Gartner defines the application programming interface (API) management market as the market for software that supports API life cycle stages such as planning and design, implementation and testing, deployment and operation, and versioning and retirement. Organizations use APIs to modernize their architectures; efficiently integrate systems, services and partners; and create and monetize data and services. API management software enables organizations to discover, design, build, manage and secure APIs, regardless of their size, region or industry. It helps them improve composability, security and business resilience, and accelerate their growth.
Gartner defines access management (AM) as platforms that include an identity provider (IdP) and establish, manage and enforce runtime access controls to at least cloud, modern standards-based web and classic web applications. AM’s purpose is to enable single sign-on (SSO) access for people (workforce, consumer and other users) and machines into protected applications in a streamlined and consistent way that enhances user experience. AM is also responsible for providing security controls to protect the user session in runtime, enforcing authentication (with multifactor authentication [MFA]) and authorization using adaptive access. Lastly, AM can provide identity context for other cybersecurity tools to enable identity-first security.
'Application integration platforms enable independently designed applications, apps and services to work together. Key capabilities of application integration technologies include: • Communication functionality that reliably moves messages/data among endpoints. • Support for fundamental web and web services standards. • Functionality that dynamically binds consumer and provider endpoints. • Message validation, mapping, transformation and enrichment. • Orchestration. • Support for multiple interaction patterns, content-based routing and typed messages.
The market for ESP platforms consists of software subsystems that perform real-time computation on streaming event data. They execute calculations on unbounded input data continuously as it arrives, enabling immediate responses to current situations and/or storing results in files, object stores or other databases for later use. Examples of input data include clickstreams; copies of business transactions or database updates; social media posts; market data feeds; images; and sensor data from physical assets, such as mobile devices, machines and vehicles.
Gartner defines integration platform as a service (iPaaS) as a vendor-managed cloud service that enables end users to implement integrations between a variety of applications, services and data sources, both internal and external to their organization.
Gartner defines user authentication as the journey-time process that provides credence in a claim to an identity established for a person for access to digital assets. User authentication is delivered by some combination of (a) an authenticator, (b) signals evaluation and (c) an authentication decision point, which may be from different vendors. User authentication is used to provide credence in an identity claim for a person already known to an organization. The credence must be sufficient to bring account takeover (ATO) risks within the organization’s risk tolerance. User authentication is foundational to and protects the value of other functions with an organization’s identity fabric, namely: runtime authorization, especially segregation of duties (SOD); audit (individual accountability); and identity analytics.