Kong Konnect Enterprise

I have experience with both Apigee  and Kong API Gateway. I have migrated from Apigee  to Kong Konnect  for organizations.

I am working currently with Kong Konnect  SaaS Enterprise, which is the SaaS version of Kong. I have also worked on Kong Gateway Enterprise .

With Kong Konnect, AWS  is the provider by default. However, the gateway runtime can be installed anywhere, the Kong Gatewa runtime also called the Kong Data Plane is platform agnostic. It does not have to be in AWS . It can be in Azure  or on-prem as well.

Kong has been working on their documentation. They have developed a separate portal for the documentation. They are trying to improve that.

Their tech support is excellent. When I raise an incident or a support ticket, it got answered in four hours.

When comparing documentation, Kong's documentation is not on par with Google, Amazon, or other cloud providers. If a new person joins a team and wants to start using Kong's product and their associated tools, they would find it difficult initially compared to Google, Amazon, or Microsoft products, or even Azure  from the deployment perspective. Kong has been working on their documentation and has developed a separate portal for the documentation. They are trying to improve that area.

I have been using both Kong Konnect and Kong Gateway Enterprise  for three years at the level of API Technical Architect.

Kong Konnect includes managed and self-hosted runtimes, allowing different business units to independently control their gateways while maintaining central governance, security, and logging policies.

Their tech support is excellent. When I raise an incident or a support ticket, it gets answered in four hours.

Positive

One thing to keep in mind is Kong Konnect has professional services which often gets involved in the initial phases of implementation. Their professional services are very expensive. That is one reason why a client should hire an API technical architect to get things done because I am much more cost-effective than the professional services team.

Significant improvement in the performance of APIs.

It is more suitable to purchase Kong license from Kong vendors, not from the cloud marketplace because the cloud marketplace has a limitation on the number of API services it supports. If the customer has many APIs, it is always better to go through the vendor route to purchase the license.

I would rate Kong Konnect 8.5 out of 10.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The clients mainly were using Proofpoint for email security, which is the primary use case.

We have used Proofpoint for email security.

Spam filtering from our partner perspective was very efficient; we were very happy with the functionality, as only relevant emails were allowed for mailboxes.

We used the Sandbox feature, and it was very beneficial concerning the Advanced Threat Protection feature.

From a business perspective, it was very helpful; it sped up our business flow and increased email delivery, and from a technical perspective, it was very effective.

Pricing might be a topic to consider regarding improvements.

I may advise Proofpoint to adjust marketing solutions based on each country itself.

I had experience with Proofpoint for more than 5 or 6 years.

Everything was very nice from a technical perspective, and we were very happy, especially since we used it for more than 5 or 6 years.

Everything was fully functional, and I cannot think of advanced features; all existing features were very suitable for our business flow.

It was very stable, so I would rate it as excellent.

It was very fast, and we did not experience any interruptions.

The scalability of Proofpoint was excellent and very scalable.

Technical support from Proofpoint was absolutely excellent.

We were very satisfied with the performance and efficiency of the product.

Positive

We are still using Microsoft Exchange , but left Proofpoint.

We stopped using this product last year, approximately ten months ago.

The product was very straightforward to install; it was very easy because we used the web interface, and simple settings definitions on the ISP site were enough for the whole setup.

At the very beginning we were working directly with the UK, but then we were redirected to a local partner, and we worked almost one year with the local partner.

We used to get a business partner in my country.

The pricing deserves a high rating for consideration.

Cost was the reason we stopped using it.

Pricing was the issue as it becomes very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances.

The integration with our on-prem Exchange was very straightforward; the only thing we did was redirect all email traffic over Proofpoint, so Proofpoint did everything independently, and we were very happy.

I am still receiving emails from Proofpoint's site.

Not using it at the moment, but in the short term we will be tackling that portion of the product as well.

We cannot provide feedback regarding Dynamics because we are not experienced enough at the moment; we have initiatives going on but did not get enough feedback from end users.

Based on my overall experience with Proofpoint, considering the cost perspective, I would rate it a 7 out of 10.

Public Cloud

Other

I use Kong Konnect  as an API Gateway or API management solution. I have several use cases, including securing internal APIs within Siemens network by deploying Kong Gateway on Amazon EKS . This acts as an API management layer to expose other internal services such as logging and Jira  APIs. Additionally, I utilize it for external use cases by deploying an API Gateway for consumers accessing services from the internet. My aim is to create a federated API management platform where various business units can still use their preferred choice of gateways while maintaining a central federation layer to control security and logging policies.

Kong Konnect  is a SaaS version of Kong Gateway, and it offers a hybrid deployment. The configuration can be controlled centrally via the SaaS offering, and each team can manage their own gateway or runtime part. It is lightweight, suitable for smaller use cases without heavy initial costs, and comes in various flavors such as open source and enterprise. The documentation is excellent, and it includes a developer portal, which helps create a common distribution channel for APIs within and outside the enterprise.

Kong Konnect's RBAC needs to evolve more, as they currently offer only one or two levels of RBAC in terms of organization and teams. Additionally, the licensing model could be simplified, especially in how they charge and track usage. There are also some technical restrictions around exposing GRPC APIs, but I have not explored this yet.

I have been working with Kong Konnect for the last six or seven months.

The deployment is straightforward because it's a hybrid model. The control plane is a SaaS offering, so there's not much difficulty there.

The solution is stable.

The platform is fully scalable, providing various ways to manage data planes or runtimes. They offer managed runtimes, but it's preferred that consumers manage their own runtime, which can be deployed in a containerized manner.

The technical support from Kong is satisfactory.

Neutral

I was previously using Azure Logic Apps  but moved to Kong API Gateway. This decision was influenced by the need to create a service around Kong API Gateway with a federated API management platform.

The initial setup is very straightforward due to its hybrid deployment model, with the configuration and control plane managed as a SaaS offering.

I have not yet seen a return on investment because the project is still in its early stages.

While the pricing model isn't very clear on how usage is tracked, the initial cost and setup for using Kong Konnect are reasonable.

The knowledge base provided by Kong is excellent, offering various learning paths not just for the technical aspects of Kong Konnect, but also for innovation within the application. It's a highly customizable platform. I would rate Kong Konnect an eight overall.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services  (AWS )

What do you like best about the product?

It is a very easy and with a vast range of features tool, and it could be integrated with many cloud environments, and on premises as well.

What do you dislike about the product?

There are some wrong documentation, a high dependency of some beta plugins, and quite high costs.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Rate limiting, microservices orchestration, api security, integration of apps.

What do you like best about the product?

Quick and Easy to start deploying APIs.
Provides different deployment options Hybrid and SaaS.

What do you dislike about the product?

Lack of monetization feature within the Developer Portal.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Konnect helped in setting up a full fledged API gateway in minutes.