Connecting the colossal: How to scale innovation with serverless integration

Starting the process of migrating to the cloud can be daunting. Legacy systems that are colossal in scale often overwhelm the average team tasked with the mission of digital transformation. How can they possibly untangle years of legacy code to start this new digital transformation initiative? Not only are these systems colossal in scale, but also colossal in terms of business importance. Enterprise applications like SAP and IBM, are integral to the daily rhythm of business. A seemingly simple mistake can result in catastrophic consequence.

Over the past year, Azure Integration Services has been reflecting on solutions to help with these challenges and we’re excited to announce new capabilities:

Developer focused – Improved the developer experience inside Logic Apps by allowing you to directly write code as a step inside a Logic App.
Enterprise ready – Added new migration and modernization scenarios with the general availability of our new-and-improved SAP connector.
Serverless first – Better integration between API Management and Azure Functions makes it even easier to create and manage serverless integrations and applications.

The challenges facing customers

Over the past year, we've had the opportunity to meet with and hear from customers in-person to discuss the biggest challenges facing their organizations, in terms of innovation. While the tools and technology customers use might be unique to their industry, the high-level challenges encountered are often universal.

Here’s a couple of the common high-level challenges :

Developing, onboarding, and scaling new apps and services within existing IT infrastructure. Vipps, the number one payment service in Norway, faced these challenges while making the move from a monolithic application structure to a microservices first architecture.
Migrating from on-premises legacy systems to the cloud without disrupting day-to-day operations. Alaska Airlines worked through this by adopting a hybrid approach.
Rolling out digital transformation efforts throughout your organization and ensuring the success of these initiative. Finastra tackled this problem by leaning into an API-first solution and created a partner program that unlocked many different new opportunities for them.

These challenges are rooted in integration. By moving to the cloud and creating new, smaller cloud-native services, customers are realizing that the true benefit lies is in how everything works together. Integration is no longer about transforming and moving data from point A to point B, it’s now about how systems of apps, microservices, databases, and on-premises infrastructure are composed to achieve results.

Azure Integration Services leverages serverless technology to remove the resource overhead of managing infrastructure and instead, focus on connecting and composing systems that are adaptable to changing demands.

Looking ahead, our focus is on two key areas:

Making the journey to the cloud as smooth and seamless as possible by improving the experience with our products, and how our products work together.
Creating an out-of-the-box solution library that provides step-by-step guidance on when and how to use our Azure services to solve business and IT problems around connectivity, integration, and application development.

We know that to achieve in these areas, we must be at the forefront of the changing technology landscape. Integration is the backbone that drives application innovation and development, the journey to the cloud, and long-term success with cloud-native innovation strategies.

To learn more about Azure Integration Services, watch the Azure Friday episode giving an overview of Integration Services.

Interested in talking with an expert? Schedule a call with one of our solutions experts to see how Azure Integration Services can help you.
Quelle: Azure

How to assess application modernization quality with continuous software testing

Quality is essential to every project. That is the clear message from businesses across every industry.
Today’s enterprise IT environment, however, is more diverse and complicated than ever before. The combination of technologies, including mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, are helping businesses drive competitive advantage. While companies are adjusting to this evolving business landscape on a macro level, delivery teams are also reacting and adjusting on their own modernization and optimization journey. Many delivery teams are finding a need for streamlined, continuous software testing.
Application modernization
While new applications are being deployed, established applications are still necessary for standard business operations. A typical enterprise may have 1,000 applications or more with dependencies across multiple clouds and on-premises ecosystems, plus possible regulatory dependencies.
As a result of this complex application ecosystem, many organizations are looking to Kubernetes to simplify the management of applications, ensuring cloud portability and rapid delivery across the full software lifecycle. This is supported with a microservices architecture, which breaks down single, often monolithic applications, into a collection of smaller, independently deployable services managed by different teams.
Test software quality throughout the delivery lifecycle
Throughout the application modernization and optimization journey, it is essential for delivery teams to assess quality at every opportunity. The combination of automated testing and test service virtualization can help teams asses the quality of their deliverables throughout the delivery lifecycle.
Quality is essential and as the need for dynamic, agile quality assessment grows, the software test automation market is also growing.
How to find the right tools for continuous software testing
The challenge can be selecting the right tools to enable continuous software testing through the DevOps pipeline. Some criteria to consider when choosing a vendor include the following:

Product design, architecture and scalability. Tools should streamline workloads now and in the future. Evaluate product specifics, such as the ability to share data and a common web-based UI across integration testing, functional testing and performance testing.
Ease of deployment and use. The ability to use one solution for testing all types of technologies and environments will enable all teams to remain in communication, ensure a strong feedback loop and improve overall agility.
Vendor support and services. Be sure testing tools can grow with your company.

 
These criteria align well with those used by EMA to evaluate DevOps continuous testing platform products in a recent report. Based on their assessment with wide range of users, EMA awarded the DevOps 2020 Top 3 award for Continuous Testing Platforms to IBM Rational Test Workbench.
Learn more about continuous software testing and find the right set of tools for your company.
The post How to assess application modernization quality with continuous software testing appeared first on Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

Introducing Red Hat OpenShift 4: Kubernetes for the Enterprise

Today at Red Hat Summit we celebrate the announcement of Red Hat OpenShift 4, which will be available in the next month. A big thank you to our customers from more than 1,000 worldwide organizations, our partners, the Kubernetes community at large, and our Red Hat teams for all of the progress we’ve made together […]
The post Introducing Red Hat OpenShift 4: Kubernetes for the Enterprise appeared first on Red Hat OpenShift Blog.
Quelle: OpenShift

UI-Toolkit: Google will Flutter für alle

Das UI-Toolkit Flutter soll zusätzlich zu mobilen Plattformen künftig auch im Web und auf Desktops laufen. Möglich machen das Entwicklungen an Browsern und den Systemen, bis zur vollen Unterstützung dauert es wohl aber noch. (Google I/O, Google)
Quelle: Golem

Klimaschutz: Großbritannien probt für den Kohleausstieg

Seit dem 1. Mai ruhen die britischen Kohlekraftwerke. Der Strom für die Insel wird aus anderen Quellen bezogen, unter anderem aus Windparks. Es ist die längste Zeit ohne Kohleverstromung in Großbritannien, seit 1882 das erste Kohlekraftwerk in London eröffnet wurde. (Nachhaltigkeit, Solarenergie)
Quelle: Golem