My key take away from London – September 18 & 19, 2024 – apidays Global and my short interaction with https://www.gravitee.io/ team (on the API governance layer that spans organization’s various API Gateways and Event Brokers) and the Kong team introduce us to work they are doing in last few quarters building a semantic AI Gateway to run and secure LLM traffic (AI Gateway – LLM API Solution | Kong Inc. (konghq.com). Both teams appeared to me are sincerely and meticulously trying to solve some of the complex industry problems with architecture simplicity, nobility but same time have potential to help to speed up transformation initiatives and AI enablement at scale. If deployed in right manner, there are multi-dimensional benefits to accelerate enterprise wide transformation, and keep the spend in check and control.

A massive thanks to Baptiste Parravicini for the invite and special thanks to Mehdi Medjaoui, Founder and Chairman of Apidays Conferences and team behind.

Both days were packed 155+ speakers, opening remarks, keynote, wide range of topics, and networking. The time I was able to spend, I intentionally kept my focus on AI enabled API solutions and tools but more importantly was looking for the teams trying to solve some of the complex industry problems with architecture simplicity, nobility but same time have potential to help speed up transformation initiatives and AI enablement at scale.

In my observation, two teams I found were way ahead in the curve:

1. gravitee.io –

• A governance layer that spans organization’s various API Gateways and Event Brokers. with auto-API discovery, universal subscription control, and a universal developer portal.
• This can immensely help organization trying to build intelligent digital experience at pace but constraints due to lack of single catalogue/source of APIs available for the consumption from various API gateway they have deployed today.
• Having options to quickly expose events as APIs opens up different level of opportunities.
• One of the important practical factor strike to me is, gravitee approach is not to make migration as day 1 problem but harmoniously first bring all gateways into single pane, and when there is right time and funding available, if required, migration to gravitee can take place.
• In my discussion with team, I requested them to give bit more focus to migration problem and let see if AI/GenAI solutions can automate 50-60% of the work where existing API design and security model is in the standardize state or have a minor gaps to fill. It’s team is already on that path and giving some of the updates in upcoming months.
• On gravitee team ambition to extend it’s current unique proposition of multi-cloud, multi-gateway with AI gateway offering, my initiate thought was, is there a different strategic option you can evaluate and let your team focus on evolving gateway unification and events exploitation?

2. AI Gateway – LLM API Solution | Kong Inc. (konghq.com) – Semantic AI Gateway to run and secure LLM traffic:

• I attended ‘No AI Without APIs’ talk Steve Roberts, Senior Staff Solutions Architect – Kong gave, followed by our 15 mins 1-0-1.
• I’m highly amazed with the level of thinking Kong team have done and taken it to a different level.
• Also spoke to Rob Graves, Enterprise Account Executive and expressed one honest input around what might become a big barrier for Kong when it comes to enterprise positioning of this new plugin.
• From the industry standpoint, the key question I’m trying to resolve in my mind is: Is there another way to bring such a noble and unique Kong AI Gateway plugin to life in the enterprise context without having a conversation of traditional API gateway?

Stay tuned. thanks