New WSO2 API Manager 4.0 helps enterprises accelerate digital initiatives

Competition for customer loyalty, a desire for new revenue streams, and demand for supply chain resiliency are just three of the drivers behind enterprises accelerating their digital initiatives. APIs now serve as the primary building blocks for these efforts. 

To support enterprises in accelerating their digital initiatives, WSO2 has added significant new capabilities in WSO2 API Manager 4.0.

“Disruptions to in-person experiences, from buying groceries to getting a doctor’s advice, attending classes, and renewing a driver’s licence have significantly expanded the push into the digital world across businesses and governments around the world,” said WSO2 founder and CEO Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana. “With WSO2 API Manager 4.0, we are empowering enterprises to speed their delivery of new digital experiences by harnessing the latest innovations in API management, event-driven architectures, and the cloud.” 

Version 4.0 is the latest release of WSO2’s industry-leading, cloud-native open-source Application Programming Interface (API) management platform. Chief among the new features is support for streaming integration and event-driven architecture (EDA), which now play a critical role in enabling digital businesses — online retail, e-government, digital healthcare, online banking, and more — to tailor online experiences for individual consumers. 

WSO2 API Manager 4.0 facilitates streaming integration and EDA implementations via support for streaming APIs, asynchronous WebSocket APIs, the Server-Sent Events (SSE) messaging protocol, and webhooks. It also provides the first generally available, full implementation of the AsyncAPI specification, the open standard API format for event-driven APIs.

“Consumers have high expectations for their online interactions at home and at work, making it more important than ever for enterprises to more effectively create and manage APIs that access the data so critical to great digital experiences,” said WSO2 CTO Eric Newcomer. “WSO2 API Manager 4.0 takes API management to the next level, especially for the event-driven architectures that are underpinning next-gen apps.”

With Version 4.0, WSO2 API Manager combines all the functionality for a seamless, end-to-end API management experience with the capabilities of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, the open-source hybrid integration platform, making it easy to add integrations to APIs. 

API Management covers all the full API management life cycle capabilities traditionally provided by WSO2 API Manager.

Micro Integrator enables both newer microservices-style architectures and traditional centralised (ESB-style) integration architectures.

Streaming Integrator is used to implement streaming extract, transform load (ETL) and change data capture (CDC), as well as process large files and real-time APIs. 

WSO2 API Manager 4.0 also adds three other key features. A new Service Catalog enables developers to discover a given service and create a managed API with a single click. Also, a new API Revisioning feature allows developers to revise and test an API or API product without affecting current deployments. Additionally, rich new cloud-based analytics let users see how their APIs and applications are being used by consumers.

Finally, WSO2 API Manager 4.0 has enhanced the performance of existing capabilities. Among these are supported for widely adopted architectures for modern applications, including serverless computing, containers, and microservices via WSO2 API Microgateway; support for gRPC, GraphQL, and native Kubernetes; among others. Also included are API security via robust policy-based controls for authentication and authorisation based on the power of WSO2 Identity Server and extensions to enable artificial intelligence (AI) powered API cybersecurity.

WSO2 API Manager 4.0 is available today as an open-source product released under the Apache Licence 2.0. The product is backed by WSO2 Subscription, which features access to WSO2 Update for continuous delivery of bug fixes, security updates, and performance enhancements, along with WSO2 Support for 24x7 support. Unified pricing means customers can simply buy a WSO2 Subscription and choose the hosting model—cloud, on-premises or hybrid—based on their preferences.