Accelerating Developer Productivity with Federated Gateways

by Josh Twist

Velocity matters. Product release cycles are now exceptionally fast. Companies ship fixes and minor updates daily and major features weekly.

The catalyst for this is developer productivity. If you can get your dev teams working together and efficiently, they can blitz through backlog and customer requests like it’s nobody’s business.

This makes it all the more frustrating that API teams have been left out of this blitzing. API developers have been left behind in terms of a better developer experience. This makes them look bad.

At Zuplo, we’re all about the API developer experience. We want to make API developers fast, and federated gateways will do precisely that.

Ship Fast, Earn More Money#

You are only as fast as your slowest release cycle.

Let’s say you have two dev teams, A and B:

• Team A works on the /product endpoints. They are constantly working to get new features out to users.
• Team B works on the /billing endpoint. They also want to send updates but must be more cautious–a bad deployment can be mission-critical.

What happens if both /product and /billing are behind the same API gateway?

Your deployment cycles look like this:

Team A is building but is always waiting for Team B to deploy. Team B needs to test their deployments extensively to avoid breaking anything, while Team A better not screw up the config and bring down the whole API, and bring down the wrath of Team B while they are at it. Only once everyone is good to go can everything be pushed through.

In large organizations with a monolithic gateway, release trains rule with everyone on the same schedule. Let’s say changes are pushed to either staging or production every other Tuesday. OK, so you have a new feature and push it to staging.

In the best possible world, you still have to wait two weeks for it to be deployed to production. In the real world, you have to rework the code based on feedback, errors, changes, etc., so you might miss that release window. Now you are waiting a month. That’s how you get a release train that suddenly turns into a two-month release cycle.

Then, you've also got to deal with environment-specific configurations, naming conventions, and conditional statements. Every team has to do this, and every team has to coordinate with every other team. This is what slows API deployments down.

This inertia matters.

If you can't release features, you're losing money. Every hour, day, or week of deployment delay adds to a massive handicap. You're an hour, day, or week behind on knowing if a new feature is working. Then, the update to that feature takes more time to deploy. It's a vicious cycle of slowness and frustration.

This only gets worse as you scale. More teams mean more waiting for the slowest group, and more processes are involved to get everyone on the same train.

So, what if Team A could deploy on their own? They could cut this time down from weeks to days. Updates could be shipped in hours. That's the kind of speed that is genuinely required for shipping and growing API-first products.

How can we then do this? Using Zuplo with our federated gateways.

Ship Faster With Federated Gateways#

With federated gateways, each team gets control of its own gateway, which feeds into the main gateway. No more waiting around for slowpokes or worrying about someone else breaking your code. Each gateway can be deployed, rolled back, and managed fully independently of the others with no impact on the others.

Now, each team can have their own train.

Team A can be on the express, blasting out features, while Team B takes the local, carefully testing and QAing their builds for a month without getting death stares from Team A.

And when Team C comes along and wants to add /analytics, they can mess with whatever they want without Teams A and B losing their minds.

Now, each team can be productive at the pace required for their part of the API, leading to a better developer experience. Each team can work on their endpoints without constantly looking over their shoulder, worried that other teams are going to screw everything up. Teams can also use their authentication schemes, rate limits, and other policies without affecting other teams, with no more lowest-common-denominator API policies.

Onboarding new developers is easier. They only need to worry about their own gateway, not the whole monolith. Debugging and troubleshooting become much simpler when each team has its own isolated environment. Rolling out new versions and doing A/B testing is a snap when each team can control its own gateway. Experimentation becomes the norm, not the exception.

With clear ownership and autonomy, teams are more invested in the success of their APIs. They can innovate without roadblocks and unlock more value for the company:

• Faster time-to-market for new features and products. When teams can move at their own pace, the company can respond to market demands and opportunities more quickly.
• Increased experimentation and innovation. With the freedom to try new things without affecting other teams, developers can develop creative solutions that drive the business forward.
• Improved quality and reliability. When each team is responsible for its own gateway, they have a vested interest in making sure it's rock-solid. This leads to better overall API quality and fewer disruptions for customers.
• More efficient use of resources. Teams can focus on their core competencies without getting bogged down in coordination overhead. This means the company can get more done with the same headcount.
• Better alignment with business objectives. Federated gateways allow for more granular control and monitoring of APIs. The company can make data-driven decisions and optimize APIs to meet specific business goals.
• Faster response to customer needs. With each team in control of their own destiny, they can quickly adapt to customer feedback and changing requirements. This agility is critical to staying competitive in today's fast-paced market.

Unleash Your API's Potential with Federated Gateways#

The API developer experience has been neglected for far too long. While the rest of the software development world has been speeding ahead, API teams have been stuck in the slow lane, bogged down by monolithic gateways and cumbersome deployment processes.

But it doesn't have to be this way. At Zuplo, we believe that API developers deserve better. That's why we've built a platform that puts the API developer experience front and center, and federated gateways are a key part of that vision.

With federated gateways, you can:

• Boost developer productivity by giving each team control over its own gateway
• Increase team autonomy and ownership, leading to more innovation and better quality
• Accelerate shipping velocity by eliminating bottlenecks and enabling parallel development
• Unlock more value for your company by aligning APIs with business objectives and responding faster to customer needs

In short, federated gateways are a game-changer for API development. They allow you to break free from the constraints of monolithic architectures and unleash the full potential of your API teams.

The best part? More productivity and faster shipping mean more money for your business. It's a win-win situation.

So, if you're ready to take your API development to the next level, we're here to help. Reach out to us to discuss how we can set up federated gateways in your organization.