Software AG has unveiled webMethods AppMesh, a configurable control plane for microservices, APIs and service mesh. Built as an extension of Software AG’s webMethods API Management Platform, webMethods AppMesh adds application context to service mesh. The application provides better agility, management and governance of microservices as business apps.
Designed to plug-in any service mesh, webMethods AppMesh gives organisations the application awareness needed to manage API-led integrations more efficiently. Specifically, the new tool allows organisations to apply business rules to drive application-specific behaviour, create application-level governance and security policies. In addition, organisations can add new services and capabilities, and perform context-aware application routing and orchestration. All without changing existing microservices or the underlying code.
Adopting service mesh technology
Jerzy Niemojewski, CTO of Savangard, a European IT services and consultancy company specialising in Integration and API Management, says: “As a seasoned integrator with a professional team, we focus on integration and business processes automation projects. Our customers want the ability to leverage microservices to quickly add new applications without having to re-write code or change their architecture. We know that service mesh technology will move us in this direction and working with Software AG and their new webMethods AppMesh product will allow us to address the application layer aspects of our customer’s microservices architecture by minimising coding and employing a configuration based policy approach.”
Some of the most important benefits of Software AG’s new webMethods AppMesh are its ability to provide organisations with deep visibility into how an application is running and who’s using it/what they’re doing with it; to centralise app governance; and to easily provision and scale across an architecture.
Key features include:
Software AG’s says its webMethods AppMesh has a number of benefits. This includes its ability to provide organisations with deep visibility into how an application is running. They can audit who’s using it/what they’re doing with it. Centralise app governance; and provision and scale across an architecture. Key features include:
- Custom access protection. Protect microservices and reduce risk of exposure with advanced user identification and security policies.
- Sophisticated policy-based control. Gain visibility into what your users are doing. Control how your app is responding with a range of policies that can be applied at runtime.
- Traffic monitoring and control. Throttle traffic with policies to manage the load on provider services. Apply limits to service invocations during a specific time interval for identified clients. Furthermore log all traffic requests and responses for analysis.
- Plug in to the service mesh. webMethods AppMesh is pre-integrated with industry-standard service meshes. Completely non-intrusive, it has no effect on service mesh behaviour and comes in a small footprint for fast startup.
- Dashboard for service visibility. Trace the path a transaction takes through your service mesh. Understand how your app is being used with the AppMesh dashboard, filtered to include only the services in your application.
- Add and remove services from the webMethods AppMesh. Add new services and if desired, automatically inherit the policies assigned to all other services in your app. Bring new capabilities online with no downtime.
Automatically expose API interface
webMethods AppMesh makes an API signature available for every service in the mesh, enabling reuse across the service landscape. In addition, these APIs can now be managed and governed with an end-to-end API lifecycle management platform.
“As businesses scale, their IT landscape and ecosystems become a lot more complex,” said Dr. Stefan Sigg, Chief Product Officer of Software AG. “While the service mesh was created to address network-level concerns such as service discovery, connectivity and security. It lacks application and business context. webMethods AppMesh adds the missing piece to make solutions understandable and usable to application owners and API providers. Organisations are able to create new applications more quickly and decrease the time it takes to get these to market.”
Enterprise Times: What this means for business?
Software AG’s new solution enables companies to manage, modify and understand business applications built using microservices. This saves their developers need to rewrite code or change their architecture. It can facilitate integrations and API strategies to make organisations innovation ready. Built as an extension of Software AG’s webMethods API Management Platform, webMethods AppMesh adds application context to service mesh. The idea being that the application provides better agility, management and governance of microservices as business apps. Software AG is repositioning itself to re-invent integration. It looks to spark business transformation and enable fast innovation on the Internet of Things so businesses can pioneer differentiating business models.
Software AG says the new service provides business with the freedom to connect and integrate any technology — from app to edge. The company’s aims are laudable. To free data from silos, so it’s shareable, usable and powerful. Enabling business to make the best decisions and unlock entirely new possibilities for growth.
