Gravitee, the full lifecycle API management platform for REST, SOAP, streaming, and asynchronous APIs, has launched an event-native API management certification program. The program is open to partners and customers. It aims to train IT professionals to adopt an “event-driven” mindset, enabling them to adapt faster to business changes and help build and connect applications within their organisations.
Gartner first identified event-driven architectures as a trend in 2018; it stated, “Enterprises should embrace “event thinking” as part of a digital business strategy. By 2020, event-sourced, real-time situational awareness will be a required characteristic for 80% of digital business solutions, and 80% of new business ecosystems will require support for event processing.”
Since then, other analysts and industry observers have underlined its importance and evolved the thinking, so the trend is now about hyperautomation. Hyperautomation combines RPA with IPaaS. At the heart of IPaaS are the API management platforms that enable organisations to turn event streams into revenue-generating channels.
However, despite the emergence of systems that promise no-code and low-code integration, pro-coders are still required to understand these platforms. This is the challenge that Gravitee aims to resolve with three new certifications and two competency designations.
Rory Blundell, CEO of Gravitee, commented, “IT professionals are under immense pressure to prepare for the move to event-driven architectures and asynchronous protocols that impact their software applications and platforms, and advancing their API Management credentials is key to this process.
“By offering certifications, we can help developers bolster their skills and further their careers in a market that is in demand. We are excited to launch this program and contribute to the advancement of an event-driven IT mindset.”
The three certification tracks and the two competencies are:
Event-Native API Management Fundamentals Certification
Individuals who earn this certification will have demonstrated a basic knowledge of APIs, API Management and event-native API Management, specifically. This course is free and takes about 45 minutes to complete, with an exam that delivers the certification upon completion. Gravitee offers a study guide alongside the course, interested parties must sign up to the community.
Event-Native API Management Professional Certification
Individuals who earn this certification have demonstrated advanced knowledge of APIs and API Management and can be trusted to implement API Management best practices for enterprise synchronous API, streaming API and asynchronous API use cases. This course takes around 90 minutes to complete and again is free. It consists of the following elements:
- Advanced API concepts
- Advanced API Management concepts
- How to apply API Management best practices
- How to use Gravitee API Management to make APIs and event streams more consumable, secure, and resilient to failure
Event-Native API Management Partner Certification
This is the first step to becoming a Gravitee partner. Individuals who earn the certification have established the ability to sell and implement Gravitee’s API Management platform. There are no details about pricing for this exam within interested developers or firms requested to contact Gravitee to discuss the certification further.
Gravitee API Management for Kafka
This is a “mini” certification for Gravitee users focused on using Gravitee for Kafka use cases. Another free course that offers a Gravitee-backed badge upon completion of the exam. The intermediate course takes around 45 minutes. The downloadable guide for this course explains how Gravitee can be used to expose Kafka streams and events to consumers not using Kafka clients, make consumption of your events more secure, reliable, and cost-effective, and monetize your real-time data.
Gravitee API Management for MQTT
Another “mini” certification demonstrates the ability to use Gravitee for MQTT use cases. This intermediate course is free and takes less than 45 minutes to complete. A downloadable white paper on API Management for IoT with Gravitee & HiveMQ accompanies the course. The course covers using Gravitee to expose, secure, and make MQTT data streams more resilient to failure.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
These courses are now generally available. The initiative launched in January 2023 in beta and has already trained “hundreds” of IT professionals, according to Gravity. Further details are available on the Gravitee certification page.
These courses appear to be very short for certification, which brings into question the value that Gravitee individuals can put against them. Having said that, they are also vital for IT professionals to ensure that they can use the Gravitee solution competently. It is a sensible move by Gravitee to ensure this, no matter how straightforward the platform, having ensured that IT teams are properly trained, should reduce the required support and remedial work. That most of the courses are free is also a good move.
