Kong has announced the beta release of the Kong Ingress Controller within Kong Konnect at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2023, marking its evolution into the first modern unified end-to-end API management platform. This integration provides a comprehensive management system for API gateways, offering seamless visibility and control over edge, cross-application, and in-application APIs, whether deployed as Kubernetes Ingress or via other methods. By merging the features of Kong Gateway with Kubernetes, the Kong Ingress Controller enhances traffic management with functionalities like authentication and caching, and aligns API management with a Kubernetes-centric lifecycle. The platform simplifies the management of Kong Gateways across diverse environments and strengthens governance capabilities, allowing for secure and efficient onboarding for application teams. In addition, the integration activates Kong Konnect's API Portal, API Analytics, and Service Registry, enhancing service management through features like auto-discovery and real-time analytics, thereby centralizing service oversight and optimizing API performance. Users can associate Kong Ingress Controllers with new Runtime Groups via the Runtime Manager, providing a streamlined solution for Kubernetes API management.