COMMUNITY

Submitting the Ambassador API Gateway to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation

We’ve always been big fans of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which has done a phenomenal job shepherding key cloud-native projects such as Kubernetes, Envoy Proxy, and Prometheus. As such, we’re excited to announce that we’ve begun the process of submitting the Ambassador API Gateway to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation as an incubation project.

Here at Ambassador, we believe in the power of open source. Having built and contributed to multiple open source projects over the years, we have seen first hand that a growing, engaged community is critical to the wide-scale adoption of infrastructure software. Ambassador would not be where it is today without extensive contributions from members of our community. In order to take this to the next level, we believe that a vendor-neutral home for the Ambassador API Gateway is a natural step.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants with the CNCF

The ingress controller / API Gateway has become a critical part of the cloud-native infrastructure stack. With the CNCF hosting other key parts of the stack such as Kubernetes, Envoy Proxy, and Prometheus, we felt the CNCF was a logical choice.

We’ve worked with the CNCF on the Telepresence project, which we donated to the CNCF a few years ago. The CNCF has helped us in many of the governance matters associated with running a robust open source project, and we expect that partnership to extend to Ambassador.

Envoy Proxy is the Future

We also think this marks a milestone for the Envoy Proxy, the Layer 7 proxy created by the team at Lyft that graduated from the CNCF in November 2018. Over the last few years, we have seen widespread community adoption of Envoy. Today, there are more than 13 open source projects built on top of Envoy, including Ambassador. With Ambassador’s submission to the CNCF, Envoy now has more CNCF open source projects than any other L4 or L7 proxy.

Our Ongoing Commitment to Our Community

We’ve seen continued, rapid adoption of the Ambassador Edge Stack by our community. The Edge Stack will continue to be built on the Ambassador API Gateway. As such, the Edge Stack will continue to provide a full superset of the capabilities of the Ambassador API Gateway, with no limits on any functionality that is part of the core Ambassador API Gateway. Edge Stack provides revenue that we in turn use to hire engineers to build out both open source and commercial applications. This is key, as the world is littered with many open source companies that never got the balance right between commercial motions and open source. Our contribution to the CNCF shows our commitment to open source while maintaining a revenue stream to help both efforts.

What’s next?

We’re excited for the next chapter of the Ambassador API Gateway. If you are a happy user and support the donation to the CNCF, please feel free to leave a comment on our submission or reach out to us on Twitter @ambassadorlabs. As always, a big thanks to our community for the continued support.