| But the entire API is an abstraction... So the benefits are: Audits Network/infra Time to market Single API Less code Risk (sometimes) The downside: 1. Slow or missing propagation of underlying features. 2. Hidden business logic. 3. Risk of changes in pricing models and so on. 4. Single point of failure. By method, let's talk about the downsides: 1. Not the biggest risk here. But for some reason features that are new or will save you a lot of money does not propagate as fast other things. 2. Many services like payment gateways are expected to hide some aspects of the underlying services. What does this hide? 3. The big risk with something like this used to be vendor lock-in. Today it is almost always acquisitions. Is this really a product? Will it be merged and sold together with something that I don't want? 4. Obvious Overall I think these types of services are the most useless. Abstractions that are not simplifications should mostly be avoided. I also think one needs to be extra careful if this only sits between you and other services. That is not a product in general. |