The rise in modern cloud native application development provides many benefits for developers including velocity, agility, and choice, allowing for greater uptime, elimination of duplicative efforts, and the freedom to further innovate on key product and solution capabilities.
“Shifting to an API-first application strategy is critical for enterprise organizations as they rearchitect their future portfolio,” said Michelle Bailey, Group Vice President, General Manager and Research Fellow at IDC.
While analysts predict a continuing rapid shift to production-grade, Cloud Native applications, the growing need for cloud-velocity, speed, and flexibility has spawned a new range of infrastructure solutions that IT teams and developers need to manage and scale. Software containerization with Kubernetes brings the benefits of serverless platforms to the domain of microservices, driving demand for secure and reliable solutions—from code to runtime—that integrate well with existing toolchains and hyperscalers.
According to IDC’s report last fall on Full-Stack Observability, “over 80 percent of IT organizations are adopting some degree of agile DevOps methodologies, and many expect that within two years, close to 30 percent of production workloads will run in containers.” IDC has also stated that 70% of new production-grade applications are expected to be Cloud Native by 2024.
Creating a seamless developer experience for modern applications requires a new approach and set of solutions to cut through the complexity created by the use of disparate components and the deluge of data they produce. To minimize the friction between developers and IT teams including cloud engineers and site reliability engineers, teams require the ability to connect, secure, and observe across all physical, virtual, and cloud native API assets driving the experience.
Developers need to be able to safely pick and use any API (internal or 3rd party) to build their app, consume them, and consistently assign policies across multiple cloud providers. They also require the ability to easily upgrade apps, while having confidence in the reputation and security of the apps, right from the time the IDE is fired and into production.
A seamless developer experience requires the following:
- A portfolio of mesh and connectivity software services that allow for the discoverability, consumption, data flow connectivity, and real-time observability of distributed modern applications built across cloud native services at any layer of the stack integrated with event-driven services that bridge the monolithic world to the new cloud native world
- Integrated security services that detect, scan, observe, score, and secure APIs (internal and 3rd party), while simultaneously ensuring real-time compliance reporting and integrations with existing development, deployment and operating toolchains
Developers and engineers are invited to join Cisco this week at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe. Cisco’s Emerging Technologies & Incubation team will be meeting with modern app developers, security and DevOps engineers, discussing the burgeoning challenges and how to thrive in a cloud-first, cloud-native world.
The Cisco showcase, located in Pavilion 2, Exhibit D4, offers attendees the opportunity to get hands-on demonstrations, gain early access, and sign up for free tier access to three new cloud native products including:
- Panoptica App—The Cisco Secure Application Cloud delivers comprehensive security for API, serverless, and containers from code to runtime, for multi-cloud environments.
- Calisti App—The Cisco Service Mesh Manager, an enterprise-ready Istio platform that simplifies connectivity, lifecycle management, and security for microservices in multi-cloud environments.
- Telescope App—The Cisco Cloud Native Application Troubleshooting tool, with powerful search capability, and connected insights from all layers of the applications.
Based on familiar open source projects, Cisco’s cloud native suite of solutions integrates with multi-cloud Kubernetes services, and existing CI/CD tools and ecosystem technologies. Cisco is contributing to and actively participating in open source communities hosted by CNCF including Istio, OpenTelemetry, KubeClarity, and API Clarity.
"The modern application stack is more than an IT imperative, it’s a digital experience imperative for business customers and end users," said Vijoy Pandey, vice president, Emerging Technologies & Incubation, Cisco. "This integrated suite of solutions brings Cisco’s monitoring and observability capabilities to a new level with instant feedback and context to make real-time decisions."
In an API-first, cloud native world, the ownership of connectivity, security, and observability shifts to cloud engineering and SRE teams. While this shift delivers the promise of far faster development cycles, it also requires the cloud and SRE teams to assume additional responsibilities previously managed by other teams. Making all of this happen while seamlessly integrating with existing on-premises environments is the multiplier effect that accelerates innovation.
Cisco is reimagining how developers of modern applications build, manage, and secure applications. We are delivering the flexibility and choice needed to develop on any technology wherever it resides, fuels innovation, and delivers value faster.
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Learn more:
Enabling Application Development Velocity in an API-first World
