Jeremy Justus and Ross Sbriscia, senior software engineers from UnitedHealth Group/Optum, detail their experience scaling API management with Kong Gateway in a three-part blog series. In 2019, their platform managed 1,900 proxies and 375 million transactions monthly, which grew to over 11,000 proxies and 4.5 billion transactions per month in 2020. This growth required only adding another pod in each environment, showcasing the efficiency of Kong Gateway. They emphasize best practices like creating platform advocates by implementing requested features, enhancing security through mutual TLS, and supporting multiple authentication patterns on a single proxy. They discuss the importance of staying updated with open-source technologies, sharing experiences with upgrades, and handling migration errors. Operational support is critical, with a GitOps-based self-service model complemented by integration consultations and troubleshooting. Governance is highlighted as essential for API management, with a structured ruleset ensuring consistent quality and security across APIs. The overall approach demonstrates how scaling an API ecosystem involves not just capacity expansion but also flexibility, operational support, and governance.