September 2024 Summaries

The Kong Konnect engineering team utilized Kong Gateway and its plugins, JQ and Request Transformer Advanced, to implement a significant yet cosmetic change known as "The Great Renaming" during API Summit 2023, which involved renaming key components in the Konnect API without altering customer-facing functionality. This renaming, which changed "Runtime Manager" and "Runtime Groups" to "Gateway Manager" and "Control Planes," required minimal backend adjustments and preserved backwards compatibility by leveraging the powerful abstraction capabilities of Kong Gateway. The project emphasized the importance of reducing unnecessary work and maintaining simplicity, allowing client-facing APIs to be refined without disturbing the underlying microservices architecture. By confining the changes to Kong Gateway configurations, the team ensured a seamless transition and efficient maintenance, demonstrating the platform's capability to manage API transformations and terminological updates with minimal operational impact.

Docker has been a cornerstone in container technology for over a decade, supporting developers in building, running, and managing containers across major operating systems and cloud providers. Docker Desktop, a popular application with over 16.2 million downloads, enhances these capabilities by incorporating Docker Engine, CLI Client, Docker Compose, and access to Docker Hub, along with introducing Docker Extensions. These extensions, numbering nearly 100, are tools that integrate third-party functionalities directly within Docker Desktop, offering enhancements in debugging, testing, security, and more. Notable extensions include Kong Konnect for managing API gateways, Snyk Container for vulnerability scanning, Grafana for monitoring, Portainer for GUI-based container management, and RedHat OpenShift for deploying and testing apps. Docker Desktop Extensions are free to use, although some may require paid tools for additional features, and can be installed, managed, and updated directly within Docker Desktop across Windows, Mac, or Linux systems. They offer extensive capabilities to streamline workflows and enhance Docker's core features, allowing users to easily integrate with familiar technologies and explore new functionalities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming business operations by rapidly analyzing data and making accurate predictions, but it requires robust data governance to ensure accuracy, security, and compliance. AI data governance is a strategic framework that manages data collection, storage, and analysis while adhering to legal and ethical standards, aiming to enhance data integrity, prevent security issues, and maximize AI benefits. Effective AI data governance supports privacy and security, enhances data quality, and improves operational efficiency by automating tasks and maintaining compliance. For enterprises and SMBs alike, AI data governance provides insights for better decision-making and competitive advantage. Implementing AI data governance involves assessing current data practices, defining goals, developing compliance frameworks, integrating AI systems, and training teams. Challenges include data silos, privacy, regulatory compliance, scalability, and cultural resistance, which can be managed through collaboration, secure practices, and strong leadership. Future trends in AI data governance include multimodal AI, ethical AI, explainable AI, real-time governance, and federated learning, which enhance AI's capabilities while ensuring ethical and responsible use. Integrating comprehensive AI data governance can secure data, comply with regulations, and drive growth and innovation.

Multimodal AI represents a significant advancement in artificial intelligence by integrating multiple data types such as text, images, audio, and video to create more intuitive and versatile systems that emulate human decision-making more closely. This integration allows for complex tasks and nuanced insights, applicable in diverse fields like healthcare, customer service, and marketing. Multimodal AI utilizes data fusion techniques—early, intermediate, and late fusion—to effectively combine information from various modalities, enhancing predictive capabilities and decision-making processes. The technology relies on core components like deep learning, natural language processing (NLP), and computer vision to interpret and respond accurately to diverse inputs. While it offers numerous benefits, including improved customer interactions and operational efficiencies, implementing multimodal AI involves challenges such as data integration, quality control, and scalability. Successful deployment requires careful planning, including defining objectives, preparing data, selecting appropriate models, and continuous testing and refinement. Tools like Kong's API Gateway facilitate seamless integration and management of multimodal AI services, ensuring secure and scalable access. As companies adopt multimodal AI, they can innovate more effectively, providing personalized experiences and maintaining a competitive edge in the evolving digital landscape.

Kong has announced the early access release of its Konnect CRDs with the konnect.konghq.com/v1alpha1 apiVersion, allowing users to configure and manage Konnect Gateway control planes and their entities within the Kubernetes ecosystem. This development aligns with the strategic role of Kubernetes in declarative configuration, utilizing Kubernetes RBAC for governance and ReferenceGrant for conditional access. The new features, which are being gradually expanded, initially focus on managing Gateway entities like KongService and KongRoute, with plans to support Ingress and HTTPRoute in the future. Users can begin using these capabilities by installing Kong Gateway Operator 1.4, available in November, and configuring authentication credentials to create control planes and services in Konnect. The company is actively seeking user feedback through GitHub discussions to refine the CRD design further.

Konnect Service Catalog is introduced as a comprehensive tool designed to help organizations manage and secure their API and service ecosystems, addressing the growing complexity and security risks associated with "Shadow APIs." These unmanaged APIs pose significant threats as potential attack vectors, especially if lacking proper authentication and authorization. With API-related breaches on the rise and increased deployment complexity, the service catalog serves as a centralized repository for all services and APIs, offering benefits like enhanced visibility, security enforcement, and developer productivity. The catalog integrates with systems like Kong Gateway and Traceable AI to identify and manage APIs, while also boosting developer efficiency by aggregating information and offering a 360-degree view of services. Upcoming features like Scorecards aim to assist Platform Teams in enforcing policy compliance and industry best practices across the organization. The Konnect Service Catalog is currently available in public beta, promising a more secure and controlled API infrastructure.

Kong Konnect Serverless Gateway offers a lightweight, cost-efficient solution for developers, particularly those with limited budgets and smaller teams, to manage and deploy APIs without the extensive operational overhead associated with traditional API gateways. Aimed at facilitating rapid prototyping, testing, and experimentation, Serverless Gateways eliminate the need for substantial infrastructure investments and allow development teams to focus on core application features. The platform supports easy integration into existing environments and CI/CD pipelines, providing a scalable option as businesses grow. As a fully managed service, it abstracts away the complexities of infrastructure management and maintenance, ensuring security and resiliency while enabling teams to quickly launch and manage APIs at a fraction of the usual cost. With the upcoming public beta release, Kong Konnect Serverless Gateway is set to assist startups and development teams in reducing time to market and optimizing infrastructure costs.

Kong Konnect, a next-generation API management platform, enhances the declarative configuration capabilities of Kong Gateway through tools like decK and now terraform-provider-konnect, which has become generally available. While decK remains a strategic tool for managing Kong Gateway configurations, the new Terraform provider allows users to manage a broader range of entities at the Konnect level, aligning with existing infrastructure practices and facilitating GitOps. This integration supports API Product owners in configuring APIs and Developer Portals declaratively, operating at scale, and utilizing familiar tools like Terraform, which has already been widely adopted by users. Additionally, a beta release of terraform-provider-kong-gateway is available for on-prem users, ensuring that both cloud and on-prem deployments can benefit from Terraform's capabilities. Kong aims to simplify infrastructure management and configuration through these integrations, encouraging users to engage with their GitHub community for feedback and collaboration.

Kong Mesh 2.9, scheduled for release in mid-September, introduces several enhancements in security, resiliency, and platform flexibility. A key update is the new MeshTLS policy, which allows granular configuration of TLS behaviors in the mesh, catering to specific service needs with different TLS modes, ciphers, and versions. This facilitates a gradual integration of applications into Kong Mesh while accommodating varied TLS requirements. Additionally, the release revamps virtual probe capabilities with "Application Probes" that support HTTP, GRPC, and TCP, enhancing health check support for non-HTTP applications. The update also improves iptables detection and configuration for better platform compatibility, reducing debugging time and ensuring seamless deployment across diverse environments. These enhancements aim to provide a more tailored and efficient service mesh experience for organizations and their application teams.

Kong Gateway 3.8 introduces significant advancements in API management, focusing on improved performance, security, extensibility, and ease of use. This release enhances configuration processing, offers new semantic intelligence for AI Gateway, and introduces incremental configuration sync, which reduces data transmission and resource usage during updates. Security is bolstered with new plugins like JSON Threat Protection and upstream-oauth, while observability is improved with full OpenTelemetry support. Additionally, Kong Konnect introduces Konnect Consumers for streamlined service consumer management and a Config Store for centralized secret management. These updates collectively aim to optimize API operations, enhance security, and improve monitoring capabilities, making Kong Gateway 3.8 a robust solution for modern API management challenges.

At API Summit 2024, Kong introduced its Premium Technology Partner Program aimed at strengthening the Kong ecosystem by fostering top-quality integrations and plugins that provide significant business value to customers while offering enhanced support and benefits to partners. This program is particularly focused on integrations and plugins related to Kong's commercial products, Kong Konnect and Kong Gateway Enterprise, and ensures that premium plugins receive thorough validation and dedicated support from Kong's engineering team. Customers gain from an enriched developer ecosystem, access to cutting-edge technologies, seamless integrations, and improved security, while partners benefit from new revenue streams, early access to features, and direct support for optimization. The program also provides a clear pathway for existing partners to advance to the premium tier, promoting ongoing innovation and excellence. At the summit, inaugural partners such as Traceable, Dynatrace, and Confluent presented their solutions, highlighting the program's potential to enhance capabilities like managing Shadow APIs, improving observability, and controlling Kafka Event Streaming.

Kong has expanded its API management solution, Kong Konnect Dedicated Cloud Gateways, to include support for Microsoft Azure in five regions across Europe and North America, complementing its existing support for AWS. This development allows organizations to deploy scalable and highly available API Gateways in a multi-cloud environment, facilitating easier management and avoiding vendor lock-in. With plans to include Google Cloud in the future, Kong aims to become the first API management provider offering an end-to-end lifecycle management platform independent of cloud providers. The addition of Azure support offers advanced auto-scalability and robust security, ensuring high-performance and secure API services, while the platform's multi-region availability provides low latency and high availability worldwide. By simplifying the operational overhead, Kong enables businesses to deploy and manage APIs efficiently, aligning with the growing industry trend towards multi-cloud strategies for digital transformation.

API Summit 2024 has commenced with an eventful two-day schedule featuring over 60 sessions and seven tracks, highlighting significant Kong-related announcements and product updates. Kong Konnect is emphasized as the API platform for AI, reflecting the rising importance of AI investments, with new releases like AI Gateway 3.8 and Kong Gateway 3.8 offering advanced features for AI handling, security, and performance. The summit introduced Insomnia 10, enhancing developer tools with new capabilities for AI consumption, and Kong Konnect Serverless Gateway, providing a cost-efficient API management solution. The Dedicated Cloud Gateways now support Microsoft Azure, expanding deployment options, while LLM Analytics in Kong Konnect offers insights into AI traffic management. The Konnect Service Catalog aims to manage "shadow APIs," and the new Premium Technology Partner Program was launched to enhance integration development with partners such as Traceable, Dynatrace, and Confluent. Kong Mesh 2.9 introduces improved security and flexibility options, and new support for managing Kong with Terraform and Kubernetes CRDs was announced, underscoring Kong's commitment to enhancing infrastructure management capabilities.

Kong's latest release of AI Gateway 3.8 introduces significant advancements designed to enhance GenAI application performance, security, and scalability. This update includes the debut of intelligent semantic plugins, advanced load balancing capabilities, and expanded support for LLM providers such as AWS Bedrock and GCP Vertex. A key feature is the AI Semantic Cache, which improves processing speeds by caching semantically similar prompts, reducing latency in GenAI applications. Additionally, the AI Semantic Prompt Guard offers enhanced security by blocking prompts based on their semantic content rather than specific keywords. The release also introduces six new load-balancing algorithms tailored for LLMs, including a unique semantic routing capability that selects the most suitable model for each prompt in real-time. These features, alongside support for various LLM providers and easy integration with existing GenAI applications, position Kong AI Gateway as a comprehensive solution for organizations looking to optimize their AI and machine learning workflows.

Businesses are increasingly grappling with the transformative impact of AI, with the key challenge being whether to harness AI for growth or risk obsolescence. As AI becomes central to business operations, the need for APIs—especially those facilitating interactions between AI agents and systems—has surged, marking a shift from user interface-based services to API-driven interactions. This evolution is highlighted by the fast adoption of AI technologies, with a significant majority of developers prioritizing AI investments. Kong is at the forefront of this shift, offering a suite of new products like the Kong Konnect API platform and Kong Insomnia 10, which enable efficient management and development of AI-powered applications. These products emphasize security, observability, and governance of AI systems, ensuring seamless and secure integration of AI capabilities into existing infrastructures. Notable innovations include the AI Gateway for streamlined LLM application development, enhanced API management through Kong Gateway 3.8, and tools like the Kong Konnect Service Catalog for improved API governance. This suite of offerings is designed to meet the rising demand for AI-ready infrastructures, supporting organizations of all sizes in navigating the AI era.

Kong's Insomnia v10 introduces a suite of powerful new features, enhancing its capabilities for managing API requests and providing advanced tools for AI integration. The update includes the highly anticipated Collection Runner, which supports unlimited collection runs and individual test result analysis, significantly improving API testing and verification. The new Invite Control feature enhances governance by allowing admins to set domain restrictions for collaborators, thereby bolstering security and preventing unauthorized access. Furthermore, Insomnia v10 debuts the Insomnia AI Runner, a pioneering product that facilitates the creation of GenAI applications with multi-LLM support, semantic caching, and comprehensive AI traffic analytics. This feature enables developers to seamlessly integrate various AI platforms without code modifications, thus expediting experimentation and implementation while reducing costs through intelligent caching. The update is fortified by Kong’s enterprise-grade infrastructure, ensuring compliance with industry standards and offering flexible deployment options, including self-hosting.

Advanced Analytics has introduced a new LLM Usage reporting feature designed to help organizations manage their large language model usage more effectively. This feature provides insights into token consumption, costs, and latency, enabling businesses to optimize their AI investments and make informed decisions by comparing different LLM providers and models. As AI adoption grows, organizations face challenges such as lack of visibility, cost management, and compliance, which this tool aims to address. The release of Kong API Gateway 3.8 allows organizations to leverage Konnect's Advanced Analytics to gain a comprehensive view of AI traffic, thus facilitating data-driven decisions, cost optimization, and improved AI performance. Users can toggle between API and LLM Usage views in Explorer for tailored analysis, using metrics like LLM Latency, Costs, and Token Usage to understand and optimize their AI operations. The feature's granular filtering and grouping options enable detailed analysis, helping organizations allocate resources effectively and identify cost-saving opportunities. By using Advanced Analytics, businesses can enhance their AI initiatives and ensure compliance with organizational and industry standards.

Insomnia has introduced the AI Runner with the release of Insomnia 10, a managed SaaS service designed to enhance and secure LLM traffic for developers' applications. This new tool accelerates LLM traffic up to 20 times by utilizing semantic caching, while also providing out-of-the-box AI guardrails for security. The AI Runner allows developers to use multiple LLMs through a single OpenAI-compatible interface, making it easier to build faster and more secure AI-driven user experiences. Developers can create multiple AI Runners, each with its own configuration, and quickly integrate them into existing applications by changing just one line of code. The service offers flexibility with settings like similarity thresholds and caching time-to-live (TTL) and supports storing credentials within the AI Runner, eliminating the need for frequent application updates. Powered by Kong's AI Gateway technology and running on Kong Konnect's enterprise infrastructure, the AI Runner is available for free to all Insomnia users, with options to self-host for additional features.