Microsoft has announced Azure API Center's general availability (GA), which offers centralized API inventory for easy API discovery, reuse, and governance regardless of API type, lifecycle stage, or deployment location.
With the GA release of Azure API Center, a follow-up of the earlier public preview, developers can now leverage its features to build a complete and current API inventory. This includes enforcing API design best practices at scale, streamlining development with improved developer experiences, and API discovery through the API Center Portal.
An essential capability of Azure API Center is managing API inventory with enhanced visibility and governance. It offers built-in metadata, including title, description, type, lifecycle stage, owner, version, deployment, and specification information. Developers can create their API inventory using the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or Visual Studio Code.
Furthermore, API Center is not just a standalone tool but a fully integrated solution. It seamlessly integrates with CI/CD pipelines in GitHub and Azure DevOps, ensuring the developers’ organization API inventory stays current. Additionally, API Center's API Analysis tool helps enforce API design best practices and consistency across your organization.
The Visual Studio Code extension streamlines API discovery and consumption. It makes it easy for developers to browse and search the organization's API catalog, view API documentation inline, and test APIs using industry-standard tools. Additionally, developers can generate SDKs for their preferred languages.
The API Center Portal, a web-based discovery and engagement portal for APIs, allows API Platform teams to provide API consumers with a seamless API discovery and consumption environment. With the portal, they can browse, filter, and search for APIs, import them into their favorite developer tools, or explore them in the API Center extension for Visual Studio Code.
API Center Portal (Source: Azure Tech Community blog post)
Justin Yoo, a cloud advocate at Microsoft, concluded in a blog post on Azure API Center:
Managing many APIs in one place is crucial as your organization grows. You might think you don't need Azure API Center if your organization's API structure is relatively simple. However, even if your organization is small, Azure API Center will give you a better overview of APIs and how they can be interconnected.
In addition, Wessel Beulink, a cloud architect at Rubicon, concluded in his blog post on Azure API Center:
By adopting Azure API Center and its complementary tools, organizations can enhance their API management practices, boost developer productivity, and unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth. As an Azure Solution Architect, the key to success lies in understanding the strategic importance of APIs in your digital transformation journey and leveraging the right tools and practices to manage them effectively.
Lastly, Azure API Center is available in the Australia East, Central India, East US, UK South, and West Europe Azure regions. Details of the service are also available on the documentation landing page.