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If You're Not Monitoring Your APIs, You're Not Monitoring Your Applications

Denis Goodwin

The world we monitor has changed. This change all starts with shifts in software development, the Internet, and the expectations of end users — each evolving rapidly and because of each other. Software development has moved from one development team building end-to-end applications for a mostly homogenous set of users to many teams assembling software components into an application for a more diverse set of users.

The software development shift is driven in part by the growth of the Internet which demands scalable solutions that cannot be built and delivered by a single team and requires a distributed architecture. The reason we build all of this is to serve the needs of a variety of end users. Now, they have high expectations for software performance, led by the prevalence of consumer applications such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, where everything is fast and mostly seamless.

The Impact of APIs on Application Performance

It is the confluence of these shifts that puts API performance front and center.

The way that software development becomes faster and more scalable is by using APIs to glue together components into applications. More scalable software development and delivery means more time to build the features that attract users. However, the assembled components delivered over a distributed architecture means that it can be tricky to provide the performance that end users expect since there are so many variables.

Since APIs Are Critical To Application Delivery, You Have To Monitor Them

The nature of how and what you monitor has to follow the same path as software development and delivery. Briefly, when software was developed end-to-end and was primarily distributed over a single network, you monitored the network by ping testing everything to make sure it was operating. As software moved outside the intranet, to the Internet, we began to monitor the entire application flow and find problems along the application delivery chain.

Today, there are a variety of monitoring methods that measure performance and availability of web applications from the back-end to the front-end, all to help operation teams manage software and developers to fix problems fast. The monitoring piece, which has been least implemented to date, is direct monitoring of APIs.

The picture that you currently have of your application performance goes blurry every time there is an API involved. If you don’t monitor the API, you can’t tell if a performance problem is in your application, the network, or the API itself. If you don’t monitor your third party APIs, you can’t tell if they are performing properly and within specifications, or if you should replace the API with one that can.

If you don’t monitor your APIs, you impact your Mean Time to Repair, which directly affects your bottom line.

Just as application creation and delivery has changed, application monitoring must change with it.

Denis Goodwin is Director of Product Management, APM, AlertSite UXM, SmartBear Software.

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If You're Not Monitoring Your APIs, You're Not Monitoring Your Applications

Denis Goodwin

The world we monitor has changed. This change all starts with shifts in software development, the Internet, and the expectations of end users — each evolving rapidly and because of each other. Software development has moved from one development team building end-to-end applications for a mostly homogenous set of users to many teams assembling software components into an application for a more diverse set of users.

The software development shift is driven in part by the growth of the Internet which demands scalable solutions that cannot be built and delivered by a single team and requires a distributed architecture. The reason we build all of this is to serve the needs of a variety of end users. Now, they have high expectations for software performance, led by the prevalence of consumer applications such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, where everything is fast and mostly seamless.

The Impact of APIs on Application Performance

It is the confluence of these shifts that puts API performance front and center.

The way that software development becomes faster and more scalable is by using APIs to glue together components into applications. More scalable software development and delivery means more time to build the features that attract users. However, the assembled components delivered over a distributed architecture means that it can be tricky to provide the performance that end users expect since there are so many variables.

Since APIs Are Critical To Application Delivery, You Have To Monitor Them

The nature of how and what you monitor has to follow the same path as software development and delivery. Briefly, when software was developed end-to-end and was primarily distributed over a single network, you monitored the network by ping testing everything to make sure it was operating. As software moved outside the intranet, to the Internet, we began to monitor the entire application flow and find problems along the application delivery chain.

Today, there are a variety of monitoring methods that measure performance and availability of web applications from the back-end to the front-end, all to help operation teams manage software and developers to fix problems fast. The monitoring piece, which has been least implemented to date, is direct monitoring of APIs.

The picture that you currently have of your application performance goes blurry every time there is an API involved. If you don’t monitor the API, you can’t tell if a performance problem is in your application, the network, or the API itself. If you don’t monitor your third party APIs, you can’t tell if they are performing properly and within specifications, or if you should replace the API with one that can.

If you don’t monitor your APIs, you impact your Mean Time to Repair, which directly affects your bottom line.

Just as application creation and delivery has changed, application monitoring must change with it.

Denis Goodwin is Director of Product Management, APM, AlertSite UXM, SmartBear Software.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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