A Substantive and Educational API Management User Group Gathering

On Tuesday December 3rd, the first Layer7 Enable U API Management User Group gathering was held at the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam. The User Group, organised by Dutch integration specialist Enable U in collaboration with Broadcom, was set up to share knowledge, and exchange ideas and experiences regarding API Management.

With a great turn out of over sixty attendees, I had the opportunity to open the gathering with a short introduction about Enable U and to emphasize the purpose of the day; to create an API Management user group “for users, by users”.

Since Broadcom acquired CA Technologies a little over a year ago, users have been wanting to be informed of what the decided strategy and development will be for Layer7 API Management. Therefore Aran White, Director of Product Adoption at Broadcom, presented the Layer7 API Gateway and Portal Roadmap and presented Broadcom’s future strategy for the API Management business.

In short, it became clear that API Management has a bright future under the Broadcom umbrella.

The user group audience had indicated that they have a great interest in the practical implementation of the Layer7 API Management solution for a large financial institution.

We therefore invited Volksbank to present their use-case. The highly engaged attendees had the opportunity to ask many questions, and also to share critical notes. These were addressed in an open atmosphere, which was highly appreciated. The session was extended to be able to answer and discuss the many questions and critical notes. From my perspective, this is exactly what a user group meeting should be like!

After this interactive session, we hosted a technical deep-dive. The demo by Gary Vermeulen, Client Services Consultant at Broadcom, certainly provided exactly this. The Layer7 New Technology demo left even the most technical architect dazzled with knowledge.

We ended the User Group with the presentation by Jascha Gregorowitsch, CTO at Enable U, and Kevin Rijs, Security Consultant at Enable U. They shared our best practices for using the API Gateway. It’s amazing to see what you could do and build by leveraging the API Gateway technology.

Thanks to the many questions the attendees asked and the practical examples that followed, we had a substantive and very educational meeting. We look forward to the next API Management User Group gathering, which we hope to organize together with more users.