Application intelligence is about moving beyond traditional networking, which focuses on IP addresses and ports, to application networking, which is application-centric and user-focused. Instead of routing packets, application networking routes business based on identity and context, enabling the delivery of specific SLAs. This is critical for routing traffic based on business context, enabling faster incident response, and implementing security at the application layer in accordance with zero-trust principles.

The core of application intelligence lies in its ability to route based on user identity and context, such as user role, customer tier, destination application, geographical location, device type, and API version. This granularity enables actions like prioritizing premium users during high load, performing canary deployments, and ensuring infrastructure portability. Authentication, typically through open standards like OIDC and OAuth, provides metadata for policy enforcement at the gateway level, connecting with identity providers like Okta or Keycloak to determine user permissions.

Traefik Labs addresses the fragmentation in application intelligence across different environments, including VMs, Kubernetes, and serverless. Their solution unifies routing, security, and observability across these environments, providing a consistent policy layer and enforcement model. With the recent launch of K-native support and native VM support, Traefik enables unified control over containers and serverless workloads. By supporting OpenTelemetry, Traefik enables the creation of unified dashboards, providing comprehensive visibility across various environments and facilitating collaboration between network operations and DevOps teams for effective troubleshooting.

Presented by Sudeep Goswami, CEO, Traefik Labs. Recorded live at KubeCon North America in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 11th, 2025. Watch the entire presentation at https://techfieldday.com/appearance/traefik-labs-presents-at-tech-field-day-at-kubecon-north-america-2025/ or visit https://techfieldday.com/event/kubecon25/ or https://traefik.io/ for more information.