Project Proposal: Cloud API Implementation and Management

This project proposal outlines the implementation of a Cloud API to address the challenges of integrating applications and workloads within cloud computing environments. The proposal identifies system administrators as the primary consumers of the API, which aims to facilitate easy access to both cloud hardware and software. The API will be built using RESTful web service technology due to its flexibility and ease of use. For management and publication, the SAP Cloud Platform API Management will be used, leveraging its capabilities to manage and expose web services. The proposal details the steps involved in publishing the API and justifies the choice of the SAP platform. The architecture of the project is also discussed. The project aims to improve the cloud experience and create cross-cloud compatibility functionalities for system administrators.

Running Head: CLOUD API IMPLIMENTATION, PROJECT PROPOSAL 1
CLOUD API IMPLIMENTATION, PROJECT PROPOSAL
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CLOUD API IMPLIMENTATION, PROJECT PROPOSAL 2
The problem domain
Cloud computing has continued to gain momentum and hence forcing system
administrators to look for advanced ways of integrating with their initial cloud models.
Currently, the direct use cases for this advanced technology require greater and more advanced
customization levels (Armbrust, Fox, Griffith, Joseph, Katz, Konwinski & Zaharia, 2010). With
these and other requirements like enhancing cloud experience and creating cross-cloud
compatibility functionalities, cloud environments have become a challenge to all the system
administrators operating at different levels of accessibility. The main challenge has been the
integration of applications and other workloads in the cloud computing environment. In this
paper, implementation of a cloud API has been proposed as the solution to these challenges.
The purpose of cloud API
This type of API will enable the development of both services and applications that will
be used to facilitate easy access to both cloud hardware and software. Important also, this API
will be serving as the gateway and an interface to provide system administrators with both direct
and indirect access to cloud infrastructure and software services (Cusumano, 2010). Finally, this
API will allow system administrators to easily interact with the cloud infrastructure as far as
allocating computing, network and storage resources as requested by cloud applications and
services is concerned.
Cloud API potential consumer(s)
System administrators in the organizations which have upgraded to cloud computing will
be the main consumers of Cloud API. This is in consideration to the fact that system

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administrators are the ones responsible in ensuring that organization’s cloud infrastructures are
working as expected and that involves constant access to cloud software and hardware,
upgrading and integrating new applications and services into these environments which have
proved challenging and tedious before (Petcu, Craciun & Rak, 2011).
The technologies used to implement cloud API
To implement my Cloud API, I will use RESTful web service technology. This is in
consideration to its easier to use the feature for the most parts and also its flexibility (Cusumano,
2010). To arrive at my decision, I compared this technology with SOAP technology and came
out with some of its stronghold features in relation to my type of API like the ease to understand
its standards, its smaller learning curve, and efficiency through the use of small message formats
and its closeness to other web technologies for the purposes of integration.
My API publish and Management platform
For the purposes of getting my API managed and proxified, I will use SAP Cloud
Platform API management and publish it in the SAP API Business Hub. To fully publish my API
into my portal, the process will take into account the following two steps:
1. Selecting my API product to publish in my portal.
2. Auto-generating the API reference documentation from my snapshot of OpenAPI
Specification to make it easy for other developers to learn about my APIs.
The main reason behind my choice is that SAP Cloud Platform API Management helps in
managing and exposing the web services for outside consumption (Petrillo, Merle, Moha &

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Guéhéneuc, 2016). This is simply to mean that the solution will act as a proxy for any HTTP-
web based services. Creating the proxy in front of source web service, the API Management will
extend the functionality of the backend. The platform will also add value to my API through
hiding the actual endpoints from the rest of consumers and hence acting as an extra layer of
security, adding logic for load distribution, adding authentication mechanisms like ensuring that
each request contains an API key and finally transforming requests from one format to another.
The Architecture of the project
References
Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., Katz, R., Konwinski, A., ... & Zaharia, M.
(2010). A view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM, 53(4), 50-58.
Cusumano, M. (2010). Cloud computing and SaaS as new computingplatforms. Communications
of the ACM, 53(4), 27-29.
Petcu, D., Craciun, C., & Rak, M. (2011). Towards a cross platform cloud API. In 1st
International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (pp. 166-169).

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Petrillo, F., Merle, P., Moha, N., & Guéhéneuc, Y. G. (2016, October). Are REST APIs for cloud
computing well-designed? An exploratory study. In International Conference on Service-
Oriented Computing (pp. 157-170). Springer, Cham.