ZeroOps
for Modern Apps
Deliver great software fast — get guaranteed results — with frameworks, workflows, automation, and proactive support
Time to read: 17 minutes
ZeroOps
1. Less ops. More apps!
ZeroOps makes it simple to deliver high-quality, modern applications with Kubernetes. Just push your code.
Developing apps is hard, no matter the platform. Building software requires a ton of skills and has many centers of effort: turning business logic into machine logic, crafting a user experience, creating an application architecture, picking the ‘frameworks du jour,’ hammering together front end and back end (writing tests all the way), iterating to the MVP, iterating on features…the list goes on.
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That’s okay. This is what you’re good at—and it builds value for your organization. Good apps help your business win.
So that’s where your focus should be.
But today, it isn’t. Today, we’re shifting left. Developers are now DevOps: they’re responsible for securing and observing and automating and scaling and updating and keeping production applications on their feet via resilience architectures and disaster recovery schemes.
The old way wasn’t sustainable. But now you’re supposed to figure out and write a lot more automation: for build, packaging, testing/QA, and then for application operations and lifecycle management. And you have to participate in fixing problems (in production and elsewhere) when things fall over. Sometimes, at 3:00 AM.
Plus: now it’s all in containers and running on platforms like Kubernetes. In part because those things are supposed to add speed – enabling dependency reduction, platform independence, modularity, and isolation of components. They’re supposed to make operations repeatable, and standardize application ops automation, so good patterns can be reused.
These tools work incredibly well. But making them work means learning new skills and best practices, becoming super-fluent in configuring applications to leverage Kubernetes’ extraordinary built-in features. And you have to do this, because unless you can leverage those features, you get no ROI. No time-savings at all.
Slow roads to lackluster ROI
Development teams seek all kinds of solutions to solve the Kubernetes complexity problem. A popular dodge is to adopt some kind of PaaS for Kubernetes, hiding the environment’s moving parts and providing a “simpler” framework for building and operating apps. Except it’s never simpler. It’s usually equally complicated…just different. And often, it’s not as well-supported or documented as Kubernetes itself.
VIDEO: Learn How to Accelerate Your Kubernetes Application Delivery by 5x with DevOps-as-a-Service
Once you’re deeply committed to a PaaS (proprietary or not), you tend to”‘ride or die.” You’re locked in. Meanwhile, you’re installing the PaaS. You’re learning the PaaS. Maybe you’re even loving the PaaS. But Kubernetes will still exist ten years from now. And your PaaS will likely not. And that means you should be learning Kubernetes, not a PaaS.
Serverless is a different story. Serverless platforms like Knative and OpenFaaS run great on Kubernetes, and really do simplify building and operating a host of important use-cases – mostly avoiding heavy lock-in, too. But they’re narrow use-cases. In the end, serverless is probably an essential adjunct for many applications, but it won’t work for most apps’ core functionality.
Meanwhile, there are all those other choices to make: development workflow automation components, build pipeline services, security scanning on container images, deployment and LCM GitOps. And then architecting, and integrating, and maintaining those workflows. And then actually operating, observing, fixing applications with the back end.
Skill up or fall down
If you’re managing Dev, you know what all this means. You need to skill up your teams. But in today’s economy, that’s hard.
SO WHAT DO YOU DO?
You want to focus on developing great applications – “just push your code.”
To do this, you need to leverage new technologies like containers and Kubernetes, which can potentially minimize operations overhead.
But to manage this, you need to build modern applications with characteristics enabling Kubernetes to manage them.
So you take on DevOps responsibilities and need to write and maintain a ton more automation in many different flavors, all tuned to accelerate modern app creation.
And you can’t easily or quickly hire and integrate new staff with proven, stellar skills, to make this all achievable.
Getting to “just push your code” can easily feel more like “one step forward, two steps back.” But the cost of not doing this is high: failed projects (and the money and opportunity cost lost with them), long release cycles (slow feature delivery), fragility in production (and apps are hard to fix when they break, meaning long downtimes), insecure apps (risks skewing towards the “mind boggling” end of the fear spectrum).
Beat the system
But modern managed service strategies, automation, and software frameworks can get you where you need to go: to “just push your code.”
What matters is picking the right partner, who can give you future-proofed methods for iterating much faster in Kubernetes, building workflows and tooling to accelerate delivery, and simplifying application operations – even solutions you can use “as a service” on any Kubernetes. Taken together, these services can help your teams learn faster, help you save money, and help you focus on building great applications, generating value for your business.
1.
You get things done
Predictable costs and timelines
Reduced risks (no more application non-availability, data loss, security incidents)
An enterprise-wide, consistent, future-proofed strategy for modern application delivery that’s technically efficient, state-of-the-art secure, resilient, disaster-proof, and as compliant as you need it to be
Significantly lower TCO vs. hiring FTE experts
Improved ability to compete by delivering apps that matter
2.
Your developers get things done
Faster delivery of better applications
Better use of existing skills
A much easier time with “DevOps” tasks: CI/CD, application operations, observability, fault mitigation, etc.
“Just push your code”
3.
Even your cloud operators get things done
Smooth, reliable operations and high application availability (no 3AM wake-up calls, no unplanned downtime, no security incidents)
A clear path to cost-effective, developer-and-ops friendly hybrid and public cloud utilization (and cost controls)
A straightforward path to adding real value through standardization and automation of strategically important, innovative ops functionality (not just ‘table-stakes ops’)
