Web operations and application development platform provider NGINX Inc. today pushed out a major update to its NGINX Application Platform.

The NGINX Application Platform is a toolkit for developers that was rolled out last year, combining the company’s flagship server NGINX Plus with its NGINX Controller and NGINX Unit products.

The NGINX Plus server is used by companies such as Groupon Inc. and BuzzFeed Inc. to deliver web content to their users. It’s based on an open-source system of the same name that powers hundreds of millions of websites.

The NGINX Controller, meanwhile, is used by administrators to monitor and manage web services centrally across multiple computing environments. At its core are policy-based controls for fine-tuning the behavior of NGINX Plus instances.

The controller can be used to optimize how web traffic is distributed among applications, the way that content is cached and several other key functions.

As for NGINX Unit, it’s an application server designed to automate operational processes of applications not covered by NGINX Plus. For example, it can be used by developers to update components of their applications without any downtime.

Today’s updates are all about simplifying application infrastructure by consolidating app delivery, application programming interface management and service mesh management into a single product, NGINX said in its pitch.

To that end, the company is adding three important new capabilities to its Controller product, including an enhanced load balancing module and a brand new API management module. The company will also add a new service mesh module by the first half of next year that’s designed to address concerns about governance, security, and control when deploying microservices, which are the components of modern software applications.

The NGINX Plus web server gets new dynamic clustering features and also new algorithms for microservices use cases and Kubernetes, which is an orchestration tool used to manage container-based applications that can run on any platform.

The updates to NGINX Unit are less exciting but still useful, primarily for improved security and programming language support, the company said.

NGINX said the updates mean that its Application Platform can now serve as both a “dynamic application gateway” used to interface with third-party applications and also a “dynamic application infrastructure” used to host applications themselves.

“This latest set of updates to our NGINX Application Platform are designed to help companies achieve better customer experiences, agility, and ROI in the digital era,” said NGINX Chief Executive Officer Gus Robertson. “I’m particularly excited we’re entering the API management and service mesh spaces, both critical capabilities companies need to master digital transformation.

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