Google’s Apigee Integration lets devs connect existing apps to build APIs

Google today announced the general availability of Apigee Integration, an Apigee product designed to connect existing data and apps and expose them as consumable APIs. Alongside Apigee Integration, the company launched software development lifecycle tools and native policies for conversational AI integration, as well as support for GraphQL APIs.

The debut of Apigee Integration comes as the pandemic continues to speed up digital transformation in the enterprise — and as the global economy around APIs grows. An IBM survey found that 59% of organizations invested in digitization technologies during the pandemic. Meanwhile, RapidAPI predicts that corporate API usage will sharply increase throughout 2021 as the market for services delivered through APIs eclipses $2.2 trillion.

“Data and applications are enablers of digital experiences. However, for many enterprises across the world, data and applications are siloed, buried inside various on-premises and cloud servers, and cannot be easily accessed by internal developers or partners,” Google Cloud general manager and VP Amit Zavery wrote in a blog post. “Our approach to integration leads with the digital experiences that customers, frontline employees, and partners need, and then the ability to deliver customization of data and services to deliver the impact needed. This ‘API-first’ approach means that APIs are the end products that address a set of specific business requirements.”

Apigee Integration

Apigee, an API development and predictive analytics software provider acquired by Google in 2016, offers API management and monetization tools in addition to professional services. Apigee Integration, which launches October 6, fits squarely into the tools category of the portfolio, delivering a solution that lets developers connect apps and build and manage APIs using the same interface.

“[With Apigee Integration,] the design and development of an API comes before the configuration of back-end data and infrastructure. With this launch, Apigee can now enable enterprise IT teams to accelerate the speed of innovation by reducing the risk associated with data connectivity challenges,” Zavery wrote.

Apigee Integration, powered by a runtime for large-scale integration volumes, ships with a set of prebuilt connectors to Salesforce, Cloud SQL (MySQL, PostgreSQL), Cloud Pub/Sub, and BigQuery. Advanced integration patterns enable use cases such as required looping, parallel execution, data mapping, conditional routing, manual approvals, and event-based triggers via a low-code interface.

“With the launch of Apigee Integration, Google Cloud brings together the best of API management and integration, all in a unified platform leveraging cloud-native architecture principles that allows enterprise IT teams to scale their operations, accelerate developer velocity, and increase the speed to market,” Zavery continued.

Beyond Apigee Integration, Google today rolled out an extension to the Google Cloud Code Plugin for Visual Studio code, integration with GIT-based repos, and a command line interface for archive bundling and deployment. New out-of-the-box policies connect with Dialogflow, allowing users to parse Dialogflow requests, set responses, and validate parameters captured by Dialogflow. As for the GraphQL support, Apigee now lets developers productize APIs, limit API traffic, monitor APIs, publish to portals, and implement security against bot attacks for GraphQL APIs.

“We … continue to add rich capabilities to make it easier for enterprise developers and architects to leverage API management alongside other technologies and processes,” Zavery said.