Developer-Friendly, Operations-Approved Container Ops
San Francisco, CA, USA and London, UK, 20 September, 2018—Cloud 66, a leading provider of DevOps tools for containerized applications, today announced the general availability of key configuration and security features for developer-friendly, policy-compliant, and enterprise-grade for Cloud 66 Skycap, the company’s container deployment pipeline. Cloud 66 will be showcasing these features and much more as a silver sponsor and exhibitor at the Gartner Catalyst Conference 2018 in London, on September 26-27.
As Kubernetes Grows, Gaps in DevOps Emerge
Kubernetes has gained significant ground in recent years as a key infrastructure building block for containerized applications. Consequently, an increasing number of IT Ops and Engineering teams are coming to terms with their next set of problems: managing the container pipeline in a scalable, secure, but developer-friendly way. In this regard, the sophistication and robustness of the various Kubernetes managed services expose the shortcomings of many traditional pipeline (CI/CD) tools.
Three Strategies to Bridge the Container DevOps Divide
Some CIOs are addressing this complexity by building large teams to wrangle complex open source projects such as Spinnaker, combined with a good dose of custom scripting; others rely on bespoke external help—but for small- and medium-sized companies, both these approaches risk dependence on custom technology in a rapidly-commoditizing space.
A third way is to combine open source and specialized commercial software. Cloud 66, a provider of such tools, has been a leader in “easy Ops for Devs” since 2012, and its own stack has been running on containers and Kubernetes since 2014, powering over 4,000 customer workloads while running on thousands of lines of configuration.
Cloud 66 Skycap, The Container Deployment Pipeline
Beyond just traditional “build & test”, in the world of containers, continuous deployment, configuration and security are just as crucial in maintaining high production quality. Cloud 66 Skycap is a git-to-Kubernetes container deployment pipeline, used hosted or on-prem. Using container images built either inside Skycap or by using common CI tools, developers can easily generate, maintain, and manage application deployment pipelines to any Kubernetes cluster—all curated by operations and compliant by default.
Today, Cloud 66 is introducing significant new capabilities focused on secure, self-service container operations, that Developers love.
These include:
• For secure, scalable secrets management in the pipeline, support for injection of application configuration and secrets into Kubernetes from Hashicorp Vault. This is all defined by Operations with fine-grained user access controls, so that developers only input if it is in their scope to do so (for example, developers may know where a private key lies, but might not be responsible for knowing what that key is).
• For policy-as-code in the pipeline, additional support for Kubernetes configuration sets as well as Kubernetes configuration policy compliance automation. This uses built-in integration for Copper, an open source configuration file validator from Cloud 66.
• For Formations—a feature to easily manage application deployment targets in multi-environment Kubernetes —integration with Helm Charts (private beta) alongside Stencils, to create a single, secure control plane for all Kubernetes configuration and deployment needs; also launched is a step-by-step wizard for generation and management of configuration file templates.
• For teams looking to stack applications onto specific, secure, larger servers, Maestro Clusters offer efficient, secure cluster management.
Be sure to visit Cloud 66 at Gartner Catalyst Conference 2018 in London, on September 26-27—or contact us at hello@cloud66.com.
About Gartner Catalyst Conference 2018
Cloud, big data, mobile, DevOps, analytics, software as a service, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are advancing rapidly, creating new digital opportunities and a new technology ecosystem that is diverse and complex. At the conference, delegates will learn how to architect their digital ecosystem, how to build and effective AI and cloud strategy, but also find out how to harness the agility benefits of DevOps. They will also hear Gartner analysts discuss how to onboard, authenticate and authorize IoT devices, and implement security for web applications and APIs.
Additional information will be presented at the Gartner Catalyst Conference 2018 26-27 September 26-27 in London. Follow news and updates from the event on Twitter using #GartnerCAT.
About Cloud 66
Built by developers for developers, Cloud 66 was founded in 2011 backed by investors from across the US, UK and Europe, including Dell Technology Ventures. The company is based in San Francisco and London. Cloud 66 automates much of the heavy-lifting required for the application lifecycle through easy-to-use but feature-rich integrated management tools. Cloud 66's developer toolchain includes a host of open source tools as well as Cloud 66 Skycap, a complete Container Deployment Pipeline to enable true self-service automation for teams building and deploying containerized apps, whether hosted or on-premises.