Our friend Kin Lane has an interesting article over at his essential API Evangelist site that includes a shout out for us. Kin discusses the trend in US government circles towards microprocurement. We have seen this in the UK too – for instance, with the G-Cloud digital marketplace.
CAPEX v. OPEX
Microprocurement tried to address the age-old problem of CAPEX v. OPEX. If you want an active API monitoring solution, that’s CAPEX. It’s a software system, so you have to go through the whole heavyweight procurement cycle with RfIs and RfPs and RfQs and supplier approval.
You might end up getting someone in DevOps to write you some cURL scripts – not because it’s better, but simply because that can be paid for out of the OPEX budget and avoids lots of administrative hassles.
Nonitoring
The real danger is that you don’t bother monitoring your APIs at all – nonitoring, as Kin calls it. Microservices let you to build fast, flexible, focused API-based applications. Microprocurement lets you respond quickly to the rapidly changing needs of your dynamic business environment by being able to get what you want, on your company card, when you need it. Which is usually RIGHT NOW, not in six months.
By offering exactly the right type and amount of service, microprocurements are affordable. With APIContext, you have enough active API monitoring to tell you how your APIs are really behaving from the end user perspective.
And if you need more, we will always be there to help you, but never hesitate to get your toe in the water. Those APIs need monitoring now!
The API testing microprocurement package that you can buy for less than $10k from us at APIContext today includes:
- API discovery and creation of a Postman collection (*** DAVID: does Kin here mean we would this as a consultancy service? ***)
- Annual monitoring for up to 10 APIs, with
- Weekly and monthly emailed quality statements that CASC scores and SLO/SLA attainment
- Interface to third party tools for alerts
- Public dashboards for sharing API status and SLA with all stakeholders.
