Kong Announces Launch of New Premium Technology Partner Program to Enhance Developer Ecosystem

Inaugural Partners Traceable, Dynatrace®, and Confluent to Showcase Innovative New Solutions at API Summit

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Kong Inc., the leading developer of cloud API technologies, today unveiled during the company's annual API Summit, its new Premium Technology Partner Program, a strategic initiative designed to deepen its engagement with technology partners and foster innovation within its cloud and developer ecosystem. Building on the success of its existing community offerings, the Premium Technology Partner Program is specifically tailored for integrations and plugins that leverage Kong's commercial offerings, primarily Kong Konnect and Kong Gateway Enterprise, ensuring that partners can deliver advanced solutions that meet the evolving needs of modern enterprises. Under this program, premium plugins will undergo validation against Kong's latest software releases, ensuring high-quality, reliable integrations for customers.

Traceable AI, Dynatrace and Confluent will kick off the program and will leverage it to address the common pain points that joint customers face to solve for API security, observability and data streaming use cases. Partners in the Premium Technology Partner Program shared:

"This enhanced partnership between Kong and Traceable AI will certainly help our joint customers gain greater visibility into all their services and APIs, which continues to be a challenge for many enterprises. By integrating Kong Konnect Service Catalog with Traceable AI's API Security Platform, customers can achieve a comprehensive understanding of their environments, ensuring that all APIs and services are covered by the governance policies of an organization," – Sanjay Nagaraj, Co-founder and CTO, Traceable AI.

"Through seamless integration with the Dynatrace platform, Kong customers will benefit from out-of-the-box observability and AI-powered insights that will allow them to gain a comprehensive, end-to-end overview of their entire API lifecycle," said Steve Tack, Chief Product Officer at Dynatrace. "This integration empowers joint customers with detailed metrics and traces, enabling them to optimize their API infrastructure, enhance service quality, and drive innovation with confidence."

"Businesses need trustworthy, real-time data at their fingertips to thrive in today's dynamic markets," said Paul Mac Farland, SVP of Partner and Innovation Ecosystem, Confluent. "Confluent's data streaming platform with unified, fully managed Apache Kafka® and Apache Flink® enables businesses to build highly reliable, scalable data products to fuel real-time applications and data-driven operations. Through the new integration of Confluent Cloud and Kong, organizations gain a secure, standardized API layer that unleashes developer productivity—providing seamless, secure access to data streams across the enterprise."

"Our Premium Technology Partner Program aims to elevate the quality and reliability of plugins available to Kong customers, enriching the Kong API ecosystem with enterprise-grade solutions that drive greater and faster business value from real-time streaming to restful APIs. The program represents a significant investment in our partner ecosystem and underscores our commitment to delivering the highest quality of integrations to our users," said Augusto Marietti, CEO and co-founder of Kong Inc. "By offering enhanced support and exclusive benefits, we are empowering our partners to innovate and succeed alongside Kong."

Customers will benefit from Kong's expanded developer ecosystem, which will give them access to the latest cutting-edge technologies, more seamless integrations, high-quality support, and enhanced security.

The program also includes a streamlined pathway for community plugins to transition to the premium tier, acknowledging the contributions of existing partners and encouraging continuous improvement and innovation.

Kong's approach reflects a broader industry trend towards more collaborative and integrated technology ecosystems. By prioritizing partner success and product excellence, Kong continues to lead the way in enabling API-first enterprises.

The Premium Technology Partner Program kicks off at Kong's annual API Summit, with the company already identifying the first three key partners for the inaugural premium tier, including industry leaders in API security, observability and data streaming. New partners will be onboarded to this program over the coming quarters. This initiative is expected to significantly enhance Kong's offering, driving both innovation and value for Kong's global customer base.

For more information about the Premium Technology Partner Program and to learn how to become a Kong partner, visit https://konghq.com/partners.

About Kong
Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become "API-first" and securely accelerate AI adoption. Kong helps organizations globally — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — unleash developer productivity, build securely and accelerate time to market. For more information about Kong, please visit www.konghq.com or follow us on X @thekonginc.

SOURCE Kong Inc.