Next-gen development with Cloud Application Platform from SUSE

New technologies emerging in the last five years have changed the face of development and IT operations. Some “buzz phrases” might include hyperconvergence, containerization, and cloud platforms. Together, they offer infrastructure, applications and services, plus infinite scalability.

Many of those new technologies and platforms rely on abstraction, that is, removing underlying complexities by presenting services ready for one-click deployment of oftentimes highly-sophisticated software.

One such is open-source Cloud Foundry platform-as-a-service, a platform that’s straightforward for developers: just push the code to Cloud Foundry for automated deployment and management!

Cloud Foundry supports applications for cloud deployment that can be written in practically any language, and in most frameworks. That gives enterprise developers the ability to use the best language for each job. Staff’s existing skillsets produce applications, updates and new products, all by using familiar tools they are familiar with.

Cloud Foundry configures the deployment environment, provides the required dependencies and binds applications to needed services, all automatically. It monitors applications, and restarts failed instances, too. IT pros spend less time fixing issues and chasing red-flags, keeping mission-critical applications running more easily.

It’s simple to manage deployments across multiple environments with Cloud Foundry, too. From development through test, to staging and production, development can be easily switched and progressed without retooling or providing new resource types.

Using Cloud Foundry dramatically reduces both application development cycle times, and also costs.  Cloud Foundry users report* an average reduction in application time-to-market of 10 weeks, and an average cost saving of $100,00 per application development cycle.

Until recently, however, Cloud Foundry has been expensive to operate because of costs associated with Cloud Foundry’s complicated deployment requirements. Also, setup & management costs are high; now, that’s changing.

Open-source business software providers SUSE has produced a solution that allows IT teams to get the power of Cloud Foundry much more easily. SUSE Cloud Application Platform packages Cloud Foundry in lightweight containers, meaning fewer required resources. Memory use is more efficient, and the platform scales quicker on finite resources. The benefits amount to much lower running costs, and faster time to production. But that’s just the beginning.

With the end-goal of quicker delivery of meaningful software projects that accelerate innovation, developers are looking for better ways to respond to the challenges of faster development iterations and shorter times to production. The release of SUSE Cloud Application Platform 2.0 supports those efforts.

It provides full application lifecycle automation, enables enterprises to shrink release cycles from months to minutes, and invokes continuous improvements to customer experiences. With CAP 2.0, the business’s requirement for agility in software delivery is more achievable.

SUSE’s Cloud Application Platform 2.0 opens an accelerated path for existing Cloud Foundry users to move to Kubernetes-based architecture. That’s achieved by a new Kubernetes Operator that enables easier deployment and management of the Cloud Foundry platform on Kubernetes. The 2.0 release is also simpler to install and operate on Kubernetes platforms anywhere; on premise and in the cloud.

With SUSE Cloud Application Platform, Cloud Foundry’s abstraction of underlying complexity combines with Kubernetes’ flexibility, plus, it’s all based on industry-standard open source tools and code. That means portability and platform agnosticism.

“SUSE provides high productivity solutions for cloud-native application delivery,” said Gerald Pfeifer, SUSE CTO EMEA. “Our approach is to identify leading open source technologies and bring them together in a way that makes sense for our customers. Today that means bringing the unsurpassed productivity of the Cloud Foundry model together with modern Kubernetes infrastructure in SUSE Cloud Application Platform. This unique combination enables our customers to reduce complexity and become more agile to meet the changing demands of the digital economy.”

There are some serious incentives on offer for enterprises. We urge developers to sign up for a Developer Sandbox account and get free access to the platform. Or, if you are a platform administrator, you can access SUSE’s free (until September 15th) Accelerate Innovation offer to get SUSE’s complete container and application platform stack. That includes SUSE Cloud Application Platform, SUSE CaaS Platform (SUSE’s Kubernetes distribution) and SUSE Enterprise Storage, along with support, training and consulting services.

The new platforms and the trial access will definitely help accelerate implementation of agile, business-focused software. For additional information, learn how to deliver applications faster.

* Cloud Foundry Foundation Application Runtime User Survey, Oct 2018