Ushering in a New Generation of API Management With Traefik Hub
Today we are pleased to announce the general availability of Traefik Hub API management, a modern Kubernetes native solution for publishing, securing, and managing APIs, with industry-first support for major third-party ingress controllers including NGINX.
The ability to design, develop, and launch APIs has become a strategic imperative for organizations focused on cloud native, containerization, and digital transformation initiatives. APIs are the connective tissue that powers nearly every digital product and service today, representing ~83% of total requests on the Internet, and are growing 2X faster than all other Web traffic. Yet, existing API management solutions are struggling to provide a cloud native experience and quick time to value, with their users facing steep learning curves, growing operational complexity, and a lack of deployment flexibility.
API management, the origin story
Before we dive into the details of the announcement, we wanted to share a bit of the back story on how Traefik Hub came to be. Traefik Proxy, our first project, was born in 2015 to tackle the growing complexity of adopting cloud native technologies. With a maniacal focus towards simplification and automation, the Traefik Proxy open source project has achieved over 3 billion downloads and 43k GitHub stars to date. From advanced home lab users to Fortune 100 enterprise architects, many have been using Traefik Proxy as their unified ingress and API gateway, helping it reach and maintain a leadership position in this category for several years in a row, based on rankings published on Ossinsight.
Given our access to such a large and globally distributed install base of Traefik users, we have routinely heard and observed first-hand the key challenges associated with API management.
- Large monolithic systems: the API management ecosystem is rife with large and proprietary monolithic systems that imbue an all-or-nothing mindset. This is in direct conflict with modern cloud native principles that promote choice, modularity, and lightweight footprints.
- Misalignment with DevOps operating model: existing API management solutions are designed around UI point-and-click workflows rather than Kubernetes-native scripting and automation, thereby causing friction and inefficiencies when addressing the needs of organizations adopting CI/CD and GitOps-centric methodologies.
- Limited deployment flexibility: existing API management solutions are tightly coupled to a limited set of deployment environments, creating operational constraints for organizations adopting hybrid, multi-cloud and edge strategies.
Through numerous discussions and user surveys, we validated and concluded the dire need for a modern API management solution that caters to the growing Kubernetes and cloud native user community. Given our company’s track record and DNA in solving similar intractable problems, we felt compelled to rise to this new challenge and deliver a best-in-class Kubernetes-native API management solution.
Introducing Traefik Hub, the first Kubernetes-native API Management solution
Traefik Hub is the industry’s first Kubernetes-native API Management solution for publishing, securing, and managing APIs, with support for both Traefik and major third-party ingress controllers including NGINX, HAProxy, Ambassador, and many others.
Traefik Hub has been built from the ground up to deliver outcomes aligned with the following design principles and goals:
1. Freedom of Choice
Traefik Hub offers choice across multiple dimensions: users can choose any leading ingress controller, including Traefik Proxy or third-party solutions like NGINX. Users can also standardize their Traefik Hub installation across multiple deployment environments, including on-prem, managed Kubernetes in multi-cloud, and edge. Furthermore, the Traefik Hub architecture is both open and modular, providing seamless integration capabilities with third-party API design, testing, mocking, and security solutions, while leveraging industry best practices and standards such as OpenTelemetry and OpenAPI specification (OAS)
2. DevOps-first Mindset
Traefik Hub is a modern solution that embodies a DevOps-first mindset. Initial configurations and ongoing changes can be expressed as code and deployed through GitOps and CI/CD friendly workflows.
3. Security-first Mindset
Any discussion of a modern API management system would be incomplete without addressing the notion of APIs becoming a new attack vector and ways to mitigate them. Traefik Hub offers robust security features such as Role Based Access Control (RBAC), and support for modern industry-standard authentication and authorization mechanisms like OAuth 2.0 and JSON Web Tokens (JWT). Furthermore, Traefik Hub’s open and modular architecture offers integration capabilities with leading third-party API security solutions to provide additional layers of protection.
4. Kubernetes-native Approach
Traefik Hub provides a Kubernetes-native approach through deep integration with the Kubernetes API. Starting with the auto-discovery of existing microservices, Traefik Hub leverages familiar and powerful Kubernetes objects and primitives such as Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), labels, and selectors to create, manage, and secure APIs at scale.
5. Quick Time to Value
Traefik Hub control plane provides a simple and intuitive point-and-click experience for users who are just getting started with publishing APIs in a single or multi-cluster Kubernetes environment, while also giving advanced Kubernetes users access to its full automation and GitOps capabilities. This dual operating model accelerates Kubernetes-native adoption and
maximizes business agility, giving organizations unprecedented speed and scale in launching new APIs and services.
Getting started with Traefik Hub
Traefik Hub addresses the challenges and limitations of traditional API management, by providing a true Kubernetes-native experience with full GitOps compliance for simplicity, automation, and security. With Traefik Hub, engineers can continue to use their preferred tech stack to build great APIs and applications. We believe Traefik Hub is the most open, modular, and intuitive platform for managing APIs across hybrid, multi-cloud, and edge environments.
If you are unsatisfied with your existing API management solutions, we would love to hear from you and encourage you to take Traefik Hub for a spin.
Sign up for a two-week trial here and experience a better way to manage your APIs.
