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Category: Features

  • Cosmonic Previews Deployment Platform for Distributed Wasm Apps

    Cosmonic Previews Deployment Platform for Distributed Wasm Apps

    Cosmonic has made available a preview of a platform for deploying applications built using the portable WebAssembly (Wasm) binary format that enables applications to be deployed on any platform.

    Cosmonic CEO Liam Randall said the company is providing early access to the Cosmonic Platform Developer Preview platform to enable developers to experiment with a new type of software artifact that will be used to build a new class of cloud-native applications.

    The Cosmonic Platform Developer Preview platform is based on wasmCloud, an open source application runtime that hosts components written as Wasm modules that can then be loosely connected to build applications. Originally developed under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium for building browser applications, Wasm is a portable binary instruction format for building software that describes a memory-safe, sandboxed execution environment.

    That approach replaces the current predominant method for building software that relies on the aggregation of software components that tend to lack distinct boundaries. It’s that lack of distinct boundaries that enables malware to flow so easily from one software module to another. The wasmCloud runtime, originally developed by Cosmonic, provides a platform for deploying distributed Wasm applications and is now being advanced under the auspices of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

    Prior to Wasm, Randall noted, every format for building applications led to the creation of ‘walled gardens’ that resulted in developers being locked into a platform. Wasm is the first software artifact that enables applications to run on an platform, including Linux and Windows, without any modification required, said Randall.

    It may be some time before Wasm becomes the preferred artifact for building applications, but it’s clear the walls that have separated one IT platform from another are about to crumble. Once applications become much more portable, the longstanding goal of writing an application once and then deploying it anywhere may finally be achieved. Just as importantly, those applications will run in a memory-safe sandbox that is more secure than what can be enabled in legacy IT platforms. In fact, as more organizations review the security of their software supply chains, they may decide to accelerate their embrace of Wasm to build more secure applications.

    Naturally, the transition to Wasm will have major implications for DevOps teams, as it represents an opportunity to streamline deployment processes across multiple platforms. In effect, the total cost of application development and deployment would decline as processes spanning multiple platforms become more automated using platforms such as wasmCloud. Ultimately, much of the infrastructure complexity that developers need to navigate today would be eliminated, noted Randall.

    It’s not clear just yet to what degree Wasm will drive a transition to another era of computing, but the potential to change almost every aspect of IT is on the horizon. Ultimately, the issue will be decided by how quickly developers are willing to embrace yet another software artifact for building and deploying applications. What is clear is that the number of platforms that will make it possible to experiment with Wasm are starting to multiply.

  • Business Leaders Will Trade Speed for Security

    Business Leaders Will Trade Speed for Security

    A global survey of 600 C-level executives conducted by CloudBees found that when it comes to building software, more than three-quarters of respondents said it is more important to be secure and compliant than fast and compliant.

    As a result, more than three-quarters (77%) also noted their organization is implementing a shift left strategy for implementing security and compliance even though 58% recognized that those efforts created additional burdens for developers.

    Three-quarters of respondents also conceded that compliance (76%) and security (75%) challenges limited their company’s ability to innovate. Nevertheless, 83% said shift left is important for them as an organization despite the fact that 88% of executives said their software supply chain is secure or very secure. However, only 33% of respondents said their software supply chain is completely compliant.

    Not surprisingly, 86% are focusing on compliance more now than they were two years ago and, in the wake of a series of high-profile breaches of software supply chains, 82% are more concerned about attacks.

    CloudBees CEO Anuj Kapur said it’s clear there is a greater need to reduce security and compliance burdens for developers by putting guardrails in place that automate DevSecOps processes. The survey noted that only 22% of executives believed their software delivery supply chain is completely automated, while another 37% said it is close to being automated. Only 22% said their compliance process is completely automated, with 35% believing it is almost completely automated.

    Three in five (59%) executives said they have all, or mostly all, external tools for security and compliance issues and 29% said they have a mix of internal and external tools. Only 11% use mostly internal tools. A full 90% said their risk management team has the tools, knowledge and expertise to build and/or maintain a secure software supply chain.

    The real challenge, of course, is that while compliance issues are relatively static, new security issues arise all the time. Developers make mistakes or a new zero-day vulnerability is discovered after an application has been deployed in a production environment. It’s critical for organizations to embrace automation to enable developers to address those issues as part of a continuously automated update cycle, noted Kapur.

    As more responsibility for compliance and security is shifted left, the degree to which DevOps workflows will need to be adjusted will naturally vary by organization. However, the days when developers could ignore security issues during the application development process are all but over. The leadership of organizations of all sizes are making it clear they want to see a reduction in the number of security and compliance issues that arise in production environments.

    Ideally, efforts to build more secure and compliant applications would not slow down the rate at which applications are being built and deployed. However, the CloudBees survey made it clear that more executives are willing to prioritize security and compliance over speed of application development. The issue is how to strike a balance between what are clearly two competing priorities.

  • Five Great DevOps Jobs Opportunities

    Five Great DevOps Jobs Opportunities

    DevOps.com is now providing a weekly DevOps jobs report through which opportunities for DevOps professionals will be highlighted as part of an effort to better serve our audience.

    Our goal in these challenging economic times is to make it easier for DevOps professionals to advance their careers. Of course, the pool of available DevOps talent is still relatively constrained, so when one DevOps professional takes on a new role, it creates an opportunity for others.

    The five job postings shared this week are selected based on the company looking to hire, the vertical industry segment and, naturally, the pay scale offered.

    We’re also committed to providing additional insights into the state of the DevOps job market. In the meantime, for your consideration:

    Indeed.com

    Level Home
    Redwood City, California
    DevOps/SRE Manager
    $175,000 to $275,000

    Monster.com

    Jobot
    Houston, Texas
    Senior DevOps Engineer
    $150,000 to $180,000

    LinkedIn

    Lenovo
    Colorado, New York City, Nevada and Washington
    Software DevOps
    $125,000 to $145,000

    SimplyHired

    Spring Health
    New York, New York
    DevOps Engineer
    $110,000 to $150,000

    Dice.com

    Black Knight, Inc.
    Remote
    DevOps Engineer III
    $91,000 to $125,000

  • Atlassian Aims to Improve Collaboration With DevOps Teams

    Atlassian Aims to Improve Collaboration With DevOps Teams

    At an Atlassian Presents: WorkLife event today, Atlassian furthered its efforts to integrate the tools technology and business professionals use to manage processes.

    Erika Trautman, general manager and vice president of product for Work Management for All at Atlassian, said that as organizations increasingly rely on digital processes to engage customers, partners and employees, the need to facilitate collaboration across a diverse set of knowledge workers is becoming more pressing.

    As part of that effort, Atlassian is now making generally available a Smart Links capability within the Atlassian platform. Smart Links can be used to integrate both Atlassian applications such as Trello and Jira as well as third-party applications. That capability is now critical because there has been a Cambrian explosion of adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications that all need to be integrated into a common set of workflows, noted Trautman. Otherwise, each SaaS application environment becomes yet another walled garden that prevents any meaningful collaboration, she added.

    In addition, the company announced that Atlas, a directory that tracks projects and simplifies communications across teams using disparate applications, will become generally available next month. DevOps teams, for example, will be able to synchronize Jira events with projects being tracked via the Atlas platform.

    Atlassian has also streamlined the tools it provides to reduce the number of steps required to administer its applications and onboard new users.

    Finally, the company also has launched Atlassian Together, a single subscription offering through which organizations can license its Trello, Confluence, Atlas and Jira Work Management applications delivered via the cloud. An enterprise organization with more than 5,000 users can now, for example, license those applications for $11 per user.

    Atlassian is making a concerted effort to enable organizations to more easily collaborate at a time when they have become more dependent on software than ever, noted Trautman. In many cases, businesses are now trying to adjust to the rapid rate at which software is being delivered thanks to the adoption of DevOps best practices, she noted.

    As such, there is a greater need for integration between tools such as Jira that development teams use to manage projects and a wide range of tools used by knowledge workers residing in various departments, said Trautman. In effect, Atlassian is trying to enable organizations to reduce the “collaboration tax” they incur as workflows span multiple silos, she added.

    In fact, in many cases, organizations are struggling to keep pace with how agile software development teams have become. The irony is that not too long ago business executives routinely complained about how long it took IT organizations to adjust as business conditions changed. Now, many businesses are rolling out additional digital capabilities via software updates that can be made multiple times a month.

    The rate at which organizations will collaborate across departments will naturally vary, but the days when each department was a fiefdom unto itself are coming to an end. The challenge and opportunity may now be determining how modern organizations should be structured once it becomes easier to collaborate.

  • ‘The OG App’ Devs’ Facebook Ban | WFH Vs. NYC Real Estate | Calif. Pay Law is GO

    ‘The OG App’ Devs’ Facebook Ban | WFH Vs. NYC Real Estate | Calif. Pay Law is GO

    Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

    This week: A third-party Instagram app causes ructions, remote work causes office slump, and more on Cali’s salary transparency law. (more…)

  • 5 Reasons to Adopt DevOps

    5 Reasons to Adopt DevOps

    DevOps IT methodologies are taking the development industry by storm. Some call DevOps great for software development. Others find it ideal for pushing out regular software updates and pursuing continuous delivery for clients.

    If you do not know what DevOps is or why your business should adopt DevOps, read on. We’ll break down five reasons why your organization should adopt DevOps at the earliest opportunity.

    What is DevOps?

    In a nutshell, DevOps is short for “development” and “operations.” It’s a software development and programming methodology that helps teams execute ideas more quickly and pursue continuous deployment for organizations and clients. In web and mobile app development, DevOps can be very beneficial thanks to its agility, responsiveness, and versatility.

    Many organizations think of DevOps as some new approach or technology, but it’s actually been around for some time. This approach to IT delivery combines special practices, philosophies, and tools to help mitigate bottlenecks from operations and development.

    Specifically, DevOps combines both development and operations principles to some extent. In this way, most of the major aspects of software or app development are unified. This, in turn, allows teams to respond more capably to shifting project demands and bugs.

    Furthermore, DevOps focuses on organizing and separating “silos” in organizations. In this way, teams or individual workers can take responsibility for a given project. This is superior to separating tasks by individual roles or team labels. DevOps’ advantages mean it’s being used in many different and unique industries, from fintech to medical communication services, and manufacturing.

    However, many businesses are wary about switching to DevOps or any other methodology because it:

    • Requires a major culture switch in workers. It is never easy to shift methodologies, especially when the methodology in question is as complex as DevOps.
    • It is not a one-size-fits-all solution. For DevOps to be successful, your team has to embrace it thoroughly, understand and master its principles, and spend some time practicing.

    Even with these potential downsides, it’s still a very good idea to get your team on board with shifting to DevOps sooner rather than later. Many competing organizations have already done this!

    Benefits of DevOps for Businesses

    DevOps can provide numerous important advantages for businesses just like yours, regardless of industry, niche, or size. Let’s take a look at the five big advantages one by one.

    Better Team Collaboration

    For starters, DevOps often leads to increased team collaboration. Specifically, it allows your development and operations teams or departments to communicate and collaborate much more easily than before.

    In turn, this translates into freer communication between both departments and more trust between individual team members. Your development and operations teams can share their inputs, knowledge, and specific understandings of tools, code, or client desires.

    Think of DevOps as unifying the two teams in your organization. A unified team is one that’s better prepared to respond to changing industry trends, new consumer tastes, or sudden objective shifts that you can’t avoid.

    DevOps is so good at fostering team collaboration because it’s an agile methodology. Agile methodologies are ideal for simplifying complex tasks into more manageable or smaller pieces. This results in a more iterative, manageable planning and development process across the board.

    Greater Security

    DevOps may also lead to greater developmental security. DevSecOps, a broader version of DevOps, involves merging your development and operations teams with your security team.

    In essence, you shift security focuses and practices to the left of your development pipeline. Security checks, cloud monitoring, and regular examinations of code to prevent breaches or vulnerabilities happen earlier in the development process as opposed to later, closer to launch (and when problems or bugs are always harder to fix).

    DevSecOps lets your team identify and fix security issues earlier and more regularly. Any software products or apps your team puts out should be tighter in terms of code security and should be harder to breach or break by any bad actors or hackers.

    Improved Efficiency

    DevOps is very beneficial for organizations because it can improve efficiency in many key ways. DevOps culture and methodologies often require you to use automated tools such as Docker, Git, AWS, and more.

    With these automated tools, your DevOps team can quickly identify bottlenecks or potential issues and take corrective actions as needed without having to waste time. Remember, DevOps inherently means that your teams are more collaborative and communicative, so you don’t need to spend time sending messages between both departments unnecessarily.

    DevOps is very high velocity, infusing your development team with more agility and flexibility than ever before. Naturally, this is a majorly competitive advantage; it allows your team to iterate and innovate more rapidly and regularly than your competitors.

    Faster Bug Resolution

    However, DevOps can also prove advantageous to your organization by helping your company solve discovered bugs more quickly. CI or continuous integration is a core element in any DevOps team or department.

    In a nutshell, this involves checking the final build and any related code regularly. Since more checks occur under a DevOps methodology, that means your teams will be more likely to discover bugs or issues with a software product before launch.

    Furthermore, this allows your team to constantly make small changes to improve code or repair bugs immediately rather than waiting for them to lead to long-term issues later down the road. This is beneficial since it will help you:

    • Crush bugs before your clients and customers see them
    • Fix bugs before they spiral out of control by deploying patches through the cloud
    • Avoid putting off or delaying software launches
    • And more

    More broadly, DevOps methodologies let you produce smaller releases and smaller changes. Since every code change has to be run through automated testing processes before getting to production, bug fixing is both faster and rarer. 

    More Client Satisfaction

    Lastlty, and perhaps most importantly, DevOps can help your organization produce greater and more consistent client satisfaction overall. After all, the primary goal for any programming or software methodology is to make sure that clients or end-users of software have excellent experiences and don’t have any complaints.

    This is even more important in the modern day when you have to compete against other software development organizations all the time. If you want your organization to be efficient, agile, and organized, DevOps is the way to go.

    DevOps should produce software with:

    • Fewer bugs or other issues
    • More manageable software updates and releases
    • A more integrated team supporting its processes
    • And more

    All of this will contribute to a better initial and long-term experience for clients or end users. In addition, DevOps allows your team to deliver innovative solutions or code changes quickly and easily, allowing your brand overall to improve customer experiences as time goes on.

    In other words, DevOps lets you evolve your product along with the desires of your customers.

    Conclusion

    As you can see, DevOps practices and methodologies are beneficial in more ways than one. Once you adopt DevOps for your organization, you could see improved efficiency, more continuous delivery of online or software-based services and other advantages. Both you and your clients will benefit, so start adopting DevOps across your company today.

  • Latest DORA Report From Google Surfaces Raft of DevOps Challenges

    Latest DORA Report From Google Surfaces Raft of DevOps Challenges

    The annual Accelerate State of DevOps 2022 report published today by the DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) team at Google found the percentage of high performers is at a four-year low, with the percentage of low performers rising dramatically from 7% in 2021 to 19% in 2022.

    Based on a survey of 1,350 DevOps professionals, the report evaluated organizations based on the five DORA metrics: Deployment frequency, lead time for changes, time to restore service, change failure rate and operational performance. The DORA team also identified clusters of DevOps teams ranging from “starters” to “flowing” based on their overall maturity. Only 17% of respondents achieved a ‘flow’ state defined by high reliability, high stability and high throughput characteristics.

    The DORA survey sample shifted this year to include more respondents that are earlier in their careers than in previous reports. However, Claire Peters, DORA research lead at Google, said that while there are a lot of factors that impact those metrics, the current hypothesis is that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on DevOps productivity as more DevOps professionals continue to work remotely.

    The report noted a marked shift in deployment targets requiring new skills, with 54% of respondents now working with container artifacts.

    Overall, the report finds software delivery performance is beneficial to organizational performance when operational performance is also high. The challenge is the number of organizations that have achieved high operational performance is relatively small. In fact, the report also noted that site reliability engineering (SRE) practices had a negative impact on software delivery performance until an organization achieved a high level of SRE maturity.

    The report also concluded that organizations that built software on and for the cloud tended to have 1.4 times higher organizational performance than those that didn’t. The percentage of respondents using public clouds is 76%, up from 56% in 2021, while the number of respondents not using a cloud stands at 10.5%. Usage of multiple public clouds is at 26%, while 35% reported using a private cloud.

    Less clear is the impact on DevOps teams of shifting application security left. The report suggested the biggest challenge organizations face when it comes to achieving application security have more to do with cultural issues than any technical shortcomings. The report notes that organizations that focus on accelerating software delivery without implementing meaningful DevSecOps best practices find themselves in a vicious counterproductive cycle that results in applications being successfully deployed in production environments less often.

    Peters noted that there is greater developer fatigue because organizations attempt to address security issues either just before an application is deployed or they remediate applications after they are deployed. Organizations that have low levels of security practices are 1.4 times more likely to experience developer burnout.

    The DORA team used both the supply-chain levels for secure artifacts (SLSA) framework defined by Google and the Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF) defined by the National Institute of Standards (NIST) to evaluate organizations. The most widely-adopted practice is application security scanning within a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) system, with 63% of respondents reporting these tools are “very” or “completely” established. Preserving code history and using build scripts are also highly established, the report finds.

    In general, Peters said the report suggested the biggest predictor of application security success was whether an organization had a high-trust, low-blame culture focused on performance. Organizations that have these cultures tend to have higher organizational performance. Similarly, organizations with teams that felt supported through funding and leadership sponsorships tended to have higher organizational performance, the report noted. In addition, team stability and positive perceptions about one’s team also tended to lead to higher levels of organizational performance. Lastly, companies that offer flexible work arrangements tended to see higher levels of organizational performance.

    Each organization, as always, will implement DevOps best practices in ways that best fit its internal culture. However, the latest DORA report makes it clear that the more empowered a DevOps team is the more proficient they tend to become.

  • CloudBees Acquires ReleaseIQ to Advance DevOps Orchestration

    CloudBees Acquires ReleaseIQ to Advance DevOps Orchestration

    CloudBees announced today it has acquired ReleaseIQ, a provider of an orchestration platform for automating software delivery via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.

    Sacha Labourey, chief strategy officer for CloudBees, said the addition of ReleaseIQ to the CloudBees platform will provide more visibility into and control over software delivery on an end-to-end basis.

    CloudBees already provides a Flow orchestration engine within its continuous delivery platform. However, ReleaseIQ provides a similar capability across multiple continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platforms using a SaaS platform that is more accessible.

    The ReleaseIQ platform is designed to enable DevOps teams to both create and maintain pipelines using a no-code tool. That enables greater transparency into workflows via dashboards that also provide optimization recommendations. That capability makes it much simpler to troubleshoot software deployments.

    Labourey said that while ReleaseIQ can be integrated with multiple platforms including CloudBees CI, Jenkins, CircleCI, GitLab, Bamboo, ArgoCD and others, the primary focus will remain on the open source Jenkins platform that still owns the lion’s share of the DevOps market. The overall CloudBees goal remains to employ automation and remove as much friction as possible from DevOps workflows as part of an ongoing effort to improve developer productivity, he noted. CloudBees, however, regardless of the level of DevOps maturity within any organization, is committed to meeting customers where they are versus requiring them to rip and replace existing investments, Labourey added.

    The overall level of DevOps maturity may vary widely both within and between organizations. However, as more organizations realize the extent to which they depend on software to drive digital business transformation processes, the need to further automate application development and delivery becomes more apparent. While CI is widely used today, the number of organizations that have consistently implemented CD is fairly limited. The underlying infrastructure that software is deployed on typically has a unique set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that each CD platform needs to support. Platforms such as ReleaseIQ provide a higher level of abstraction through which managing the pipelines that deliver software becomes simpler.

    In general, most organizations are trying to strike some level of balance between centralizing the management of DevOps workflows and enabling development tools to adopt whatever tools they prefer. It’s not uncommon for application development teams to independently adopt any number of tools that ultimately need to be integrated with a DevOps toolchain. Each of those tools, however, contains metadata that needs to be shared with a centralized orchestration engine that automates a range of tasks across multiple pipelines based on the metadata collected from each tool.

    There are, of course, still a lot of manual DevOps processes that should be automated. CloudBees is positioning ReleaseIQ as the orchestration engine for both unifying the management of pipelines and, ultimately. enabling value stream management across increasingly complex application development environments. It may take a while to fully realize that ambition, but with the acquisition of ReleaseIQ, a new foundation is being laid.

  • Five Great DevOps Job Opportunities

    Five Great DevOps Job Opportunities

    DevOps.com is now providing a weekly DevOps jobs report through which opportunities for DevOps professionals will be highlighted as part of an effort to better serve our audience.

    Our goal in these challenging economic times is to make it easier for DevOps professionals to advance their careers.

    Of course, the pool of available DevOps talent is still relatively constrained, so when one DevOps professional takes on a new role it tends to create an opportunity for others.

    The five job postings shared this week are selected based on the company looking to hire, the vertical industry segment and, naturally, the pay scale being offered.

    We’re also committed to providing additional insights into the state of the DevOps job market. In the meantime, for your consideration:

    LinkedIn

    Underdog Fantasy
    Remote
    Senior DevOps Engineer
    $150,000 to $240,000

    SimplyHired

    DISH Wireless
    Littleton. Colorado
    Senior DevOps Engineer
    $106,210 – $143,750

    Monster.com

    UMD Energy Solutions
    Bonita Springs, Florida
    AWS Cloud Engineer
    $100,000 to $120,000

    Indeed.com

    Medispend
    Remote
    DevOps Engineer
    $100,000 to $130,000

    Dice.com

    Venusgeo
    Clinton, New Jersey
    AWS DevOps Lead
    $120,000+

  • Wipro Fires 2-Job Staff | Python Bug from 2007 | Lite Layoffs

    Wipro Fires 2-Job Staff | Python Bug from 2007 | Lite Layoffs

    Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

    This week: Wipro fires 300 for moonlighting at competitors, Python has a nasty 15-year-old bug, and companies are finding new ways to lay people off without calling it a “layoff.” (more…)