Navigating the transition from monolith to microservices can be an ambitious undertaking for any organization. Today, we’re launching our new Kong GTM Partner Program to create a global ecosystem of experts to help organizations successfully transition to microservices, service mesh and other modern architectures.

As API programs gain traction, we know many companies want to empower developers to quickly build and deliver their API products. To aid them in this effort, we recently announced the availability of new capabilities in Apigee, the enterprise API management platform of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), to help enterprise IT teams speed up their API development. With faster API development within GCP, you can innovate faster and create connected customer experiences, plus increase developer productivity.

Today’s connected experiences — such as controlling smart home accessories from a mobile app or ordering takeout via a voice assistant — involve a lot of software talking to other software. This means these digital experiences rely in large part on application programming interfaces (APIs). When someone uses their social media account to log into other websites, an API mediates the interaction.

When the Application Program Interface (API) first came into existence, developers viewed it as a revolutionary approach to creating re-usable software fragments. Instead of creating new code from scratch for every new program, they could now use existing functionality to develop new features. Not only did this decrease the amount of time needed to deploy a program but also meant they could leverage existing code which was already tried and tested.

The cloud native paradigm for application development has come to consist of microservices architecture, containerized services, orchestration, and distributed management. Many companies are already on this journey, with varying degrees of success. To be successful in developing cloud native applications, it’s important to craft and implement the right strategy. Let’s examine a number of important elements that must be part of a viable cloud native development strategy.