Developing Technology in the Cloud: An Informed Perspective

Part 1

Cloud technologies were in the past referred to “grid computing” and were distributed parallel environments to deal with complex workloads. The various multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments emerging for a variety of reasons. Some organizations will want to mitigate risk from a compliance perspective, others geographically and others will be on-premise and partially in the cloud. That is promise of a Federated Cloud construct.

This new type of real-world application has created a complicated toolbox for developers. You have legacy systems and older toolboxes; you have newer cloud applications and microservices. Open-source software is assisting in standardizing and speed to market and agility are being vital to keep up with the pace of innovation. 

The advantage with the cloud is to play and have a developer sandbox while experimenting with use cases. You can scale your storage and compute needs infinitely, the cloud is distributed and highly available, making the sandbox and rapid iteration, experimentation and deployment key to delivering value. We all understand that our products are becoming more data-rich and customer centric with customized nuances for each individual.

As we can scale in the Cloud, the developer can use toolsets with containers, analytics, AI and Kubernetes and you want to standardize and use particular dev toolboxes to make that process more streamlined. While many microservice applications are now de-coupled for design into the future, legacy systems have not been and require things like managed containers. Thus, we are learning to utilize new processes and resources on legacy environments as well as future-designed systems – and that is exactly why Red Hat has been so successful. 

While we are so excited by rapid developer experiences and innovation, data privacy and hacks are becoming front page news and part of daily life with our increased big data creation. We have to consider security as part of the innovation process to keep up and not create a bottleneck on deployment or advancement in things like Artificial Intelligence. Open Source Software, code and hardware, smart hybrid developments and sharing best practices will keep the industry moving forward. 

There can be privacy laws, like GDPR in Europe; some organizations uncomfortable of having all data in the cloud. The developer has to consider both the security and privacy aspects as a matter of course now. Privacy by design and security scaling with innovation is emerging as very important concepts. GDPR states you cannot hold customer data, thus, with Cloud tools, the developer must be very careful in their design choices. Storage is important with regards to data center locations and what is stored there and how it is stored. In the United States, there is similar issues with regards to health care privacy and HIPAA compliance.

IBM’s fully-certified, managed Kubernetes Service enables you to help your clients rapidly delivery their applications, while having the option of tapping into IBM’s comprehensive and intelligent cloud services, like AI, for added value and can be seen here: https://ter.li/4hrepq and try thousands in free cloud credits here: https://ter.li/nbyqh2 Through an intuitive user interface, the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service works by creating a cluster of compute hosts and deploys highly available containers. This cluster lets you securely manage the resources that you need to quickly deploy, update and scale applications with complete control.