I use it as a gateway for our APIs. We have several hundred APIs here, so we use Kong Gateway Enterprise to manage and monitor them. In this application platform, we prefer to use the Kong Enterprise UI instead of the Kong Community Edition GUI.
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Market leader as A API Gateway and the Leading API Gateway for Microsevices Management
2. Documentation is very improve like step by step guidance for setup the dev portal.
3. We can also integrate the third party IDP server like Okta and auth0 and much more like these.
4. Multi Dev Portal support is obviously now.
5. A plugin, I most like name as Mocking is fantastic, like you can use mock data when your API is under the development.
6. Introduce API tracing on the SaaS platform, Now we don't have to integrate the Dynatrace or other third party service.
7. AI manager is also in the SaaS platform.
8. They improved Observability & Metrics as compare to previous version.
9. AI plugin introduced like ai-proxy, ai-proxy-advanced.
10. Introduce Redis configuration for rate liming plugin.
11. A simple, user-friendly interface that's easy for anyone with basic API management knowledge to use.
2. They can improve the multi-tenant support in upcoming version.
3. Improve the RBAC for tight security and user permissions.
2. API Management, there is lot of functionality like rate limiting, load balancing, Authorization using ACL plugin and routing.
3. Monitoring and Logging
4. Dev portal for the developers, we can easily publish the api product and expose the service for new developers
Create Product and potential future market leader
2. Lots of plugins which is useful
3. Ease of use and setup
This enhances security, provides valuable analytics, and allows our team to focus on development.
Great tool and Market leader
Kong also release a debug tracing where we can see the live tracing, which is really good and too fast compare to other APIM.
Kong has also release Kong Event Gateway which is tailored for event-driven architecture which extends Kong's reach beyound synchronous REST.gRPC APIs to tackle streaming and event-based workflow
Kong Gateway Operator 1.5 is powerful, but CRDs can be verbose, and debugging misconfigurations still requires YAML diving.
About to be Market leader Product.
2.Low latency
3.Useful Plugins
Great Product having Potential of being the Segment Leader
Helps manage API usage, monitor anomalies, and detect unusual behavior
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
We use both authorization and header-based methods. Additionally, we connect with our identity provider (IdP) using single sign-on (SSO) and OAuth 2.0. We also enable OpenID Connect.
The traffic control capabilities in Kong Gateway are effective. It helps me manage the usage of each API and monitor any anomalies. I can see any strange behavior or illegal usage from developers, which allows me to notify management about potential issues. Sometimes, it might just be a typo or a bug in the application, but other times, it could be something more serious. The Kong Gateway's traffic control helps detect these anomalies in usage.
What needs improvement?
The main challenge, in my opinion, is the price. It's difficult to convince our management to approve the budget to purchase it from our vendor. There are no technical problems.
It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency).
One thing I've seen in a competitor's product is the ability to create a simple API within their platform using a low-code/no-code GUI. It connects to databases and allows you to drag and drop to create basic API functions. I think this feature would be a valuable addition to Kong Gateway Enterprise.
So, they should create a single API for the platform.
Moreover, if Kong Gateway Enterprise could integrate AI, that would be great. It could automatically scale itself, assess request rates for each API, or even detect attacks. That would be great.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for one and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Kong Gateway helped to improve performance. It's good enough for our users.
I would rate the availability an eight out of ten, we experienced some hiccups.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very easy to scale and create another adapter.
I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. We around thousands of end users using it.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Kong is my first API gateway.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup had moderate complexity. You have to know a lot of things.
I would rate my experience with the initial setup a five out of ten, with ten being easy.
The Community Edition requires a lot of technical knowledge to implement and use. It's okay for me, but you need to know a lot about Linux, Docker, and networking.
- Deployment time: From scratch, it took about three months.
- Deployment process: The main thing is the configuration and combining it with our existing APIs. Adding them one by one is the most tedious part.
What about the implementation team?
I implemented it. I deploy it in Docker and use it with my team.
What was our ROI?
It helps us mitigate the time to detect problems since we can look up the monitoring system and logs very easily.
It's free for the community edition.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's expensive in Thailand.
As far as I know from one of our vendors, it's about 10 million baht per year.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I'm comparing Kong Gateway Enterprise with other software for potential use in our enterprise. We're looking at management, monitoring, and ease of use.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend it because its performance is great. It's reliable.
Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.