APIO consists of 3 main modules: Front-end APIs, Orchestration and Back-end APIs.

• The orchestration process starts upon event reception.
• APIO uses a SOAP/REST/JSON API as front-end interface that receives events information.
• APIO comes with predefined API orchestration. The Business Logic defined by the Customer is implemented as an additional layer of Orchestration.
• APIO uses a back-end interface to the servers/equipment that need to be adapted.

Back-end interfaces are already available for multiple vendors and new ones can quickly be developed based on vendor APIs. Those 3 modules works independently meaning that back-end API modification doesn’t affect the front-end and orchestration module.

APIO also handles asynchronous requests thanks to a specific asynchronous module.

An asynchronous request is a request that cannot be answered immediately but will be answered within an unspecified period of time (10 minutes, 70 hours…etc). An example might be a request that needs approval from a manager before being actually acted upon or request that needs information from a third-party service to be completed.

To support such requests APIO implements a state machine engine that keeps track of a request state and is able to take the “next step decision” based on that state.

APIO comes with many features that make life easier for a netops team.

• APIO can apply different priorities to a request based on criteria such as the request type, the user initiating the request or source IP address.

• APIO can be configured to implement different error handling behaviours based on the nature of the request. Error reception for a specific back-end API can for example be ignored and the orchestration script allowed to continue or error reception can lead to the stopping of the orchestration script and rolling-back all modifications carried out in the previous step of the script.

• APIO keeps track of requests that have been processed

• The APIO internal database stores user profiles allowing APIO to apply a strict user policy