Introduction

WSO2 API Cloud is an enterprise-ready, self-service platform that enables you to expose business capabilities as managed APIs and leverage off-the-shelf potential for advertising and selling business APIs.  The API Cloud supports all aspects of an API's lifecycle, from its creation to publication and retirement.  

The API Cloud is based on WSO2 API Manager, WSO2's complete solution for designing and publishing APIs and managing a developer community. 

Advantages of the API Cloud

• Provides a pre-setup environment that is ready to go and saves time on infrastructure set up.
• Reduces the cost of development and time-to-market because developers understand what capabilities are already available as APIs and ready for reuse before starting a new development project.
• Helps build a digital business ecosystem. The API Cloud fosters cross-organizational development collaboration by making your APIs public in a storefront and encouraging reuse.
• Enables platform service sharing by tenant-aware and service-aware load balancing.
• Frees enterprises from vendor locking. You can start hosting and managing your APIs on the API Cloud and then migrate between an on-premises instance, a private PaaS, a public PaaS, and hybrid cloud environments without rewriting code or reentering data.  
• Helps manage and monitor APIs through various statistical dashboards.
• Provides a consistent, easy-to-use, check-box GUI for creating and managing API and a developer community.
• The platform automatically manages dependencies for you. For example, when moving an API from the CREATED state to PUBLISHED state, you usually have to connect to different databases. But now, the publisher can simply move the application through its lifecycle stages while the platform automatically handles the underlying tasks.