Azure API Management Solution for Prescription Benefit Facilitator

Organization

Our client is a family- and pharmacist-owned and operated prescription benefit facilitator (PBF). Its mission is to deliver an innovative, clinically focused model and provide the industry’s best service. Through complete transparency and pass-through arrangement, customer goals align with reducing inappropriate drug utilization, improving health outcomes, and guaranteeing savings. Over the past decade, the company has redefined what to expect from prescription benefit facilitators: they put an end to the games that prescription benefit managers (PBM) play by delivering a completely transparent, pass-through arrangement aligned to customers’ interests. Just as it’s extending its commitment to prioritizing member health and safety, they streamline processes connected to customer and partner.

Challenge

As part of their digital transformation initiative, they needed to implement an Application Programming Interface (API) Management Solution. The solution required a robust architecture to address each of their needs, from gathering requirements and legacy application migration to design and implementation. Without in-house Azure experts, they also needed technical guidance and recommendations on best practices for maintaining the solution. As experienced cloud strategists and API designers, the client partnered with XTIVIA to implement a turn-key API Management Solution on the Azure Platform.

TECHNICAL SOLUTION

To continue pursuing their mission, the client wanted the room to innovate and rapidly create a cloud-based API management solution that provides the best service in the industry by connecting with partners and customers. With Microsoft Azure API Management from XTIVIA, our client can make its vision of seamless partner/customer interactions a reality. XTIVIA used Microsoft Azure API Management to fast-track processes such as pricing & mail order and delivery productivity for everyone. The engagement was limited to a three-week Implementation phase, including a top-down approach to defining an implementation plan and roadmap that consisted of the following task: API Implementation, Developer Portal, Infrastructure, CICD Implementation, and testing. XTIVIA’s solution included:

• Working with stakeholders to define API Management solution requirements: API Environment Setup, API Architecture, and API Security
• Designing and implementing an API Management Solution on Azure Cloud: creating application permission, making an application in Azure AD, Securing APIs with OAuth/OID, and configured API Policy.
• Customizing the PBF’s portal easily, adding portal content, creating client applications for the developer portal, creating developer portal identities, and configuring APIs access to the developer portal. Our team took about a week to complete the Developer portal. Azure offers a vast set of components, all easily connected to build what we want, like building blocks.
• Implementing CICD by creating Jenkins Pipelines for Dev Test and Prod API Management and creating CICD scripts to automate the deployment of Azure Active Directory’s application roles, scopes, token configuration, and API permissions.
• Exposing API to partners using Imperva Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers and White-listing Imperva CDN Partner IPs in PBF’s Azure API Management Solution.
• Configuring partners to forward requests to API Gateway and Developer Portal, multiple locations to Prod API Gateway, and autoscale rules for Prod API Gateway.
• Securing API with OAuth2 and OpenID standards
• Creating necessary training material and API solution documentation (CICD, Application Registration/Token, etc.) to help ownership of PBF technical resources and control the Azure API Management solution.

BUSINESS SOLUTION

Through our client’s project, XTIVIA found new ways to make information systems more productive and collaborative. Our team Implemented a scalable and extendible Azure API Management Solution with an API Gateway that aligns to the client’s API Strategy and meets future demands, including:

• Azure API Management instances for different environments (Dev, QA, Staging, and Prod)
• Configurable Auto Scaling rules and limits for API management instance
• Easy to Import or Add existing or sample APIs to environments
• Configurable Policies and Products for the APIs
• Customized Developer Portal
• Configurable Custom Domain
• Configurable Logging and Monitoring
• CICD using Azure Resource Manager Template