API Summit 2024: Kong News and Announcements Recap

API Summit 2024 is underway! The seventh-annual Kong event kicked off today with 7 tracks and 60+ sessions from industry trailblazers. And, of course, the two-day event is packed with Kong-related news and product updates.

Looking for a quick rundown of all the big Kong news? Here's a round-up of the Kong announcements dropped today.

Kong Konnect is the API Platform for AI

According to the 2024 API Impact Report, 83% of developers and leaders reported AI investments led to new products or services in the last year — and 92% say AI is a priority in the next year. There’s no question as to whether or not AI is here to stay. But there is a new question: Are you on the right side of AI? Kong CEO and Co-Founder Augusto Marietti discusses how the news we're announcing today comes together to help further Kong Konnect as the API platform for AI.

AI Gateway 3.8: Semantic Caching and Security, New LLM Load-Balancing Algorithms, and More LLMs

Kong AI Gateway 3.8 made its debut, adding a new class of intelligent semantic plugins, new advanced load-balancing capabilities for LLMs, and the official support for AWS Bedrock and GCP Vertex — in addition to the other supported LLM providers.

Kong Gateway 3.8: Enhanced Performance, Comprehensive Security, Extensibility, and Ease of Use

Kong Gateway 3.8 marks a major milestone in the evolution of the world's most adopted API gateway and our API management platform. This release is packed with enhancements designed to boost performance, fortify security, and provide greater flexibility and ease of use for our customers.

Insomnia 10: Unlimited Collection Runner, Invite Control, and AI Runner for Developers

The momentum of Kong Insomnia continues with the latest v10 GA release, which ships with capabilities like the long-awaited Collection Runner built into the application, a new governance capability called Invite Control, and an entirely new capability for AI consumption. Check out the Insomnia 10 announcement blog for all the details.

Serverless Gateways: Lightweight, Cost-Effective, and Fully Managed Kong Gateways

Announced today at API Summit, Kong Konnect Serverless Gateway is designed to provide developers with a lightweight, cost-efficient, and fully managed API management solution. Soon to be in public beta, Serverless Gateways allows application development teams to quickly deploy and test gateways without the financial strain and extensive operational overhead — making them a great starting point for smaller, agile teams.

Dedicated Cloud Gateways: Deploy Kong Gateways Anywhere — Now With Azure Support

Announced earlier this year, Kong Konnect Dedicated Cloud Gateways are a fully managed, multi-region API management solution that makes setting up global API infrastructure fast and easy. Today, we're thrilled to announce Cloud Gateways now comes with Microsoft Azure support in five regions across Europe and North America. This means you can now deploy cloud gateways in Azure and/or AWS (already supported) in 23 regions worldwide. Google Cloud support is coming soon.

LLM Analytics in Kong Konnect for GenAI Traffic

Advanced Analytics for AI traffic will help organizations better manage their large language model (LLM) usage. This feature offers insights into token consumption, costs, and latency, allowing businesses to optimize their AI investments. By enabling comparisons across different LLM providers and models, organizations can make informed decisions and improve budget management.

Konnect Service Catalog: Shine a Light on Shadow APIs Lurking in Your IT Infrastructure

The Konnect Service Catalog is now available in Public Beta. Discover and manage "shadow APIs" with a a single source of truth for all your services and APIs. This will give you comprehensive visibility to help secure your entire service and API ecosystem.

Kong's New Premium Technology Partner Program Elevates Integration Development

Today, Kong announced the new Premium Technology Partner Program. This program is designed to enhance the Kong ecosystem by promoting high-quality, reliable integrations and plugins that deliver real business value to customers. Inaugural partners Traceable, Dynatrace, and Confluent showcased their solutions at API Summit.

Kong Mesh 2.9: Increased Security Configurations and Health Check Capabilities

Security configurations, resiliency, and platform flexibility all get improvements in Kong Mesh 2.9, which adds some regularly requested and powerful additional features and configuration options for customers to deploy and integrate mesh into their environments — all while ensuring a smooth onboarding experience for their application teams and partners. 

GA Support for Managing Kong with Terraform

Many of Kong users are already relying on Terraform to manage infrastructure on AWS, Azure, and GCP. Kong is infrastructure too, so why don’t we let you manage Kong Gateway and all other entities above it at the Kong Konnect level with Terraform? Now we do. Learn more about managing Kong with Terraform.

Manage Konnect Resources Using Kubernetes CRDs

Kubernetes is a strategic tool for you, which makes it a strategic tool for Kong. That’s why we’ve invested in making sure that you can configure Konnect using CRDs. Learn more about managing Konnect with Kubernetes CRDs.