At CloudEXPO Silicon Valley, June 24-26, 2019, Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with expanded DevOpsSUMMIT and FinTechEXPO programs within the DXWorldEXPO agenda. Successful transformation requires a laser focus on being data-driven and on using all the tools available that enable transformation if they plan to survive over the long term. A total of 88% of Fortune 500 companies from a generation ago are now out of business. Only 12% still survive. Similar percentages are found throughout enterprises of all sizes.

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Serverless Computing or Functions as a Service (FaaS) is gaining momentum. Amazon is fueling the innovation by expanding Lambda to edge devices and content distribution network. IBM, Microsoft, and Google have their own FaaS offerings in the public cloud. There are over half-a-dozen open source serverless projects that are getting the attention of developers.

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If you are part of the cloud development community, you certainly know about “serverless computing,” almost a misnomer. Because it implies there are no servers which is untrue. However the servers are hidden from the developers. This model eliminates operational complexity and increases developer productivity.

We came from monolithic computing to client-server to services to microservices to the serverless model. In other words, our systems have slowly “dissolved” from monolithic to function-by-function. Software is developed and deployed as individual functions – a first-class object and cloud runs it for you. These functions are triggered by events that follow certain rules. Functions are written in a fixed set of languages, with a fixed set of programming models and cloud-specific syntax and semantics. Cloud-specific services can be invoked to perform complex tasks. So for cloud-native applications, it offers a new option. But the key question is what should you use it for and why.

Amazon’s AWS, as usual, spearheaded this in 2014 with an engine called AWS Lambda. It supports Node, Python, C# and Java. It uses AWS API triggers for many AWS services. IBM offers OpenWhisk as a serverless solution that supports Python, Java, Swift, Node, and Docker. IBM and third parties provide service triggers. The code engine is Apache OpenWhisk. Microsoft provides similar function in its Azure Cloud function. Google cloud function supports Node only and has lots of other limitations.

This model of computing is also called “event-driven” or FaaS (Function as a Service). There is no need to manage provisioning and utilization of resources, nor to worry about availability and fault-tolerance. It relieves the developer (or DevOps) from managing scale and operations. Therefore, the key marketing slogans are event-driven, continuous scaling, and pay by usage. This is a new form of abstraction that boils down to function as the granular unit.

At the micro-level, serverless seems pretty simple – just develop a procedure and deploy to the cloud. However, there are several implications. It imposes a lot of constraints on developers and brings a load of new complexities plus cloud lock-in. You have to pick one of the cloud providers and stay there, not easy to switch. Areas to ponder are cost, complexity, testing, emergent structure, vendor dependence, etc.

Serverless has been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of years. We will wait and see the lessons learned as more developers start deploying it in real-world web applications.

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Because Linkerd is a transparent proxy that runs alongside your application, there are no code changes required. It even comes with Prometheus to store the metrics for you and pre-built Grafana dashboards to show exactly what is important for your services – success rate, latency, and throughput.

In this session, we’ll explain what Linkerd provides for you, demo the installation of Linkerd on Kubernetes and debug a real world problem. We will also dig into what functionality you can build on top of the tools provided by Linkerd such as alerting and autoscaling.

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The KCSP program is a pre-qualified tier of vetted service providers that offer Kubernetes support, consulting, professional services and training for organizations embarking on their Kubernetes journey. The KCSP program ensures that enterprises get the support they’re looking for to roll out new applications more quickly and more efficiently than before, while feeling secure that there’s a trusted and vetted partner that’s available to support their production and operational needs.

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Containers and Kubernetes allow for code portability across on-premise VMs, bare metal, or multiple cloud provider environments. Yet, despite this portability promise, developers may include configuration and application definitions that constrain or even eliminate application portability. In this session we’ll describe best practices for “configuration as code” in a Kubernetes environment. We will demonstrate how a properly constructed containerized app can be deployed to both Amazon and Azure using the Kublr platform, and how Kubernetes objects, such as persistent volumes, ingress rules, and services, can be used to abstract from the infrastructure.

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GCP Marketplace is based on a multi-cloud and hybrid-first philosophy, focused on giving Google Cloud partners and enterprise customers flexibility without lock-in. It also helps customers innovate by easily adopting new technologies from ISV partners, such as commercial Kubernetes applications, and allows companies to oversee the full lifecycle of a solution, from discovery through management.

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Skeuomorphism usually means retaining existing design cues in something new that doesn’t actually need them. However, the concept of skeuomorphism can be thought of as relating more broadly to applying existing patterns to new technologies that, in fact, cry out for new approaches.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Gordon Haff, Senior Cloud Strategy Marketing and Evangelism Manager at Red Hat, discussed why containers should be paired with new architectural practices such as microservices rather than mimicking legacy server virtualization workflows and architectures.

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10ZiG Technology is a leading provider of endpoints for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure environment. Our fast and reliable hardware is VMware, Citrix and Microsoft ready and designed to handle all ranges of usage – from task-based to sophisticated CAD/CAM users.

10ZiG prides itself in being one of the only companies whose sole focus is in Thin Clients and Zero Clients for VDI. This focus allows us to provide a truly unique level of personal service and customization that is a rare find in the industry. We offer a multitude of custom embedding options and hardware configurations to ensure our devices are tailor-made to fit seamlessly into the environments of our customers.

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Enterprises are adopting Kubernetes to accelerate the development and the delivery of cloud-native applications. However, sharing a Kubernetes cluster between members of the same team can be challenging. And, sharing clusters across multiple teams is even harder. Kubernetes offers several constructs to help implement segmentation and isolation. However, these primitives can be complex to understand and apply. As a result, it’s becoming common for enterprises to end up with several clusters. This leads to a waste of cloud resources and increased operational overhead.

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