TUNE Kubernetes and OpenAPI Developer Case Study

Challenges

Legacy API not aligned to end user requirements for new target market
Developer productivity hampered by the need to build and maintain API infrastructure logic at the application layer
Lack of agility since team assignments were limited by code base and architectural concerns

Solution

Kong Enterprise as service control platform running on Kubernetes in AWS to expose new external API
Dev Portal enabling service discovery and API standardization on OpenAPI 3.0

Results

Created architectural freedom, allowing vertical-oriented teams that own front end to back end without dependencies on other teams
Improved developer productivity by over 10X by adding API infrastructure logic at the networking layer

Founded in 2009, TUNE builds technology that powers successful marketing partnerships across mobile and web. The TUNE Partner Marketing Platform is the industry’s most flexible SaaS platform for building, managing, and growing partner programs for advertisers and networks. As one of the first cloud-based SaaS platforms to support affiliate marketing, TUNE’s mission has evolved as affiliate marketing has expanded and evolved into the larger partner marketing category. As part of this evolution, TUNE set a business goal to increase revenue and market share in the direct advertiser space.

Legacy API Blocks Entry Into a New Market

A challenge TUNE faced in achieving this goal was that its legacy API was more geared toward affiliate marketing networks, rather than direct advertisers. “The legacy API was not very useful for advertisers. It was too complex and assumed too much. Part of our API strategy is building new endpoints on a new API that is simpler and specialized to advertiser needs,” said Robert Anton-Erik, software development manager. The API team at TUNE manages TUNE’s external-facing API, including related concerns such as authentication, rate limiting and monitoring API operations.

TUNE also wanted to move toward more vertical-oriented teams. “We had multiple back end services with different languages, all being managed by different teams,” said Anton-Erik. The dependency on multiple teams and languages was reducing developer productivity significantly. “We wanted to move toward having teams own building the front end and back end as well as exposing the API – all without depending on other teams.” In order to do so, TUNE needed a platform that enabled the freedom to work with any architecture, protocol or deployment pattern.

Choosing an API Gateway, Enabling Architectural Freedom

“We knew we needed a standardized gateway allowing us to have shared functionality in a specific location,” said Anton-Erik. Doing so would allow developers on TUNE’s application teams to focus on building and maintaining their services, while the API team could own supporting infrastructure.

“Kong made our shortlist because it could do everything we needed a gateway to do for our new API, as well as expose our legacy API,” said Anton-Erik. “Ultimately, we chose Kong because it stood out as a developer-friendly, integrated solution.” The team saw that Kong was built to run in containers, its documentation made developer set-up easy, and its platform inclusion of an integrated development studio and developer portal along with an API gateway offered a comprehensive solution.

TUNE Runs Kong on Kubernetes to Manage APIs

TUNE went live with Kong about three months after purchasing Kong Enterprise. TUNE runs its production Kong instance in a single Kubernetes cluster in EC2 on AWS, using Kong’s Kubernetes Ingress Controller to manage configuration changes. “Our developers run images locally for Kong’s enterprise gateway and developer portal,” said Anton-Erik. “They can make changes and play around with them locally. After verifying the changes, our developers then update the Custom Resource Definitions for Kong’s Kubernetes Ingress Controller with the same changes. When the changes are merged, our deployment pipeline pushes the changes to staging and production, while running tests alongside the deployments.” TUNE values the integrated nature of its solution with Kong, its ability to run in Docker and its flexibility across platforms.