DEVOPSdigest

Kong announced the general availability release of Kong Konnect, a service connectivity platform that enables the modern connected business.

First previewed at Kong Summit 2020 in private beta, Kong Konnect provides end users with instant access to a comprehensive suite of tools that enable reliable, secure and observable connectivity across their APIs and microservices. The GA release features new multi-geo support, allowing users to physically locate services close to their businesses for privacy and regulatory compliance.

The fully modular platform enables developers, architects and operators to accelerate application development cycles and provide connectivity between services for stellar digital experiences. Architects decouple connectivity concerns from microservices so that developers can focus on building applications instead of wasting time building pipes; developers gain architectural freedom to choose the best language, protocol and cloud services for building their microservices; and operators deploy APIs consistently across any infrastructure to support the hybrid or multi-cloud deployment patterns that the business requires for performance, cost, privacy or regulatory compliance reasons.

With the GA release, Kong is introducing a flexible consumption-based pricing model that brings enterprise-class tech within reach of individual developers as well as large teams. Usage of Kong Konnect is metered, enabling users to pay solely for the number of services used.

Kong Konnect is available in three plan tiers:

- Kong Konnect Free allows developers to instantly try out the product without having to go through an enterprise sales representative.

- Kong Konnect Plus offers a freemium model with a pay-as-you-go, credit card-based option that provides a simple way for developers or operators on small teams to quickly start using the services they need right now.

- Kong Konnect Enterprise is for organizations that want to use the platform as a whole; it provides connectivity with enterprise-grade security, scalability and observability across any cloud, platform and protocol to help teams build powerful digital services and experiences.

“Kong Konnect addresses a massive challenge companies face as they enter digital transformation 2.0, which is characterized by an exponential increase in the volume and variety of connections that need to be activated and secured with lightning-fast speed,” said Marco Palladino, CTO and co-founder of Kong Inc. “One day, we will look back in amazement to realize that developers were spending a lot of time building the plumbing, and writing the networking and security code for each service on each platform. Automated cloud connectivity is inevitable – from gateway to service mesh across every cloud, Kubernetes and VMs – and market-leading companies already know this and are offloading this function so that their top talent can focus on application design and feature development so they can continue to outpace the competition.”

With a modular approach, end users can access capabilities delivered as functional modules and provision different types of runtimes on-demand without requiring purchase of the entire platform. Users are able to select and consume only the features they need directly through the Kong Konnect interface, removing barriers to building next-generation applications and services.

Kong Konnect provides reliable, secure and observable connectivity for services across any infrastructure. The SaaS-based management plane accelerates deployments and provides access to functionality modules, including the Kong ServiceHub, Kong Vitals, Kong Runtime Manager and the Kong Developer Portal. Kong Immunity and Insomnia continue to be available for self-management to customers. The runtimes – Kong Gateway and Kong Mesh – are self-managed and provide the flexibility to support any hybrid or multi-cloud deployment pattern.