APIdays Australia LIVE is happening on September 15th and 16th - less than two weeks away! Registration to this online event is free and open now at: https://apidays.co/australia.

Previously, I talked about the overall event structure which - in addition to our invited keynotes - is split into three streams:

• Business: the business and strategy of APIs,
• Execution: the technical details of API protocols, management and security.
• Platforms: the back-end architecture providing all the "ilities".

This time I'll take a deeper dive into the Platforms stream to cover some of the highlights you'll find in that program.

Day 1

Gartner's latest hype cycle for Application and Integration Infrastructure tips microservices into the "trough of disillusionment" which is why day 1 of the Platforms stream is dedicated to microservices and distributed systems. We can all commiserate together on our collective despair and share ideas on how to make microservices better.

Better visibility and control is the promise of service mesh which is the subject of the talk by Marco Palladino, CTO of Kong. Kubernetes may either be making your day or putting you in that trough - either way, Rob Richardson is here to help with "day 2" tips and techniques for using Kubernetes. And Rod Cope, CTO of Perforce, takes a pragmatic approach to architecture, examining your choices around different service granularities.

In the afternoon we are treated to talks from Dasith Wijesiriwardena (Telstra Purple), Mark Crawshaw (Aplas), Archanaa Ravikumar (ThoughtWorks) and Martin Varga of Atlassian. Dasith reflects on what we can learn from the hyper-scalars to manage our own distributed systems. Mark presents cutting edge techniques to map your microservices landscape providing better insights and visibility. Archanaa, shares her "10 commandments" for scaling microservices and Martin describes how crafty use of APIs can enable platform evolution. Following Martin, we return to APIs and service mesh with Pubudu Gunatilaka (WSO2) talking about how gateways and service mesh work together.

Day 2

Day 2 of the Platforms stream opens with our attention on a different style of architecture driven by asynchronous events. Nelson Petracek, CTO of TIBCO starts off with a look at why Event Driven Architecture is relevant - and even "cool" - in today's enterprise.  Aaron Lee from Solace then follows this up with insights on how the AsynchAPI standard is bringing the worlds of APIs and events together.

The afternoon dives into the fast moving stream of IoT with Michelle Howie from Telstra, Pooja Subramanian from ThoughtWorks and Rachel White from Datadog. Each will be sharing their perspective on APIs that enable the high volume, fan-in requirements for many IoT use-cases. Closing out the platform stream will be Alan Shone of Deputy on building resiliency in your API  and Uli Hitzel of Axway getting hands-on with his open source framework for API unit testing.

Kubernetes, service meshes, distributed systems, events, IoT, resiliency, testing and strangling the odd monolith. Check out the agenda for details but I know that you'll find great experience and advice to help lift you toward that microservices "plateau of productivity" at APIdays Australia on September 15th and 16th.