Solo.io Recognized as a Visionary in the Gartner 2023 Magic Quadrant for API Management

Solo.io is at the forefront of modernizing API management for the cloud-native community. For cloud-native customers grappling with the challenges of using API management tools designed for a pre-cloud era, Gloo Gateway has emerged as the solution they’ve been waiting for.

We are proud to announce that Solo.io has been named a Visionary in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for API Management.

The Challenge of Cloud-Native API Management

Cloud-native applications, deployed within containers and orchestrated by Kubernetes, present a fresh set of challenges in API management. API creators and users are transitioning to a cloud-native landscape where applications can be deployed across multiple locations and scale independently.

In this new paradigm, modern API management must thrive in a distributed environment. It needs to ensure that the API gateway scales alongside the application, enhancing performance as it seamlessly adapts to containers across various cloud deployments.

Gloo: Designed for Cloud-Native Challenges

Solo.io’s Gloo was purpose-built to address the API gateway, service mesh, and multi-cluster requirements of Kubernetes-native applications. Gloo Gateway and Gloo Mesh collaborate to meet communication security needs, regardless of how traffic flows through the cloud-native application.

From the initial ingress to the connections between services and across clusters, Gloo ensures that API connections are secured throughout the application’s lifecycle. It is built on top of well-known open-source technologies such as Envoy, Istio, and Cilium, bringing innovation from the open-source community to create a modern API management solution.

“We believe/feel/think that this recognition by Gartner validates the importance of building Gloo to align with the needs of cloud-native customers,” said Idit Levine, CEO of Solo.io. “We developed a next generation API gateway that addresses the unique set of capabilities that these distributed applications bring to our customers. We built the features our customers required into Gloo Gateway so the API management functions can live next to the applications in the public or private cloud. And we enabled this authentication to extend throughout the application services with Gloo Mesh.”

Bridging the Security Gap

Gloo bridges the gap between east-west traffic security among services and north-south security provided by the API gateway. As cloud-native applications move toward zero-trust security models, this integrated approach addresses the evolving challenges that cloud-native customers are likely to encounter, ensuring comprehensive security across all connections within the application. This functionality extends to code running in serverless environments, including AWS Lambda, and aligns with deployment methods common to cloud-native applications.

Complete API Management Functionality

In addition to handling ingress and service connectivity, Gloo incorporates emerging technologies like GraphQL and a developer portal to provide comprehensive API management functionality. Integrating GraphQL into Envoy Proxy and Istio eliminates the need for a separate GraphQL server, extending authentication and authorization beyond the initial API gateway access.

Gloo Portal simplifies API management and seamlessly integrates into GitOps, CI/CD workflows, and popular internal developer portals, enhancing developer workflows. For customers using tools like Backstage to build their own portals, Gloo Portal provides the integrations that simplify the process.

What to learn more about API management? Complimentary Download – The Gartner Magic Quadrant for API Management Report

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for API Management, 11 October 2023, Shameen Pillai , et. al.

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