Welcoming 2022: Reflecting and looking forward
Dec 22, 2021 by Jim Douglas
Nearly all cultures globally have some form of celebration marking the Winter Solstice. Common threads found in most observances of the annual event are celebration of family and friends (living and past), reflection of the past year, and some form of giving thanks for continued health and sustenance.
Exiting 2021, said celebrations would seem especially important and relevant given the state of the world as we battle through the second year of a global pandemic. To put it in perspective, there have been 249 pandemics throughout recorded history, but less than a dozen in the last ~100 years. In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in more deaths than 240 of the previous pandemics. Not to mention the impact it has had on economies and mental health globally. Reflection and giving thanks for continued health and sustenance seems to be important right about now.
I feel very fortunate that my family and close friends have been relatively spared from the hardships caused by Covid-19. However, this hasn’t been the case for many of my colleagues around the world. Many who have had to deal with people close to them struggling with illness and in some cases death. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who has had the misfortune of suffering during this time.
Us humans are a resilient bunch. Despite the challenges, we have found creative ways to move forward. As a member of the global technology community, I’ve been thrilled and amazed at some of the incredible advances in science, medicine, and technology I’ve witnessed throughout 2021. I joined Armory in September and have had the distinct pleasure of interacting with customers that are leading the way for the future of software development and deployment. Truly doing groundbreaking things when it comes to deploying software at incredible velocity and scale. I’m very appreciative to be part of a company that plays such a key role in enabling these inspirational companies to deliver mission critical applications at enterprise scale never witnessed before. Their drive to continue pushing the art of the possible is what motivates us at Armory to focus daily on improving the value we deliver to enable their journey.
Our focus is simple: enable customers to Commit, Deploy, Repeat . . . at Enterprise Scale. That simple. Enable development teams to only worry about what applications they want to deploy and where they want to deploy them. Not have to worry about the complexities of deployment strategies, deploying to multiple environments (e.g., targets, clouds, etc.) or multiple regions simultaneously. Just commit and go.
Our product deliverables in 2021 reflects this focus. Our new Long-term support (LTS) release process for our Enterprise Spinnaker users has simplified the process of maintaining and evolving their environments. We released quick start programs and improved our managed services offering to help new customers shorten their time to value with Spinnaker. We launched Armory Agent for Kubernetes, a lightweight, distributed service that monitors Kubernetes clusters and streams real-time changes back to users immediately. This capability facilitates Armory Enterprise customers and Spinnaker open source users to deploy to thousands of Kubernetes clusters with enhanced performance and security. We provided early access to our next generation intelligent deployment solution that will radically simplify the deployment process for our Armory Enterprise customers, Spinnaker open source users, and development teams struggling to cobble together scalable deployment solutions with their CI platforms. Look for a broad market launch of this new offering in early 2022. Finally, we’ve continued to expand our commitment to key partners and the Spinnaker community. We worked closely with AWS to improve their customer’s experience by jointly delivering quick start programs, hosting Dev Days, working with the AWS ISV Workload Migration Program, and supporting their launch of EKS Anywhere. We solidified our commitment to the Spinnaker community and the CD Foundation (CDF) by becoming a premier member of the CDF.
I’d like to end by thanking the incredible crew at Armory. Like the rest of the world, they’ve had to deal with a lot of change. In addition to the fears and frustrations brought on by the pandemic, they’ve powered through significant change at Armory. I stepped into the president and CEO role, DROdio, an Armory co-founder and former CEO stepped up in the Chairman role, and Isaac Mosquera, also an Armory co-founder, stepped into a Board Advisor role. In addition, many of our crew members have dealt with significant changes at home. We were blessed with many new additions to growing young families bringing joy to our collective hearts. But also had to deal with incredible sorrow as several of our crew members had loved ones pass away during 2021. Through all the ups and downs, our crew continued to support each other without exception or question . . . and maintained their laser focus on enabling our customers’ success.
From my family to yours, I want to wish you happiness and joy as you celebrate Winter Solstice in whatever tradition you follow. And a happy and prosperous 2022.
