API Development for Enterprise Integration
Every enterprise system eventually needs to talk to another one — a warehouse platform to a marketplace, a CRM to a billing engine, an internal tool to an AI agent acting on its behalf. The API is the contract that makes that conversation possible, and a poorly designed one becomes the single point of failure for every integration built on top of it: undocumented endpoints, breaking changes shipped without warning, authentication that leaks under load, and rate limits nobody tested until a partner's bulk job took the service down.
We design and build APIs as first-class products, not afterthoughts bolted onto an internal admin panel. That means explicit versioning, documented contracts before code is written, authentication and authorization modeled around real consumers (internal services, partner systems, and increasingly AI agents), and observability that tells you which endpoint broke and for whom before your partner's support ticket does. Whether you need a new API-first platform, a stable public interface over a legacy system, or a hardened integration layer for EDI, marketplace, or ERP connections, we build it to be trusted by machines and partners for years, not just to pass a demo.
Problems we solve
Undocumented, unstable contracts
APIs built as a side effect of frontend work rarely have a real contract — field shapes drift, error formats vary by endpoint, and there's no OpenAPI spec a partner or an AI agent can read to know what to expect. Every integration becomes a support conversation instead of a self-service lookup.
Breaking changes with no migration path
Without deliberate versioning, a schema change made for one internal consumer silently breaks a partner integration or a mobile client three versions behind. Teams end up afraid to touch the API at all, which stalls the product roadmap.
Auth and rate limiting that don't match real usage
A single API key shared across every consumer, no scoped permissions, and no rate limiting means one runaway script or one compromised credential can take down the platform for every partner at once — and there is no audit trail to tell you who did what.
How we approach it
API-first design, contract before code
We define the resource model, request/response shapes, and error semantics up front, expressed as an OpenAPI (or GraphQL schema) specification that becomes the source of truth for both the implementation and the documentation your partners read.
Auth, scopes, and rate limits sized to the consumer
OAuth2 client-credentials or JWT flows for service-to-service and partner access, scoped API keys where that fits better, per-consumer rate limiting and quotas, and webhook signing — so a bad actor or a runaway integration is contained, not catastrophic.
Versioned and observable in production
Explicit URI or header-based versioning so old consumers keep working while new capability ships, plus structured logging, request tracing, and error-rate monitoring per endpoint and per consumer so you see a problem before it becomes an incident.
What you get
- OpenAPI 3.x specification (or GraphQL schema) as the reviewable, versioned contract
- Authentication and authorization layer — OAuth2 / JWT / scoped API keys with per-consumer permissions
- Rate limiting, quota, and throttling rules matched to each consumer tier
- Webhook or event-stream delivery for asynchronous integrations, with signing and retry/backoff
- Interactive API documentation and, where useful, generated client SDKs
- Request logging, tracing, and per-endpoint error/latency monitoring in production
Technologies & integrations
Our delivery process
- 01Discovery
We map who consumes the API today and who will tomorrow — internal services, partners, mobile clients, AI agents — and the volumes and failure modes each one implies.
- 02Contract design
We draft the resource model and OpenAPI/GraphQL schema, review it with your team and, where relevant, the partner or downstream consumer, before writing implementation code.
- 03Build
We implement endpoints against the agreed contract, with authentication, rate limiting, and versioning wired in from the start rather than retrofitted.
- 04Testing & hardening
Contract tests validate the implementation against the spec, load tests confirm rate limits and quotas behave correctly under real traffic, and security testing checks auth boundaries and scope enforcement.
- 05Deploy & support
We ship with monitoring and alerting live from day one, and provide ongoing support for new consumers, schema evolution, and incident response — visible to you throughout in the connected client portal.
Apparel Globe — a multi-channel operations platform
Frequently asked questions
REST or GraphQL — which is right for us?
It depends on your consumers. REST with a clear OpenAPI contract is usually the right default for partner and marketplace integrations because it's simple to document, cache, and rate-limit per endpoint. GraphQL earns its complexity when you have many different frontend or partner clients each needing different slices of the same data and want to avoid over-fetching. We'll recommend one based on your actual consumer mix, not a blanket preference.
How do you handle authentication for partner and third-party integrations?
We typically use OAuth2 client-credentials flow or scoped API keys, depending on the consumer's technical sophistication and your control requirements. Each consumer gets its own credentials and permission scope, so access can be audited and revoked individually rather than sharing one key across every integration.
What happens when the API needs to change after partners are already integrated?
We version the API explicitly (via URI path or header) from the first release, so a new version can introduce breaking changes while existing consumers keep working against the version they built to. We also document a deprecation timeline so partners have a clear migration window rather than a surprise cutoff.
Can our API be built so AI agents can use it reliably?
Yes — that's increasingly a design requirement, not an afterthought. A well-documented OpenAPI spec, predictable error formats, and scoped, rate-limited authentication are exactly what lets an AI agent call your API safely and consistently, the same way a human developer or partner system would.