Kong Konnect on Red Hat OpenShift ups API (K)onnectivity
APIs are everything.
Actually, they’re not, they’re just really important in the context of modern cloud applications, services and distributed networks that rely upon the interconnectivity and glueing element of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to create bonds and information exchange channels.
With so many technologies now moving to a state of ‘headless’ (i.e. operating at a lower substrate level, often without a GUI and designed to be accessible from a variety of different device form factors and platforms), APIs are shining even brighter.
So APIs are not everything, but (if and) when the tech industry’s trade shows do start to emerge again, that opening statement is the kind of thing that CEOs and evangelists like to kick off their keynotes, fireside chats and birds-of-a-feather sessions with, isn’t it?
This semi-truism is perhaps why cloud connectivity company Kong Inc. has this month worked with Red Hat to deliver its Kong Konnect service connectivity platform on Red Hat OpenShift, an enterprise Kubernetes container orchestration platform.
Kong has achieved Red Hat Operator Certification for Kong Konnect on Red Hat OpenShift.
What is Kong Konnect?
But hang on, Kong didn’t tell us what Kong Konnect is in the first place.
Kong Konnect can be described as a universal control plane delivery cloud that is consumption-based. It works to enable software engineers to manage and orchestrate API gateway runtime, service mesh runtime and Kubernetes Ingress controller runtime. The concept here hinges around the idea to give businesses a single service that allows them to manage the connectivity between their APIs and microservices and help developers and operators manage their workflows.
Kong is among the first Red Hat partners in API management to establish a technology collaboration and Operator certification for Red Hat OpenShift.
According to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) 2020 survey, 92% of organisations reported to be running containers in production environments and 83% are also using Kubernetes in those environments.
But… (it’s not all that easy) because enterprises invest tremendous time and resources into attempting to make Kubernetes work for them — and developer teams frequently run into hidden (often over over-provisioning and auto-scaling related) challenges and difficult decisions around how to build, operate and maintain Kubernetes in production.
Kubernetes cure-all?
Julio Tapia, senior director, partner ecosystem, core cloud platforms at Red Hat says that Kong and Red Hat provide the capabilities and expertise to help customers accelerate their journey with Kubernetes while being confident that their applications are more secure, scalable and flexible for the future.
“Kong has worked closely with Red Hat to streamline and automate deployments of Kong’s API management solution on Red Hat OpenShift so enterprises can support their hybrid and multi-cloud strategies with Kong Konnect and OpenShift,” said Tapia.
Reza Shafii, VP of product at Kong Inc. concurs and suggests that what we have here are, “Two best-of-breed technologies that are built for the cloud era.”
Did someone forget to say this migration from monoliths to microservices? No, Kong’s Shafii said that too, don’t worry.
As a certified Red Hat Operator, Kong Konnect is now available on Red Hat Marketplace.
Image credit” Kong