Disclosure: I work at Kong.

The simplest way to think of Kong is as a piece of software that controls traffic going in and out of an API. At its simplest form, it helps make sure that traffic gets to the right API, is secure, etc.

Where Kong really differentiates itself is its ability to support decentralized software architecture patterns like microservices, service mesh, etc as well as traditional monoliths, regardless of the underlying platform or hardware. Microservices make deploying software a lot faster, and we're the connective tissue that lets those microservices work together smoothly and with older legacy systems.

Kong is indesed open source. We also have an enterprise version that adds a lot of features that make managing kong in an enterprise much easier.

Even basic features like proxy caching is locked behind enterprise version. No thanks.

I think you are raising a valid point. What is considered a basic feature is a constantly moving target. The proxy-caching in Kong Enterpise is implemented as a plugin, and it is not that complex. All our new plugins are developed outside Kong open source repository. Some of them are public and some are private. Some of them we include in our default packaging. Ultimately this is a product decision. I think we have some features in open source that could have been enterprise only, and vice versa. I work mostly on developing the Kong core (open source), but at the same time, I think that having a healthy business, will help the open source too. Who knows, your wish of proxy caching plugin , we will endup moving from enterprise to open source.

Many features are also available from community in the form of plugins.

Thanks much! Never too late to learn something new...

So from what I know about cloud technologies (not much) your description makes it sound like Kong is a Service Mesh. But then you also say you support Service Meshes as an architecture, so I'm not sure I got that right. Would you mind to clarify?

I work in API management and API gateways and related tech (IOT, security, api designt, digital transformation etc)

Kong makes a pretty neat impression in buisness, because it is "enterprise" supported and get recognized now as "others use it, so I can't be bad!"

And kong is miles and miles ahead of IBM, axway, CA and CO.

There is better and newer tech on the way to allow cloud mesh api (hyper) integration. But they are not on the "enterpricey" list (pun intented)

Had a brief look at it when considering an API gateway frontend for several microservices; as such it solves things like rate limiting, centralised authentication etc. Based on tried and tested tech like nginx, so has maturity as a benefit. If I remember the pro version offers some conveniences, secures the control pane better than the O/S version, and I imagine is supported commercially for those who need it.

Used Kong but don’t know too much about the internals other than I’ve heard it’s a wrapper on Nginx intended to be used as a proxy. Looking at some features around caching I was thinking about implementing they seem to have implemented a typical upsell tier around “plugins” or “features” not core to the product to charge for.

Calling Kong _just a wrapper_ is dismissive of the features and value it brings to just a web server. Kong is an ecosystem in it's own right, with a plugin development kit and an open source community supporting creation of an intelligent proxy.