Understanding Multi-Gateway API Governance

In today’s increasingly hybrid enterprise landscape, companies rely on diverse technology stacks and a wide range of providers to handle highly specialized tasks. As a result, adopting multiple API gateways has quickly become a common practice. In this environment, a well-structured governance strategy is essential, ensuring centralized control while enabling efficient API usage across the organization.

In this conversation, Rafael Rocha, Head of Solutions at Sensedia, breaks down this new reality and explains how businesses can prepare to implement best practices for multi-gateway API governance.

Why is the multi-gateway approach gaining traction among large enterprises?

More than a trend, this has already become a reality. At Sensedia, we increasingly work with clients that operate in multi-gateway environments, reflecting the growing hybrid nature of enterprise technology.

Take, for example, organizations that adopt two public clouds as part of their stack, say, AWS and Oracle. Both providers offer an extensive suite of services: storage, compute power, container and application management, and countless other capabilities. Naturally, each cloud also comes with its own API gateway.

When you build and deploy an application within AWS, the default way to expose its functionality is through their API gateway. We’re seeing cloud-native gateways gain traction, with many companies adopting this.

Beyond cloud vendors, software providers such as CRMs and ERPs increasingly embed their own API gateways as part of their solutions. The result is that most enterprises today rely on multiple gateways rather than a single, centralized one.

What makes multi-gateway governance critical for enterprises?

Governance is the cornerstone of this approach. Imagine your APIs are spread across an AWS gateway, an Oracle gateway, and a gateway of an ERP solution...how do you know what APIs are active and where? Governance means knowing exactly which APIs exist, assessing their quality, understanding the back-ends they expose, tracking data and metrics, and ensuring security and compliance.

Without centralized governance, it becomes difficult to maintain visibility and control. This lack of oversight leads to gaps in observability, security risks, duplicate services, missed opportunities for reuse, and higher costs.

To address these challenges, Sensedia developed an Adaptive API Governance solution, a vendor-agnostic governance layer that can connect to the leading API gateways in the market and centralize API catalogs, metrics, and documentation in a single place. Governance and enterprise architecture teams benefit greatly from this visibility, as it enables reuse and promotes API best practices.

But governance isn’t just about having a catalog, it’s about enforcing rules. For example, if you standardize that all public APIs must include a security mechanism, but this isn’t automated, a developer might accidentally expose sensitive company data to the world. Governance ensures these rules are enforced automatically.

With Sensedia’s solution, you can define cross-gateway rules so that if an API doesn’t meet security requirements, the governance agent will block its deployment into production. This process is automated, teams don’t need to open tickets or wait for manual reviews.

The result? Stronger security, better compliance, improved reuse, reduced costs, and faster time-to-market. Manual processes slow API delivery; automation streamlines governance and accelerates release cycles.

How does a Developer Portal fit into a multi-gateway strategy?

Documentation is just as important as governance. It’s not enough to have a catalog, you need a Developer Portal that connects directly with platform engineering teams and empowers product teams.

A well-structured API portal provides clear, accurate documentation and guides developers on the correct way to consume APIs. This makes it easier for product teams to identify which APIs are available and relevant, accelerating integration and encouraging reuse.

Another critical scenario in the multi-gateway context is API productization. When enterprises want to make APIs available to partners, they need a complete journey: registration, product discovery, pricing, contract formalization, and seamless integration. Sensedia’s Multi-Gateway Developer Portal integrates APIs across AWS, Oracle, Sensedia, and other major providers, enabling a unified experience for both internal teams and external partners.

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Ready to take control of your AI and API governance? Connect with our team and see what Sensedia can do for you. 

https://www.sensedia.com/contact-us

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