Marco Palladino, CTO of Kong, discusses APIs as the backbone of the digital world with Lee Atchison. They explore the evolution of APIs, the importance of API gateways and Kong functionalities, and how APIs drive modern organizations. They highlight the crucial role of rate limiting in API health and the revolutionizing impact of Kong's API platform.
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Quick takeaways
APIs are the foundation of digital products globally, handling 85% of internet traffic.
RESTful APIs gained popularity over SOAP due to simplicity and JSON adoption.
API gateways are crucial for securing, managing, and governing APIs effectively.
Robust analytics enhance API management by providing insights into usage and performance.
Kong's API platform offers diverse solutions, from edge gateways to AI gateways, for seamless deployment.
Deep dives
APIs as the Backbone of Digital World
APIs are highlighted as essential building blocks for modern applications, powering digital products and experiences globally. Demonstrated by their importance in everyday activities like booking tickets or shopping, it's emphasized that APIs have become the foundation of the internet, with 85% of all internet traffic being API-related, illustrating a significant shift towards API-centric digital interactions.
Evolution of API Traffic and Technology
The evolution of API traffic is attributed to technology advancements and digital transformations. Starting with the shift towards mobile apps in the era of SOA, the landscape changed further with the emergence of Docker and Kubernetes, promoting a microservices-first approach. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital shift, amplifying API consumption. Additionally, AI adoption has reinforced the vital role of APIs, marking them as the linchpin for AI's functionality and interactions.
Transition to RESTful APIs
The podcast discusses the transition to RESTful APIs as a preferred choice over SOAP due to its simplicity and adoption in front-end and mobile frameworks. The flexibility and ease of building APIs using JSON over SOAP's complexity led to RESTful APIs' popularity. Despite initial criticisms about REST being verbose, restrictive, or lacking typing, developers' preference for JSON and familiarity with HTTP primitives drove REST's widespread adoption.
The Significance of API Gateways
API gateways are identified as crucial components for securing, managing, and governing APIs. Beyond handling request and response transactions, API gateways play a pivotal role in ensuring security, governance, and standardized access control for different API tiers. By abstracting underlying infrastructure complexities, API gateways enable developers to focus on core business logic while optimizing API management, security, and compliance effortlessly.
Enhancing API Management with Analytics and Rate Limiting
API management is enhanced through robust analytics that provide insights into API usage, performance, and reliability. Tracking metrics like requests per second, errors, and latency not only monitors API health but also offers vital business intelligence. Moreover, rate limiting is highlighted as a critical mechanism to maintain application health by preventing cascading failures and ensuring efficient traffic control, particularly in a microservices environment with interconnected services.
Flexible API Deployment and Management Solutions
Kong's API platform offers a broad spectrum of solutions, from edge gateways for external APIs to service meshes for microservices, and AI gateways for AI-driven interactions. With a unified control plane facilitating seamless deployment and management of APIs across diverse use cases, Kong enables organizations to enhance productivity, streamline API governance, and optimize business outcomes effectively. Its recent dedicated cloud gateways feature simplifies API infrastructure provisioning, further boosting reliability and scalability.
Open Source Strategy and AI Gateway Advancements
Kong's commitment to open source software extends to its core gateway and mesh technologies, emphasizing collaborative development and easier adoption. The company's AI gateway innovation reflects a strategic focus on AI's transformative potential, streamlining AI consumption, ensuring compliance, and optimizing costs. By offering advanced AI capabilities through an open-source AI gateway, Kong aims to cater to evolving AI use cases while complementing its existing API management features.
Hybrid Cloud Solutions and Industry Impact
Kong's hybrid cloud offerings, combining self-hosted data planes with a cloud control plane, cater to diverse compliance requirements and data localization needs. Empowering users to retain control over their data while leveraging centralized management and analytics services, Kong's solutions are engineered to adapt to varying industry regulations and security standards effectively. The company's revenue growth and industry influence underscore its positioning as a key player in API and AI infrastructure.
AI Gateway and Future of AI Integration
The discussion delves into the specialized requirements of AI API management vis-a-vis traditional services, focusing on productivity improvement, governance compliance, and cost optimization. Kong's AI gateway distinctive capabilities encompass enhancing developer workflows, ensuring responsible AI consumption, monitoring AI traffic, and implementing cost-effective strategies. By addressing AI-specific protocols and traffic orchestration needs, Kong's AI gateway aims to propel AI integration across industries while aligning with evolving AI trends.
Marco Paladino on API Industry Trends and Future Outlook
Marco Paladino shares insights on Kong's evolution, open-source ethos, and strategic positioning in the API and AI market. By elucidating the company's growth trajectory, technological innovations, and commitment to open collaboration, Marco underscores Kong's transformative impact on API management and AI integration. His forward-looking perspective on AI's role in shaping future applications and Kong's strategic direction towards consolidating API infrastructure and embracing AI advancements encapsulates the podcast's exploration of cutting-edge industry trends and business strategies.
Kong is a software company that provides open-source platforms and cloud services for managing, monitoring, and scaling APIs and microservices.
Marco Palladino is the CTO of Kong, and he joins the podcast to talk about the platform and APIs as the building blocks of the digital world.
This episode is hosted by Lee Atchison. Lee Atchison is a software architect, author, and thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. His best-selling book, Architecting for Scale (O’Reilly Media), is an essential resource for technical teams looking to maintain high availability and manage risk in their cloud environments.
Lee is the host of his podcast, Modern Digital Business, an engaging and informative podcast produced for people looking to build and grow their digital business with the help of modern applications and processes developed for today’s fast-moving business environment. Listen at mdb.fm. Follow Lee at softwarearchitectureinsights.com, and see all his content at leeatchison.com.
