As APIs (Application Programming Interface) proliferate, the full life cycle API management market has developed and grown accordingly. The market for software that supports all stages of an API’s life cycle, including the planning and design, implementation and testing, deployment and operation, versioning and retirement is expected to grow from $3.87 billion in 2020 to $7.54 billion by 2026 according to Market Data Forecast. One company,  Solo.io , is helping to drive much of that growth, innovation and adoption by software engineers. Founded in 2017 by CEO Idit Levine,  Solo.io  positions itself as providing a suite of tools that allow enterprises to connect the “old world” of stable, well-tested applications that are hard to change with the newer, flexible world of microservices, serverless and service mesh. This way, new features can be added to existing applications without having to rebuild legacy codebases, allowing enterprises to respond to business demands today without first completing painful multi-year transformation programs. Solo.io Founder and CEO Idit Levine
Solo.io
“When I first began thinking about starting the company, there were a few things that were pretty clear happening in the market. And that's mainly the fact that there was a huge migration from what was called back then, monolithic applications, to what's called small, little ‘microservices’. So basically, taking this big, big application and cutting it into small little pieces,” says Levine. She had encountered the challenges of managing such migrations through her previous roles as a software engineer at some of the Boston-area’s most innovative tech firms and felt she could go out on her own and start a company that would create tools devoted to solving the problem. “So, that's where we started. Now the question is, if this is the biggest problem that people have, how are we going to solve them? When I looked at the market, I saw that there is this technology called Service Mesh that is solving exactly that problem. The thing is, it was brand new, not a lot of people were using it. And, honestly, the options weren't great. So, the question was, ‘If I understand that that's the future, and if I understand that that's what we should bet on, what am I going to do for the meantime?’ Because until the market is actually going to adopt that technology to solve that problem, it probably will take three to four years. I can't go to my investor and tell them to wait three years and I'll give you the first customer,” says Levine. MORE FOR YOU
She chose to attack the API gateway market, because she felt nothing really had changed much in the space, despite all the innovations in Cloud native applications up until that time. The company created its first product called Gloo Edge, an API gateway based on the building block technology of the service mesh to make sure that a company’s infrastructure was going to be secure and scalable. Building a tool that enabled software engineers to connect APIs and microservices more easily was not her only challenge in starting the company for a woman with no previous track record of building a company. “When I decided I wanted to start a company, I needed to raise money. That was the first challenge. The second challenge was once I raised the money, I discovered that no one wanted to come to work for a one-person company. And that was a challenge. Then, when we built the product, I learned that unlike when I was at a place like EMC and every reporter wanted to interview me, I had become this little start-up that no one knew about, and no one cared. And I was very much in shock in the beginning,” says Levine. She also thought that if she placed her tool into the open-source community that everybody would adopt it and the company would be off and running. But she found it didn’t quite happen that way. Changing software developers’ accepted practice for managing API gateways would be more of a challenge than she imagined. But she was undeterred and over time attracted world class talent that helped her create the technology that enabled the company to attract more customers. Today, the company is growing fast. According to Levine, the 85-person business has a 100% renewal rate, tripled revenues in 2021 and is expecting 5X to 6X growth in 2022. They count the world’s biggest data centres and Cloud services as customers, as are such clients as T-Mobile, Pega, ADP, BMW, American Express and  Booking.com  to name a few. As a result, the company has attracted $171.5 million in venture financing to date, with Altimeter Capital leading its latest C round for $135 million. Other investors include Redpoint, True Venture and others giving the company a $1billion valuation. Why the name Solo? “When I started the company, I was looking for a name, and it was very hard. Every time we came with a name, the domain wasn't available. So, eventually, it was clear to me that that Solo should be the name. And there were two reasons for that. Number one, because when I started the company, I tried to raise money. I went through investors, specifically in the Boston area, and they honestly constantly asked me, ‘Where is your partner? Where's your businessperson?’,” says Levine. She was indeed doing this solo at the beginning. She also liked the idea that if you if you remove the “S” from Solo.io you get 01010. Levine grew up in Israel in a household of modest means, as her parents never finished high school. She was always very competitive and had thoughts of being a basketball player. She worked her way into attending and graduating from Bar-Ilan University with a degree in Computer Science and Biological Science. It’s also where she met her husband who was finishing his PhD at the Weizmann Institute. He was required to finish his doctoral work in the US, so the pair moved to San Diego where Idit also started working as a bioengineer at the University of California, San Diego. Once her husband finished his PhD, he was offered a professorship at Harvard and the pair moved to Boston where Idit began her career as a software engineer. She worked her way up through several innovative companies to eventually become the CTO of Cloud Management at EMC. She became frustrated working for a large company and her husband encouraged her to go out on her own. “Probably I would not have started my firm, unless my husband didn’t push me, because honestly he said to me, ‘You have all these great ideas, Go do your own thing.’ And he challenged me, and he knows that when I'm challenged, I get very competitive. So, I wanted to prove to him I could do it,” says Levine. As for the future? “We are kind of like the structure for everything that you want to do on your application networking. So, that's the vision that we have right now. But honestly, when you collect all these amazing people in one company, that's only the beginning,” concludes Levine.

Idit Levine’s Solo.io Innovates Application Networking Tools Market

Solo.io BumbleBee Expands Access to eBPF Technologies
Solo.io has launched an open source BumbleBee project that makes it simpler for developers to take advantage of extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) technologies that run within the kernel of an operating system. Solo.io CEO Idit Levine says the company developed BumbleBee to automatically generate the boilerplate user-space code that is required to access eBPF technologies running at the kernel level. BumbleBee includes a command line interface (CLI) that automatically generates the user-space code for eBPF programs by automatically exposing maps as logs, metrics and histograms. Solo.io is using that code to add additional functionality to the open source Istio service mesh created for integrating application programming interfaces (APIs) running on Kubernetes clusters. Other organizations, however, can employ the same boilerplate code to invoke eBPF technologies as they see fit; BumbleBee is packaged as a container that complies with the open container image (OCI) specification, Levine notes. IT organizations will increasingly be able to run networking and security software as a set of sandboxed programs at the operating system kernel level. That capability will significantly improve the overall performance of networking and security services and will also make the IT environment more secure. The challenge is that eBPF programs need to be loaded in the form of bytecode, and the kernel has data structures and formats that are specific to each kernel version. Packaging and distributing these binary programs is tedious, time-consuming and error-prone. BumbleBee simplifies the development, packaging and sharing of eBPF tools in a way that will help accelerate the adoption of eBPF, says Levine. In effect, eBPF changes the way operating systems are designed . It bridges the boundary between kernel and user space by enabling developers to combine and apply logic across multiple subsystems that, historically, were completely independent of one another. That approach enables, for example, a security tool to scale to the point where it can identify threats at much higher levels of throughput. That improvement in overall scale is critical as the volume and frequency of cybersecurity attacks continues to increase. The biggest benefit of eBPF is simply efficiency. The total cost of processing for security, networking and storage platforms should decline as more vendors take advantage of its capabilities. Currently, eBPF is widely used by web-scale companies such as cloud service providers. Facebook is using it as the primary software-defined load balancer in its data centers while Google is using open source Cilium networking software within its managed Kubernetes offerings. Going forward, however, Levine says it’s now only a matter of time before eBPF is much more widely adopted as more operating systems enable the capability. Regardless of approach, it’s clear there will soon be a reason to upgrade not just networking, storage and security platforms but also instances of operating systems that don’t yet support eBPF. DevOps teams would be well-advised to plan accordingly because the number of platforms that will ultimately benefit from eBPF spans the entire enterprise. Mike Vizard
Mike Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience. He also contributed to IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, Baseline and a variety of other IT titles. Previously, Vizard was the editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise as well as Editor-in-Chief for CRN and InfoWorld. TechStrong TV – Live
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Solo.io BumbleBee Expands Access to eBPF Technologies

By
New Open-Source Project Delivers a Docker-like Experience to Packaging eBPF Programs
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Solo.io , the application networking company, today announced a new open-source project, BumbleBee, that simplifies the developer experience for building, packaging, and distributing eBPF tools. BumbleBee automatically generates boilerplate user-space code for developing eBPF tools and brings a Docker-like experience to packaging an eBPF program. This allows it to plug into other OCI-image workflows for publishing and distribution. eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a kernel technology that can run sandboxed programs in an operating system kernel, providing a safe way to enhance the kernel with observability, networking, and security technologies. These programs run in response to events such as — in the case of service mesh — the arrival of network packets. eBPF programs are typically written in higher-level language (like C) and then JIT compiled into x86 assembly for maximum performance and safety. While eBPF enables customizations of Linux kernel behavior, developing these extensions can be quite challenging. The eBPF architecture expects eBPF programs to be loaded in the form of bytecode, and the kernel has data structures and formats that are specific to each kernel version. In addition, packaging and distributing these binary programs is tedious, time- consuming, and error-prone. The goal of BumbleBee is to simplify the development, packaging, and sharing of eBPF tools and accelerate the adoption of eBPF. “At Solo.io, we see eBPF as a critical enabling technology that will improve application networking. We’ve been working during the last year to leverage eBPF technology with Gloo Mesh, our Istio-based service mesh offering for the enterprise,” said Idit Levine, founder and CEO, Solo.io. “While developing eBPF extensions, we have faced many technical challenges — and this led us to develop BumbleBee to help streamline our eBPF efforts. Since we truly believe in the benefits of eBPF, we are happy to share BumbleBee with the community to accelerate eBPF adoption.”
BumbleBee includes a CLI (command line interface) that automatically generates the user-space code for eBPF programs by exposing maps automatically as logs, metrics, and histograms. The developer only has to worry about writing the eBPF code; BumbleBee provides tooling to automate away the rest of the experience. For more information: https://bumblebee.io/
About Solo.io
Solo.io, the modern service connectivity company, delivers API infrastructure from the edge to service mesh, helping enterprises adopt, secure, and operate innovative cloud native technologies. APIs drive microservices and cloud native technologies, forming the foundation for developers, partners and customers to interact with application services quickly, effectively, and securely. Solo.io brings developer and operations tooling to manage and federate security and traffic control and tie together the integration points to enable and observe the application network. Founded in 2017 in Cambridge, MA, Solo.io is backed by Redpoint Ventures and True Ventures. For more information, visit https://www.solo.io/ or follow @soloio_inc. Media Contact

Solo.io Announces BumbleBee; New eBPF Project Simplifies Development, Packaging, and Sharing of eBPF Tools

Cambridge, Massachusetts, UNITED STATES
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan.  05, 2022  (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Solo.io , the application networking company, today announced a new open-source project, BumbleBee, that simplifies the developer experience for building, packaging, and distributing eBPF tools. BumbleBee automatically generates boilerplate user-space code for developing eBPF tools and brings a Docker-like experience to packaging an eBPF program. This allows it to plug into other OCI-image workflows for publishing and distribution. eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a kernel technology that can run sandboxed programs in an operating system kernel, providing a safe way to enhance the kernel with observability, networking, and security technologies. These programs run in response to events such as — in the case of service mesh — the arrival of network packets. eBPF programs are typically written in higher-level language (like C) and then JIT compiled into x86 assembly for maximum performance and safety. While eBPF enables customizations of Linux kernel behavior, developing these extensions can be quite challenging. The eBPF architecture expects eBPF programs to be loaded in the form of bytecode, and the kernel has data structures and formats that are specific to each kernel version. In addition, packaging and distributing these binary programs is tedious, time- consuming, and error-prone. The goal of BumbleBee is to simplify the development, packaging, and sharing of eBPF tools and accelerate the adoption of eBPF. “At Solo.io, we see eBPF as a critical enabling technology that will improve application networking. We’ve been working during the last year to leverage eBPF technology with Gloo Mesh, our Istio-based service mesh offering for the enterprise,” said Idit Levine, founder and CEO, Solo.io. “While developing eBPF extensions, we have faced many technical challenges — and this led us to develop BumbleBee to help streamline our eBPF efforts. Since we truly believe in the benefits of eBPF, we are happy to share BumbleBee with the community to accelerate eBPF adoption.”
BumbleBee includes a CLI (command line interface) that automatically generates the user-space code for eBPF programs by exposing maps automatically as logs, metrics, and histograms. The developer only has to worry about writing the eBPF code; BumbleBee provides tooling to automate away the rest of the experience. For more information: https://bumblebee.io/

To close out our last NY Enterprise Tech Meetup of the year, we assembled a panel of the top open-source enterprise infrastructure experts: Spencer Kimball , CEO and Co-Founder of Cockroach Labs , Ajay Kulkarni , CEO and Co-Founder and Timescale , Lin Sun , Director of Open Source at Solo.io , and moderated by Dan “POP” Papandrea , Director of Open-Source Community and Ecosystem at Sysdig and Host of The POPCAST Podcast . This month’s topic: building in the open. As open source continues to evolve in both practice and meaning, we sat down with leaders who have successfully built and scaled open source companies. See the full webinar recording here and the top takeaways from our panelists below. First, what is open source? This may seem mundane to the developer community, but according to our panelists, the definition is vastly changing. Historically, to be considered a true open-source project, you needed to get an approved Open-Source Initiative (OSI) license . However, over the past few years, the open-source community hasn’t been as religious about licensing, and instead has a much more practical definition of open source pending its free, dynamic functionality. “I want to be able to look at source code and understand what’s being done, and modify and monetize it to my purpose. Those ideas are probably of the greatest value to humankind.” — Spencer Kimball
How do you decide what to open source? After all, businesses need to make money somewhere. Our panelists broke down commercial pricing into three different waves:
The 1st wave: sell customer / user support. This approach didn’t come highly recommended given that eventually most users won’t need to buy support and will create independent, free channels to find answers to their questions. Also, if your company is financially dependent on selling support, you’re disincentivized to make the project better. The 2nd wave: create an open-core model. Here you’ll have a free, open-source project with a layer of paid, enterprise features. Right now, most open-source projects tend to fall in this category. The 3rd wave: create a cloud model. According to our panelists, this is the most modern approach. The best time-to-value for developers is no longer downloading an open source project…it’s actually using a cloud service someone else is providing. Open source needs to contend with this new reality. Timescale has taken an extreme approach to cloud and has made all of its enterprise on-prem features free, only monetizing on features in the cloud. But should you even open source? TL;DR: open source is not always a requirement. First figure out the problem you’re trying to solve. If an open-source community won’t help you solve that problem or other businesses won’t be able to build on top of the project, then open source may not be the best route. Snowflake is a great example of a cloud data infrastructure company that is cloud only with no open source. How do you build an engaged open-source community? Developers are a discerning audience. They are quickly turned off by anything too salesy or marketing heavy. Instead, make sure you are “authentically helpful.” How to do this will depend on what type of company you’re building, but generally, when you’re building an open-source project from scratch, it’s important to build engagement with one person at a time. Be responsive to your community and answer every question as quickly as possible in order to gain momentum and find your champions. Some other tactics include:
Post informational blog posts (on GitHub, StackOverflow, Hacker News, your own blog, etc.) or Youtube videos about new features or trends. This will help boost your SEO and create organic source traffic to your project. Getting on the front page of Hacker News is worth $500K in Google adword spend, so if you can do it organically, you’ve won! Create and moderate a Slack or Discord channel so that you have an open feedback loop with your users. Host educational workshops for users on how to get started and get the most out of your project. Build an approval automation pipeline for contributors to minimize the manual work of reviewing contributions. This will also help you better respond to contributor requests. Invest in large, related open-source communities by becoming a contributor in other ecosystems. While it will feel like you’re not directly impacting your own open-source project, over time you will grow as a thought leader and create a following that you can then introduce to your project when/where relevant. Give away swag…ok this isn’t the most important, but everyone loves swag ????
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Building In The Open: The Future of Open Source with Cockroach Labs, Timescale & Solo.io

Crealogix

The partnership between CREALOGIX and Solo.io started during the extended validation phase as they worked together to add financial industry specific functionality to Gloo .

CREALOGIX and Solo.io partner to deliver a secure digital banking platform for the cloud - Solo.io

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Solo.io develops open source and enterprise software that helps enterprises adopt and operate cloud-native technologies like microservices, serverless, and service mesh.

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Name	Work History	Title	Status
Idit Levine		Founder, Chief Executive Officer	Current
Christian Posta		Chief Technology Officer	Current
Erik Frieberg	VMware, MongoDB, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Borland Software Corporation, BEA Systems, Persistence Software, Kiva Software, CenterView Software, and Oracle	Chief Marketing Officer	Current

Name	Idit Levine	Christian Posta	Erik Frieberg
Work History			VMware, MongoDB, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Borland Software Corporation, BEA Systems, Persistence Software, Kiva Software, CenterView Software, and Oracle
Title	Founder, Chief Executive Officer	Chief Technology Officer	Chief Marketing Officer
Status	Current	Current	Current

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