Why Smart API Governance Matters for Multigateway (and How Sensedia Gets it Right)

For companies relying on a variety of technology providers, having APIs distributed across multiple gateways is becoming an unavoidable reality. Whether by design or circumstance, a multi-gateway environment requires robust governance to maintain order in the API catalog.

In this discussion, you’ll learn how Sensedia addresses these challenges by bringing centralization, consistency, and security to your API portfolio, enabling your business to scale effectively. Guiding the conversation are Sensedia experts Rafael Rocha, Head of Solutions, and Felipe Ferreira, Product Manager for Multi-Gateway.

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Why is the use of multiple API gateways becoming increasingly common in companies, and what are the main challenges that come with this new reality?

Rocha: Over time, companies often acquire products, either intentionally or unintentionally. In the first case, a company may have a preferred gateway, but when adopting a public cloud or a CRM that comes with its own embedded gateway, it can unintentionally create a multi-gateway ecosystem.

The second scenario occurs when different product and development teams choose the technologies they prefer to meet API and integration needs.

One of the main challenges of a multi-gateway environment is decentralized governance. For instance, when developing a new API or integration, how can you be sure the catalog doesn’t already include an API that meets the same requirement?

Without proper visibility into the API catalog, companies risk creating duplicate APIs instead of reusing existing ones. This leads to higher costs, longer time-to-market, and additional assets that require monitoring and management, compounding operational challenges.

Decentralized monitoring and observability are also critical issues. Without knowing where APIs reside, it is impossible to gain a unified view of traffic, performance, consumers, and the services they support. Without this perspective, taking quick action to resolve issues or unexpected behaviors becomes significantly harder.

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How does Sensedia tackle the challenges of managing APIs across multiple gateways?

Rocha: We offer a multi-gateway governance platform that connects to the leading API gateways on the market, providing a unified and centralized API catalog. This gives you visibility into all the APIs in your ecosystem, their consumers, and the back-end systems they depend on. Through Smart API Governance, organizations gain unified governance across multiple gateways, where catalogs, metrics, and policies are centralized, delivering a holistic view of every API.

Felipe: Smart API Governance enables continuous discovery and helps evolve APIs according to best practices and quality standards. Beyond this governance layer, which integrates with a wide range of gateways, we also provide the Developer Portal. This portal allows companies to expose APIs to third parties, fostering a partner network that can integrate directly with APIs without friction.

By reducing the internal demand on operations teams, partners can onboard themselves seamlessly through the portal. They can create credentials, access API documentation, navigate workflows, and find all the information needed to complete integrations. The portal becomes an external showcase for integrations, business opportunities, and the company’s ongoing innovation.

Internally, the Developer Portal also functions as a catalog for API discovery, allowing teams to share information quickly and avoid redundant work. This reduces duplicate APIs and saves significant development time, allowing teams to focus on creating new APIs rather than replicating existing ones.

Combined with Smart API Governance, Sensedia’s Developer Portal adds an extra layer of efficiency by providing centralized and flexible governance across the entire API ecosystem.

Which teams and professionals benefit the most from this multi-gateway API governance enabled by Sensedia?

Rocha: Platform, governance, and architecture teams benefit the most, as they provide the tools for other development teams, such as a product development squad, to use. In this scenario, when creating a new feature, teams can consult the catalog during the development cycle to see if an existing API already addresses that functionality, promoting reuse. This increases agility and reduces project costs.

Another area of benefit is security teams, who face challenges like data leaks. Are APIs, regardless of which gateway they reside on, following best security practices? Do they implement OAuth 2.0, SQL injection policies, or are they vulnerable?

Business teams also benefit from the Multi-Gateway Developer Portal, especially when a company wants to expose its API portfolio externally, regardless of which gateway the APIs reside on, to productize or monetize them. This enables partners and end customers to access the APIs, creating an ecosystem and generating value.

A multi-gateway API portal provides a seamless onboarding and discovery experience for all partners. Through the portal, they can explore, test, and integrate APIs via self-service onboarding. The portal is designed to connect with any API, making it a flexible and powerful tool for expanding your API ecosystem.

How is artificial intelligence embedded in our solutions to help optimize API governance across multiple gateways?

Felipe: Our products already integrate AI as a core mechanism to optimize processes, especially those that were previously done manually. AI acts as an acceleration engine, enabling API ecosystem administrators to troubleshoot and monitor activity easily and in real time.

Our Smart API Governance provides AI-driven API best practice recommendations to improve documentation, efficiency, and ease of access for your consumers. It also identifies overlaps and redundancies among existing documented APIs within our platform. These processes would normally take hours or days and require continuous effort, potentially involving more than one dedicated person to manage.

Sensedia’s solution identifies potential resource overlaps daily and gives teams the autonomy, alongside governance professionals, to determine the best course of action, whether to unify APIs or at least eliminate redundancies. This helps create a simpler, leaner, and more consistent ecosystem while also reducing costs.

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