Google Cloud has taken its Next event to London – and the company stressed its commitment and capabilities to European businesses in the process.

The company took to the ExCeL to announce a variety of product updates and customer news, with Anthos, its hybrid cloud services platform, top of the bill.

The general availability (GA) launch of Migrate for Anthos, announced today, aims to provide a more straightforward path to convert physical servers or VMs from multiple clouds – the reason why Anthos was rebranded at Next in San Francisco back in April – directly into containers in Anthos GKE. The updated service will be available at no additional cost and does not need an Anthos subscription to activate.

“Migrate for Anthos makes it easy to modernise your applications without a lot of manual effort or specialised training,” a blog post from director of product management Jennifer Lin and VP product and design Pali Bhat noted. “After upgrading your on-prem systems to containers with Migrate for Anthos, you’ll benefit from a reduction in OS-level management and maintenance, more efficient resource utilisation, and easy integration with Google Cloud services for data analytics, AI and ML, and more.”

Another new product moving to GA was Cloud Code, which enables developers to write, debug, and deploy code to Google Cloud, or any Kubernetes cluster, through extensions to popular integrated developer environments (IDEs). This was by no means the only developer-centric product launched, with a hybrid version of API management tool Apigee also announced.

In terms of customers, the biggest announcement was John Lewis, which, as a blog attributed to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian notes, is utilising Google Cloud for greater eCommerce benefits, as well as Google’s artificial intelligence and machine learning expertise. The retailer has worked with Google for half a decade, firstly around productivity through G Suite and then to create a centralised data platform with Google Cloud.

Retail has become a major area for the biggest cloud providers over the past year, with particular focus on Microsoft and Google’s clouds given Amazon’s strength. One of Google Cloud’s biggest customer acquisitions this quarter has been fellow UK supermarket Sainsbury’s, with machine learning again cited. Yet at the start of this year, following Albertson’s move to Microsoft, 451 Research told this publication to beware the narrative of retailers ‘fleeing AWS.’

Other customers referenced at the event included Vodafone, using Google Cloud to develop a data analytics platform called Neuron, as well as ride hailing app Kapten.

Analysis

The timing of the event could be seen as portentous, as some of Europe’s most powerful countries are looking to fight back at what it sees as a monopoly among US cloud providers.

At the end of last month, the German federal ministry for economic affairs and energy, alongside counterparts at the French ministry of economy and finance, issued a press release announcing plans to build a Euro-centric ‘secure and trustworthy data infrastructure.’ Amazon Web Services (AWS) told Bloomberg in a statement at the time that while the idea of a national cloud was ‘interesting’ it ‘in reality… removes many of the fundamental benefits of cloud computing.’

Google Cloud’s data centre map has seven European sites listed; alongside the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium, there are regions located in London, Frankfurt, Zurich and Warsaw. The latter was the most recent to launch, in September. For comparison Microsoft Azure also has presence in seven countries, but swapping France, Ireland and Norway for Belgium, Finland and Poland.

Writing in a blog, Google Cloud EMEA president Chris Ciauri – a high profile signing from Salesforce just a few months before – noted today’s developments were part of an ongoing commitment to ‘make Google Cloud the best place for digital transformation for European organisations.’

“Europe’s ambition for a successful digital transition is something we have always strived to support and enable,” Ciauri wrote. “Our cloud is designed to fully empower European organisations’ strict data security and privacy requirements and preferences. Where data resides, who has access to customers’ data, and protections for the privacy and security of customers’ data is central to our offering.”

This need for privacy and security above all else has been emphasised in research conducted by analyst CCS Insight. The company’s 2019 CIO survey data found that trust for Google Cloud among senior IT executives was going up as EMEA remained a primary growth area.

It is almost a year to the day since Kurian took over Google Cloud after the departure of Diane Greene. At the time, as this publication reported, Kurian’s in-tray would consist of two primary goals: bolster sales and improve industry education and trust around the company’s value proposition. The first has been achieved, or at least plenty of effort has gone towards it, while the second has also seen a lot of endeavour.

“Google will need to continue to push its communications hard over the next 12 months as many still don’t understand the separation of Google Cloud from the consumer business,” said Nick McQuire, VP enterprise at CCS Insight. “Messaging its corporate strategy is imperative especially as ethics, governance and responsibility have now become crucial indicators for investment in not only cloud computing, but its crown jewel machine learning as well.”

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Google Cloud has announced the acquisition of CloudSimple, a California-based provider of software to help organisations run VMware workloads in the cloud.

The move expands on the companies’ existing partnership and will enable Google to bring forward a fully integrated VMware migration path, with the promise of improved support.

“Apps [from VMware] can run exactly the same as they have been on-premises, but with all the benefits of the cloud, like performance, elasticity, and integration with key cloud services and technologies,” wrote Rich Sanzi, VP engineering at Google Cloud, in a blog post. “Best of all, customers can do all this without having to rearchitect existing VMware-based applications and workloads, which helps them operate more efficiently and reduce costs, while also allowing IT staff to maintain consistency and use their existing VMware tools, workflows and support.

“To that end, we believe in a multi-cloud world and will continue to provide choice for our customers to use the best technology in their journey to the cloud,” added Sanzi.

This may not go down as the most surprising acquisition of 2019, given the announcement in August of extended entente cordiale between VMware and Google Cloud. The companies’ solution which enabled customers to run VMware workloads on-prem, in the cloud or as part of a hybrid architecture was based on CloudSimple’s technology.

CloudSimple had a similar offering in place with Microsoft, allowing organisations to run native VMware environments at scale on the Azure cloud. Guru Pangal, CloudSimple CEO, noted that while partnerships with the two hyperscalers taught the company how to ‘dance amongst the elephants’, Google Cloud’s ‘innovation prowess’ and ‘clear leadership’ in analytics sealed the deal.

“We saw the incredible potential to transform enterprise workloads to the cloud by partnering more strategically with a cloud provider who could help us with larger investments and tighter integration with the cloud to realise the massive potential of our offering,” Pangal wrote. “Google Cloud’s amazing innovation prowess, modern infrastructure and clear leadership in areas like smart analytics convinced us that joining this incredible team will accelerate our joint vision.”

The move, for which financial terms were not disclosed, represents the fourth Google Cloud acquisition of 2019. CloudSimple follows on from enterprise data pipeline provider Alooma in February, business intelligence platform Looker in June and storage vendor Elastifile in July.

“The acquisition of CloudSimple continues to demonstrate Google Cloud’s commitment to providing enterprise customers a broad suite of solutions to modernise their IT infrastructure,” said Sanzi.

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The issue of shared responsibility in cloud security is an issue which refuses to go away. Yet according to a new report from backup and disaster recovery managed services provider (MSP) 4sl, organisations are risking a data disaster by misunderstanding cloud providers’ backup processes.

The study, which polled 200 UK enterprises, found a majority of respondents believe the backup times for their various cloud products are longer than the advertised standards.

The hyperscale clouds are a primary example. The report notes Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform do not offer backup as standard on its own. Securing such data has long been a booming channel industry for independent MSPs and others – at least until AWS, for instance, launched AWS Backup at the start of this year to take a cut.

Yet the vast majority of those polled believed backup did exist as standard. More than four in five agreed this for AWS (81%) and Azure (84%), while an overwhelming 92% of respondents said so for Google.

Even for products with standard backup included, respondents believed they were getting more than they had – although a difference was evident in how much. For Office 365 SharePoint Online and Teams files, where the backup is 93 and 90 days respectively, around half (55% and 50%) knew where they stood. For products with only a short sprint, such as 14 days for Teams messages and Office 365 Exchange Online, this drops to 22% and 27% respectively.

“With cloud infrastructure services and applications firmly entrenched in 21st century IT strategy, enterprises need to be certain that their cloud and backup strategies are operating in concert – with any change to cloud strategy accompanied by changes in backup policy,” the report notes. “However, this is not consistently the case.”

The one product which came out of the rankings relatively unscathed was Salesforce. The CRM giant promises 90 days as standard backup retention, with more than half of respondents (55%) knowing this and almost four in five whose backups are therefore not at risk as a result.

Yet the findings – perhaps not entirely surprising given 4sl’s line of business – should come as a warning to organisations. “The desire to pass on responsibility for backup to service providers is understandable – backup environments are becoming extremely complex, and the peace of mind that a responsible partner is managing backup can be invaluable,” said Barnaby Mote, 4sl CEO and founder. “However, enterprises need to understand that in the main the standard level of backup provided for infrastructure or software as a service won’t meet their needs.”

Organisations back up data as a matter of course, not least for privacy and compliance but also to garner insights and analysis. Speaking to this publication in August, David Friend, CEO of cloud storage provider Wasabi Technologies, noted his view that storage would become a ‘commodity’, and that issues of cost around backing up what where would simply no longer exist.

“We [shouldn’t] think of data as sort of a scarcity… more a mindset of data abundance,” said Friend. “The idea that data storage gets to be so cheap that it’s not worth deleting anything. We have to think about data as something which has probably got future value in excess of what we think it might have today; we need to think of cloud storage the same way we think of electricity or bandwidth.”

You can read the full 4sl report here (pdf, no opt-in required).

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has filed with the US Court of Federal Claims to protest the decision to award the $10 billion-rated JEDI government cloud computing contract to Microsoft, according to reports.

As first reported by the Federal Times, and later confirmed by AWS, chief executive Andy Jassy told employees of plans at an all-hands meeting on November 14, citing potential presidential interference making the contract process ‘very difficult’ for government agencies.

Per the report, Jassy also claimed in the meeting that customers claim AWS is ‘about 24 months ahead of Microsoft’ when it comes to functionality and maturity.

AWS already holds one key card with its continued running of the CIA’s cloud operations, having been at full operational capability since the start of 2015. According to Nextgov, the agency earmarked in April plans for more commercial cloud contracts at a cumulative value approaching $10bn.

Following the decision to award the contract to Microsoft last month, many industry pundits continued to question supposed executive interference, as well as the setup of the Department of Defense (DoD) with regard to single tenant or multi-cloud operations.

At the time, AWS said it was ‘surprised’ about the conclusion and that it ‘remain[ed] deeply committed to continuing to innovate for the new digital battlefield’, but stopped short of confirming whether an appeal would be put in place.

“AWS is uniquely experienced and qualified to provide the critical technology the US military needs, and remains committed to supporting the DoD’s modernisation efforts,” an AWS spokesperson said in a statement. “We also believe it’s critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence.

“Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias – and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified,” the spokesperson added.

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Salesforce is moving its Marketing Cloud suite onto Microsoft Azure in an expansion of the companies’ partnership – and a big win for Microsoft.

The move will also see the two companies integrate Sales Cloud and Service Cloud with productivity and collaboration suite Microsoft Teams.

“By bringing together the power of Azure and Microsoft Teams with Salesforce, our aim is to help businesses harness the power of Microsoft Cloud to better serve customers,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a statement, while a statement attributed to Salesforce co-CEOs Marc Benioff and Keith Block noted that the company was ‘excited to expand our partnership with Microsoft and bring together the leading CRMs with Azure and Teams to deliver incredible customer experiences.’

Details are thin on the migration plan itself, aside from Salesforce moving Marketing Cloud from its own data centres to Azure in the coming months. The press materials can give away some of the intentions with words such as ‘preferred’ indicating a multi-cloud setup, yet the release simply notes that Salesforce ‘names Microsoft Azure as its public cloud provider for Marketing Cloud.’

Microsoft is by no means the only major cloud provider Salesforce works with. The company has had a longstanding relationship with Google Cloud on the software side, last year receiving a partner award from Google. As far as Amazon Web Services (AWS), the long time cloud infrastructure leader goes, only last week AWS and Salesforce, alongside Genesys and The Linux Foundation, launched the open data-focused Cloud Information Model. The companies also align on integration with Salesforce an advanced member of the AWS Partner Network (APN).

Last month Microsoft noted there was ‘material growth’ in Azure contracts of $10 million or more in what were strong results compared with stuttering figures for AWS and Google. Among the company’s more recent customer wins, alongside the controversial $10bn JEDI government cloud contract last month, are Walt Disney Studios and subsidiary LinkedIn.

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No cloud is created equal – and according to a benchmark analysis of the biggest providers from network intelligence software provider ThousandEyes, performance varies between the hyperscalers with some potentially surprising findings.

The report, ThousandEyes’ 2019-2020 Cloud Performance Benchmark, assessed more than 320 million data points collected from almost 100 global metro locations over the course of a month. The study focused on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), as well as Alibaba Cloud and IBM Cloud.

The research not only assessed the speed of traffic being delivered by the biggest clouds, but also how it was getting there. ThousandEyes argued GCP and Azure rely heavily on private backbone networks, while AWS and Alibaba rely more heavily on the public internet. Fighting for room amid traffic jams means inevitable performance downturns. Last year’s report argued similar, exploring how AWS’ traffic only comes into its architectural backbone close to the target region.

Connectivity through China was seen as a crucial area of analysis – and the research found that even Alibaba suffered packet loss when crossing the Great Firewall.

Naturally, in some areas Alibaba would have been naturally considered the best of the bunch. Analysing the Singapore regions, customers in China using Alibaba would have a three times quicker service than IBM. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the research also found Alibaba outperformed the rest when it came to China-Hong Kong network speed.

As a result, for enterprises looking – and potentially avoiding – China, the research concluded there were viable options. Regular readers of this publication will be aware of the presence Singapore and Hong Kong can bring; the most recent analysis from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) last year found the former had overtaken the latter as the strongest Asia-Pacific cloud nation. China, by contrast, was ranked second from last among 14 nations.

Compared with last year’s report, there are similarities. As can be expected, many of the headline-grabbing elements of reports such as this are to show that the long-term market leader – in this instance of course AWS – is more fallible than may be thought.

The report explored AWS Global Accelerator – Amazon’s fee paying service introduced this time last year for customers to use the AWS private backbone – and found that while performance gains were appreciable, it was not a one-size-fits-all solution.

Ultimately, as cloud workloads continue to become more complex, then the conversation around network and performance becomes more nuanced.

“It is imperative for enterprise IT leaders to understand that cloud architectures are complex and not to rely on network performance and connectivity assumptions or instincts while designing them,” the report concludes. “Enterprises relying heavily on the public cloud or considering a move to the cloud must arm themselves with the right data on an ongoing basis to guide the planning and operational stages.

“Every organisation is different, cloud architectures are highly customised and hence these results must be reviewed through the lens of one’s own business in choosing providers, regions and connectivity approaches.”

You can read the full report here (email required).

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Another day, another example of misunderstanding shared responsibility when it comes to cloud security. Or is it?

A new report from identity and access management (IAM) provider Centrify has argued that while many organisations understand the basics of shared responsibility, the increasing complexity of workloads means that confusion occurs when it comes to privileged access.

The study, titled ‘Reducing Risk in Cloud Migrations: Controlling Privileged Access to Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments’, polled more than 700 respondents across the UK, US, and Canada. Three in five (60%) respondents said security was the leading challenge when it came to cloud migration generally, while more than half (51%) affirmed they were taking different approaches to securing cloud workloads compared with on-premises.

Yet the responses begin to unravel after this. 60% of those polled said they believed cloud providers were responsible for securing privileged access. This goes to show that while some data may be more privileged than others, it all falls under the same bucket.

Cloud providers, as they frequently note, are responsible for the security of the cloud – infrastructure and uptimes et al – while the onus is on the user for security in the cloud; applications and data. While not being able to cut the cord completely, vendors have gradually taken more proactive steps; none more so than Amazon Web Services, who this time last year launched a new offering to help mitigate against open bucket misunderstandings – which are frequently an open goal for criminals.

For Centrify, the company’s focus on privileged access management (PAM) can be seen in other survey responses. More than two thirds (68%) of those polled said they were not implementing PAM best practices for cloud environments, while more than three quarters (76%) said they use more than one identity directory for their cloud strategy, putting them at risk of ‘identity sprawl’ attacks.

Organisations predominantly saw applying privileged access controls as a way to secure access to cloud service management – cited by 71% – while secure access to cloud workloads and containers was cited by more than half (53%). The report notes how that the more specific the privilege is, the interest diminishes in securing it.

In terms of best practices companies utilise, unsurprisingly the most popular was multi-factor authentication across all privileged access accounts – albeit only cited by 60% of those polled. The remaining factors were used by less than half of respondents, from operating a ‘least privileged access’ model (43%), to privileged session monitoring (38%). It must be noted that many of these questions come down to how many clients have an ‘all-in-one’ security offering, compared with a more bits-and-pieces strategy.

Centrify argues there are five key actions organisations should take; understanding privileged access to cloud environments was the company’s responsibility; reducing risk associated with identity sprawl; enforce a least privilege model; employ a common security model; and modernise your security approach, focusing on cloud-native PAM.

“We know that 80% of data breaches involved privileged access abuse, so it’s critical that organisations understand what they are responsible for when it comes to cloud security, and take a least privilege approach to controlling privileged access to cloud environments,” said Centrify CEO Tim Steinkopf. “Too much access and privilege puts their workloads and data at risk.”

You can read the full report here (email required).

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IBM is looking to target financial services customers with the launch of what is being claimed as the world’s first financial services-ready public cloud – in association with Bank of America.

In some respects, this can be seen as a glorified customer update. Bank of America will be a ‘committed collaborator’ to use the platform, built on IBM’s public cloud, and will host key applications to support its 66 million banking customers.

Yet the companies have collaborated extensively on the product, naturally designed to stringent security practices. The duo is working with Promontory, an IBM business unit focused on financial services regulatory compliance consulting, while strict compliance will be enforced among ISVs or SaaS providers who wish to participate.

Red Hat OpenShift will be deployed as the product’s primary Kubernetes environment to manage containerised software, with more than 190 API-driven services being issued to create new cloud-native applications.

Financial services is an important battleground for the leading clouds. Amazon Web Services (AWS) cites three primary customers in this industry; Liberty Mutual, Starling Bank, and Capital One. The latter hit the headlines for the wrong reasons after a data breach was confirmed in July, although the company subsequently noted its cloud operating model helped solve the issue at greater speed. For Microsoft Azure, MetLife, German savings bank Provinzial and South African Nedbank are among its key clients.

This is not the entire story, however, as many financial services firms are looking to hybrid cloud to ensure sufficient digital adoption. According to a report from Nutanix issued in April, more than one in five financial organisations polled said they were deploying a hybrid cloud model, with the vast majority (91%) saying hybrid was their ‘ideal’ IT model.

“This is one of the most important collaborations in the financial services industry cloud space,” said Cathy Bessant, Bank of America chief operations and technology officer in a statement. “This industry-first platform will allow Bank of America to use the public cloud, putting data security, resiliency, privacy and customer information safety need at the forefront of decision making.

“By setting a standard that addresses the concern of hosting highly confidential information, we aim to drive the public cloud to a safety level that is unmatched,” Bessant added.

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Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Microsoft’s most eye-catching announcement at MS Ignite earlier this week was around Azure Arc which, similar to AWS Outposts and Google Anthos, allows Azure to run and be run on its hyperscale rivals.

The rationale, as the company has put it in the press materials, was to go beyond the usual definitions of hybrid cloud in an area which is rapidly becoming more than table stakes for the hyperscalers. Mark Russinovich, Azure CTO, told ZDnet that it was what the company is considering as ‘hybrid 2.0.’

“Enterprises rely on a hybrid technology approach to take advantage of their on-premises investment and, at the same time, utilise cloud innovation,” Julia White, Azure corporate vice president, wrote in a blog post. “As more business operations and applications expand to include edge devices and multiple clouds, hybrid capabilities must enable apps to run seamlessly across on-premises, multi-cloud and edge devices.

“Without coherence across these environments, cost and complexity grow exponentially,” added White. “Today, we take a significant leap forward to enable customers to move from just hybrid cloud to truly deliver innovation anywhere with Azure.”

First up on the list of services to go into Arc are Kubernetes and Azure SQL Analytics. Customers will now ‘have the flexibility to deploy Azure SQL Database and Azure Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale where they need it on any Kubernetes cluster’, as the company puts it.

While the three hyperscalers now have options where services can be deployed on different clouds, don’t imagine for a moment that they are all arm-in-arm walking into the sunset singing Kumbaya. At the time of VMworld in August – VMware having extensive partnerships with the three biggest clouds – Pivot3 CMO Bruce Milne noted the ‘tension’ in the air.

“There’s an obvious strategic tension in VMware’s collaboration with the hyperscale cloud providers, but for now it appears they’ve agreed to a collaborative détente,” said Milne. “Watch this space because that friction is sure to generate sparks eventually.”

Nick McQuire, VP enterprise at CCS Insight, noted the changes Microsoft had made, but with a caveat.

“Over 60% of enterprises use multiple clouds and a mix of on-premises and public cloud computing in their businesses so providing a single control pane, consistent management and security across this multi-dimensional environment is now becoming the new rules of engagement in the cloud wars,” said McQuire. “It means that Microsoft is becoming more attentive to customer needs, but it is also an indication that battle lines of competition in cloud are shifting towards managing the control pane.

“With the arrival of multi-cloud management in Azure, we are now seeing perhaps the biggest shift yet in Azure’s strategic evolution.”

Perhaps the most comprehensive analysis was from regular Forbes contributor Janakiram MSV. Alongside noting the changes to the control plane, Janakiram noted where Microsoft is looking in terms of customer focus. “With Azure Arc, Microsoft is enabling enterprises with legacy infrastructure to join the hybrid cloud bandwagon,” he wrote. “Microsoft is not alienating customers running legacy hardware and VMs from the hybrid cloud. VMs are treated as first-class citizens in the world of Azure Arc.”

“Microsoft’s hybrid strategy based on Azure Arc and Azure Stack looks compelling and convincing,” Janakiram added. “Azure Arc’s key differentiation lies in the balance between traditional, VM-based workloads and modern containerised workloads that operate in the same context of the hybrid and multi-cloud environments.”

You can find out more about Azure Arc by visiting here.

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Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) software provider CircleCI has been acting on its expansion plans following the $56 million (£44.8m) secured in series D funding in July. Now, the company is ready for business in London – and has hired a new head of EMEA to push things along.

Sharp observers looking at the almost 250 faces which comprise the CircleCI team would have noticed a recent addition at the foot of the list. Nick Mills joined the company in September having previously held leading sales roles at Stripe and Facebook, among others, invariably concerned with international expansion.

At CircleCI, Mills will be responsible for EMEA – which the company says represents almost a quarter of its overall business – in everything which is classified as non-engineering. “There’s a huge amount of expansion opportunity,” Mills tells CloudTech. “I’ve already had some interesting conversations in the first few weeks here with companies in fintech and mobility, on-demand services. They really see CircleCI and CI/CD as a fundamental critical enabler that can help their teams increase productivity.”

The company certainly appears to be seeing gains from this bet. Big tech names on the customer roster include Facebook, Spotify and Docker, while investor Scale Venture Partners described the company earlier this year as the ‘DevOps standard for companies looking to accelerate their delivery pipeline while increasing quality.’

For CEO Jim Rose, who has been in London this week for the launch, it is the expansion of a journey which began for him in 2014, first as COO before moving up to the chief executive role a year later.

“When I first got to the company, there were about 30 individual logos in the CI/CD market, and that’s been whittled way down,” Rose tells CloudTech. “Now there is, really, ourselves, a couple of smaller, standalone, very focused CI/CD players, and then you’ve got some of the larger platforms that are trying to go end-to-end.”

Rose cites the ‘peanut butter manifesto’, the now infamous document from Yahoo which used the foodstuff as a metaphor for businesses spreading themselves too thinly across multiple offerings, as evidence for why the larger platforms will struggle.

“We have really gone for the opposite of that strategy,” he explains. “For the vast majority of large customers, you can only move certain systems one at a time. Customers ask us all the time… how do we build that CI/CD system but also the most flexible system so that regardless of what you have in place inside of your overall enterprise or team, it’s really easy and seamless?”

There are various aspects which pull together the company’s strategy. Back in the mid-2000s, if a company built a new application it would hire a bunch of developers, flesh out the spec, write custom code across every line and then package and ship the resultant product. As Rose puts it, any custom code written today takes on the mantle of orchestrating all the pieces together, from the plethora of open source libraries and third-party services.

Continuous delivery is a hornet’s nest – it’s very easy to get to version one, but then the complexity comes as your developers start pushing a lot faster and harder

“What we’re helping customers do is, across all of these hundreds and thousands and millions of projects, start to take a heartbeat of all those different common components and use that to help people build better software,” says Rose. “If you have a version that’s bad or insecure, if you’re trying to pull a library from a certain registry that has stability problems, if you have certain services that are just unavailable… these are all new challenges to software development teams.

“Using the wisdom of the crowd and the wisdom of the platform overall, we’re starting to harness that and use that on behalf of our customers so they can make their build process more stable, more secure, and higher performing.

“Honestly, continuous delivery is a hornet’s nest,” adds Rose. “It’s really complicated to run into one of these systems at scale. It’s very easy to get to version one, but then the complexity comes as you bring it out to more teams, as you add more projects, as your developers start pushing a lot faster and a lot harder.”

For a large part of the company’s history, the individual developer or team of developers was the route in for sales; almost in an infiltrative ‘shadow IT’ context, whether it was the CTO of a small startup or a team lead at a larger company. While this can still be the case at enterprise-level organisations, CircleCI realised it needed more of a top-down, hybrid sales approach.

“One of the biggest changes in our space – not just CI/CD, but the developer space more generally – is developers historically have not been conditioned to pay for things,” says Rose. “If you needed a new tool, a new script, the developers would either go out and create it on their own or they use an open source service.

“What’s changed over the last two or three years is now developers, because their time is so valuable, have the budget and the expectation that they have the opportunity to pay for services that help you move faster. A lot of what we do from a sales perspective is help development teams understand how to procure technology. What’s necessary? What do you think about what you look at? How do we help you through that commercial process?”

Mills will be looking to guide EMEA customers through this process, with the stakes high and the motivation to assist leading tech companies strong. “A lot of companies are successful in and of themselves and can build their businesses, but the space we’re in really has the potential to enable the most successful tech companies today and of the future,” Mills explains.

“Ultimately, the creation they can generate as companies can obviously help them move quickly, increase the scale and pace of product delivery,” he adds. “To me, that feels like incredibly high-level work to be doing and high value.”

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.