AppDirect SaaS Add-on Services for Cloud Foundry
There are 5,000 cloud apps available today; the number is growing so fast that just in 4 years it may reach 50,000+. On the other hand, 56% of businesses want to stick to a single vendor. This video explains how you can extend your PaaS offering with numerous third-party cloud services via AppDirect, an API integration platform.
In attempt to combat the problem of "shadow IT," AppDirect integrated CF with a cloud service broker (CBS). This video explains how it works and helps to handle all the API connectivity and complexity.
The concept of "last-mile app delivery" brings up a concern of how manual configuration ruins the whole thing. When monitoring--e.g., with AppDynamics or New Relic--you need to drop the .yml file to a VM/app instance to start tracking info. Paul Arnautoff explains how AppDirect binds service APIs with apps, automating provisioning, billing, and single sign-on.
It’s an API world we are living in.
That seems to be the overall message in this presentation from the CF Summit 2014 by Paul Arnautoff of AppDirect.
AppDirect is an API management platform that enables companies to create branded marketplaces and integrate cloud services into existing apps. With its cloud service broker (CSB), developers can handle all the API connectivity and complexity of cloud infrastructure and services for large enterprises, while addressing the issue of “shadow IT” that’s being purchased outside of formal IT department procedures.
Paul notes the “instant gratification” that users now experience with apps on all of their devices, and the resultant behaviors related to what they expect to consume. In other words, time waits for no app development, and users do not care about all the complexity lying behind delivery of the information they demand.
The so-called Third Platform of cloud-based networks and devices has “shifted the paradigm of ownership (of IT resources) to the apps and code,” Paul says. Now developers no longer need to have quaint thoughts about building engines or databases or sending emails, but rather, “plug-ins to apps handle all of this.”
As a result, there are now more than 5,000 cloud apps in use, a number that’s expected to rise (according to IDC) by a magnitude to 50,000 within four years. Service broker integration, as envisioned by AppDirect using Cloud Foundry, is shown in the graphic below:
Remember the early days of cloud computing when we were told that cloud computing would bring a new simplicity to managing IT resources? Have things really turned out that way?
In a way, that sales pitch has come to fruition, as Cloud Foundry deals with underlying infrastructure, analytics reports in various degrees of clarity what’s happening with all the new information being generated, and companies such as AppDirect work to amalgamate all the separate pieces any given enterprise might require.
Enterprise IT has always been, and always will be, a big, bloody mess. Even the most well-run shops can suddenly be faced with an acquisition that needs to be integrated, or a management directive stemming from a crazed C-suite executive’s recent conversation in Davos or Aspen.
The power of APIs cannot be denied, though, and this presentation shows a way out of the mess for a lot of people. Worth viewing and considering, even if nothing will ever solve all of your problems.
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