Because of the maturity of the complementary API management tools, you can provide those interfaces to consumers and the following functions: 

GLYPH<SM590000> Make them easily discoverable by potential consumers. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Enable secure, self-administered onboarding of new consumers. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Provide analytics to understand usage and dependencies. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Promote them as externally facing so they can be used by third parties. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Potentially even monetize APIs by treating them as a product that is provided by your enterprise rather than just a technical interface. 

In this more standards-based, API-led integration, there is little burden on either side when an application wants to use APIs that are offered from another provider application. 

Of course, API management is only part of the picture. API management provides the standardized, secure, and discoverable exposure of an API, but what if the application in question does not provide an API, has the wrong granularity, is overly complicated, or has a complex security model? This is where application integration run times help by providing the tools to perform deep connectivity, unpick complex protocols, and compose multiple requests to produce an API that is appropriate to expose through an API management layer. 

It is not point-to-point because this integration and surfacing of the API is done only once on the provider side for a capability. It can then be reused easily by multiple consumers, and its usage can be monitored and controlled in a standardized way. 

## 2.4 The three aspects of agile integration 

Over the next few sections, you explore agile integration based on its effects on people, architecture, and infrastructure: 

GLYPH<SM590000> People - Decentralized integration ownership: Improve development agility  by empowering teams with integration capabilities so that they can innovate in real time. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Architecture - Delivery focused integration architecture: Improve deployment agility  by using modern architectural and design practices such as API-led integration, microservices, and event-driven applications apply to integration. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Infrastructure - Cloud portable integration infrastructure: Improve operational agility by using a platform-neutral, cloud-native approach to integration infrastructure. 

## 2.5 People: Decentralized integration ownership 

Any significant change must start with people. If the people are not aligned with a new way of working, they rapidly slip back into the old way of doing things. As ever, you can refer right back to Conway’s Law (circa 1967): If we’re changing the way we architect systems and we want it to stick, we also need to change the organizational structure. 1 

Look at how enterprises are typically aligned from an integration perspective, then consider how you might progressively change them to a more agile approach. Although we propose an alternative model to centralized technology teams, we recognize that this model may not be right for all enterprises, and even within any enterprise it might be right only for some parts of that organization. 

