IBM API Connect 10.0.8.2 has just been released (see What's New) and there are some exciting features in this release that I want to highlight.

Out-of-the-box Gateway Policies deployed by API Manager

Until now, delivering new gateway policies required software update of the DataPower gateway, even if the definition of the policy did not really require a “software” update as such, as most often policies are “configurations” leveraging gateway’s existing features.

Now, we are adding a powerful ability to add and ship new gateway policies in IBM API Connect without the need to spin off new DataPower API Gateway software versions, for such policies which don’t really require gateway software update. This decoupling of policy delivery from DataPower version updates improves IBM API Connect's ability to deliver new policy capabilities in the future.

There is a new underlying mechanism to deploy out-of-the-box policies from API Manager to DataPower API Gateway. See documentation for details. In this release, the mechanism deploys a new Token Mediation policy, and we expect to ship more in future releases. This means the following:

• When you register a new DataPower API Gateway in Cloud Manager, the policy will be sent to gateway automatically after registration.
• On upgrade of API Connect Management subsystem, the new policy will be sent to all existing (registered) DataPower API Gateways.

For example, the Token Mediation policy appears on API editor user interface as shown here:

AI Gateway Enhancements

We have seen great interest from customers in IBM API Connect AI Gateway since its release last year. There are a number of enhancements to the AI Gateway support on top of the support provided in 10.0.8.1, described in the subsections here.

Enable AI Gateway along with your gateway extension

AI Gateway can now be enabled on DataPower API Gateways with gateway extension. This was a limitation in previous release 10.0.8.1 (see previously documented manual procedure) which has now been removed. See documentation for details. This means that the following scenarios are supported from 10.0.8.2:

• If you have an existing AI Gateway enabled gateway, after upgrade you will notice that it does not take up the gateway extension spot, you can add you own gateway-extension to it.
• If you have an existing DataPower API Gateway with gateway extension, you can enable AI Gateway on it.
• You can create (register) a new DataPower API Gateway with AI Gateway enabled and your own gateway extension.

For a deeper understanding of how gateway extensions work, I would recommend this post.

Google Gemini

Since the AI Gateway support for watsonx.ai and OpenAI in 10.0.8.1, driven by customer demands, Google Gemini policy support has been added. See documentation for details.

We hope you will like these enhancements and look forward to receiving the feedback.