Introduction

Today, we are thrilled to announce that we have expanded open access to Kong Konnect, the world’s only cloud native, full lifecycle service connectivity platform, for everybody anywhere in the world, thanks to a new plan called Konnect Plus! Available today with a free 30-day trial.

The era of building our own software connectivity is behind us: with Konnect, our SaaS Cloud API Platform, any developer can now provision connectivity at the edge and internally via API gateways and (coming soon) service meshes with the click of a button and with a pay-as-you go model. Data plane proxies can still be deployed in your own infrastructure, enforcing strict data traffic separation from Konnect.

By doing so, we can focus on what matters: the applications and the products that we are building, whereas reliable, secure and observable connectivity ships out of the box with Konnect across every cloud, including Kubernetes and VMs.

Along with the Konnect Plus GA, we are also announcing:

• Support of decK for Konnect, Kong’s command line tool for enabling declarative configuration management and APIOps.
• Konnect Enterprise is going global with the availability of the Konnect management plane in other geographies outside of the US.

Konnect is the first cloud native connectivity platform that gives the end user the flexibility of protecting the API and service traffic within the organization, while simultaneously taking advantage of 10x ops improvements via the cloud control plane, thanks to the unique deployment topologies available:

1. A fully self-managed topology.
2. A cloud topology that allows you to run and operate your connectivity runtimes, while Kong provides the connectivity control planes and functionality modules as illustrated below. 

The Konnect cloud topology enables developers, DevOps and enterprise architects to:

1. Eliminate the complexity of running and operating connectivity runtime control planes, as well as the software stack and infrastructure required to run and operate connectivity functionality modules.
2. Leverage ServiceHub, Runtime Manager, Portal and Vitals functionality modules as SaaS services, as outlined in the announcement of the general availability of Konnect Enterprise. These functionality modules enable developers to focus on the development of business logic rather than connectivity logic, while enabling enterprise architects to accelerate time-to-value by empowering developers – all while having a single-pane-of-glass connectivity and service management view.
3. Enable a simple and consistent web UI, declarative configuration and API-driven experience for managing and automating the lifecycle of connectivity logic across any environment, be it on-premises data centers, any cloud provider or any Kubernetes provider.

Self-Service Connectivity With Konnect Plus

Konnect Plus is the new self-service, pay-as-you-go pricing tier of Konnect. Konnect makes it even easier for teams to adopt and scale their service infrastructure by creating an account, deploying gateways and services in minutes, and inviting other users to join their organization. Konnect Plus provides a 30-day free trial that automatically reverts to a Konnect Free tier after the trial period.

Cloud Native on decK

A key element of APIOps is the ability to convert the state of your connectivity fabric. That is, the runtimes that are executing your connectivity logic as well as all meta-data about this logic through declarative configuration files that are changed and managed through Git, and tested and validated through your CI/CD pipelines.

To that end, today we are excited to announce decK support with Konnect SaaS, Kong’s command line tool for enabling declarative configuration management. To use decK with Konnect SaaS, simply run the following command and follow the command like help instructions.

deck konnect
Konnect command contains sub-commands that can be used to declaratively
configure Konnect.

Usage:
  deck konnect [command]

Available Commands:
  diff        Diff the current entities in Konnect with the one on disks
  dump        Export configuration from Konnect (in alpha)
  ping        Verify connectivity with Konnect (in alpha)
  sync        Sync performs operations to get Konnect's configuration to match the state file

Note that this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of declarative configuration capabilities for Konnect. Stay tuned for many more exciting capabilities in this area. 

Konnect Enterprise Goes Global  

With Konnect SaaS, you can run the Kong Gateway runtimes on any cloud, any geography, any country and any zone, as well as on your own data centers, while leveraging Konnect’s functionality modules that provide value on top of these runtimes as SaaS. This capability has been available and fully supported since the launch of Konnect Enterprise in February. We have heard from some of our customers that data privacy and compliance requirements sometimes require Kong’s hosting of Konnect SaaS management plane and functionality modules in different geographies.

As such, we are announcing today the availability of the Konnect SaaS layer in other geographies outside of the US. Specifically, our customers in Europe geography can now have access to a Konnect SaaS layer in their region if they have data privacy and compliance requirements that require it. 

Go Ahead and Give Konnect a Spin!

To get going with Konnect, you can begin with any of the following starting points:

• Learn more about Konnect
• Watch the getting started video
• Follow the quickstart guide

Happy Konnecting!