Building .NET and Java APIs for cloud applications

Thriftly.io allows C# and Java developers to quickly build web APIs and then serve them globally using the Thriftly.io API gateway. The Thriftly gateway allows an API to be published for public consumption, without requiring network configuration or changing firewall security.

The gateway aspect is especially attractive to independent software vendors (ISVs) who deploy their solution to multiple sites.

This may not sound like such a big deal until you consider how difficult it can be for an ISV to accomplish this on their own. To describe the issues that most ISVs face in this area, we'll consider a fictional software company called "Dental Management Systems Inc.", or DMS for short. DMS makes a software package for dental offices both large and small. It handles accounting, scheduling, insurance billing, patient management, records, the works. This is a Microsoft Windows-based package that they've been selling for about 15 years now. DMS has approximately 600 customers ranging in size from 3 employees to 50 employees. For the past 2-3 years, many customers have been asking for an online patient portal where their customers can request appointments, see their balance, and their patient records.

A True SaaS Solution

This is a very difficult feature for DMS to add to their software. Building the web interface isn't the hard part. Their software uses an SQL database installed at each dental office. The SQL database is often running on a server that is controlled by a local IT contractor or, at the larger dentists, by a staff IT person. The IT staff/contractor is in charge of handling security and networking. This means that getting a web server up at each customer location entails: (1) interacting with that IT staff or outside contractor to make sure that they have a place to host the web server along with (2) getting the needed static IPs and (3) making firewall changes and (4) buying an SSL certificate. The setup at each customer location could easily take 8 hrs once you include all the interactions with IT, ISPs, etc. Now multiply this setup time by 600 customers! Suddenly the rollout of this feature becomes a costly, time-consuming logistical nightmare.

Additionally, DMS is also competing with a new startup that has a VERY limited feature set in comparison but is a fully SaaS (Software as a Service) based solution. What this means for DMS is that this key feature that is going to be so difficult for them to implement is exceedingly easy, even trivial for their competition to implement. How can DMS deal with both this competitive pressure along with their customer base pressing them for this feature?

Zero-Network Configuration

How does Thriftly.io API Gateway assist in this situation? The Thriftly.io API Gateway acts as a secure bridge that publishes your applications API to a public internet address. This entire process is completely transparent to you and your customers. No special code is required and you don't have to worry about static IPs, port forwarding, firewall changes, or any other network related issues that would require the involvement of IT staff. Thriftly.io can open a secure connection from within a corporate firewalled network with no configuration changes and publish an API that exposes your business logic onto the web at an HTTPS secure web address.

Let's think about this in terms of our fictional ISV: Dental Management Systems Inc. Instead of having to individually configure each and every one of their 600 customers (meaning they now have 600 custom installations to maintain) they can instead roll out their new patient portal with a simple software update because there is no configuration needed. Instead of 600 custom sites to maintain, they now have 600 identically configured sites. Through the Thriftly Portal website they can monitor and control all 600 APIs as part of their Thriftly.io subscription. Now that rollout that could have easily taken multiple man-years of effort...is done in an entirely automated process!

To make things as fast as possible our gateway servers are located throughout the world so that no matter where your customers are, we have a server nearby.

This is just one of the ways you can use the Thriftly.io API Gateway.