Deploying Your APIs Exactly Where You Need Them

Building on earlier stories about how my API partners are making API deployment more modular and composable and pushing forward my understanding of what is possible with API deployment, I'm looking into the details of what DreamFactory enables when it comes to API deployment. "DreamFactory is a free, Apache 2 open source project that runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. DreamFactory is scalable, stateless, and portable" — making it a pretty good candidate for running it wherever you need.

After spending time at Google and hearing about how they want to enable multi-cloud infrastructure deployment, I wanted to see how my API service provider partners are able to actually power these visions of running your APIs anywhere, in any infrastructure. Using DreamFactory you can deploy your APIs using Docker, Kubernetes, or directly from a GitHub repository, something I'm exploring as standard operating procedure for government agencies, like we see with 18F's U.S. Forest Service ePermit Middle Layer API. In my opinion, all federal, state, and local government should be able to deploy API infrastructure like this.

One of the projects I am working on this week is creating a base blueprint of what it will take to deploy a human services API for any city in Google or Azure. I have a demo working on AWS already, but I need a basic understanding of what it will take to do the same in any cloud environment. I'm not in the business of hosting and operating APIs for anyone, let alone for government agencies. This is why I have partners like DreamFactory, who I can route specific projects as they come in. Obviously, I am looking to support my partners as they support me, but I'm also looking to help other companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies better leverage the cloud providers they are already using.

I'll share more stories about how I'm deploying APIs to AWS, as well as Google and Azure, as I do the work over the next couple of weeks. I'm looking to develop a healthy toolbox of solutions for government agencies to use. This week's project is focused on the human services data specification, but next week I'm going to look replicating the model to allow for other Schema.org vocabulary, providing simple blueprints for deploying other common APIs like products, directories, link listings, and directories. My goal is to provide a robust toolbox of APIs that anyone can launch in AWS, Google, and Azure with a push of a button — eventually.