Federated API management redux

Federated API management is a novel approach that allows organizations to maintain decentralized management of their API ecosystems while providing a centralized layer of governance and oversight, addressing the challenges of diverse teams, software, and standards across subsidiaries. Unlike traditional centralization efforts, which can be cumbersome and expensive, federated API management lets teams continue their productive work with different stacks while ensuring compliance with IT and security regulations. The article discusses two main approaches in the market: a consultative strategy with software support that often leads to technical debt and a centralization-by-proxy method that risks defeating the purpose of decentralization. The proposed solution advocates for open standards and existing solutions like the OpenAPI Specification and Open Policy Agent to enable effective governance without vendor lock-in or centralization drift. Emphasizing the need for APIM vendors to adopt cloud-native tools, the text argues for using federated and open tooling to achieve true federation in API management.