By Scott Seaton, Logicalis US Business Development Specialist, Solution Providers
In our last two blogs, we discussed how automation accelerates the DevOps process for software development firms while orchestration supports the pursuit of true Continuous Delivery. Reaching this point is critical as almost every software company is in a fast-pace race to maintain and gain market share vs. the competition.
But achieving Continuous Improvement (i.e. excellent product management) for the applications you provide to customers is not the only area where success is critical. You also need Continuous Improvement when tuning the cloud platforms on which you develop software as well as the platforms from which you provision software to customers.
As we’ve discussed in our past blogs, collaborating with a third-party cloud provider for development and production environments makes general sense for software firms. Doing so lets you focus more resources on improving the features of your applications. At the same time, your cloud provider can focus on delivering compute resources that allow software performance to exceed customer expectations. The cloud provisioning model also enables you to extend better pricing to your customers.
An Overwhelming Number of Cloud Platform Improvements
When it comes to achieving Continuous Improvement for your cloud platforms, working with a cloud service provider may be even more critical. In 2015, Amazon Web Service issued approximately 600 major feature updates. While each improvement offers some value, not all are applicable for all software firms that use AWS for development and/or provisioning.
It’s thus important to work with a partner that can help your firm not only identify all the new updates provided by your various platform providers, but also evaluate which updates you should take advantage of. Before allocating resources and investing dollars into any changes, you need to make sure there will be sufficient return, and you want to avoid any potential pitfalls that can cause inefficient resource use.
By identifying ahead of time which new cloud capabilities to leverage—whether it’s a private, public or virtual-private platform—you can plug your cloud platforms into your own product development lifecycle, and then sync improvements to your applications with the enhancements to your cloud platforms.
Identifying Improvements That Offer True Value
Logicalis assists software firms with this process by utilizing leading tools to identify changes to cloud platforms. We also help assess the value of each change in relation to the particular applications a software firm develops.
From there, we conduct regular meetings with our clients that involve developers, managers and senior leadership. We discuss application performance and what new changes to consider in order to take advantage of any new cloud technologies and shifts in pricing offered by platform providers.
These discussions typically work their way up from tactical to strategic planning. We alert you of the potential benefits and the drawbacks of any cloud platform’s new capabilities—so you can decide which ones to pursue that help you gain a competitive edge. We also incorporate into the conversations your private cloud and our cloud services as well as any third-party platforms or remotely-managed devices you use.
We think an approach like this is vital to your long-term success. By considering the new capabilities your cloud providers offer in both your development and production environments—and in conjunction with your own application enhancements—you are in a better position to develop truly strong solutions for your customers.
Logicalis is a global cloud and managed services leader with nearly 4,000 employees operating in 24 countries. Our Solution Providers Practice is dedicated to enable, support and accelerate software companies’ growth across global markets with reduced time and risk. To find out how we can help your firm, click here for more information.