Kong Konnect is Kong’s infrastructural SaaS solution. We run the control planes and API management applications for the data planes (API gateway and mesh) that are run by our customers to power their APIs. Some of the most critical traffic in the world goes through these data planes. The criticality of Konnect and therefore our customer’s uptime expectations of Konnect are very high.

Today — alongside the announcement of Kong Insomnia 10.2 — we're excited to introduce two new Kong Insomnia enterprise capabilities that will improve user management at scale across every organization. These new features are available to use for every existing enterprise customer, and they complement existing advanced user management capabilities like EE SSO and SCIM. Let’s take a look at each of the new capabilities.

Kong Insomnia 10.2 is now generally available with some exciting new features and improvements! As usual, we strongly recommend upgrading to this latest version and to always use the most recent release of Insomnia.

You’ve probably heard of generative AI, which uses deep learning models to simulate human decision-making by processing large amounts of data, and then responding with pertinent new content. Since the arrival of ChatGPT in 2022, generative AI has come a long way — but now there’s another technology on the scene that could further revolutionize the capabilities of AI. Read on to learn more about agentic AI and how it could transform the business landscape.

More than 80% of developers and business leaders say AI investments have already created the opportunity for new products or services, according to Kong’s 2024 API Impact Report. Clearly, AI has proven its value and place in the enterprise, but with new innovations come new potential vulnerabilities. But as organizations push forward into and navigate the rising risk of AI-enhanced threats and the adoption of AI tools and large language models (LLMs), what have tech leaders experienced?

More than ever, it’s vital for organizations to develop software fast. Businesses are ever seeking ways to speed up their development, launch products sooner, and beat the competition. This is where AI proxies come into play. They're a new technology that helps developers solve tough software development challenges.

No AI without APIs — as we say here at Kong. I’m excited to officially share our oversubscribed Kong Series E financing at a $2 billion valuation! We raised $175 million in both primary and secondary, led again by Tiger Global and co-led by new investor Balderton as well as new strong participation from long-only Teachers’ Venture Growth (the late-stage growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan).

We announced the Kong Premium Technology Partner Program at API Summit 2024, and Confluent was one of the first in the program. This initial development was all about ensuring that the relationship between Kong and Confluent — from a business and product perspective — fully represented our joint belief that the world of data streaming and the world of APIs are converging.

In Kong Gateway 2.0, we released Hybrid Mode, also known as Control Plane/Data Plane separation. With it, our customers could efficiently and securely deploy clusters of Kong Gateway Dataplanes on their on-prem, private, and public clouds in any combination they wanted, and they could control the entire cluster from a single point, the Control Plane. Hybrid Mode became instantly popular with all our customers with large and varied deployments, due to the increased flexibility and ease of management.

It’s here! The Kong Gateway Operator release we teased at API Summit is now available for you all to use. KGO 1.4 allows you to configure Kong Konnect using CRDs, attach your DataPlane resources to Konnect with minimal configuration, and even manage the deployment of custom plugins using Kubernetes CRDs. Keep reading to find out more.