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Category: DevOps Toolbox

  • SAP Extends Effort to Modernize App Development

    SAP Extends Effort to Modernize App Development

    SAP this week expanded the scope of the SAP Cloud Platform to include support for the ABAP programming language and made available a beta version of a Kubernetes-as-a-service offering, in effort to update its app development portfolio.

    Announced at the SAP TechEd 2018 conference, these two offerings serve as bookends for an evolving SAP strategy that seeks to include organizations that have heavily invested in ABAP over the last 20 years as well as organizations that are shifting toward employing containers to build applications based on a microservices architecture.

    Dan Lahl, vice president of product marketing for SAP, said ABAP has been widely employed by more than thousands of SAP customers to build applications using the same language that SAP employed to build its on-premises IT environment. Those applications now can be built or enhanced using an SAP Cloud platform based on a distribution of the open source Cloud Foundry platform-as-as-service (PaaS) environment.

    At the same time, Lahl said SAP is working toward hosting its distribution of Cloud Foundry on Kubernetes in addition to making available a Kubernetes-based platform alongside Cloud Foundry. SAP is also leveraging container-based technologies such as Knative and Kubeless to provide access to a serverless computing framework based on Kubernetes. That capability is also in beta.

    The SAP Cloud Platform Backend Service for generating application programming interfaces (APIs) is now available in beta, while the SAP Cloud Platform Enterprise Messaging Service—based on technology developed by Solace—is now generally available.

    Finally, SAP is making available Cloud Application Programming Model for SAP Cloud Platform, a set of framework, tools, languages and libraries based on best practices defined by SAP. Lahl noted that many of those best practices are based on DevOps methodologies that SAP is helping customers embrace as part of an effort to accelerate application development projects.

    Lahl said SAP is, for the moment, focused on modernizing the application development processes of its core developer community. ABAP support, for example, makes it possible to use a venerable programming language that most SAP customers know on a managed instance of the Cloud Foundry PaaS. But the goal is to make SAP Cloud a platform that organizations will use to build applications using multiple programming languages regardless of how many SAP applications they might have running. According to SAP, today there are more than 10,000 customers using SAP Cloud Platform.

    It’s not clear to what degree Kubernetes might supplant Cloud Foundry as a major platform for building applications in the enterprise. Lahl contended that by putting Cloud Foundry on top of Kubernetes, SAP now provides one of the richest application development tools on a platform that is rapidly becoming a de facto standard for orchestrating containers.

    It may take a while before SAP becomes a dominant provider of a platform for building custom applications. But the one thing that is clear is that SAP these days is focused on a lot more than delivering a set of packaged applications that eliminate the need to build a custom application in the first place.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Microsoft Puts Upgrade Plan in DevOps Motion

    Microsoft Puts Upgrade Plan in DevOps Motion

    Microsoft this week at its Ignite 2018 conference made it clear DevOps teams will have their hands full upgrading both databases and operating systems this Fall.

    Erin Chapple, corporate vice president for Windows Server, announced Windows Server 2019 will become generally available next month. As is the case with Windows Server 2016, there are three editions: Standard, Data Center and Essentials. The latter offering is for small businesses.

    However, the suite of management tools the company provides for its operating systems will not be available until early next year.

    Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on Windows Server Software Defined (WSSD) 2019, which provides another approach to combining compute, storage and networking on top of a hyperconverged infrastructure platform. That offering is expected to come bundled on a wide variety of hardware platforms early next year. Organizations looking to shift from a legacy rack-based approach of managing their data centers to a more modern HCI approach will have to wait for WSSD 2019 to become available.

    The company is simultaneously pushing forward with a public preview of Microsoft SQL Server 2019. In addition to adding support for faster queries and persistent storage in memory, Microsoft SQL Server 2019 packages the Hadoop Distributed File System and Apache Spark in-memory computing framework with a relational database. Microsoft is also making it possible to run SQL Server 2019 on Kubernetes clusters running on either Linux or Windows deployed on-premises or in the cloud. While the company has broadly embraced Kubernetes, its support for Kubernetes on Windows Server is not expected to be generally available until 2019.

    Microsoft also announced that a General Purpose service tier for the Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is slated to become available next week. That capability gives DevOps teams the option to deploy SQL Server databases either in a public cloud or on-premises.

    Microsoft touts the ability to run Windows Server on-premises and in the cloud as a core element of its hybrid cloud computing strategy. Right now, however, the most widely employed platform running on the Azure cloud is Linux. The company is also pushing another approach to hybrid cloud computing based on Microsoft Azure Stack, an on-premises edition of the cloud framework the company employs to drive its public cloud. An edition of Kubernetes is available in beta on Microsoft Azure Stack as well.

    Microsoft earlier this month revamped its AzureOps tools to make it easier to manage all those variations on its public cloud. But those tools have yet to be extended to on-premises environments.

    Of course, there’s no requirement that says any approach to a hybrid cloud using Microsoft technologies requires Azure. Windows Server and SQL Server both are already widely deployed across multiple public clouds. The challenge DevOps teams will face is managing all the different versions of Microsoft operating systems and databases that potentially will be strewn across an extended enterprise. It’s unlikely any organizations will be able to upgrade operating systems and databases in one wholesale effort.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Kong Inc. Defines Services-Centric Approach to Integration

    Kong Inc. Defines Services-Centric Approach to Integration

    Kong Inc. has released a feature-complete version of its namesake services broker for legacy and microservices-based applications that promises to eliminate the need for legacy application programming interface (API) management platforms.

    Company CTO Marco Palladino said traditional API management platforms, for all intents and purposes, are now dead. Formerly known as Mashape, the core technology developed by Kong Inc. has been widely employed to manage APIs. But the time has come to focus on managing services at a much higher level, he said.

    Despite Kong having been downloaded more than 45 million times, the latest version is being labeled a 1.0 release because the open source service broker has now been deemed to be feature-complete, which includes support for service mesh patterns, Kubernetes Ingress controller and backward application programming interface (API) compatibility to future releases, Palladino said.

    Kong is being positioned as a microservices API gateway capable of supporting sub-millisecond response times in a way that would not be possible to achieve using legacy API management platforms that reside in the cloud or in a local data center. Kong can be deployed on-premises or in public clouds based on virtual machines, Kubernetes or bare-metal servers. That approach makes it possible to employ Kong to manage services regardless of where they run. Kong has also developed a “Kong Brain” function that employs machine learning algorithms to optimize the flow of data traffic between services that has increased dramatically in the last few years, Palladino said.

    Palladino noted that while service meshes exist specifically for Kubernetes clusters, most enterprise IT organizations will require an approach to managing services across legacy monolithic applications and emerging microservices-based applications that are based on multiple types of runtime environments and serverless computing frameworks. Over time, Kong will integrate with various platform-specific service meshes as they emerge to further enable a more comprehensive approach to services lifecycle management, he said, adding that Kong automatically configures itself to serve traffic to new applications as they are deployed and new services are created.

    In addition, organizations can migrate from one service to another based on a different databases schema without incurring any downtime.

    When it comes to managing services, Palladino said there’s still too much focus on tribes that have emerged around specific platforms that wind up polarizing the IT industry. IT organizations clearly need a means to broker services regardless of where they run or might have originated, he said, noting API management could be viewed as a stepping stone toward achieving that goal.

    It’s not clear yet whether legacy approaches to API management are truly dead or simply in the process of transforming into a means for managing services at higher levels of abstraction. Regardless of the outcome, it’s clear that a less brittle approach to managing integration in the age of microservices will be required. Many forget, however, that in most cases a monolithic application is now just another type of service.

    — Mike Vizard

  • 5 Tips for Creating Blockchain IOS and Android Apps

    5 Tips for Creating Blockchain IOS and Android Apps

    Blockchain development and blockchain technology are playing a major role in the creation of various iOS and Android apps. Blockchain technology has seized the attention of many and when it is utilized properly, mobile app developers are able to achieve results that few thought possible.

    There are no shortage of benefits provided by blockchain development. Data security levels are increased and unnecessary intermediates are removed from the process. Financial organizations have been taking an increased level of interest in blockchain technology in recent years and this creates added opportunities for app developers.

    So, how can app developers properly capitalize on the opportunities that are created by blockchain technology and blockchain development? This guide is here to help. Here are some tips and pointers that are designed to help developers create iOS and Android apps that take advantage of blockchain technology and blockchain development.

    Focus on the Interface

    Blockchain development can be used to create all sorts of valuable iOS and Android apps, but for these apps to reach their full potential, developers must remain focused on the interface. Not considering the user’s experience during the development process could lessen the level of impact of the app.

    Is the front-end programming language operational? Is the blockchain application that is necessary for operating this language included? Has the developer considered the importance of an external database? Is the right application control being included during the development process?

    These are all questions that need to be answered so the app developer can create a quality design for the user interface. Identifying the proper analytics is also crucial. Otherwise, it becomes more difficult for developers to identify the right system. Building an admin console is a key step of the process as well.

    Take a Closer Look at the Importance of Architecture

    If a blockchain app is being created to be used on an iPhone or Android device, developers must take a closer look at the design architecture so that they can avoid common mistakes. Unfortunately, many aspects aren’t always considered, and they often involve additional processes that can add extra time to the process.

    For example, those who are planning on creating a hybrid app will need to obtain certain permissions first. The more developers know about the necessary parameters that have been established, the better their chances of creating an app that will be useful to those who rely on blockchain technology daily.

    The processors, size, memory and operational systems must be configured properly, and these configurations all fall under the architectural umbrella. Great design is crucial, and app developers who aren’t willing to consider the most vital components will come up short when it comes to their design architecture.

    Proper Platform Utilization

    An app that relies on blockchain development and technology needs the proper platform to be successful. This platform should be unique yet accessible. When issues come to the forefront (and they are going to, despite your best efforts), developers’ ability to solve these problems will be determined by the chosen platform.

    For issues to be solved, a consensus must be reached, which is easier when the correct platform has been selected. Now that more platforms are openly sourced, this makes life much easier—developers have the chance to select the platform that best aligns with all of their needs and desires.

    Whether a developer decides to choose Ethereum, Quorum or a different platform entirely, it behooves them to take the time to study the advantages and disadvantages of each, especially when blockchain technology is being utilized.

    Recognizing the Importance of Consensus Mechanisms

    Is the application being decentralized? This is one of the main questions that must be answered before this process can be completed. An iOS or Android app that is reliant on blockchain needs a consensus mechanism to work in the proper manner once it has launched.

    Without decentralization and a consensus mechanism, many of the typical problems and issues that arise are not as easy to solve. The system used to connect and provide a link needs a proper consensus. Without a consensus mechanism, the system’s ability to carry out all of the necessary tasks is severely compromised.

    Apps that are related to blockchain must be developed with the right approach. Are the necessary considerations being made? Is the best method being chosen for delivering proofs? Are the basic requirements being met when these proofs are delivered? A developer looking to take advantage of the current climate needs to be able to answer all of these questions.

    Identification of Objectives

    Last but certainly not least, developers must identify their objectives. What is the goal they are trying to accomplish by creating this app? What role is blockchain technology going to play? Are all of the necessary blockchain development principles being adhered to? Is the issue that is going to be solved being made perfectly clear?

    Answering these questions in a timely manner allows a developer to decide on the correct course of action. The same rules that apply during the creation of any other app still come into play when blockchain apps are being developed for iOS and Android users. The problem that is being solved by the creation of the app must be clearly defined.

    Are the issues being caused by data loss? What resources are being provided that were not previously available? To get the most out of the development process, the issues and the associated goals must be examined closely.

    — Harnil Oza

  • OpsRamp Extends AIOps Visibility

    OpsRamp Extends AIOps Visibility

    OpsRamp has advanced its case for AIOps via a Fall update to its software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications that adds a Topology Explorer alongside an enhanced set of Service Maps.

    In addition, OpsRamp added a cloud database monitoring capabilities for relational databases deployed on public clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

    Mahesh Ramachandran, vice president of product management for OpsRamp, said the Topology Explorer makes it possible to automate network and application discovery to accelerate impact analysis and troubleshooting. An existing Service Map capability, meanwhile, has been enhanced to allow DevOps teams to invoke visualizations within an alert to better prioritize responses.

    OpsRamp has also added a pause capability for alerts, intended to be used during maintenance windows to prevent alert floods. Alert filters now include text-based search that, when combined with the AI Inference Engine, helps resolve issues faster. DevOps teams also can create policies to notify them of alert state changes.

    Finally, OpsRamp has added reporting tools that enable DevOps teams to determine not just the amount of resources being consumed on a public cloud, but also which public cloud or on-premises environment is generating the most trouble for the IT organization.

    In general, Ramachandran said most organizations have very little way in the way of tools that enable them to realistically compare how one platform performs over another when running specific classes of workloads. By leveraging the machine learning algorithms that OpsRamp includes in its SaaS applications, enough data becomes available to provide DevOps teams with actionable insights, he said.

    AI tools typically require access to massive amounts of data. By making available IT operations tools available as a cloud service, OpsRamp is trying to make it practical for DevOps teams to employ AI on both tactical and strategic levels without requiring an IT team to acquire special data science skills, Ramachandran said, adding such an approach also provides the added benefit of making it possible to holistically manage IT silos across multiple classes of infrastructure and applications.

    IT organizations are still in the early stages of coming to terms with AIOps and its potential impact on DevOps processes. Many of the manual processes that tend to inhibit widespread adoption of DevOps are clearly going to be automated. In fact, many of those tasks will be accomplished using voice commands that bots will be able to understand. In other cases, the bots will inform DevOps teams when an issue needs to be addressed long before they would otherwise be aware of it. Less clear is how job roles within DevOps teams will evolve as it becomes easier to manage applications and infrastructure comprehensively.

    Of course, the rate that transition will occur will vary widely by organization. But rather than debating the right approach to automation, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that many of those decisions will be made by machines. The unspoken assumption being made is that humans responsible for managing IT will be comfortable that the right decisions are being made on their behalf.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Atomist Advances Developer Productivity

    Atomist Advances Developer Productivity

    Atomist is extending the reach of an automated approach to managing software delivery out to the local machines developers work on every day.

    Company founder and CEO Rod Johnson said with its Software Delivery Machine (SDM) project, Atomist seeks to eliminate much of the complexity developers currently must navigate as they build code, including making changes that require updates to dependencies across projects.

    That capability makes it easier to keep multiple development projects consistent and up to date automatically, Johnson said.

    Atomist is applying many of the concepts Johnson used to create the widely employed Spring framework as an alternative to Java Enterprise Edition (J2EE), which is now being developed under the auspices of Pivotal Software, a unit of Dell Technologies. Atomist created a domain model for software delivery based on an API server and GraphQL, an open source data query and manipulation language.

    This approach eliminates the need to work within the construct of more cumbersome framework based on, for example, YAML files, Johnson said. Rather, Atomist is making use of code to develop an alternative framework that is optimized around a more familiar API construct, which frees developers to extend the SDM in any direction that best reflects how they want to work.

    Atomist currently provides a service based on SDM to large enterprises that have aggressively embraced DevOps. Johnson said that service enables organizations to allow developers a maximum amount of flexibility within the context of policies that can be defined by an IT operations team. The local instance of SDM is intended as an open source tool for increasing individual developer productivity.

    Most organizations are becoming increasingly obsessesed with developer productivity at a time when companies recognize how dependent they are on software to differentiate themselves. The rate at which new and existing applications are being rolled out and updated has expanded considerably. For developers face to rise to that challenge, many of them embraced microservices that make it easier to add and replace new functionality using Docker containers. Those microservices, however, create a massive number of dependencies across different code bases that must be tracked. SDM can be employed to not only spin up containers images and Kubernetes clusters, but also update all the interdependent microservices spanning multiple clusters.

    Asking developers to keep track of and manually update all those dependencies involving multiple projects is not the best use of their time, Johnson said. Real DevOps progress will be achieved only when organizations provide tools that make it easier for developers to do the right thing in a way that doesn’t try to impose an inflexible framework.

    Most of the processes that organizations rely on to build code today are not nearly as automated as they should be. In fact, DevOps adoption arguably would be much further along than it is today if it didn’t require so much manual effort.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Atlassian Acquires OpsGenie to Automate Incident Management

    Atlassian Acquires OpsGenie to Automate Incident Management

    Atlassian this week announced its plans to acquire OpsGenie as part of an effort to apply DevOps principles to incident management. The announcement was made at the Altassian Summit Europe 2018 conference.

    Atlassian plans to integrate OpsGenie, which provides incident alerting and communications software, with its Jira service desk software to enable organizations to automate responses to a major incident such as a site outage using a Jira Ops incident management command center unveiled this week.

    Jens Schumacher, head of software teams for Atlassian, said that while most organizations today have processes in place to respond to minor incidents, very few have incident management processes in place to deal with significant catastrophic events. OpsGenie already has been adopted by more than 3,000 customers to enable organizations to put together a set of structure processes to recover as quickly as possible.

    Schumacher said a more structured approach to recovery is now required because so much more of a modern organization’s ability to drive revenue is tied to the availability of IT. Whenever there is a significant amount of downtime, the urgency attached to recovery process is now much greater. The combination of OpsGenie and Jira, available now via an early access program, makes it possible to predefine a structured set of workflow processes to be followed in the event of an emergency, he said, adding that by defining those processes within a common framework, IT organizations also will be able to significantly reduce the number of point products they need to navigate during a crisis.

    The combination of the two products will also aid in applying forensics to discover the root cause of any outage, Schumacher said.

    Incident management within IT environments over the last few years has been evolving into a science. There are several dedicated incident management platforms that mange everything from who needs to be alerted in what order to providing detailed instructions bringing applications back online. The challenge many organizations wrestle with today is that all the silos of IT make it difficult to approach incident management comprehensively.

    But as it becomes easier for finance officers to draw a straight line between IT downtime and lost revenues, interest in more structured approaches to recovery is on the rise. In fact, regardless of whether the root cause of an issue is a cybersecurity breach or a geological event, the recovery process is usually consistent. Incident management platforms provide the means to capture those processes in a way that creates institutional memory. Access to those best practices is often critical, because organizations can never be sure which members of the IT staff will be available during a crisis. If the one person who knows how to provision a storage system is unavailable, there should be enough information in an incident management system to enable another member of the IT team to accomplish that task.

    As is often the case when it comes to IT, the tools at hand only enables the battle to be joined. It’s the quality of the processes attached to those tools that decides whether the battle will be won or lost.

    — Mike Vizard

  • DevOps Dozen 2018 – Nominations Are Now Open

    DevOps Dozen 2018 – Nominations Are Now Open

    The DevOps Dozen awards are back and now open for nominations. This fourth annual DevOps Dozen honors the best of the best—the leaders and innovators in the DevOps community. This year’s awards will include 12 categories, with a winner chosen from each. The top four to six nominees in each category will become finalists, who will be selected based upon the number of nominations they received. You can nominate up to two entrants in each category; however, you can make only one nomination per person. In addition, everyone nominating will be required to provide their name and email address; while that won’t thwart any ballot-stuffing, we hope people will be trustworthy during the nomination process. The winners will be selected by our panel of judges.

    Last day to submit your nominations for the DevOps Dozen 2018 awards is Oct 10, 2018. Here’s where to vote: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/devopsdozen

    Who are the judges? This was tough. We couldn’t have anyone who might be eligible for an award. That disqualifies vendors, practitioners and many others. However, I think we have four great judges:

    1. Alan Shimel, founder and editor in chief, staging-devopsy.kinsta.cloud
    2. George Hulme, longtime tech journalist and editor at staging-devopsy.kinsta.cloud and Security Boulevard
    3. Jayne Groll, CEO and co-founder of the DevOps Institute
    4. Helen Beal, DevOpsologist at Ranger4.

    So what are the dozen categories for the DevOps Dozen this year? That you can get on the site itself, but here they are as well:

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    Thank you again for your enthusiastic response to last year’s awards. The full list of 2017 finalists and winners are available to view here.

    There are so many great companies and people involved in DevOps that it’s always difficult to pick the winners. We know some worthy choices will not be voted tops in their category; however, acknowledging them in our awards process helps show how important they are in the DevOps space.

    As stated earlier, the top four to six nominees in each category will be designated as finalists, who then can submit a presentation on why they deserve the award to judges@devops.com. Finalists will be announced the second week of November and the winners, who will be chosen by our panel of judges, will be announced in December.

    If you have questions, send them to DD@devops.com. Voting for finalist nominees is open for three weeks, so don’t waste any time—nominate your favorites today. Good luck to everyone vying to be one of the DevOps Dozen 2018!

    — Alan Shimel

  • VMware Looks to ‘Ruthlessly’ Automate IT

    VMware Looks to ‘Ruthlessly’ Automate IT

    VMware, at VMworld 2018 this week, advanced an ambitious campaign to automate IT management by announcing a deal to acquire CloudHealth Technologies and then previewing a Project Magna initiative that employs machine learning algorithms and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) to create what VMware describes as self-driven data centers.

    VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger told conference attendees that, as part of achieving that goal in the era of the cloud, every aspect of IT now needs to be automated.

    “The rule of the cloud is to ruthlessly automate everything,” he said.

    Project Magna represents an effort to centralize AI research and development to enable IT organizations to reallocate resources to building applications by eliminating many of the manual tasks that conspire to make IT inflexible.

    At the same time, increased levels of automation will serve to reduce the cost of labor associated with managing IT, which remains the single highest cost within most IT budgets. Without increased levels of automation, those costs inevitably will rise as IT organizations embrace not only public clouds but also emerging new platforms such as Kubernetes.

    Gelsinger this week made it clear VMware views being able to automate the management of Kubernetes as an opportunity to expand the reach and scope of its management offerings.

    The addition of CloudHealth Technologies to the VMware portfolio adds a cloud operations platform that spans Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Once the acquisition is formally closed, VMware has pledged to integrate its cloud automation services, Secure State and Wavefront cloud services with the CloudHealth platform. The CloudHealth platform will be rebranded VMware Cloud Operations. Those moves come on the heels of a significant expansion of the portfolio of DevOps tools the company also announced this week.

    VMware also revealed its is working on the Dimension project with Dell EMC and Lenovo, which will create a hyperconverged architecture optimized for deployment at the network edge. Project Dimension will make use of VMware NSX network virtualization software and the software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) platform gained by the company’s acquisition of VeloCloud to connect servers running at the network edge. That initiative complements the existing Pulse project for managing internet of things (IoT) devices, for which VMware announced REST application programming interface (API) support and which will be available as an on-premises or a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application.

    VMware this week also unveiled updates to updates to its vRealize automation portfolio that enable organizations to rightsize workflows and automate host-based placement of those workloads. The core vRealize Automation platform also sports a new user interface and integration with open source Ansible Tower automation software and integration with Pivotal Container Service (PKS), an instance of Kubernetes. Version 7.5 of vRealize Automation 7.5 also features enhanced AWS and Azure support.

    It’s unclear to what degree increased automation will transform how IT is managed within the context of modern DevOps processes. But the one thing that is clear is the economics of IT are being altered. Via automation VMware is sharply reducing the need for IT specialists in favor of “super” administrators capable of managing compute, storage, networking and security at unprecedented levels of scale in a much more integrated fashion. How much of that will be accomplished by AI is still anyone’s guess. But it’s already clear the job of the average IT administrator will soon be transformed utterly.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Mirantis Modeling Tool Extends SDI Scope and Reach

    Mirantis Modeling Tool Extends SDI Scope and Reach

    Mirantis has added a modeling tool to its portfolio that enables users to allocate IT infrastructure that has been distributed across multiple data centers to a common set of workloads.

    Company CEO Adrian Ionel said the latest edition of the Mirantis Cloud Platform (MCP) for building provide clouds on OpenStack or Kubernetes platforms now includes a Mirantis Infrastructure Model Designer tool that makes it possible to manage IT infrastructure residing in multiple data centers as though they were one logical resource. In effect, slices of distributed data centers can be allocated to run specific classes of application workloads, he said.

    The Mirantis tool is based on open source software spanning Cookiecutter, Reclass and Salt projects that Mirantis is employing to enable users to apply management templates across multiple distributed data centers. The goal is to make it possible for IT organizations to employ a software-defined framework that makes it easier to not only manage distributed IT environments, but also change the configuration of those environments as the nature of application workloads change over time, Ionel said.

    The Mirantis modeling tool provides a declarative approach to managing software-defined infrastructure that doesn’t require IT operations teams to learn how to program, he added.

    Ionel said that as IT organizations invest in IT infrastructure, they need to deploy multiple classes of application workloads on the same systems. Each of those application workloads has distinctly different attributes and requirements. For example, a big data application running on Hadoop today has different infrastructure requirements than an analytics application infused with machine learning data that might be deployed tomorrow. That said, most IT organizations won’t be able to replace IT infrastructure as application workloads evolve, he said, noting the Mirantis tool provides a means to easily reconfigure IT infrastructure from a central location without requiring IT personnel to be present in each local data center.

    Virtualization of servers and now storage and networks is a concept that has now permeated data centers for decades. Mirantis is effectively taking that concept to its next logical conclusion by making it possible to maximize utilization of data centers. In fact, Ionel noted, templates can be configured to prioritize the running of different workloads on the same infrastructure.

    As software-defined infrastructure (SDI) continues to mature, it’s becoming apparent that data centers soon will be managed at much higher levels of abstractions than they typically are today. Instead of trying to navigate individual compute, storage and networking silos, IT organizations will be able to manage data center resources on demand. The implications of the level of automation go well beyond simply enabling IT organizations to be more agile—the entire organizational structure of IT organizations will need to evolve.

    Obviously, organizations that have embraced DevOps are further down than the SDI path than most. But as SDI continues to be able to automate IT infrastructure at levels of unprecedented scale, it’s clear there’s still a long road ahead in terms of how just how extended those DevOps processes can become.

    — Mike Vizard