Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style in which development groups within an enterprise create and maintain services that capture business capabilities and related artifacts in accordance with defined standards of quality, consistency, and interoperability. The enterprise maintains the services in a registry and exposes them to consumers inside the enterprise. Service consumers, such as developers or process designers, can combine and reuse the services to more quickly and easily create a variety of business applications.

API management is a system in which an enterprise publishes application programming interfaces (APIs) in a secure environment. The enterprise maintains the APIs in a registry and exposes them to consumers inside or outside the enterprise. API consumers, such as developers or trading partners, can use the APIs to more quickly and easily create a variety of business and mobile applications. API management typically does the following:

Services in an SOA and APIs in an API management system are distributed over a network, and are often made available to client applications through a mediation layer. The mediation layer provides a layer of abstraction that prevents client applications from having to know where the services are running or certain details about the API, or which languages, technologies, or platforms were used in their development.