DevOps Blog
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Announcing Ansible AWS Session Manager Plugin
We are excited to announce the availability of the Ansible AWS Session Manager Plugin, compatible with the 2.10 release of Ansible. Ansible is a popular configuration management tool due to its push-based model and easy syntax that make it an excellent choice for configuration management. Its ease of use simplifies server configuration management for operations team members and helps development team members take an active part in maintaining playbooks.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 9.28.2020
DevOps World anchors this week’s DevOps news as CloudBees makes several announcements at its virtual event. Specifically, the company unveiled two software delivery management modules – for management and engineering productivity use cases — fulfilling its vision to “solve challenging software delivery problems for organizations and enable them to continuously deliver software efficiently…” The CloudBees Software Delivery Management will be GA with these two modules in Q4 2020, according to the company.
Is It Time For A DevOps Culture Reality Check?
In pursuit of the promises and benefits of DevOps, many organizations started down the path to DevOps, approaching it as a technology problem. The thinking was that if the right tools and technologies were in place, the organization could use technology as a means to DevOps success. And frankly, as technologists, we’re comfortable reaching for technology as an answer.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 9.21.2020
Rumors that the pandemic have sped modernization efforts ring true in a new report from the Synergy Research Group in which it finds growth across cloud services and infrastructure markets. With the largest leaps coming from cloud infrastructure (34%) followed by enterprise SaaS (21%), enterprises are clearly investing in Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and Google. Summing up the findings, John Dinsdale, Chief Analyst, reports “In case anyone was still in doubt, cloud is increasingly dominating the IT landscape. Cloud technologies and services continue to disrupt the market and to open up new opportunities for operators, technology vendors and corporate end users.”
Conviction is the Enemy of Time to Innovation
It has never been more important to make customers central to business transformation. While it is not an easy goal to attain, it is possible. In a recent webinar, Dr. Suleman, Vice President of Cloud Transformation at NTT DATA, and Jon Collins, GigaOm VP of research, discussed time to innovation and how to drive customer centricity through digital agility, highlighting how technology foundations can help businesses meet evolving market demands and changing customer expectations.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 9.14.2020
Gartner releases its annual Magic Quadrant look at the Cloud market. While the review has been updated to cover both cloud infrastructure and platform services, the result should be familiar to many as Gartner places AWS as a Leader within the report, giving it the highest score for both its ability to execute and completeness of vision. Remaining true to past reports, Gartner places Microsoft and Google as the only other market leaders while IBM, Oracle, Alibaba and Tencent Cloud are all relegated as Niche Players. Looking to further its vision, Google Cloud announces a new category that it is calling a Business Application Platform. Google describes it as, “encompassing API management, no-code application development, automation and data insights capabilities.” The goal is to provide a “consistent way of consuming services, data, and functionality, via APIs, despite complex backends and empower non-technical employees to quickly build data-driven applications without coding.” The Business Application Platform leverages Google Cloud’s Apigee API management and AppSheet investments.
Seven Cloud Cost Optimization Resources
In uncertain times, it’s a natural reaction to focus on funds. Yet, there is a clear difference between tripping over dollars to pick up pennies and being a good steward of one’s budget, ensuring systems are optimized for cost efficiency. Fortunately, cloud cost optimization is a pillar in both AWS’s Well Architected Framework and Microsoft Azure’s Architecture Framework. Indeed, with the help of several tools offered by the cloud providers themselves and some analysis, cloud cost optimization can be achieved.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 9.8.2020
In this week’s DevOps news, Progress announces its plan to acquire Chef for $220 million in cash. The combined entity will provide, according to a news release, “industry-leading compliance and application automation products for multi-cloud and on-prem infrastructure.” The transaction is expected to close in October 2020. We can expect additional acquisitions from Progress as it pursues its plan to double the company in the next five years. Chef, a mile marker in that journey, is seen by Progress as growing its offerings, providing continuous application delivery, dependable compliance, and remediation automation.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 8.31.2020
In this week’s DevOps news, Microsoft shares how the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation of cybersecurity. According to a new survey, the majority of interviewed firms (58%) have increased their security budgets, with 82% planning to use a portion of the expanded budget to add staff. The top goal identified by security teams is to provide secure remote access, with multi-factor authentication identified as the top security investment made during the pandemic. Compliance has not been neglected during the pandemic with 65% reporting an increased budget for it. Longer-term, respondents identified cloud security (40%) as a top area for investment along with Zero Trust with 51% of companies speeding up their deployments.
Announcing SNowForm, a ServiceNow and Terraform Integration
We are excited to introduce SNowForm, a new solution that integrates ServiceNow Service Catalog and Terraform Enterprise to quickly and easily build infrastructure on public cloud platforms, including AWS and Azure. The new solution shrinks the time consuming process of requesting, approving, and provisioning cloud infrastructure from weeks to minutes, greatly expediting developer productivity and efficiency.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 8.24.2020
In this week’s DevOps news, Cloud Native Computing Foundation and SlashData release findings from their bi-annual State of Cloud Native Development Report. Perhaps not surprising, researchers found that the population of cloud native developers is growing, with 1.8 million more than in Q2 2019. Among the 6.5 million developers, 2.7 million use Kubernetes, and 4 million use serverless architectures and cloud functions. CNCF also reports that 60% of backend developers use containers in their work, a 10% year-over-year increase. As you’d expect in light of this, the use of container orchestration tools has also grown — by 7%.
Manufacturers Get Closer to the Customer
Not too long ago, retailers owned the customer relationship. Customers would visit the store, interact with store staff, and leave with recommended goods. Manufacturers set up distribution centers to get their products to retail to be sold to the customer and vied heavily for shelf space. Indeed, it was a major coup for a new product to be picked up by a retailer like Wal-Mart as it could mean the difference between remaining small or becoming a household brand.