Kubernetes in Action

Kubernetes is becoming a very popular platform to manage containers. There is a consensus in the i8c team that the book Kubernetes in Action is really a great way to dive into the matter. By reading the book, one also grasps the complexities of Kubernetes.

Interesting to see how all the big names
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Pivotal, Redhat  support the Kubernetes platform in their respective clouds and on-premise. The list of Kubernetes Certified Service Providers is extensive.

Also integration platforms are being containerized, e.g. TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition or IBM AppConenct Enterprise. But other vendors in the integration space are taking this direction as well: multiple lighter-weight integration engines running a limited number of integration flows. Whereby containers can run distributed on-premise and in different clouds.

Marrying API management with Istio

Istio is a service mesh on top of Kubernetes. Istio assists with the securing, managing and monitoring the communication between microservices.

The two main drivers behind Istio, IBM and Google (Apigee) both have a strong API Management solution. IBM comes with API Connect, Google with Apigee. Now both IBM and Google are definitely going to bring their API Managemet solution together with Istio. 

Apigee has already released a "Apigee Adapter for Istio" that we successfully took it for a spin.

IBM is releasing papers describing API + Microservices Management as the perfect marriage.

A topic to closely monitor as it brings enterprise API Management and Micro Services together!

Apigee API Mgt ~ SAP API Mgt

API Management is booming. The i8c team works with many API Management solutions. Personally I'm more involved with IBM's API Connect and Google's Apigee.

SAP's API Management is an OEM version of Apigee. By subscribing to the free openSAP training "SAP Cloud Platform API Management", I got triggered to actually put my hands on SAP's API Management solution.

Although both products are fundamentally identical, they definitely look different, see screenshots below. But there are other differences as well:

• SAP focuses (of course) on exposing SAP back-end systems and the use of OData and SAP Gateway
• SAP comes with the concept of Templates, a number of preset policies that can be copied into an API proxy
• SAP renamed Edge Management UI to API Portal
• Apigee is also available on-premise with their Edge for Private Cloud, SAP API Mgt isn't
• SAP integrates with its API Business Hub
• Apigee seems much cheaper: SAP charges €150 for 1 million API calls, Apigee charges $500 for 15 million API calls (per month, Sept 2018)

Looking forward to learn more about SAP's API management during the free openSAP training. And also curious to see if SAP will go its own way yes or no. For now, they are still very similar on the inside but looking different on the outside.