Guest: Ram Iyengar (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Organization: Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF) (Twitter)
Show: 2022 Prediction Series

Ram Iyengar, Developer Advocate at Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF), believes pragmatism as a service is going to be the PaaS mantra for 2022. He predicts the unifying and convergence of multi-cloud environments for the year ahead. “Now, as we are starting to observe Kubernetes work very well for massive Cloud-based deployments, and also start to make inroads into the other end of the spectrum, these are the IoT systems and Edge and all of the other computing systems in the middle of the spectrum. The ability to work with Kubernetes should no longer remain a barrier to entry for software engineering teams,” says Iyengar.

He predicts that in the year 2022, we’ll actually start seeing a lot of teams roll out very effective multitenancy over Kubernetes. Check out the above video to know what other predictions Iyengar made about the coming year.

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Swapnil Bhartiya: Hi, this is your host, Swapnil Bhartiya, and welcome to our 2022 predictions, the reason we have with us today, Ram Iyengar, Developer Advocate at Cloud Foundry Foundation. Ram, it’s great to have you on the show again.

Ram Iyengar: Thanks, Swapnil, happy to be here today.

Swapnil Bhartiya: I will ask you to share your prediction, but before that, just quickly tell our viewers, what is Cloud Foundry Foundation, Cloud Foundry committee all about?

Ram Iyengar: So Cloud Foundry is an open source PaaS. The Cloud Foundry Foundation basically exists as a governance team that oversees projects that are related to the Cloud Foundry PaaS tool as well. Some of the examples are Paketo Buildpacks, Open Service Brokers, and others that basically exist to complement Cloud Foundry PaaS.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Excellent. Now it’s time for you to grab your crystal ball and share with us, what predictions do you have for 2022?

Ram Iyengar: So my predictions, I guess predictably, focus on the PaaS way. In a nutshell, I believe, pragmatism as a service is going to be the PaaS mantra for 2022. Let me share a few details.

These predictions and observations basically come from taking a look at all of the innovation that’s been happening in the technological front, and also observing a lot of the undercurrents in the business world, that span Cloud technologies, infrastructure and so on. Generally speaking, for teams that are working on a transition to Kubernetes, I predict that this year, we’ll see the resolution of some of the teething problems that they have as they adopt, and some of the seeding problems that will come as they hit their data issues and other things. The PaaS tools, I believe, will bring a sophisticated experience to all programmers alike, irrespective of languages, irrespective of technologies, and ultimately, will allow folks to maintain the required velocity and cut down on operational inefficiencies.

Now in that regard, prediction number one is the unifying and convergence of multi-cloud environments. Now, as we are starting to observe Kubernetes work very well for massive Cloud-based deployments, and also start to make inroads into the other end of the spectrum, these are the IOT systems and Edge and all of the other computing systems in the middle of the spectrum. The ability to work with Kubernetes should no longer remain a barrier to entry for software engineering teams. In fact, PaaS tools are in high demand, because a lot of engineering teams are working on a DIY PaaS-like system over Kubernetes, and so, teams shouldn’t be struggling with configuring external DNS with networking interfaces, with load balancers, with storage, with security, what have you, right? And so ideally, in principle, all of these will come from PaaS systems.

Consequently, one of the trickiest areas for these PaaS substrates over Kubernetes is multitenancy, and I believe that in the year 2022, we’ll actually start seeing a lot of teams roll out very effective multitenancy over Kubernetes. A lot of good work has already been happening. CubeCon, this year, demonstrated folks from a couple of the different companies across the world, working on effective multitenancy systems for Kubernetes, and I think 2022 will be the year that matures, and the abstraction stops leaking, you know, proverbially.

Another area where I predict there will be a lot of improvement is with Service Brokers. Now, there’s a lot of murmur, not just now, it has been in the past as well, about stateful applications migrating successfully to Kubernetes based deployments. And so, this is going to be the year again, I believe, that the Service Broker experience is going to actually enable large scale migrations, and also provide a seamless way in which developers don’t have to think about whether they’re deploying a stateful app, or a stateless app, or how the transition will be, and really wrangle around migration plans, but they should have an easy ramp-up towards better Service Brokers that will allow them to handle stateful applications on Kubernetes as well.

And speaking of the path, from a developer’s working environment to production, Buildpacks, I believe, have a very key role to play, and that’s my fourth prediction for the upcoming year. Now, it’s not just going to be about adopting Buildpacks, which I think has seen a tremendous amount of resurgence with platforms like DigitalOcean app platform, with Azure, with Google Cloud, with a lot of folks actually starting to adopt Buildpacks as the best foot forward in terms of getting apps to production. It’s also going to open up in terms of allowing a lot of customization to happen for the Buildpacks experience, and right now, the trend is, if there are new applications that people want to push, they’re all using Buildpacks very effectively, but if there are already applications that they’re working with in existing, and they’re using like Docker based deployments and builds, they’re going to start getting a good way, and finding a nice path towards migrating to using Buildpacks for existing applications as well.

So those are the four main sort of technology-based predictions that I have, which build up to my final prediction, which is, PaaS has always been perceived as a tool where you can get a great start, but eventually, as your app scales, your PaaS tool no longer suffices in terms of your application fit on your infrastructure. So a lot of people just say, oh, there’s a point in future where we’ll outgrow our PaaS. Now I believe, that with all of the innovations that we are going to see, these are the Buildpacks and Open Service Brokers, and just unifying Kubernetes as well, PaaS is going to be, not just a great place for technology teams to start, but also a great place for them to stay and continue to scale and secure their applications.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Excellent. Thanks for sharing this prediction. Now, if I ask you, what is going to be the focus for the Foundation and the whole community in 2022?

Ram Iyengar: So, as you probably know, and your audience does as well, 2021 was a year of rather massive change at the Foundation. One of the key changes, especially in the positive trend of things, has been a newly appointed TOC, and some updates to our governing board as well. And with that, we believe that there’s going to be an increase in community participation. There’s a lot of good work that the TOC has put in to up the anti in terms of getting more community participation, and that we believe is going to be the key element that drives forward, the way Cloud Foundry is perceived in the community. Now, we’re going to see, not just more participants, but also more participation, and we’re going to keep the old projects alive, while we work on more modern breakthroughs as well. And so, I think this balance of the old and the new is going to be wonderful for the community in the year that’s to come.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Ram, thank you so much for sharing, not only these predictions, but also insights where the [inaudible 00:08:34] community is heading. There was of course, as you mentioned, a lot of transitions going on. So there were some worries, but thanks for addressing those worries. And as usual, I would love to have you back on the show. Thank you.

Ram Iyengar: Sure, Swapnil, thank you very much.

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