Kong Previews Application Connectivity Service

Kong Inc., at its online Kong Summit 2020 conference, unfurled Kong Konnect, a cloud service through which developers can leverage application programming interfaces (APIs) and microservices to integrate distributed applications.

Available as a private beta, Kong Konnect promises to make it easier for developers to create complex workflows spanning API gateways, Kubernetes Ingress controllers and service mesh runtimes.

Company CTO Marco Palladino said Kong Connect makes it possible for developers to consume integration runtimes as a service via an interface that allows them to invoke only the specific services they require.

Scheduled to be generally available early next year, Kong Konnect is based on a ServiceHub platform that creates a single source of truth for all services via a catalog that any organization has developed. Kong Konnect also provides access to a runtime manager that enables self-service provisioning based on roles in addition to enabling IT teams to manage Kong runtimes across hybrid cloud computing environments.

Kong Konnect also integrates the company’s API Gateway, Ingress Controller and Kong Mesh, a service mesh based on open source Envoy proxy software, and Kong Vitals, a tool for monitoring Kong services and transactions in real-time. Kong Konnect is also integrated with Insomnia to design APIs using a tool that integrates with any Git-based repository and the Kong Developer Portal, through which developers can publish their own services.

Palladino said the goal is to provide a turnkey service that automatically provides all the Layer 4 through 7 networking services that developers require to integrate both monolithic applications running on virtual machines as well as emerging microservices-based applications running on Kubernetes clusters. Kong Konnect makes available universal service connectivity on-demand via a single API to any class of developer, he said.

As application environments become more distributed, developers are spending more time than ever on basic connectivity issues. The company is making a case for a cloud service that unifies all those services under a common control plane it manages on behalf of developers. That service will then free up developers to spend more of their time writing code versus integrating application services, said Palladino.

That capability will be especially critical as IT organizations begin to deploy more applications on edge computing platforms that need to be integrated with a wide array of application services running on public clouds and on-premises IT environments, added Palladino.

It’s too early to say to what degree IT organizations may be ready to rely on a service versus continuing to manage connectivity themselves. In effect, Kong is making a case for abstracting all the underlying complexity of connectivity and networking using an API to invoke everything from a simple API gateway to a service mesh designed to integrate hundreds of microservices.

Regardless of the path chosen, the one thing that is clear is a new application connectivity as a service era has finally arrived.