As part of my role as a principal communication strategist at an enterprise software company with an open source development model, I publish a regular update about open source community, market, and industry trends for product marketers, managers, and other influencers. Here are three of my and their favorite articles from that update.
As cloud native computing rises, it’s transforming culture as much as code
The time is right for the industry to coalesce around a set of common principles for cloud native computing as many organizations come to the realization that their initial forays into the cloud yielded limited returns. An International Data Corp. survey last year found that 80% of respondents had repatriated workloads back on-premises from public cloud environments and, on average, expect to move half of their public cloud applications to private locations over the next two years.
The impact: The first run at the cloud involved a lot of "lift-and-shift" attempts to pick up workloads and drop them in the cloud. This second run will involve more work to figure out what and how to move, but should ultimately deliver more value as developers get more comfortable with what they can take for granted.
Why automating for cloud native infrastructures is a win for all involved
The holy grail in development is the creation and maintenance of secure applications that yield strong ROI and happy customers. But if this development isn’t efficient, high-velocity and scalable, that holy grail quickly becomes unattainable. If you’ve found yourself expecting more from your current infrastructure, it might be time to consider cloud native. Not only does it check all these boxes, but automating for cloud native infrastractures can improve efficiency and results.
The impact: I'd add to this that truly adopting a cloud-native approach is simply impossible without substantial automation; the number of moving pieces involved is just too high to keep in a human head.
Linkerd case studies: meeting security requirements, reducing latency, and migrating from Istio
Finally, Subspace shares its experience with Linkerd to deliver multiplayer gaming “at the speed of light.” Although it at first seemed counterintuitive to use a service mesh in an ultra-low-latency environment, Subspace has found a strategic use of Linkerd that actually reduces total latency—the service mesh is so lightweight that the minimal latency it adds is overshadowed by the latency it reduces through observability. In short, this unique use case of Linkerd gives Subspace a large net positive on operational outcomes. Read the full user story.
The impact: I've heard this idea that you don't really reduce complexity in a system, you abstract it and change who it gets exposed to. Seems like a similar observation is being made about latency; if you choose carefully where you accept latency, you can reduce it elsewhere in the system as a result.
A top exec explains IBM's 'important pivot' to win over developers, startups, and partners as part of its plan to win the hybrid cloud market away from rivals like Microsoft
Big Blue is shifting to a new strategy focused on building an ecosystem of developers, partners, and startups."Our services organization can't get to all clients. The only way to get to those clients is to activate an ecosystem."
The impact: More and more companies are embracing the idea that there are customer problems they just can't solve without help. Maybe that reduces the money that can be made from each individual customer as it expands the opportunities to engage more broadly into more problem spaces.
I hope you enjoyed this list and come back next week for more open source community, market, and industry trends.
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