Introducing IBM's API Connect 2018.1 a scalable multi-cloud API Management platform, agnostic of hypervisors or cloud providers. A platform built ground up based on micro-service architecture, that is cloud native to it's core. In addition to deployment advances, new API Management tooling has been added and the user experience enhanced. This gives development teams more capabilities, while reducing the time to market of their digital projects.
Introducing all of the new features and functionality would be too much to digest in a single blog. Thus the topics will be broken down and published as a blog series over a period of time. Below are blurbs of each of the topics to be covered and an end to end demo of this new solution [coming soon].
Advanced Deployment Strategies
This major version release is a complete re-architecture of our current product. Built for the future of hybrid and multi-cloud application architectures. Below are examples and highlights of the changes to API Connect deployment options:
- Docker and Kubernetes based deployment as it's foundation, and still retaining the ability to deploy as an OVA.
- Analytics deployed as separate component from API Manager, promoting remote gateway deployments and having enhanced scalability options.
- Association of analytics services to gateway services, to again promote remote gateway deployments, while having aggregated view of your metric data.
- N number of Portal Clusters, per API Connect Cloud to enable those companies that have internal, external and global API Projects.
- Configure geographic high availability of APIs, with simple configuration in API Connect tooling.
- Streamlined control of Global API Projects, with management from single centralized API Manager.
- Improved scalability and reliability of API Gateway clusters, as Gateway clusters are now responsible for configuration persistence. No longer having a dependency on the API Manager.
Cloud Manager Highlights
API Connect is revamping it's Cloud Management tooling. Improving the experience of customers managing the API Connect infrastructure themselves. Here are some highlights:
- Standardize API Security across organizations with ability to configure connections to OAuth Providers that can be re-used on multiple API projects.
- Enhanced TLS Profile configurations such as ciphers for fine grained control.
- Email templating for not just custom messages, but also notifications sent out from API Connect to users.
- Extensible Visibility and Sharing Control of Cloud Resources, such as ability to share with specific line of businesses building out APIs.
- Role Based Access Control at Cloud Level, allowing companies to extend their corporate governance to the Cloud configuration and administration.
API Manager & Developer Experience Highlights
IBM's API Connect has had key improvements in its API Management tooling, and also undergone a user experience overhaul. Here are some highlights that will improve the workflow of developers across organizations leveraging API Connect:
- Comprehensive set of APIs available enhancing customers CI/CD pipelines.
Enhanced Gateway Management, with ability to scope policies to specific gateways and target specific gateways during publishing.
Rolling Updates of APIs, with ability to selectively publish new versions of APIs to certain gateway clusters.
- Native Install of Developer Toolkit, rather than a Node Package Manager install allowing developers to comply with corporate software guidelines.
- New Sandbox Environment, to prioritize rapid iteration of API development projects.