With over 50 built-in integrations, Cortex customers have an always-up-to-date, single interface for their engineering priorities, tools, and tasks.
But large organizations have a lot of tools. And if you're running internally hosted tools, or for policy or security reasons would prefer to keep your access tokens private, that used to limit what was possible in your internal developer. Not anymore.
Today, we’re thrilled to unveil Axon: a robust integration framework designed specifically to help you effortlessly bring data into Cortex from any source, securely and reliably.
Combined with Cortex’s 50+ built-in integrations, the introduction of Axon means that Cortex is the first and only internal developer portal that offers a truly hybrid model of on-premise functionality that connects with a Cloud SaaS instance.
Axon brings more flexibility to Cortex
Large organizations with a slew of tools need flexibility to incorporate critical data that either Cortex doesn’t natively support via a first-class integration, or is inaccessible from outside the organization’s network. Whether it’s metadata from an internal tool, an API that doesn’t have an official integration, or deployment details from a homegrown system, teams need a structured way to pull in and use this information.
Axon provides that structure, giving teams the ability to ingest external data without requiring workarounds or maintaining standalone scripts.
Axon:
Reflects how your systems actually work, regardless of where they live
Opens the door for deeper customization and extensibility
Makes Cortex Cloud viable in environments where on-prem used to be the only option
Helps your teams get value from Cortex faster, with less red tape
Axon Relay: Secure connectivity without the hassle
Many engineering teams still rely on on-prem versions of their tools. Connecting these tools to a cloud-based platform like Cortex used to mean opening ports, submitting security reviews, and configuring your network just right.
Axon Relay changes the equation.
When configured, it creates a secure tunnel with your Cortex workspace; enabling a direct integration so that things like the catalog, scorecards and other Cortex capabilities work just like a typical integration with any other cloud-hosted tool.
Relay runs as a small agent inside your environment. It initiates a secure outbound connection to Cortex, so you never have to open a port or allow specific inbound IPs. Cortex can then securely interact with your internal services, without touching your firewall settings.
You keep control over what data is shared, and your credentials never leave your network. For customers who use cloud-hosted tools but want to retain control of access keys, Relay also works as a secure local proxy.
Benefits:
Secure model that avoids the need to open any firewall ports
Flexible deployment via Docker, Docker Compose, or Kubernetes
Works with internally hosted tools that were previously hard to integrate
Lightweight setup, typically done in just a few hours
Lets you use Cortex Cloud without needing to manage infrastructure
Lets you securely access internal HTTP services from Cortex Workflows
Axon Handlers: Bring in the data that matters
Axon Handlers are agents that you can deploy in your environment to collect data and send it to Cortex through our public API. These are especially useful if you use tools that Cortex doesn’t yet support with a first-party integration.
Using our Go or Python SDKs, you can build handlers that run on a schedule or respond to events. Examples include:
Pulling metadata from a security scanner and attaching it to your services in Cortex
Creating entities that don’t exist yet in Cortex based on internal systems
Keeping custom fields in Cortex up to date with real-time context from your environment
Handlers give you full flexibility to extend Cortex with the exact data you care about. You decide what to collect, how often to collect it, and where to push it. It’s a powerful way to unlock deeper value from Cortex, especially for teams with unique or homegrown tooling.
Get started with Axon
Axon is available in beta today. If you want to securely connect your internal tools to Cortex or bring in data from systems we don’t yet support natively, Axon is for you. As we continue expanding its capabilities, we’re working on more pre-built examples to make onboarding easier, and a repo of reusable scripts for common use cases.
Check out the docs or each out to your customer success manager to get started or schedule a demo to see how it works in your environment.
Axon is another step toward making Cortex a more flexible, extensible platform, giving teams the ability to integrate their ecosystem in ways that fit their unique needs.
