Cloud App Development

Johannesburg Is Home to Africa's First Cloud Region

Oracle | January 20, 2022

On January 19, Oracle announced the opening of its first cloud region in Africa. This move effectively meets the rapidly expanding demand for enterprise cloud services on the continent. This new cloud region will boost cloud adoption across Africa while also assisting businesses to attain optimum performance and fostering continuous innovation. With Johannesburg, Oracle has opened its 37th cloud region around the world. They move forward with the aspiration of having at least 44 cloud regions by the end of 2022 while continuing one of the highest growth rates of any primary cloud provider.

 "In recent months, cloud technologies have played a vital role in helping African public and private sector organisations ensure business continuity, deliver essential services, and meet evolving customer expectations. The Oracle Johannesburg region offers a next-generation cloud to run any application faster and more securely for less, helping businesses build resilience, agility and achieve improved ROI."

Executive vice president, EMEA, Oracle, Richard Smith 

The Johannesburg cloud region, built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), enables customers to seamlessly migrate IT workloads and data platforms to the cloud to develop new cloud-native applications. Oracle also provides a comprehensive range of application modernization and cloud strategies to help African organizations compete on a global scale.

The next-generation architecture of OCI provides a high-performing, resilient foundation for cloud services, while its physical and virtual network design optimizes performance and security. In addition, Oracle is committed to sustainability, and by 2025, Oracle has pledged that all Oracle cloud regions worldwide will be powered entirely by renewable energy. Several Oracle cloud locations in North America, South America, and Europe are already powered entirely by renewable energy.

As a part of Oracle's expansion plans, it'll open seven additional cloud regions in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, France, Israel, and Saudi Arabia over the next year to accommodate increasing client demand.

Spotlight

Everyone wants to realize the benefits of AI for their business, but in order to get there you need infrastructure that offers the flexibility and scalability demanded by the potential diverse and dynamic AI workloads. IT teams have to be able to juggle consistent high-performance storage, powerful compute via GPUs shared across


Other News
Cloud App Development

CloudBees Launches Groundbreaking Cloud-Native DevSecOps Platform

Business Wire | September 15, 2023

On September 14, 2023, CloudBees, a leading enterprise software delivery platform, introduces a groundbreaking cloud-native DevSecOps platform that prioritizes platform engineers and developer experiences. The platform, built on Tekton, employs a domain-specific language akin to GitHub Actions and incorporates feature flagging, security, compliance, pipeline orchestration, analytics, and value stream management (VSM) into a fully managed single-tenant SaaS, multi-tenant SaaS, or on-premise virtual private cloud instance. A spokesperson for CloudBees stated that the revolutionary platform was the market's most open and extensible DevSecOps solution, capable of orchestrating any tool in the software development toolkit. They added that it redefined DevSecOps by addressing the challenges of delivering secure, compliant, cloud-native software faster than ever. Meeting the Challenges of Cloud-Native Development As the rush towards cloud-native application development continues, software development and delivery teams grapple with the complexities of modern cloud-native architectures. This has led to the emergence of platform engineering as an evolution of DevOps practices. Platform engineering unites various roles such as site reliability engineers (SREs), DevOps engineers, security teams, product managers, and operations teams with the shared goal of integrating all organizations’ disparate technologies and tools into a streamlined path for developers. The CloudBees platform is purpose-built for this mission. The CloudBees Platform: Speed and Security The CloudBees platform empowers organizations to simplify complex cloud-native development and deployment processes across all DevOps tools, thereby accelerating innovation. It ensures a seamless journey from code development to successful deployment with a focus on: 1. Developer-centric experience: Enhancing developer experience by minimizing cognitive load and making DevOps processes nearly invisible through blocks, automations, and golden paths. 2. Open and extensible: Embracing the DevOps ecosystem, starting with Jenkins, and offering flexibility to orchestrate any other tool, protecting existing tooling investments. 3. Self-service model: Allowing platform engineers to customize the platform, providing autonomy for development teams. Developers can focus on innovation without waiting for automation or resources. 4. Security and compliance: Centralizing security and compliance with out-of-the-box workflow templates containing built-in security measures. Automated DevSecOps is integrated, incorporating checks across source code, binaries, cloud environments, data, and identity. Michel Lopez, founder and CEO at E2F, noted that the CloudBees platform had significantly reduced the time required for their ISO 27001 compliance audit, from 12 hours to just 60 minutes. He also mentioned that the CloudBees platform provided all controls. Shawn Ahmed, Chief Product Officer at CloudBees, emphasized, Our new platform empowers developers, unifies teams, and accelerates innovation while offering unprecedented flexibility and choice. [Source: Businesswire] The CloudBees platform promises to enhance developer experiences, streamline processes, and prioritize security, offering organizations a powerful tool to navigate the complexities of modern cloud-native architectures and accelerate innovation. About CloudBees CloudBees, headquartered in San Jose, California, has been a software development leader since 2010. The company thrives in an innovation-driven industry by addressing the need for balancing development freedom and regulatory governance through its pioneering end-to-end automated software delivery system. Its robust Software as a Service (SaaS) platform encompasses DevOps, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and more, ensuring secure and compliant innovation.

Read More

Cloud Deployment Models

Mirantis’ Lens AppIQ: Upgrading Kubernetes Application Management

Mirantis | September 22, 2023

Mirantis has introduced Lens AppIQ, a new tool designed to simplify Kubernetes application management. Available directly to the 50,000 organizations using Lens, Lens AppIQ offers application intelligence, making it accessible for non-Kubernetes specialists to oversee applications across multiple clusters. Lens AppIQ aggregates information from various configuration files and sources, presenting it in a user-friendly tabbed display. This feature allows cloud-native developers to streamline the deployment and management of Kubernetes applications, offering web-based tools for viewing application details, configuring security measures, and automating deployment processes. With a quick launch time of under a minute, Lens AppIQ swiftly identifies applications in connected clusters and maps their components. Developers can access application architecture, metadata, logs, events, and more through Lens Desktop’s new 'Applications' view or the Lens AppIQ web portal, simplifying debugging, accelerating code releases, and enhancing performance optimization. DevOps professionals, platform engineers, and operators can utilize Lens AppIQ to define, monitor, and enforce policies related to application performance, security, and compliance. Automation features in Lens AppIQ facilitate repeatable deployments and enable effortless application migration to new Kubernetes environments. Miska Kaipiainen, Vice President of Engineering at Mirantis, reportedly stated, While Lens Desktop already provides an incredibly user-friendly experience for Kubernetes management, we understand that cloud-native development doesn't end there. That's why we've created Lens AppIQ. Lens AppIQ complements Lens Desktop by offering real-time intelligence and additional insights into the apps running on your Kubernetes clusters. This not only makes debugging, operation, and security easier but also opens up Kubernetes to a broader audience of developers who can benefit from streamlined processes without having to become Kubernetes experts. [Source – Businesswire] Lens AppIQ is available for free for small-scale and trial use, accommodating up to 10 nodes, two clusters, and two users. A Pro plan is available for larger-scale use, supporting up to 100 nodes, 10 clusters, and 50 users, priced at $35 per node monthly, inclusive of 8 hours/5-day business hours support. Enterprises can opt for a bespoke version with 24/7 support and custom pricing. Lens AppIQ is accessible within Lens Desktop for the 50,000 organizations currently using Lens and is also available as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. About Lens With over 1 million users worldwide, Lens Desktop is a leading tool for boosting productivity in Kubernetes application development and management. This desktop application breaks down barriers for newcomers to Kubernetes while significantly enhancing the efficiency of experienced users. Lens supports all certified Kubernetes distributions on any infrastructure and seamlessly runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. As the world's largest and most advanced Kubernetes platform, it provides real-time workload management, development, debugging, monitoring, and troubleshooting across multiple clusters. Built on open-source principles, Lens enjoys a strong community with over 20,000 stars on GitHub. About Mirantis Mirantis is a leading company streamlining code delivery on public and private clouds with a ZeroOps approach to Kubernetes. It serves global enterprises, enhancing developer productivity and offering secure cloud solutions. Its clients include Adobe, DocuSign, PayPal, and others across diverse industries. Mirantis contributes to open-source projects like Lens and Kubernetes, empowering businesses to tackle complex challenges.

Read More

Cloud App Management

Google Cloud Teams Up with StackPath to Expand Edge-Forward Cloud

StackPath | September 20, 2023

StackPath Edge Compute is now accessible via the Google Cloud Marketplace, allowing Google Cloud customers to expand their environment to the internet's edge. StackPath, a leading edge computing platform, has made its Edge Compute Virtual Machines and Containers available on the marketplace, with purchases counting towards users' committed Google Cloud expenditure. StackPath offers cloud computing instances at edge points of presence within 38 major global markets, ensuring proximity to data sources and destinations. This proximity enhances application distribution options. Tom Reyes, Chief Product Officer for StackPath, emphasized the synergy between edge and cloud computing, highlighting the cost and performance benefits of utilizing Google Cloud for latency-neutral workloads and StackPath for latency-sensitive tasks. Dai Vu, Managing Director at Google Cloud, reportedly stated, As a part of their digital transformation strategies, many enterprises are seeking solutions that help them optimize their workflows. With its solutions now available on Google Cloud Marketplace, StackPath is enabling companies of all types and sizes to achieve the speed, security, and efficiency they require. [Source: PR Newswire] Additionally, StackPath recently added support for Virtual Kubelet in StackPath Edge Compute, facilitating seamless integration of StackPath Edge Compute Containers into multi-cloud Kubernetes (K8s) clusters. K8s, born on Google Cloud, remain popular among Google Cloud users. Key features of StackPath Edge Compute include deploying VMs with certified Linux distributions, image capture for autoscaling and rollbacks, deploying compliant container images, and rapid provisioning in StackPath Edge locations. About StackPath StackPath is an edge cloud platform offering cloud services in close proximity to end users compared to core cloud providers. Its edge compute solutions, including virtual machines and containers, along with edge applications such as CDN and WAF, are strategically positioned in densely populated areas. These services are connected through a secure private network fabric and managed through a single system. Clients, ranging from Fortune 50 enterprises to startups, rely on StackPath to optimize the performance, security, and efficiency of their latency-sensitive workloads and applications. Headquartered in Dallas, TX, StackPath was founded in 2015 and specializes in SECaaS, CDN, WAF, and various other cloud-related services.

Read More

Cloud Infrastructure Management

CoreWeave and VAST Data Join Forces to Build the Data Foundation for a Next Generation Public Cloud with NVIDIA AI

GlobeNewswire | September 27, 2023

VAST Data, the AI data platform company and CoreWeave, a specialized cloud provider powering many of the world’s leading generative AI efforts, today announced a strategic partnership that will further CoreWeave’s mission to deliver highly scalable and performant cloud infrastructure for AI and accelerated compute workloads. CoreWeave has selected the VAST Data Platform, the world’s first data platform designed for the AI era, to build a global, NVIDIA-powered accelerated computing cloud for deploying, managing and securing hundreds of petabytes of data for generative AI, high performance computing (HPC) and visual effects (VFX) workloads. CoreWeave did extensive research and testing before selecting VAST Data to power all of its data centers. The VAST Data Platform has the necessary scale, performance, and multi-tenant enterprise AI cloud capabilities required to power the massive AI and LLM training and inference applications that are now transforming everything from business, to science, to society itself. CoreWeave’s customers demand the most secure and scalable solutions on top of the industry’s fastest and most flexible infrastructure to keep their data safe," said Michael Intrator, CEO and co-founder of CoreWeave. We’re delighted to partner with VAST Data to deliver a multi-tenant and zero-trust environment purpose-built for accelerated compute use cases like machine learning, VFX and rendering, Pixel Streaming and batch processing that’s up to 35 times faster and 80 percent less expensive than legacy cloud providers. This partnership is rooted in a deep technical collaboration that will push the boundaries of data-driven accelerated computing to deliver the world’s most optimized AI cloud platform. Through their joint partnership CoreWeave and VAST Data are leveraging NVIDIA technology to engineer a new data platform architecture for large-scale, end-to-end data pipelines and deliver next-generation data services for AI workloads. To support this, the VAST Data Platform boasts an enterprise network attached data store that is certified for use with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD and eliminates tiers and infrastructure silos to make large scale AI simpler, faster and easier to manage at virtually limitless levels of scale and performance. “Since our earliest days, VAST Data has had a single vision of building an architecture that could power the needs of the most demanding cloud-scale AI applications," said Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data. "We could not imagine a better cloud platform to realize this vision than what we’re creating with CoreWeave. We are humbled and honored to partner with the CoreWeave team to push the boundaries of modern AI computing and to build the infrastructure that will serve as the foundation of tomorrow’s AI-powered discoveries.” About VAST Data VAST Data is the data platform software company for the AI era. Accelerating time-to-insight for workload-intensive applications, the VAST data platform delivers scalable performance, radically simple data management and enhanced productivity. Launched in 2019, VAST is the fastest-growing data infrastructure company in history. For more information, please visit https://vastdata.com and follow VAST Data on Twitter and LinkedIn. About CoreWeave Founded in 2017, CoreWeave is a specialized cloud provider, delivering a massive scale of GPU compute resources on top of the industry's fastest and most flexible infrastructure. CoreWeave builds cloud solutions for compute-intensive use cases — machine learning and AI, VFX and rendering, life sciences, the Metaverse, and real-time streaming — that are up to 35 times faster and 80% less expensive than the large, generalized public clouds. Learn more at www.coreweave.com.

Read More

Spotlight

Everyone wants to realize the benefits of AI for their business, but in order to get there you need infrastructure that offers the flexibility and scalability demanded by the potential diverse and dynamic AI workloads. IT teams have to be able to juggle consistent high-performance storage, powerful compute via GPUs shared across

Resources