WSO2 has released Bijira to replace and expand on Choreo for API Management. It is an AI API management SaaS platform that is AI-native and scalable, supporting any API gateway developers want to use. It has a new user experience (UX) focused on API management, is simpler to use and supports multiple APIs.
The company has also delivered several updates to the WSO2 API Manager. It now has a single control plane to support four key API gateways, the WSO2 Kubernetes, Immutable, Universal gateways and 3rd party gateways.
The announcements came at WSO2Con, where the company is showing its latest products amid a push for greater integration of AI.
Christopher Davey, WSO2 vice president and general manager of API management, said, “Organisations are increasingly modernising their digital API ecosystems to innovate new classes of intelligent applications and services faster while reinforcing best practices.
“With our rearchitected open-source WSO2 API Manager release and new Bijira AI API management SaaS, we’re helping enterprise software developers to meet their evolving needs by utilising AI-assisted API management while ensuring security, scalability and governance.”
Using AI to secure APIs and APIs to access AI
WSO2 has a long history of API management, observability, security and governance. These announcements are about furthering and deepening those areas. They will also make it easier to create new APIs and new controls and detect potential security issues. With the company making a significant shift towards the way it supports AI, these two products will be key to the success of that shift for itself and its customers.
One of the uses of AI is for better governance of APIs. A new AI Governance feature uses generative AI (GenAI) to improve governance and compliance of APIs. Using documentation, standards, specifications and compliance controls, it will scan for issues in APIs. It will significantly improve the time to detect and resolve issues, making organisations more secure.
The WSO2 AI Gateway has been enhanced. It now has multi-model support, allowing the routing of AI API requests between OpenAI, Microsoft Azure OpenAI, and Mistral models. A significant benefit is that it will allow the API to select which model to use. The selection criteria WSO2 has listed include cost, availability, or performance, optimising response times, and reducing expenses.
A new tool, AI API Design Assistant, will make it much easier for organisations to design efficient APIs. Using WSO2 Copilot, Bijira and the WSO2 API Manager, users can design an API through a natural language interface. This will reduce the technical hurdles for API creation and, combined with the AI Governance feature, will ensure those APIs are secure.
WSO2 API Manager gets a raft of updates
The WSO2 API Manager has been redesigned. It now has a componentised architecture that the company says “combines centralised control with flexible API gateway management to meet organisations’ evolving needs.”
The biggest change is a new unified control place, the WSO2 API Control Plane (ACP). It means there is now a single interface for visibility of the API lifecycle. Below the control plane are four separate gateways for Kubernetes, Immutable, Universal and third-party APIs. The use of ACP and WSO2’s connector architecture now means developers can manage third-party gateways, including AWS API Gateway and Solace.
Large organisations can now change how APIs are deployed. They can deploy APIs that match the way role-based security is set up for the business. This aligns APIs with the business, which will improve security and control.
Bijira – a cloud-native AI-native API management solution
Bijira is a new solution, launched by WSO2 this week. It combines the capabilities of the WSO2 API Manager and Choreo for API Management for managing APIs in the cloud. It is not a replacement for either solution but a platform-specific solution. The announcement claims, “Bijira goes beyond traditional API SaaS offerings by providing greater flexibility, scalability, and innovation to modern enterprises.”
Bijira provides developers with API lifecycle management, AI-powered API governance and all the newly announced features of WSO2 API Manager. Perhaps the most important of these is the unified control plane. It ensures that policy enforcement and control are consistent across all platforms an organisation uses.
Just as important is the new AI Governance feature. As organisations make more use of APIs across multiple cloud platforms, risks increase. Being able to search, identify and remediate issues quickly, even in third-party APIs, will make cloud-based solutions safer.
Bijira also takes advantage of the Choreo API Management SaaS technology. That includes self-service, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) and zero trust. The latter is especially important given the AI security announcements that the company is making.
What is not clear is whether Bijira will be seen as a replacement for Choreo by customers or an additive solution. The same can be said of API Manager. While WSO2 points to it being cloud-native and AI-native, customers will want a clear architecture of how these products work together. Perhaps the solution would be a new platform into which the three solutions sit.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Bringing AI into the management of APIs and using it to create better APIs is a sensible move. It will reduce the risk of using APIs, especially with the new AI Governance feature. Many organisations suffer from API bloat and the problem of unknown APIs. Yet, ironically, WSO2 hasn’t talked about how it will improve the discovery of APIs. That will be a key step if this is to be a fully inclusive solution for API management.
Adding in the ability to create APIs using a natural language interface is also extremely interesting. Will it lead to an explosion in APIs? Quite possibly. The easier you make something, the more people will use it. The important thing here is that that ease of creation appears to be matched by the new visibility and management tools.
Both WSO2 API Manager 4.5 open-source software and the Bijira AI API management SaaS are now generally available.
