The Unknown Unknowns of Cloud Providers with Catchpoint
Your Internet Application is full of unknowns, which will affect its performance and availability for your customers. This episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast features Catchpoint CEO and co-founder Mehdi Daoudi, Eric Wright, Jon Myer, and Alastair Cooke. Internet applications are seldom self-contained, relying on other web services for specialized functions and needing responses from the services before a final response to a user. Functions such as DDoS protection, tracking, embedded advertising, and other valuable services enable faster application feature development, but at what cost? Any delayed response from these services can slow down your application for your users, leading to dissatisfaction, even when your servers perform beautifully. Remember that the services you choose to use may, in turn, use other external services. Catchpoint champions user-centric monitoring and Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) to complement existing APM tools. Visibility of issues outside your data center is vital to identifying issues before they become helpdesk tickets or application outages. If this Tech Field Day Podcast episode piques your interest, watch the Catchpoint appearance at Cloud Field Day on YouTube.
The Network is Finally the Application
The network is, finally, the application in the public cloud. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, recorded before Cloud Field Day, features Jon Myer, Michael Levan, Larry Smith, and Alastair Cooke. Deploying applications across multiple clouds requires the network be the common connector to integrate applications across those clouds. Everything is an API, deploying networks on the cloud is software defined but every cloud has its own API and many on-premises networks have their own APIs. Observability across a multi-cloud application is far more complex than when everything was on-premises in our own data center, there are so many new places where issues might arise. The pace of change in modern applications makes analyzing and troubleshooting applications challenging too, when networks are built using a CI/CD pipeline the network configuration can change every day, with new software version deployment. Observability is vital; metrics, logs, and traces need to be fed into a single location where insights can be gained, without the insight there is no reason to collect the data.
Private Clouds are Coming Back
The public cloud is real; are private clouds real? Will we see more private clouds in 2025? Private cloud technology is far from the early days when on-premises virtualization was cloud-washed. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Jon Myer, Allyson Klein, and Justin Warren join Alastair Cooke to examine why businesses deploy private clouds. The cloud operating model makes the private cloud more relevant in 2025 than ever.
Southworks – AppDev Field Day – KubeCon @cncf 2024
During AppDev Field Day 2 at KubeCon 2024, Jon Myer explored SOUTHWORKS’ innovative approach to application development, which they term “development on demand.” Unlike conventional system integrators, SOUTHWORKS offers scoped projects with a flat-fee pricing structure, emphasizing knowledge transfer to minimize customer dependencies for future modifications. Their approach, likened to a “SWAT team” for software tasks, such as app development and migrations, was well received by delegates. Attendees particularly valued how SOUTHWORKS harnesses sophisticated cloud functionalities and facilitates cloud-to-cloud mobility, effectively addressing prevalent challenges in the industry. Their strategy of offering scalable engineering resources was noted for its potential to significantly enhance organizational efficiency and flexibility in software development efforts.
Heroku – AppDev Field Day – KubeCon @cncf 2024
During the AppDev Field Day 2 at KubeCon and CloudNativeCon, Jon Myer discussed with delegates Heroku’s status as a pioneering platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider, highlighting its emphasis on simplifying developer experiences by abstracting the complexities of infrastructure management. The delegates reviewed Heroku’s approach which favors usability over the deeply technical, infrastructure-focused style typical of cloud-native development. They acknowledged Heroku’s aim to ease enterprise operations and their move towards embracing open-source with initiatives like the open-sourcing of the 12-Factor App Manifesto. However, concerns were raised about the lack of transparency in its infrastructure. Despite some finding Heroku’s detailed presentations overwhelming, the overall commitment to addressing challenges and setting clear future paths was well-received, underscoring Heroku’s ongoing effort to bridge the gap between developers and operations, specifically targeting enterprise-level applications.
Codiac – AppDev Field Day – KubeCon @cncf 2024
In this video, Jon Myer asks the AppDev Field Day 2 delegates for their reaction to Codiac’s presentation. Delegates found the session intriguing and appreciated Codiac’s focus on bridging the gap between software development life cycle (SDLC) and infrastructure management, particularly through a GUI and drag-and-drop interface. This approach simplifies processes for infrastructure teams unfamiliar with pipelines and unit testing, addressing challenges like technical debt, migrations, and workload transitions across environments. Delegates highlighted Codiac’s potential to reduce friction between developers and platform engineers by streamlining collaboration and deployment workflows. Overall, they were excited about Codiac’s innovative approach and eager to see more.