5 - The API Economy
APIs are the connective tissue of modern cloud architectures — but poor API design compounds into technical debt that is expensive to unwind. In this episode, Chris Reddington and Peter Piper explore the full lifecycle of API design: defining versioning contracts up front, modernising legacy APIs using the Strangler and Façade patterns, and securing APIs with JWT tokens, OAuth 2.0, and OIDC. They also cover Azure API Management patterns, circuit breakers, throttling, key rotation with Azure Key Vault, and the DevSecOps practices that keep an API estate healthy at scale.
Chris and Peter examine why versioning must be designed in from day one — including the case for shipping v1 even when you only have one version — and how bounded context thinking influences API boundary decisions. The episode explores how legacy SOAP APIs can be gradually replaced using a façade with the Strangler pattern, rather than risky big-bang rewrites, and discusses the role of microservices in decomposing monolithic API estates. Security is woven throughout: embedding JWT validation and identity provider integration into CI/CD pipelines as part of a shift-left DevSecOps approach, and using Azure API Management to centralise throttling, key management, and gateway-level security policies.
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1 - Requirements in Context
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There are no clear architecture patterns for the Cloud? (Azure Mythbusters)
Cloud design patterns are abundant and well-documented on the Azure Architecture Center — from established patterns like cache-aside and materialized view to cloud-native ones like circuit breaker and health endpoint monitoring. This Azure Mythbusters episode tours the full pattern catalogue and deep-dives four key patterns: cache-aside, circuit breaker (open/half-open/closed states), health endpoint monitoring, and materialized view in CQRS/event sourcing scenarios.