How Can Cloud API Monitoring Improve User Experience
Discover how cloud APIs drive digital transformation, enhance user experience, and ensure security.
The adoption of cloud APIs within organizations has surged in recent years due to their critical role in driving digital transformation and improving end-user experience. Yet, having a key API monitoring strategy is key to maintaining the quality of service provided, says Jamie Beckland, chief product officer at APIContext.
In recent years, the use of cloud APIs (application programming interfaces) within modern enterprises has accelerated due to the critical role they play in driving digital transformation success. Cloud application programming interfaces, otherwise known as cloud APIs, enable applications to communicate and transfer information to one another. Cloud APIs promote innovation and empower businesses to create new markets and opportunities and most importantly, help to deliver better customer experiences without sacrificing security. Most importantly, cloud APIs facilitate the connection of applications and the exposure of services.
Indeed, APIs have many functions. Some APIs offer access to more customized API data integrations, and many cloud APIs synchronize data between applications and databases, sharing data and information among colleagues across diverse departments and even external partners. This helps to enhance communication and security within organizations. Furthermore, cloud APIs streamline the process of building applications for developers by simplifying sharing data and functionality. As a result, teams build applications at speed and enable effective application management.
Given the extensive data access and interaction capabilities APIs have across networks, API monitoring improves application and site performance, security, uptime, recovery from outages, user monitoring, and other aspects of an organization’s work performance. Moreover, API monitoring enables organizations to ensure functionality, minimize website security threats, resolve existing performance issues quickly, and improve user experience.
Cloud API Availability Metrics
Due to the complex nature of APIs, there is a vast range of metrics used to measure performance. One of the key API metrics organizations should monitor is the availability or uptime score of the API, as the score will ultimately determine the quality of user experience. When an API becomes unavailable, it may result in application errors, impaired functionality, or delayed loading times. Consequently, this may deter users from interacting with the organization’s product or service, resulting in a poor user experience. Such occurrences not only jeopardize customer loyalty but also invite negative reviews and feedback, potentially damaging brand reputation.
Yet, the continuously evolving cloud ecosystem, which has increased by 20% in the past 12 months, has made it challenging for cloud service providers such as AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and others to scale hardware at the same rate as consumption growth. In fact, statistics from the 2024 Cloud Service Provider API Report by APIContext show that in 2023, globally, only 7% of API Services achieved a 99.99% service availability score, a significant drop from 18% in 2022. Taking into consideration that the benchmark for all API service providers should be 99.99%, while 99.999% is the traditional telecommunications standard for service availability, this significant drop equates to more than five minutes of downtime in a year. Evidently, the increase in remote working, in combination with the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning computing, has taken its toll on how cloud service providers maintain the speed and quality of their services.
Measuring API Cloud Performance
Measuring API cloud speed is another important metric to monitor which can help organizations to improve user experience. Organizations should take into consideration the geographical location of cloud service providers as API cloud performance rates can differ depending on the location the cloud service providers are situated in. Our own findings from more than 650 million API calls in 2023 revealed that North America had the fastest Connect Time speed of 500 milliseconds (ms), whilst Europe came in as a close second amongst the other regions. This is unsurprising when taking into consideration that Europe and North America have robust, reliable telecommunications networks and higher performance expectations than regions with slower speeds. Oceania ranked last in fifth, which highlights the decline in API speed amongst cloud providers hosted in isolated regions. Further to this, the report highlighted the effective performance of cloud service provider AWS, as four of the top five locations for Time to Connect fell within AWS locations in Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania.
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Recommendations For Effective API Management
APIs play a vital role in helping organizations to expand, scale, and offer new services that users need and want through improving end-user experience and eliminating the need to rewrite their core applications. Yet, if they are not regularly monitored, faults can occur within the APIs, which can ultimately hinder user experience and lead to consequential outcomes for organizations. Organizations can determine performance rates and execute effective API management by actively monitoring the availability and latency of all APIs within the network infrastructure and cloud environments. It is equally important to benchmark the performance and quality of their APIs against competitors to ensure the delivery of the best possible service to users.
Moreover, it is imperative for organizations to choose their cloud service providers carefully to ensure that cloud API speed remains high and latency can be improved, especially considering that 70 ms or more of latency can be down to cloud choice. In a typical 10-call API workflow, this could add up to 700 ms to a customer transaction. Further, organizations need to understand the difference between the geographical location of their cloud service providers and user locations and how this can impact API cloud speed. For instance, if the cloud service provider is hosted in Virginia, but the organization’s user base is in Vietnam or Vienna, this could cause organizations to lose valuable milliseconds for their users. Consequently, this could result in a decline in customers, who may then choose to migrate to faster or more reliable services.
Additionally, organizations that currently rely on a single cloud service provider should consider adopting a multi-cloud approach to help build resilience. All cloud service providers operate differently and change for different latency components. While one service provider may be appropriate for one user segment, it may not be for another. Therefore, by using multiple cloud service providers, organizations can cover all bases to help improve latency and overall API performance.
Teams must also familiarise themselves with the impact of API failures and errors on user experience and business costs. Although API performance and quality issues can be costly, bad APIs will eventually result in the loss of valuable customers. Ideally, organizations need a solution that can consolidate all API monitoring tools into a single and unified platform to ensure critical APIs are kept secure and can continue to deliver the highest possible level of user experience.
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