About Providers, Customers, Consumers, and End-Users
Published in · 2 min read · Jun 1, 2018
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There are four main groups of stakeholders: API providers, API customers, API consumers, and end-users. API providers build, expose, and operate APIs. API customers make a decision to buy the use of an API. API consumers develop apps that use APIs. End-users don’t use directly APIs. Instead, they use APIs indirectly via the app that is developed by the API consumer and provided by the API customer.
The following figure shows the four main groups and how they interact.
In the following, we describe each group, their competencies, as well as heir interests.
API providers build, expose, and operate APIs. In other words, API providers are the ones that provide APIs to others.
API providers need to know how APIs are designed, built, and operated.
Typically, API providers use an API management platform to build, expose, and operate APIs. Further, they provide operate a developer portal to engage with API customers and API consumers.
API customers are the ones who make the decision what APIs to use and who pay for using commercial the APIs.
