Trend 2: Platform engineering - API Economy Trends for 2025

APIs enable faster product development, improve digital partnerships, allow reusable components, integrate data and web services, automate workflows, and provide the infrastructure necessary for enabling AI and other technologies.

However, APIs also introduce complexity with different approaches available and different interface patterns that can be applied.

Federated API management (as described in Trend 1) is a technical solution for addressing this complexity when exposing APIs to partners and externally.

Federated API management solutions also offer mechanisms to manage internal APIs from a traffic perspective: managing who has access and how APIs flow from core infrastructure to their use via gateways, and enabling observability and so on.  

But what about when seeking to simplify the complexity internal developers face when trying to find out what APIs are available for building products and services and automating workflows, and ensuring APIs are designed and built consistently in a way that aligns with other APIs already built?

Platform engineering has emerged as the solution to support teams to work more efficiently by enabling greater sharing of IT components, encouraging internal standardisation and common processes, promoting reuse of data models, and highlighting the availability of tools and internal APIs. 

At Platformable, we break down platform engineering into the following formula:
Business policy for ecosystem-based business model + team reorientations and organisational restructures +  Internal developer experience (consistent architecture/design patterns + internal catalog) + API governance + data governance + DevOps = Platform Engineering¹.

API Governance as a starting point

API governance is a good place to start when building a platform engineering approach internally. Most organisations have built APIs from the ground up: initially to address a single use case and then discovering the impact value and creating more APIs. Over time, API sprawl occurs where there are multiple APIs, each designed slightly differently or using different data models and naming conventions for the same things.

If your organisation is taking an API-first approach when building internal products and services, your internal developer teams are slowed down when they must either create new APIs (where there were options that already existed), or must learn each individual API's naming conventions and approach (where they are reusing an API built for a different use case).

If your organisation is seeking to take a platform business model approach and build out an ecosystem, or participate in an existing open ecosystem like open banking or digital health, it is essential that external developers are supported to quickly make use of your APIs and that once they understand one of your APIs, they can more easily make use of others in your catalogue.

Both these scenarios require API governance approaches.

The need for data governance

One under-addressed area, however, is that data governance is also needed. In our work with various clients on API governance, one of the biggest challenges has been that data governance is seen as a completely separate concern to API governance. Often there was a work program either planned or "just starting" that sought to improve data governance practices internally, but this work program was often run by other departments with little API overlap. Yet developers need data models in their APIs.

Data governance as an area that is often not linked with APIs, but data models are an important part of API design and in 2024, we saw some maturing in how JSON Schema is being used consistently to define data models within APIs. We saw the JSON Schema community grow significantly in 2024, and expect that dynamism to keep expanding in 2025.  Also, as opportunities for AI continue to be sought, data governance will also become increasingly important, as good data management is needed for AI to be leveraged successfully.

Internal developer portals

Internal developer portals have arisen as a key tool that addresses API sprawl by providing an internal catalog for APIs, but also a central space to share internal developer resources such as organisation API style guides and data models. Some internal developer portals are now enabling new APIs to be reviewed against internal standards and then moved to deployment automatically where they meet defined API governance requirements². (We will be releasing a deep dive analysis of internal developer portals in March 2025 as part of our API Economy Trends updates, please let us know if you would like to be involved.)

2025 predictions

Platform engineering may be going through somewhat of a trough of disillusionment phase at the moment. At Platformable, we recommend following the work of the New Stack and Jennifer Riggins in particular who is regularly tracking the rise of platform engineering and how it can be applied in a way that enables developer productivity.

API governance, data governance, DevSecOps and observability processes will all converge into platform engineering as a discipline for managing APIs and other digital components that help organisation’s build out their digital products and services, automate workflow processes and incorporate new technologies like AI. New API tools will continue to expand to support platform engineering approaches.

In 2025, we do expect to see platform engineering continue to grow as an approach. We expect to see data governance be more closely aligned with other aspects of platform engineering (including API governance and internal developer portal product teams, with increasing use of JSON Schema and related approaches, and we think if Team Topologies-type reorientations are applied to organisational structure, that data teams might move a little closer to API governance and software architect teams). As we will show in Trend 4, we also expect that platform engineering will attempt to leverage AI a lot more. 

Addressing this API Economy Trend: Where to Start

For Data and API consumers

As a digital business, platform engineering can help you maintain oversight of your API assets, and streamline engineering teams to utilise best-in-breed tools when managing API consumption.

For Data and API providers

Having all APIs collected in an internal developer portal can help speed up product development and reduce complexity and security risks from API sprawl and shadow APIs.

For Data and API tools providers

Consider whether your product can integrate with existing internal; developer portals and other platform engineering tools.