Cloud Hosting

A lightning strikes a building during a thunderstorm in Bangkok on April 23, 2021. (Photo by Mladen ... [+] ANTONOV / AFP) (Photo by MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP via Getty Images)

Cloud computing takes a lot of engineering. It takes a lot of software engineering in the form of programming and code development, it takes a lot of backend engineering in the form of cloud datacenter management and maintenance and it takes a lot of engineering in terms of the actual process of deployment, if virtualized cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications are going to stand any chance of survival in the real world once users get their hands on them.

All of that engineering creates what we could call a fairly complex cloud pattern and higher level weather system for the SaaS world to circulate in.

Knowing what the weather is going to be like in any given cloud instance once its sent spiraling up into the tornado of live use cases is tough to do. In order to try and weather the storm, software application development professionals (DEV) work with their operations system administration (OPS) counterparts inside so-called DevOps teams to try and pull off a safe flight.

But theres still a challenge, because even at the pre-flight stage, todays DevOps teams often configure cloud-native applications by using a trial-and-error approach thats labor-intensive and requires a deep level of Kubernetes management (a cloud container orchestration technology designed to build, deliver and scale working parts of cloud), so life is still pretty tough.

Cloud-native performance testing and resource optimization company StormForge is on a mission to help technology teams achieve cloud application performance and cost-efficiency without manual configuration or tuning and indeed without trial-and-error.

New functions in its platform toolset include the ability to automatically generate cloud instance optimization experiments and use new guided walkthroughs for setting up and running the experiments, speeding cloud-native development and deployments regardless of the level of in-house expertise.

The company claims that too many organizations are guestimating cloud provisioning with trial-and-error, which is not only ineffective, it results in applications that can cost twice as much to run as necessary and still risk poor performance. The result is bloated spending and cloud waste.

Airbnb, for example, recently published the results of its nine-month cloud efficiency journey in which it saw a US$63.5 million year-over-year decrease in hosting costs, which contributed to a 26 percent decline in its cost of revenue. This is not a small problem.

Kubernetes application performance optimization shouldnt require you to be a Kubernetes guru. With our newest capabilities, StormForge is making it easy to achieve cloud efficiency without requiring users to be experts on the inner workings of Kubernetes, said John Platt, VP of Machine Learning of StormForge. Theres no longer any reason for DevOps teams to choose between their application performance and cost-efficient provisioning.

The newest StormForge platform capabilities include the ability to generate optimization experiments by automatically scanning in-cluster resources (i.e. the amount of cloud power available in terms of memory, storage, application processing ability, Input/Output scope and other workings such as data analytics and AI-based functions), making it easy to optimize applications without requiring in-depth knowledge of underlying Kubernetes plumbing.

There are also guided walkthroughs of optimization experiment creation and execution, making optimization of applications faster and easier; improved customer onboarding experience built into the StormForge app, making it easier for customers to get started and reducing time to value; and a new user interface designed for faster innovation and to further improve ease of use and accessibility.

"StormForge is one of our primary tools for building efficient Kubernetes services. Auto-scanning for experiments and the updated UI considerably improve the cost and time spent in terms of management and operations of the product," said Prashanto Kochavara, director of product at Trilio, a cloud data protection company.

If StormForge hasnt quite pulled off the perfect all-weather cloud with its latest product and services updates, then surely some of these instance optimization experiments and guided walkthroughs will help.

Spoiler alert: there may be no perfect all-weather cloud in our lifetimes. The application surface for even the most contemporary cloud deployments appears to still be susceptible to fragility given the massively complex number of supporting and enabling technologies that constantly impact the global cloud-scape

Cloud remains more of a perfect storm that a perfect norm, the best we can do is to try and keep warm.

Link:
StormForge Forecasts All-Weather Cloud - Forbes