Building sustainable API platforms

In this episode of the FinOps on Azure Podcast, we speak with Tom Kherkhove from the Azure API Management team about how sustainability should be approached when building and operating API platforms.

Rather than treating sustainability as a separate initiative or a reporting exercise, the conversation focuses on how everyday API design and platform decisions influence efficiency and environmental impact. Tom explains why sustainable outcomes often come from good engineering practices, reducing unnecessary traffic, avoiding wasteful processing, and designing APIs that scale efficiently.

The discussion highlights how API platforms play a critical role in cloud sustainability, especially at scale. Design-time choices, traffic management, and platform behaviour all contribute to how much compute and energy is consumed over time. The episode keeps the focus on practical thinking, not frameworks or policy-driven mandates.

This is a practitioner-led conversation for platform and engineering teams who want to understand how sustainability fits naturally into modern API platform design.

You can listen to the other episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Episode Highlights

00:02:00 – Tom’s Background & Experience

00:04:00 – Getting Started with GreenOps

00:05:30 – Azure Carbon Optimization Service

00:06:30 – Feature 1: Carbon-Aware Traffic Shaping

00:09:00 – Feature 2: Carbon-Aware Load Balancing 

00:13:00 – Five Carbon Emission Categories Explained

00:15:00 – How Carbon Predictions Work

00:17:00 – Fallback Behavior & Availability

00:19:00 – Live Demo: Carbon Optimized Policies

00:22:00 – Advanced Policy Configuration

00:25:00 – Network Routing & Latency Considerations

00:28:00 – Resources & Where to Learn More

Enjoyed This Conversation?

Don’t miss other episodes of the FinOps on Azure Podcast, where we speak with practitioners, consultants, and cloud leaders about real-world cost management challenges, lessons learned, and what actually works in practice.

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