What is the value of API Management in my integration solutions?

Azure API Management is an API-Gateway service on Microsoft’s Azure Platform. You can use API Management to provide a Gateway to any service residing on-premise, in a container or cloud. It can help you securely expose your APIs to third parties, partners or internally.

With API Management, you can secure your Logic App endpoints, i.e. your HTTP-triggered Logic Apps that have a public endpoint. Hence API Management can be useful to protect publicly available Logic Apps – and act as a façade. See also the tip: Secure Logic Apps Using API Management. Note that API Management can protect any endpoint – not just Logic Apps, but also HTTP-triggered Azure Functions, API hosted in App Services, or elsewhere.

The value of API Management is providing better protection for your Logic Apps that can be part of an integration solution in the cloud. As an extra perimeter around your Logic Apps is one way of hardening the security for Logic Apps. You can however also choose to isolate your Logic Apps further by having them in an Integration Service Environment, inside a Virtual Network, accessible through an API Management in the same VNET, with Application Gateway in front of the API Management instance. This setup will require a premium tier of API Management, which has VNET support and Azure Active Directory integration.

Lastly, the value of API Management is not only protecting API endpoints (security) – it offers many other capabilities that can enhance the quality of service for your APIs. Moreover, you can delegate rate-limiting, transformations, authorization, and so on to an API Management instance – providing you with a central (one) management service for your APIs.