Finding Velocity: Highlights of ‘Cloud Native Evolution’

Aug 27, 2017 by Armory

Finding Velocity is our blog series for executives where we share strategies to deliver software to users faster and more confidently (and why creating this deep competency in software matters strategically).

 

When executives at global companies ask me for the best primer to quickly get up to speed on how to compete in a software-first world, I point them to Cloud-Native Evolution , a free 70 page e-book by O’Reilly.

How Companies Go Digital: We highly recommend O’Reilly’s free PDF e-Book about migrating toward cloud-native technologies and practices by shifting from monolithic onsite architectures to applications designed solely to operate on cloud computing platforms. Also includes case studies from Capital One and other companies making this transition.

Here are screenshots from my favorite parts of the book, along with some additional detail filled in:


Companies that learn how to effectively make software a core competency are better positioned to respond to market needs, innovate faster, and create high margin lines of business.

For example, when we started Armory, we were responding to having fixed this problem ourselves at our previous company.


The “two pizza team” concept of de-centralizing teams lets companies combine more nimble cloud deployment infrastructure with the ability to produce output faster.

94% of companies surveyed for the book are moving to public, hybrid or private clouds in the next five years.

While “Lift & Shift” is a good staring point, it’s important to evolve past that to fully leverage the cloud.

Moving applications to the cloud often requires retrofitting them to enable deployments in a modern, fully immutable fashion. Armory helps companies through this process.



Enabling Continuous Integration, Delivery (and Continuous Deployments through further automation) of software form the bedrock of cloud-native evolution.

Breaking monolith apps up into microservices signifies an evolution of maturity in the cloud.

Allowing teams to deploy their parts of an application on the cadence that’s right for them is a huge benefit of moving to microservices.

This is the most important part of the book from an organizational structure and culture perspective. Companies create systems that mimic their structure. Meaning, it’s hard or impossible to move from monolith apps to microservices without also instituting the decentralization found in “two pizza teams”. The organization must evolve to enable the system to evolve.

Armory takes “blue/green” deployments a step further with Barometer, our automated canary analysis engine.

What Stage are You In? Read our Stages of Software Delivery Evolution Infographic to understand which software delivery stage your company currently falls into.

Learn More

Share this post:

Recently Published Posts

Continuous Deployment KPIs

May 31, 2023

Key SDLC Performance Metrics for Engineering Leaders Engineering leaders must have an effective system in place to measure their team’s performance and ensure that they are meeting their goals. One way to do this is by monitoring Continuous Deployment Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).  CD and Automated Tests If you’re not aware, Continuous Deployment, or CD, […]

Read more

What Are the Pros and Cons of Rolling Deployments?

May 26, 2023

Rolling deployments use a software release strategy that delivers new versions of an application in phases to minimize downtime. Anyone who has lived through a failed update knows how painful it can be. If a comprehensive update fails, there are hours of downtime while it is rolled back. Even if the deployment happens after hours, […]

Read more

What is DevSecOps?

May 23, 2023

Before agile development became an accepted approach to delivering software, companies waited until software contained all desired features before releasing it. Imagine waiting a year before a needed feature became available. Yet, that was how most software releases occurred.  Once the software was released, companies prepared an annual or semi-annual update that incorporated new features […]

Read more