# Version 4.5.0

## About WSO2 API Manager

WSO2 API Manager is a powerful platform for creating, managing, consuming and monitoring web APIs. It combines tried and tested SOA best practices with modern day API management principles to solve a wide range of enterprise challenges associated with API provisioning, governance and integration.

WSO2 API Manager 4.5.0 is developed on top of the revolutionary Carbon platform (Middleware a' la carte), and is based on OSGi which provides better modularity for your SOA architecture.

## About WSO2 Carbon

WSO2 Carbon is a component based Enterprise SOA platform. The design of WSO2 Carbon focuses on separating the key functionality of the SOA platform into separate pluggable Carbon components that can be mixed and matched, like customizable building blocks. This allows you to add only the functionality you need to start up, and continue to add product capabilities as your requirements grow. This helps a business to quickly adapt to changes.

OSGi is used as the underlying core modularization technology to build the Carbon platform. The Carbon framework is shipped with Eclipse Equinox by default, but can be supported on Spring dm Server, Felix or Knoplerfish if required. The OSGi technology even allows you to write your business functionality as an OSGi component and deploy it in the existing Carbon platform.

For a quick start on using the WSO2 Carbon platform, the Carbon components are pre-assembled into the following products:

- WSO2 Micro Integrator
- WSO2 Identity Server
- WSO2 Streaming Integrator

You can assemble your own products by combining components and deploying them in a preferred architecture.

The WSO2 Carbon platform gives maximum flexibility to adapt the middleware to your enterprise architecture, rather than adapt your architecture to the middleware.

## About WSO2

WSO2 is an Open Source technology company building Open Source middleware platforms for Web services and SOA. WSO2 delivers integrated middleware stacks based on components developed at Apache, offering industry leading performance and convenience for customers.

Founded in August 2005 by pioneers in Web services and Open Source, WSO2 engineers contribute heavily to many key Apache Web services projects.

### Stay connected

Subscribe to the WSO2 newsletter - project updates, events, articles, SOA news and much more.