Kalamuna and Tyk
Kalamuna partnered with Tyk as part of an open source solution it was developing for San Francisco’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). The goal was to deliver an updated API system that was secure, accessible and easy for the MTC to maintain.
The end beneficiaries would be the millions of commuters and occasional travellers who use the MTC’s 511.org gateway. The site delivers aggregated real-time traffic and transit information from 27 transit agencies in the Bay Area. Consumers including Bing and Google Maps also rely on the MTC’s real-time traffic and transit data.
Who is Kalamuna?
Kalamuna is a team of seasoned experts who design and build websites with purpose.
They work with socially impactful organisations to deliver thoughtfully crafted,
accessible and people-friendly digital experiences.
Why did Kalamuna need an API gateway for its client, the MTC?
Kalamuna was tasked with migrating the MTC’s legacy, end-of-life proxy system to a modern, open source API gateway solution. The MTC could no longer update or confidently maintain the legacy system, which was a custom Python application.
Kalamuna led the creation of a restructured API system on behalf of the MTC, with a modernised deployment platform that integrated smoothly with the 511.org website. Improving security was a priority, as was maintaining the platform’s usability and reliability.
How is Kalamuna using Tyk?
Tyk’s industry-leading open source API gateway sits at the heart of Kalamuna’s solution for the MTC. In addition to the Tyk Gateway, Kalamuna developed 24 JSON REST APIs for the MTC, to replicate the functionality of the legacy application being replaced. For real-time data manipulation, and to integrate the APIs seamlessly into the 511.org website, the Kalamuna team wrote customer middleware in Go.
Why Tyk?
Tyk ticked all the right boxes for Kalamuna. The company needed a reliable and highly performant open source API gateway as the cornerstone of its solution for the MTC. Robust security was also crucial, as was the flexibility to build an API ecosystem that could replicate MTC’s legacy app functionality and integrate seamlessly with its website.
The Tyk Dashboard ensured the MTC could easily monitor API activity and quickly spot any errors. Monitoring of the gateway’s functions and features are linked to automated alerts, so that engineers and managers can always be on top of what’s occurring.
Working smoothly alongside Tyk, Kalamuna implemented a customised Lando development environment, along with a container-based infrastructure with Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) tools and processes. This aimed to achieve parity between remote and local environments while enabling streamlined development, testing and deployment processes.
How are Kalamuna and the MTC benefitting from using Tyk?
Using Tyk meant Kalamuna was able to present its client, the MTC, with a high impact solution for its complex, high-availability public system. Using Tyk gave Kalamuna the flexibility of a gateway that would coexist well with the other components of the solution, while Tyk’s open source principles harmonised with Kalamuna’s. The MTC was also keen to prioritise an open source solution – something which weighed heavily into the decision to use the Tyk API Gateway.
Kalamuna’s partnership with Tyk is delivering tangible results for the MTC. Since its launch in February 2023, the gateway has delivered more than 325 million API-supported calls at an overall success rate of 99.88%. To put this number in context: the previous system failed completely multiple times per year at a rate of approximately once every six to ten weeks!
In addition to reliable performance and enhanced security, the MTC reported finding maintenance far easier within a month of Kalamuna’s Tyk API Gateway solution going live. Tyk opened up greater accessibility in terms of the ability to log in and view issues clearly, monitor reports, see data, spot problems and more. This enabled Kalamuma to support the MTC to level up everything from identifying issues to troubleshooting them and monitoring overall system health.
