<article><p>Last week, we released the first-ever <em>State of Federation</em> report—a deep dive into how teams across industries are adopting and evolving GraphQL Federation.</p><h4><a href="https://wundergraph.com/state-of-graphql-federation/2024">Get the Full Report Here</a></h4><p>GraphQL Federation is now a proven strategy, and organizations from small startups to Fortune 500 enterprises are making the shift:</p><ul><li>1.5M+ WunderGraph Cosmo downloads</li><li>10x growth in WunderGraph Cosmo Managed service users</li><li>By 2027, 30% of enterprises using GraphQL will use GraphQL federation, up from less than 5% in 2024 [1].</li></ul><p>This report is jam-packed with insights from our customers about how they are leveraging federation, tackling challenges, and shaping the future of API architecture.</p><h2>Why Companies are Adopting Federation</h2><h3>Fragmented APIs:</h3><p>As companies shift from monolithic to microservices architectures, APIs become increasingly fragmented and difficult to manage.</p><ul><li><a href="https://khealth.com/">K Health</a> uses GraphQL Federation as an abstraction layer over microservices, creating a unified API surface to improve collaboration and simplify new service integration.</li></ul><h3>Slow Feature Delivery:</h3><p>Cross-team dependencies delay feature releases, negatively impacting business growth.</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.onthebeach.co.uk/">On The Beach</a> adopted GraphQL Federation to delegate domain ownership (e.g., Flights, Hotels, and Transfers). This allows teams to iterate independently, reducing the delays that previously blocked feature rollouts.</li></ul><h3>Modernization Pressure:</h3><p>Legacy systems must be modernized to meet the demands of a digital-first world, often leading to makeshift updates.</p><ul><li><a href="https://soundcloud.com/">SoundCloud</a> uses GraphQL Federation as a facade over legacy services, enabling gradual modernization without a complete backend rewrite.</li></ul><h3>AI-Driven Use Cases &amp; New Technologies</h3><p>Emerging AI workloads and next-gen applications require real-time, unified data access.</p><ul><li><a href="https://khealth.com/">K Health</a> leverages Federation to power real-time AI-driven diagnostics, enhancing response times and accuracy.</li></ul><h3>Enhanced Customer Experience</h3><p>Seamless customer journeys demand faster, personalized, and data-driven experiences.</p><ul><li>By transitioning to Federation, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/">SoundCloud</a> has improved query efficiency by up to 45%. Optimizing query performance directly enhances the responsiveness of high-traffic views, such as track waveforms and comment counts, giving the user a smoother and more engaging experience.</li></ul><h2><strong>Federation in Action</strong></h2><blockquote><p><em>“We can clearly see three focus areas in which GraphQL Federation users are going. Users want to implement more real-time use cases with Subscriptions and solutions like EDFS (Event Driven Federation Subscriptions). There’s big interest in performance optimizations through tools like Query Cost Analysis and directives like `@provides`. Security is a very important topic with persisted Queries, rate limiting and depth limiting being the next items on the checklist of platform teams.”</em></p></blockquote><p>– Jens Neuse, CEO &amp; Co-Founder at WunderGraph</p><p>What better way to highlight these areas than through real-world customer experiences?</p><ul><li><strong>Real-Time Use Cases</strong>: <a href="https://wundergraph.com/blog/cosmo_case_study_on_the_beach">On the Beach uses EDFS</a> to power real-time pricing and availability updates across multiple travel providers.</li><li><strong>Performance Optimization</strong>: <a href="https://wundergraph.com/blog/cosmo_case_study_soundcloud">SoundCloud's migration to Cosmo</a> reduced query latency by 45% and infrastructure costs by 86%, saving $265,000 annually.</li><li><strong>Security &amp; Compliance</strong>: <a href="https://wundergraph.com/blog/cosmo_case_study_khealth">K Health adopted Federation</a> to scale securely while maintaining strict HIPAA compliance.</li></ul><h2>Looking Ahead</h2><p>The State of Federation 2024 is our inaugural report, and we’re excited to make this an annual tradition. Each year, we hope to expand our insights by surveying not just our customers, but the broader GraphQL community,  providing a more comprehensive look at how Federation is evolving across the industry.</p><p><a href="https://wundergraph.com/state-of-graphql-federation/2024">Get the Full Report Here</a></p><p>Interested in GraphQL Federation?<br><a href="https://cal.com/team/wundergraph-team/introduction-call">Let's connect</a> and explore the most efficient approach for your team.</p><h4>References</h4><p>[1] Gartner, When to Use GraphQL to Accelerate API Delivery, Shameen Pillai, Tigran Egiazarov, et al., 7 March 2024. Available at: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-2H060YE8&amp;ct=240319&amp;st=sb.</p></article>

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Discover why teams choose GraphQL Federation with Cosmo. See real-world insights on modernization, performance, and security at scale.

Insights from the Community: State of Federation 2024

<article><h2>TLDR;</h2><h3>Challenge</h3><p>K Health needed a way to scale securely while keeping their microservices connected and API stable.</p><h3>Solution</h3><p>They adopted GraphQL Federation with Cosmo, leveraging schema checks to catch breaking changes early and hosting the router internally to maintain security and control.</p><h3>Results</h3><p>Queries now resolve more efficiently, reducing unnecessary round trips, while schema validation prevents disruptions. Engineers can work faster with more reliable data, and non-engineers can verify information independently, making collaboration smoother across teams.</p><h2>How K Health Ensures Security While Scaling with Cosmo</h2><p>Security is always a challenge in the healthcare industry. With strict HIPAA regulations, companies must maintain current standards while scaling to meet new ones without letting existing security measures become outdated.</p><p>K Health currently uses the Cosmo router as a proxy between subgraphs while relying on their own security protocols. By hosting the router within their infrastructure, sensitive data never leaves their environment, and WunderGraph has no access to the information being processed.</p><h2>Why Federation?</h2><p>A few years ago, K Health pivoted to a new business model, which required phasing out several existing microservices while introducing new ones. To avoid disruptions, both old and new services needed to coexist during the transition.</p><p>The previous architecture relied on services communicating through OpenAPI specs and generating client libraries in multiple languages, such as TypeScript and Python. Each service often required numerous foreign clients—sometimes up to 10—leading to additional middleware for authorization, language handling, and more.</p><blockquote><p><em>&quot;Every service would have more than 1, 2, or sometimes up to 10 foreign clients installed. You would have to add middleware into each and every client.&quot;</em></p></blockquote><p>— <em>Maksym Komarychev, Principal Engineer at K Health</em></p><p>With teams distributed globally, building a unified API surface was critical to improving communication and collaboration. The main challenge was ensuring the system was easy to understand and manage across teams.</p><p>Leadership identified GraphQL Federation as a potential solution, influenced partly by the CTO’s prior experience with Federation. As Maksym (Principal Engineer) said, “<em>We wanted to use it as an abstraction layer on top of our microservices</em>”, which would make integrating new services into the graph easier.</p><h2>Why Cosmo?</h2><p>After exploring various federated solutions, K Health ultimately chose Cosmo. But how did they get there?</p><p>At the beginning of this process, they built a basic router and schema management service to test GraphQL Federation and determine its feasibility. Because Cosmo is open source, they could experiment with it before formally engaging with WunderGraph. While K Health ultimately preferred a professionally managed service to avoid maintenance overhead, this hands-on phase allowed them to confirm that Cosmo was the right choice.</p><p>Cosmo proved easy to set up, whether on a local machine or in a Kubernetes pod. With no contract or trial limitations, K Health could thoroughly experiment with the router. This flexibility made internal buy-in easier, as developers could experience and test its capabilities before committing to adoption.</p><h3>Impact</h3><p>API stability is a top priority for K Health, and Cosmo’s schema checks have significantly improved this. Before adopting Cosmo, breaking changes were more challenging to catch and occurred more frequently.</p><p>Some of the consequences included:</p><ul><li>Null pointer exceptions and similar runtime issues</li><li>Missing fields or unexpected type changes (e.g., a string becoming a boolean)</li><li>Errors arising from requests fanning out to multiple backend services</li><li>Corrupted or inconsistent data requiring additional validation</li><li>JavaScript objects that can't be trusted at runtime, even with TypeScript interfaces, requiring extra runtime checks</li></ul><p>Cosmo’s schema checks help catch these issues early. While breaking changes are still possible, they are much easier to identify.</p><blockquote><p><em>&quot;The checks that Cosmo does is a super great thing to have. I’m referring to actual checks on the real traffic.&quot;</em></p></blockquote><p>— <em>Maksym Komarychev, Principal Engineer at K Health</em></p><p>The Cosmo router ensures data integrity, giving developers confidence that it will work at runtime if the code compiles locally. With schema checks, automated testing becomes more efficient and reliable while requiring fewer redundant checks. Serialization and deserialization no longer require double testing because they trust the graph’s structure.</p><h2>Config Validation and Signing</h2><p>K Health uses Cosmo’s <a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/router/security/config-validation-and-signing">Config Validation and Signing</a> to enhance security by ensuring only validated configurations are applied. Config files are signed, and the router verifies these signatures during deployment to prevent unauthorized changes. Signature Webhooks add another layer by sending signed payloads during updates, ensuring authenticity before applying changes. Together, these features catch errors early, protect against tampering, and maintain a secure, stable GraphQL infrastructure.</p><h2>Business Impact</h2><p>One of K Health's most significant improvements has been handling large queries. Before Cosmo, large queries required multiple round trips to gather all necessary data. Now, with query resolution handled internally within the router, responses feel faster to consumers, even if the component-level execution times remain the same.</p><blockquote><p><em>&quot;When we do one large query, we avoid doing round trips. From the consumer perspective, it's faster because all the resolution is happening internally behind the router.&quot;</em></p></blockquote><p>— <em>Maksym Komarychev, Principal Engineer at K Health</em></p><p>Cosmo has dramatically improved internal workflows, especially for non-engineering teams. Non-engineers can now log into Cosmo Playground, generate tokens, and run queries, allowing them to verify data discrepancies independently and produce more accurate bug reports.</p><blockquote><p><em>&quot;This means better bug reports from non-engineers because they can now verify data discrepancies themselves.&quot;</em></p></blockquote><p>— <em>Maksym Komarychev, Principal Engineer at K Health</em></p><p>Having a unified API surface has also improved communication. Previously, different services handling the same entity (e.g., “patient”) often used different field names and structures. Now, every team references the same entity in the same format, saving time and reducing errors.</p><p>On the technical side, tracking upgrades and breaking changes is much easier. If an update breaks something, the affected service’s pipeline fails immediately, making issues easier to catch and fix without digging through logs.</p><h2>The Future of WunderGraph and K Health</h2><p>K Health continues to expand its infrastructure. What began with only 3–4 subgraphs has now grown to nearly 10, with more to come. GraphQL Federation has become a crucial component of their architecture as they phase out legacy services and integrate new ones.</p><p>Through their collaboration with WunderGraph, K Health has gained more than just a tool—they've gained a partner. The ability to quickly reach out for support and receive meaningful, actionable guidance has been instrumental in their success. As their needs evolve, K Health is well-positioned to continue leveraging Cosmo’s capabilities for stability, security, and future growth.</p><p>We're looking for Golang (Go) Developers, DevOps Engineers and Solution Architects who want to help us shape the future of Microservices, distributed systems, and APIs.</p><p>By working at WunderGraph, you'll have the opportunity to build the next generation of API and Microservices infrastructure. Our customer base ranges from small startups to well-known enterprises, allowing you to not just have an impact at scale, but also to build a network of industry professionals.</p><p>If you like the problems we're solving and want to learn more about Cosmo Router, check out our <a href="https://github.com/wundergraph/cosmo">GitHub repository</a>. Interested in exploring GrahpQL Federation? Let’s connect and explore the most efficient approach for your team—<a href="https://cal.com/team/wundergraph-sales/introduction-call">book a time with us!</a></p></article>

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K Health streamlined its API architecture with GraphQL Federation and Cosmo, enhancing security, scalability, and collaboration across teams.

Safeguarding APIs: How K Health Ensures Security While Scaling with Cosmo

<article><p>We're looking for Golang (Go) Developers, DevOps Engineers and Solution Architects who want to help us shape the future of Microservices, distributed systems, and APIs.</p><p>By working at WunderGraph, you'll have the opportunity to build the next generation of API and Microservices infrastructure. Our customer base ranges from small startups to well-known enterprises, allowing you to not just have an impact at scale, but also to build a network of industry professionals.</p><h3>TLDR;</h3><h4>Challenge</h4><p><a href="https://soundcloud.com/">SoundCloud</a> needed to optimize its GraphQL infrastructure to reduce costs and improve query performance while maintaining scalability and flexibility.</p><h4>Solution</h4><p>They  migrated to WunderGraph Cosmo, utilizing its open-source model for cost-effective GraphQL Federation without restrictive licensing.</p><h4>Results</h4><p>Cosmo reduced infrastructure costs by 86%, leading to an estimated annual savings of $265,000. It also improved query latency by 45%, enabling a leaner, more scalable system while enhancing performance and developer efficiency.</p><h2>SoundCloud &amp; WunderGraph Cosmo Cut Computing Costs by 86%</h2><p>SoundCloud took a proactive approach to optimize its GraphQL infrastructure, lowering latency for one key query by 45%—from 171ms to 94ms—and CPU usage by 86%—from 600 to 80. Based on AWS Fargate pricing in the US-EAST region, this CPU optimization is estimated to save <strong>$265,000</strong> annually in computing costs. By refining its architecture and transitioning to Cosmo Router, SoundCloud built a leaner, more scalable system that supports long-term growth while maintaining high performance.</p><h2>Choosing the Right GraphQL Strategy</h2><p>SoundCloud initially relied on a third-party GraphQL Gateway for query execution and API traffic management. While enterprise features like co-processing and persisted queries were available through the same provider’s enterprise router, adopting it would have increased their dependence on that ecosystem.</p><p>When SoundCloud introduced its own gateway, the enterprise router became less critical. However, the team still avoided migrating, knowing that relying on enterprise-locked features would make future changes more restrictive. Instead, they built a schema reporting plugin to track usage metrics while they assessed alternatives.</p><p>As they evaluated their options, it became clear that their previous solution would further entrench them in its ecosystem, making future changes more difficult. They needed a scalable, cost-effective solution that provided full control over their GraphQL infrastructure.</p><h2>Evaluating Cost-Saving Alternatives</h2><p>Building an in-house GraphQL framework seemed like an option. On paper, it offered independence and potential cost savings—but the long-term development and maintenance costs outweighed the benefits.</p><blockquote><p><em>Building it ourselves was something we talked about, but the amount of effort required to build and maintain it long term just wasn't worth it.</em></p></blockquote><p>— <em>Tim Caplis, Principal Software Engineer at SoundCloud</em></p><p>Open-source solutions like The Guild had some of the right components, but it didn’t feel fully integrated for large-scale enterprise needs. They also had concerns about the additional support responsibilities required to maintain everything outside the router—something SoundCloud wanted to avoid.</p><h2>Decision to Migrate to Cosmo Router</h2><p>SoundCloud’s original third-party solution worked, but it was proving to be an imperfect long-term fit. They needed more flexibility—something that wouldn’t lock them into enterprise licensing or restrict their ability to scale.</p><p>Seeking alternatives, they evaluated WunderGraph and Cosmo Router, testing whether an open-source alternative could deliver the flexibility and cost savings they needed. A Proof of Concept (POC) confirmed that Cosmo offered significant performance improvements while reducing infrastructure demands. Cosmo’s open-source model ensured SoundCloud retained control over its infrastructure without restrictive licensing requirements.</p><p>Beyond the technology, WunderGraph’s collaborative approach stood out. They felt more like partners than vendors. Confident in both performance and partnership, they made the transition to Cosmo Router.</p><blockquote><p><em>Working with WunderGraph felt like working with another team inside SoundCloud versus having that tension with a vendor</em></p></blockquote><p>— <em>Tim Caplis, Principal Software Engineer at SoundCloud</em></p><h2>Migration Process</h2><p>SoundCloud didn’t make the switch overnight. They took an incremental approach, running Cosmo alongside their existing federated gateway to test schema checks and track performance.</p><p>Early signs were promising: lower infrastructure demands and better efficiency. As confidence in the results grew, the old gateway was gradually phased out and replaced with Cosmo’s lightweight alternative.</p><h2>Results and Impact</h2><p>The move to Cosmo delivered exactly what SoundCloud needed—lower costs and better performance. Infrastructure costs for computing dropped from ~$14,000 with the original gateway to ~$9,750 with Tyk and Cosmo combined. More importantly, they achieved this without sacrificing speed or flexibility.</p><blockquote><p><em>Our infrastructure costs went from $14,000 with our previous provider down to $9,750 with Cosmo, even with some extra infra costs.</em></p></blockquote><p>— <em>Tim Caplis, Principal Software Engineer at SoundCloud</em></p><p>Additionally, optimizing AWS ECS usage reduced infrastructure costs by 86%. The new setup runs 10 router containers with 4 vCPUs and 8 GiB memory each, totaling 40 vCPUs and 80 GiB memory. Previously, they required up to 600 vCPUs, as it also handled session management, geo lookups, and subscriptions—workloads that have since been offloaded to other services.</p><p>By removing unnecessary overhead,  SoundCloud has made its GraphQL routing layer leaner, more efficient, and fully scalable.</p><p>The migration reshaped their delivery pipeline. With a unified graph and reduced operational complexity, teams began shipping features at over <strong>three times</strong> their previous pace. What started as an infrastructure optimization became a company-wide multiplier for delivery speed and product momentum.</p><h2>Improved Performance and Efficiency</h2><p>Beyond cost savings, migrating to Cosmo delivered significant performance gains. Queries now execute faster with lower latency, thanks to more efficient routing and resource allocation. With a leaner infrastructure and fewer bottlenecks, SoundCloud has improved response times while reducing the overall computational overhead.</p><p>For instance, one reactions-related query saw latency drop from an average of 171ms to just 94ms (P95) in Cosmo. Because reactions load with every public track, optimizing their query performance directly impacts the responsiveness of high-traffic views like track waveforms and comment counts. This gives the user a seamless experience and keeps them actively engaged with the content.</p><blockquote><p><em>We knew the router would be more performant, but we didn’t know how much. Now we’re proving that hunch.</em></p></blockquote><p>— <em>Tim Caplis, Principal Software Engineer at SoundCloud</em></p><h2>Next Steps: Cost-Optimizing Query Handling</h2><p>Migrating to Cosmo was a significant step forward, but SoundCloud isn’t stopping there. With a leaner, more cost-efficient architecture in place, they’re now refining their approach—reducing query overhead, optimizing API traffic, and implementing caching for even greater efficiency.</p><blockquote><p><em>We are really excited to start taking advantage of persistent queries - we expect this to improve efficiency while also making our graph more secure.</em></p></blockquote><p>— <em>Tim Caplis, Principal Software Engineer at SoundCloud</em></p><h3>Key Initiatives Include:</h3><ul><li><p><a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/router/persisted-queries"><strong>Persisted Queries</strong></a> <strong>:</strong> Lower compute costs by pre-validating and optimizing queries before execution.</p></li><li><p><a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/router/configuration#rate-limiting"><strong>Rate Limiting</strong></a> <strong>:</strong> Prevent excessive API traffic, ensuring efficient infrastructure scaling.</p></li></ul><p>These improvements will extend cost savings beyond infrastructure migration by further optimizing request handling and reducing redundant compute cycles.</p><h3>Conclusion</h3><p>Migrating to Cosmo Router allowed SoundCloud to eliminate costly inefficiencies and maintain control over its GraphQL infrastructure. By reducing CPU usage, they lowered overall infrastructure costs by 86%, translating into an estimated <strong>$265,000</strong> in annual savings.</p><p>Beyond cost reductions, SoundCloud's move away from enterprise-locked features freed it from restrictive licensing models, giving them the flexibility to scale on their terms. With ongoing optimization efforts in query handling and caching, SoundCloud is positioned to reduce spending further and improve efficiency without compromising performance.</p><p>We're looking for Golang (Go) Developers, DevOps Engineers and Solution Architects who want to help us shape the future of Microservices, distributed systems, and APIs.</p><p>By working at WunderGraph, you'll have the opportunity to build the next generation of API and Microservices infrastructure. Our customer base ranges from small startups to well-known enterprises, allowing you to not just have an impact at scale, but also to build a network of industry professionals.</p><p>If you like the problems we're solving and want to learn more about Cosmo Router, check out our <a href="https://github.com/wundergraph/cosmo">GitHub repository</a> and take a look at our <a href="https://wundergraph.com/jobs">open positions</a> if you're interested in joining our team.</p></article>

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How the team at SoundCloud saved 86% on infrastructure costs for their GraphQL Federation deployment by moving to WunderGraph Cosmo.

SoundCloud and WunderGraph Cosmo Cut Computing Costs by 86%

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UK travel giant On The Beach replaced their custom GraphQL Federation with WunderGraph Cosmo, improving performance, observability, and developer velocity.

From Custom Code to Cutting-Edge: On The Beach Adopts WunderGraph Cosmo for GraphQL Federation

<article><p>We're looking for Golang (Go) Developers, DevOps Engineers and Solution Architects who want to help us shape the future of Microservices, distributed systems, and APIs.</p><p>By working at WunderGraph, you'll have the opportunity to build the next generation of API and Microservices infrastructure. Our customer base ranges from small startups to well-known enterprises, allowing you to not just have an impact at scale, but also to build a network of industry professionals.</p><p>Believe it or not, but <strong>~60%</strong> of the global food calories are produced by <strong>~500</strong> million farmers who own plots of land not much bigger than 2 hectares and trade through a dynamic network of non-transparent traders. These farmers are known as smallholder farmers.</p><p>The supply chain from the farm to the factory largely depends on word-of-mouth information, using personal memory or pen &amp; paper as only records. This leads to lost revenues and a lack of traceability, contributing significantly to illegal deforestation.</p><p><a href="https://www.pempem.io/">PemPem</a> has built a mobile-based trading platform with embedded financing for smallholder farmers producing commodities worldwide. Their platform is like a digital exchange, with integrated logistics and financing and 100% traceability from farm to factory.</p><h2>The journey to federation begins</h2><blockquote><p>Our previous provider had some limitations on customization that we hit early when we started to scale. GraphQL Federation with WunderGraph Cosmo allowed us to serve multiple endpoints without restrictions with a single router. -José Rose, Senior developer at PemPem</p></blockquote><p>Like any startup, you'll know when you hit product market fit. Customers are signing up, usage is skyrocketing, and things around you are breaking. This is precisely what PemPem started to experience earlier this year. Their commodity market trading platform had lifted off!</p><p>While they started to scale very quickly, they also realized that their old solution and vendor could not scale as soon as they could and needed more customization in various areas. José and his team started looking for a solution that would allow them to scale while keeping costs low and introducing observability across their entire stack.</p><p>With their previous approach, they hit limits quickly on custom visible endpoints for their clients and started looking into GraphQL federation solutions.</p><h3>The Transition to GraphQL Federation</h3><blockquote><p>We're relatively new to GraphQL Federation. Still, the transition from our old solution to Cosmo was very smooth, and we like the direction WunderGraph Cosmo is going for federation vs our previous provider.<br>-José Rose, Senior developer at PemPem</p></blockquote><p>While looking for a solution and scaling rapidly, José and his team learned about GraphQL Federation and WunderGraph Cosmo. With the WunderGraph router, they could place it in front of their architecture and serve multiple endpoints through Cosmo's performant router as a single point of truth. This quickly alleviated the concern with their previous provider because they would have had to hack together a custom solution.</p><h3>Embracing Federated GraphQL with WunderGraph Cosmo</h3><p>While scaling the usage of their platform, José and his team noticed they were having issues with clients and permission issues across their stack. With multiple client stacks, such as web and mobile applications, they needed a way to observe all of them and improve development time for endpoints.</p><p>With the Cosmo Router, they can now serve multiple clients with a single entry point versus having to stitch together multiple managed services. Scaling with Federation and Cosmo allows José and his team to choose the data they want from various data sources and harness it into a single place of truth.</p><p>With the Cosmo Studio, José and his team can now get end-to-end observability on their client's stacks and increase security permissions for their clients. They can understand who is using what client and if fields need to be included or are used across all their clients. PemPem is a heavy user of DataDog and wanted to have all their analytics in one place. With Cosmo Studio's <a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/router/open-telemetry#can-i-export-otel-data-from-my-application">OTEL Exporter</a>, they were quickly able to sync Cosmo Studio and DataDog.</p><h2>Key features highlighted by PemPem</h2><h3>Maintained Productivity and Expanded Possibilities with Studio:</h3><p>PemPems's productivity level, achieved through federation, has been successfully maintained with <a href="https://wundergraph.com/cosmo/features">Cosmo's Studio</a>. Additionally, the studio's detailed analytics dashboard and Advanced Request Tracing have allowed PemPem to have observability across their entire platform and quickly identify bottlenecks across clients.</p><h3>Migration process</h3><p><a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/studio/migrate-from-apollo">Migrating to WunderGraph Cosmo</a> proved to be a trivial and enjoyable journey for the PemPem team; They were able to set up the router within a day and have moved fully into production in less than 30 days.</p><h3>Team support</h3><p><a href="https://wundergraph.com/services">WunderGraph Support</a> was enjoyable for both parties. With a shared Slack connection and access to our development team, PemPem could ask any questions during their migration and about the latest news in GraphQL Federation. José highlighted the speed at which we could help him with questions and issues.</p><h2>Final Thoughts</h2><p>Cosmo's graphql federation solution allowed PemPem to quickly migrate away from their old solution while adding GraphQL Federation to their tech stack. The highlighted benefits included improved performance, enhanced observability, cost savings, and more. <a href="https://cosmo.wundergraph.com/login">To experience WunderGraph Cosmo, sign up for Cosmo's free tier and start building (no credit card needed)</a></p><blockquote><p>We learned about WunderGraph Cosmo and deployed it into production in about ten days. I highly recommend WunderGraph Cosmo; they helped us pivot quickly when we needed a solution ASAP! Everything now is working perfectly. -José Rose, Senior developer at PemPem</p></blockquote><h3>Video testimony</h3><p>If you prefer watching to reading, you also have the option to view this case study as a video.</p></article>

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How PemPem Accelerates Product Development with a Custom GraphQL Federation Approach

PemPem scaled faster by migrating to Cosmo—gaining GraphQL Federation, endpoint control, and full observability in a single, secure router.

<article><p>We're looking for Golang (Go) Developers, DevOps Engineers and Solution Architects who want to help us shape the future of Microservices, distributed systems, and APIs.</p><p>By working at WunderGraph, you'll have the opportunity to build the next generation of API and Microservices infrastructure. Our customer base ranges from small startups to well-known enterprises, allowing you to not just have an impact at scale, but also to build a network of industry professionals.</p><blockquote><p>Utilizing Cosmo's self-hosted router empowers us with direct control over our data. This enables necessary scalability according to our requirements and ensures absolute PCI compliance, a crucial aspect of our operations.  -Tyler Hawkins, Backend Tech Lead at Travelpassgroup.com</p></blockquote><p>Let's examine GraphQL's fundamental promise:</p><p>With a single query, receive precisely what you require and avoid excess data.</p><p>Amazing concept, right? However, if you've attempted to incorporate GraphQL across an entire engineering team, you might've quickly realized that achieving this objective is more complex than it sounds. For every developer in the organization to get everything they need in a single query, all possible required data must exist within one graph.</p><p>A single graph enveloping all data might seem implausible, especially from a compliance standpoint. This was one of Travel Pass's most significant obstacles when they expanded their use of GraphQL. As a travel booking platform catering to millions of global customers, their backend services handle a substantial amount of PCI data that can't be available to our client applications.</p><p>One graph = equals one endpoint, meaning client apps could access everything, including cardholder details and other sensitive data, right?</p><p>Surprisingly, not necessarily. With a Federated Graph and a self-hosted router, we can contain all our data and services, including the sensitive ones, within our federated graph, yet selectively determine which graphs are available to different groups, such as app developers. In this post, we'll guide you on how Travel pass achieved PCI compliance, and how you can replicate it employing namespaces with Cosmo Studio and the self-hosted cosmo router!</p><p>It's important to note that Travel Pass group were early adopters of GraphQL and were using Apollo GraphQL before WunderGraph Cosmo.</p><h3>Company background</h3><p><a href="https://www.travelpassgroup.com/">Travel Pass Group</a> is a company dedicated to enhancing the travel booking experience. They specialize in connecting travelers with a wide range of travel options, enabling them to explore new places and cultures with ease. TravelPass Group has been acknowledged for its rapid growth and workplace culture by several prestigious lists and awards.</p><p>They've always been at the forefront of technology adoption, even being an early adopter of GraphQL before it gained widespread popularity. They embraced GraphQL and Apollo GraphQL as their preferred tools for data management and API development.</p><h2>Let's take a step back</h2><p>To understand how Travel Pass Group (TPG) was able to achieve total data sovereignty and remain PCI compliant. It's important we understand how <a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/architecture">Cosmo's architecture works</a> and what information is shared between the studio and the router.</p><p>The architecture diagram displays our <a href="https://www.wundergraph.com/pricing">Hybrid SaaS model</a>. This model comprises of the customer-hosted router and our hosted studio. To detail, everything below the red line, namely the router, is under your management and hosting. Conversely, we at Wundergraph take care of everything above the red line, which includes hosting the studio.</p><p>But even though this is a SaaS model, how was Travel Pass Group able to achieve total data sovereignly and remain PCI Compliant?</p><p>By default, your sensitive information is segregated from the Cosmo Managed Service.</p><p>Cosmo in its hybrid set-up (Router hosted by you, analytics and tracing data stored in Cosmo Managed Service) means that we receive and store nothing but request metadata. This metadata cannot be linked to or reverted into your actual request payloads, and is used solely to provide the tracing and analytics insights of Cosmo Studio.</p><p>Any information (i.e. request / response data) exchanged between different APIs through your Cosmo Router never leaves your infrastructure where the Router is being hosted. WunderGraph is without any access to your Cosmo Router instance.</p><p>This privacy safeguard is implemented with WunderGraph Cosmo by design and not dependent on configuration or individual customization, which means that it cannot be - intentionally or by accident - circumvented or switched off.</p><p>There also is no scenario where WunderGraph would need to host or access your Router. These measures ensure you stay compliant with data privacy regulations and regulatory requirements, e.g. GDPR, PCI, HIPAA etc.</p><p>WunderGraph Studio is also SOC2 compliant.</p><h2>WunderGraph Cosmo: The Open-Source GraphQL Federation Solution</h2><blockquote><p>It's very important that we have a solution that gives us a secure environment, where we can stay PCI compliant as well as have control over our traffic  -Tyler Hawkins, Backend Tech Lead at Travelpassgroup.com</p></blockquote><p>Now that we have a clear understanding of Cosmo and its architecture. Let's talk about how Travel Pass Group uses its federated graph as a single point of truth but can expose certain graphs to customers without exposing sensitive data.</p><h3>Namespaces</h3><p>As a single source of truth, our federated graph schema contains everything, including sensitive data. So, we can’t just directly have every customer application query our GraphQL endpoint for the entire federated graph. Instead, we need to define which federated graph specific applications can access. We can create <a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/cli/namespace">Namespaces</a> in Cosmo Studio.</p><p>Namespaces are a way to isolate your federated graphs and subgraphs. They are the way to group graphs in different environments, such as production and staging.</p><h3>Using Namespaces to filter out PCI data</h3><p>By using Namespaces and label matchers, we can ensure we expose the correct federated graph and subgraphs to our customers. This eliminates touchpoints with sensitive information, which is better for all parties involved. We can expose different GraphQL schemas to different parties based on a policy that we set.</p><p>That's it. You can apply <a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/cli/namespace">Namespaces</a> through the CLI.</p><h2>An Easy migration from Apollo to Cosmo</h2><blockquote><p>With Cosmo we were able to get things up and running pretty smoothly. Cosmo was very similar to our old provider so there wasn't much of a learning curve. It only took us about a day to reconfigure everything and get started with Cosmo. -Tyler Hawkins, Backend Tech Lead at Travelpassgroup.com</p></blockquote><p><a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/tutorial/switch-from-apollo-to-cosmo">Transitioning from Apollo to Cosmo</a> took us around one day. The reason for this relatively quick process was the resemblance between the two products, with many of Cosmo's features mirroring those in Apollo. This resulted in minimal disruption due to a reduced learning curve, as only some elements were unfamiliar.</p><p>One feature of Cosmo that we found pretty valuable and relished was the <a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/cli/essentials#labels"><strong>labels</strong></a> aspect. This feature provides a systematic way to fragment and comprehend our complex graph better, making it much simpler for us to utilize internally. By using labels, we can tear down the complexity of our graphQL schema into more manageable parts, enhancing our efficiency and comfort in using the system.</p><p>We now have cosmo running in production and so far are very happy with the migration and results.</p><h2>Final Thoughts</h2><p>Cosmo's self-hosted router allowed Travel Pass group to stay PCI compliant while separating the complex schema into more manageable sections. The migration process only took Travel Pass about a day to migrate and use Cosmo. <a href="https://cosmo.wundergraph.com/login">To experience WunderGraph Cosmo, sign up for Cosmo's free tier and start building (no credit card needed)</a></p><h3>Video testimony</h3><p>If you prefer watching to reading, you also have the option to view this case study as a video.</p></article>

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Discover how TravelPass Group ensures PCI compliance and secure GraphQL usage at scale with WunderGraph Cosmo’s self-hosted router and namespace filtering.

How TravelPass Group manages PCI compliance with GraphQL and WunderGraph Cosmo

<article><p>We're looking for Golang (Go) Developers, DevOps Engineers and Solution Architects who want to help us shape the future of Microservices, distributed systems, and APIs.</p><p>By working at WunderGraph, you'll have the opportunity to build the next generation of API and Microservices infrastructure. Our customer base ranges from small startups to well-known enterprises, allowing you to not just have an impact at scale, but also to build a network of industry professionals.</p><blockquote><p>We have experienced significant performance enhancements for our most complex queries since switching from Apollo to Cosmo. The query planning in Cosmo is more advanced and intelligently optimized. -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand</p></blockquote><p><a href="https://www.soundtrackyourbrand.com/">Soundtrack your Brand</a> is a company that provides a music streaming platform specifically designed for businesses. It offers curated playlists, licensing, and royalty management services to create a tailored audio experience for companies in various industries. Think Spotify, but with the focus on delivering music solutions for commercial use.</p><p>They've always been at the forefront of technology adoption, even being an early adopter of GraphQL before it gained widespread popularity. They embraced GraphQL and Apollo GraphQL as their preferred tools for data management and API development.</p><p>Despite being one of the earliest adopters of Apollo GraphOS, Soundtrack your Brand, had a divergence in opinion regarding the change in Apollo's non open-source licensing and business model. As a company that values their alignment with GraphQL principles, Soundtrack your Brand embarked on a journey to find a solution that better resonated with their GraphQL views. Ultimately, this exploration led them to choose WunderGraph Cosmo as the preferred alternative</p><h2>Unpacking the Concerns Surrounding Apollo GraphOS</h2><blockquote><p>For us, it's very important that GraphQL in it's entirety remains a open ecosystem and we were seeing parts of the market moving in a completely different direction.&quot; -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand</p></blockquote><p>Fredrik and his team were excited to adopt Apollo GraphQL due to its reputation as one of the pioneering solutions for working with GraphQL. At the time, it was among the few open-source options available, and they appreciated the extensive tooling and community support provided by Apollo.</p><p>However, they realized that the company's business direction gradually shifted away from the open-source ethos they valued. Apollo had started introducing premium features and services not part of the open-source framework. This divergence from open-source and extreme pricing hike left Fredrik and his team concerned about their project's long-term viability and compatibility.</p><p>With nearly a decade of experience with adopting and working with GraphQL. Fredrik understood the direction GraphQL should be going and where other vendors were taking it. However, after engaging with the WunderGraph Team, they quickly realized that we share the same values for where we want GraphQL to go as a technology. Cosmo provided an easy migration away from Apollo while staying true to GraphQL's licensing, which is remaining open source.</p><h2>WunderGraph Cosmo: The Open-Source GraphQL Federation Solution</h2><blockquote><p>WunderGraph had the same vision to allow GraphQL to remain open, standardized, and competitive. They were also able to technically deliver a solution that much more closely fit our needs. With both those boxes checked, it was basically a no-brainer to migrate over. We made the decision in a week. -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand</p></blockquote><p>The move to Cosmo has significantly benefited Soundtrack your Brand's operations by improving performance, increasing productivity, and saving costs.</p><h3>Improved Performance</h3><p>Cosmo's <a href="https://wundergraph.com/cosmo/features/router">superior query planning capabilities</a> have resulted in significant performance improvements for Soundtrack your Brand. Complex queries now execute faster and more efficiently, enhancing the overall user experience by providing quicker data retrieval.</p><h3>Maintained Productivity and Expanded Possibilities with Studio:</h3><p>Soundtrack Your Brand's productivity level, achieved through federation, has been successfully maintained with <a href="https://wundergraph.com/cosmo/features">Cosmo's Studio</a>. Additionally, the introduction of federated subscriptions has opened up new possibilities for the company, further enhancing its operations.</p><h3>Autonomous Team Shipments to End Customers</h3><p><a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/architecture">Cosmo's architecture</a> allows multiple teams at Soundtrack your Brand to deliver their products to end customers autonomously. This autonomy eliminates bottlenecks and enhances efficiency, resulting in streamlined and collaborative development workflows.</p><h3>Flexible Deployment Options and Cost Savings:</h3><p>Soundtrack your Brand benefited from <a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/deployments-and-hosting/intro">Cosmo's flexible deployment options</a>, enabling them to optimize their infrastructure costs. By choosing specific platform components, they have achieved a balance between performance and affordability, making cost savings without compromising quality or functionality.</p><h3>Speed and Innovation:</h3><blockquote><p>The innovation rate that the WunderGraph team is keeping up with is mind blowing. During our time together, the team has released numerous features that are quite cutting edge and that I haven't seen from any other supplier on the market. -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand</p></blockquote><h2>An Easy migration from Apollo to Cosmo</h2><blockquote><p>We have a quite complex schema that has been growing over the past 7 to 8 years. During our migration to Cosmo, we worked very closely with the WunderGraph engineers to debug issues with our most complex queries. In the end we discovered that we had some errors in our schema, that our previous provider did not notice or report to us. -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack your Brand</p></blockquote><p><a href="https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/studio/migrate-from-apollo">Migrating from Apollo to Cosmo</a> proved to be a trivial and enjoyable journey for the Soundtrack team; let's delve into the key benefits that they highlighted during their migration and highlight the difference it has made in their schema issue detection, collaboration, setup time, response time, and overall satisfaction.</p><p>Setting up Cosmo and running it only took the Soundtrack team a day's work. During the migration, Soundtrack discovered that some of their most complex queries needed to be fixed. While working with the WunderGraph Engineers, the team was able to fix edge cases and issues where Apollo did not previously catch federation issues.</p><p>The migration process was made easy through the close collaboration between the Soundtrack team and our experts at Cosmo. We worked closely to identify and address various use cases, ensuring their specific requirements were met. This collaborative approach enabled us to tap directly into the organization, resulting in faster resolution and improved user experience.</p><p>One of the most highlighted aspects of this migration was the rapid response time and resolution provided by Cosmo. By having direct access to our engineers, Soundtrack your Brand experienced a significant reduction in turnaround time for issue resolution. This increased their operational efficiency and was a source of delight for their team.</p><p>Furthermore, the collaboration with our engineers throughout the migration process was refreshing to the Soundtrack Team. Unlike relying solely on account executives, directly interacting with our engineers allowed them to gain deeper insights into the technical aspects and ensure their requirements were met accurately. This direct collaboration fostered a sense of empowerment and a strengthened partnership between Soundtrack, your brand, and WunderGraph Cosmo.</p><h2>Final Thoughts</h2><p>Cosmo's open source solution allowed Soundtrack your Brand to easily migrate away from Apollo GraphQL and enjoy benefits such as improved performance, flexible deployment options, cost savings and much more. <a href="https://cosmo.wundergraph.com/login">To experience WunderGraph Cosmo, sign up for Cosmo's free tier and start building (no credit card needed)</a></p><blockquote><p>The Cosmo team was extremely supportive and helpful, and now we've been running Cosmo in production for a couple months and everything has been fantastic so far -Fredrik Wärnsberg, Vice President of Engineering at Soundtrack Your Brand</p></blockquote><h3>Video testimony</h3><p>If you prefer watching to reading, you also have the option to view this case study as a video.</p></article>

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Soundtrack Your Brand migrated from Apollo to Cosmo in a day—boosting performance, federation flexibility, and developer productivity.

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