With 2020’s challenges now behind us, it’s a great time to reflect on the lessons we learned. During a time when digital transformation and technology innovation took center stage during the global health crisis, API integration and management became even more critical for organizations. With all this in mind, and to help you set your 2021 API New Year’s resolutions, here is a look back at our must-read posts about APIs from 2020.

Getting API design right

There’s more to APIs than providing access to functionality and data—API design plays a significant role in maximizing business value, increasing developer productivity, and ensuring the longevity of an API. This topic has been covered many times in the Google Cloud Blog, but here are two of our favorite posts about API design from 2020:

• API design: Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them
• APIs 101: Everything you need to know about API design

Why API strategy is powering digital transformation

It’s impossible to discuss transformation and modernization without mentioning APIs. They are the de facto standard today for building and connecting modern applications. APIs can no longer be an afterthought in application development, they are central to delivering competitive advantage, enabling inter-service communication, and improving operational efficiency. With this in mind, it is more important than ever to treat your API program as a mission-critical initiative. Here are our top picks for posts you need to read on API strategy:

• What is API-first? 5 opportunities to create business value
• How APIs and ecosystem strategies accelerate digital transformation
• How an API-powered digital ecosystem can drive innovation and efficiency
• Four ways to generate value from your APIs
• How to be a data-driven company: 5 ways to embrace data
• Building business resilience with API management

Powerful new API capabilities and product enhancements

From the new Apigee Adaptor for Envoy-based services and the launch of the Google Cloud API Gateway to using Apigee to fuel no-code development or unlock the wealth of data in legacy SAP environments, there was no shortage of new Google Cloud offerings in 2020 to help developers create, manage, and leverage APIs. APIs have emerged as the key tissue linking organizations and technologies in ecosystems, allowing businesses to gain maximum value from their data and forge new avenues for innovation and growth. In case you missed them, here are the most popular posts about the latest Google Cloud product offerings and updates for API management:

• Faster, more powerful apps for everyone: What happened at Next OnAir this week
• Announcing API management for services that use Envoy
• Google Cloud API Gateway is now available in public beta
• Apigee: Your gateway to more manageable APIs for SAP
• No-code momentum: Accelerating app development and automation
• How to develop secure and scalable serverless APIs

Apigee named a Leader again by Gartner and Forrester

For the fifth time in a row, Gartner recognized Google (Apigee) as a Leader in the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management. Apigee was positioned highest out of all the vendors for the ability to execute, enabling enterprises to build and scale their mission-critical API programs. Check out the post (and download the full report) to learn how Apigee’s comprehensive API management capabilities accelerate app development, build API-driven digital ecosystems, and power modern API economies:

• Google (Apigee) named a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management

Google Cloud was also recognized by Forrester as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2020. In this report, Forrester assessed 15 API management solutions against a set of pre-defined criteria. In addition to being named a leader, Google Cloud received the highest possible score in the market presence category, and the strategy category criteria of product vision, and planned enhancements, and current offering criteria such as API user engagement, REST API documentation, formal lifecycle management, data validation and attack protection, API product management, and analytics and reporting.

• Google Cloud named a Leader in the 2020 Forrester Wave for API Management Solutions

Anthos makes multicloud simple and more cost-effective

In an increasingly hybrid and multi-cloud world, organizations are looking for a way to build, deploy, and operate applications anywhere they are. They need visibility, scalability, and portability so developers are empowered to build and run their apps—whether legacy or cloud-native—where they want without the headache of dealing with lack of cloud-specific training, vendor lock-in, and silos. Anthos can see, orchestrate, and manage any workload that talks to the Kubernetes API, making it easy to create systems that are consistent across any environment—and to do more with APIs and microservices in the cloud. Read more about why Anthos goes far beyond application modernization and what we have planned for the future in this post:

• Anthos: one multi-cloud management layer for all your applications

Cool things you didn’t know Google APIs could do

We’ve emphasized the importance of APIs, but we’re also inspired in our own work by the unlimited potential of APIs to help us build and create things that improve how we work. Here are some Google API highlights from the year:

• Our Healthcare API and other solutions for supporting healthcare and life sciences organizations during the pandemic
• Building a G Suite app with the Google Cloud Vision API and Apps Script
• Use the Dashboard API to build your own monitoring dashboard

Looking to read more about the power of APIs? Get inspired with more customer stories, product news, and industry insights. We’d also love to hear your top API takeaways from 2020. Share them with us on Twitter.

^{Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management, 22 September 2020, Paolo Malinverno, Kimihiko Iijima, Mark O’Neill, John Santoro, Shameen Pillai, Akash Jain}

^{Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.}