WSO2 Integrates Microservices Into New Release

WSO2 on Monday unveiled the latest release of its WSO2 Integration Agile Platform, which includes new microservices integrations to help business users simplify, improve and streamline their IT infrastructures.

The latest platform from WSO2, an open-source integration vendor, includes a myriad of new features and services to better meld microservices into business IT systems using an agile approach. They include secure, low-latency access to microservices using an API Microgateway; real-time microservices analytics through a WSO2 stream processor; and optimized microservice integrations through a MicroESB lightweight remediation runtime. Also included are improvements in integrated API management; enterprise integration; analytics; and identity and access management.

WSO2 also unveiled new platform licensing to help enterprise environments that are deploying middleware as a dynamic collection of services or microservices. WSO2 is a cloud-native, open-source platform. It’s designed to provide IT agility that enables business users to protect themselves from vendor lock-in while improving their infrastructures to better perform in a global marketplace.

Ken Oestreich, vice president of product marketing for WSO2, told Channel Futures that the latest release deeply integrates microservice capabilities into all facets of the platform.

“The core products have all gotten upgrades,” he said. “In this release, across the board all the products now have additions for microservices and all are optimized for microservices,” which were not include in previous versions.

Ken Oestreich

“The stream processor is now using open tracing to better assess scads of services coming from containers and microservices,” said Oestreich. “This will all make it easier for users to use microservices.”

Among the key new features in the latest release are:

• WSO2’s updated API microgateway eliminates the need for a central gateway by enabling enterprises to apply API management policies in a decentralized fashion. With the flexibility to serve as a dedicated proxy for a microservice, as a sidecar for a microservice running on the same host or as an API hub that proxies one or more microservices, the improved microgateway in this latest release adds local in-memory rate limiting and operational analytics through metrics,the company said.
• The updated WSO2 stream processor, which is a lightweight runtime that can run in distributed deployments using Kafka and container-native environments such as Kubernetes, now adds support for message tracing across microservices using the OpenTracing standard for better insights into performance. In addition, it also provides default support for analyzing HTTP services; improved connectors and monitoring for distributed processing; and built-in analytics dashboards for HTTP, message tracing and Twitter hashtags. Its usability is also updated with improved snapshot state persistence using an incremental approach and an improved streaming application builder with a drag-and-drop configuration user interface.
• The new MicroESB feature is a lightweight mediation runtime that includes all core mediation capabilities. Based on the WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, the MicroESB offers a faster startup time, which makes it useful for containers.
• Also included in the latest release is WSO2 Identity Server with new support for role-based access control (RBAC) and validation using the Java Web Token (JWT) standard that has been widely adopted for microservices. This allows the identity server to act as the single source of truth across the enterprise, managing user identities, enforcing global authorization policies and acting as a trust broker for user identities across enterprise-level trust boundaries, the company said.

Also new are licensing details. The new WSO2 platform license for WSO2 Subscription features access to WSO2 Update for continuous delivery of bug fixes, security updates and performance enhancements, along with WSO2 support for 24×7 support, according to the company. Customers can buy a single subscription tiered to the number of CPUs allotted for their WSO2 deployments. That allows any of WSO2’s primary products to be deployed as needed to meet a customer’s scalability or functional demands.

Pricing has also been simplified by now allowing customers to buy a WSO2 subscription and then deciding to use it in any way they desire, whether via cloud, on-premises or through a hybrid approach.

In the last 12 months, WSO2 has doubled the number of its channel partners and now has them around the world, said Oestreich. “We have a unique partner program, selling open source and support, and hopefully the channel partners are selling their own services as well. We’re making opportunities for professional services arms of our partners to add value to the product.”

In a related announcement, WSO2 also revealed that it is expanding its partner program by adding initiatives to help partners to build their expertise and roles in successfully implementing WSO2’s platform, while extending joint marketing and social-media initiatives and growing revenue from customer engagements. WSO2 also is kicking off its first partner advisory board.

WSO2 is the sixth largest committer to the Apache open source project, said Oestreich, behind Facebook, Microsoft and several other companies.

Ruben van der Zwan, the CEO of Yenlo, a WSO2 systems-integrator partner which provides consulting, implementation, training and support, told Channel Futures that he sees the adoption of microservices just beginning and that products like the latest WSO2 platform will “be an enabler to speed up microservices development and use.”

Ruben van der Zwan

The new simplified licensing model, with costs based on compute usage rather than each possible use, will be helpful for customers because it will make their costs more predictable and give them more options in the cloud, he said.

“We think this can really be a breakthrough to really speed up the microservices architecture and vision,” he said of the new release and its new licensing structure. “We truly believe that microservices will be the new way of designing and developing middleware.”