July 2019 Summaries

In July 2019, Tyk, an open-source API management platform, secured its first round of funding led by MMC Ventures to propel its growth and international expansion, particularly into the U.S. market. Founded in 2015 in London by Martin Buhr and his co-founders, Tyk initially grew through bootstrapping and organic expansion, achieving notable success in Asian markets. The decision to seek external funding was driven by the need to address challenges in the competitive U.S. market, which required a significant investment to establish a physical presence. Despite the new funding, Tyk remains committed to its open-source principles, focusing on delivering value through fair pricing, backward compatibility, and empowering its users by integrating seamlessly with other open-source solutions. The investment will be allocated towards geographic expansion, product innovation, and operational growth, including the professional development of its team, as the company continues to prioritize its mission of democratizing connectivity without compromising its core values.

Extending the Tyk Gateway with gRPC authentication plugins provides the flexibility to incorporate additional business logic without overhauling existing security infrastructures. Tyk supports various authentication mechanisms but allows the integration of custom middleware using gRPC for specialized needs. The process involves configuring a Java-based gRPC server to handle authentication requests, with Tyk acting as the intermediary between client requests and the server's authentication logic. Successful authentication results can be optionally cached to enhance performance. The setup demonstrates how Tyk can offload authentication tasks to this custom plugin, showcasing its capability to handle complex authentication scenarios. Additionally, Tyk supports various programming languages for middleware, including JavaScript, Lua, Python, and potentially Go, offering versatility in extending its functionalities.