Stacklet,
developers of the industry-first cloud governance as code platform based on the
open source Cloud Custodian project, today announced
Stacklet Platform. To learn more about Stacklet Platform, VMblog spoke with Kapil
Thangavelu, creator of Cloud Custodian, co-founder and
CTO of Stacklet, to discuss today's announcement.
VMblog: To kick things off, can you start by providing a quick
background on the Cloud Custodian open source project?
Kapil Thangavelu: Cloud
Custodian is a CNCF open source project that enables users
to be well managed in the cloud. The simple YAML DSL makes it easy to define
rules to enable a well-managed cloud infrastructure that's both secure and cost
optimized. It consolidates many of the ad-hoc scripts organizations have into a
lightweight and flexible tool, with unified metrics and reporting.
VMblog: Tell us a little bit about the Stacklet Platform that is being
announced today?
Thangavelu: Designed in partnership with
several Fortune 1000 organizations, Stacklet Platform extends Cloud Custodian
with robust management capabilities, real-time cloud asset visibility,
out-of-box policy packs, and other advanced features to help businesses innovate
securely in the cloud at scale. Stacklet Platform allows cloud engineering and
security teams to easily understand, codify, and automate cloud governance for
a frictionless experience for development teams and rapid cloud adoption.
VMblog: What challenges are organizations facing with cloud governance
that the Stacklet Platform solves?
Thangavelu: Organizations
are accelerating the move to the cloud to ensure business continuity and
innovation. However, many organizations identify governance as a key inhibitor
to their cloud adoption journey, and a lack of visibility into cloud
infrastructure introduces cloud security risks which presents a key challenge
for customers as they move into the public cloud. Additionally, organizations
are struggling to enforce a fleet of policies that control usage, avoid
potential breaches, and meet regulatory requirements across an ever-increasing
number of cloud services and accounts -- all while ensuring development
productivity.
VMblog: What is governance as code? How does it benefit customers?
Thangavelu: Governance as
code is a new paradigm that enables organizations to use code to manage and
automate various aspects of governance, including cost, operations, security,
and compliance. Automation reduces the
burden of maintenance, but also increases the visibility across cloud
environments. Stacklet Platform allows organizations to shift to governance as
a code model by providing real-time policy enforcement across all clouds via
detection, notification, and remediation - all with an easy-to-write,
declarative language.
VMblog: How does the Stacklet Platform extend Cloud Custodian?
Thangavelu: Stacklet
Platform extends Cloud Custodian with robust management capabilities, real-time
cloud asset visibility, out-of-box policy packs, and other advanced features to
help businesses innovate securely in the cloud at scale.
VMblog: What should Cloud Engineers be thinking about for the
remainder of 2021?
Thangavelu: Cloud
Engineering teams should be focusing on
reducing operational overhead and developer friction which is associated with
policy implementation and inconsistent cloud management. They need to balance
being well-managed in the cloud with deployment velocity.
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