Shipa, Corp., which abstracts away Kubernetes complexity from application deployment and management, recently announced the general availability of its Shipa Cloud.  To dive in a bit and explore more, VMblog spoke with the company's CEO, Bruno Andrade.

VMblog:  Shipa recently launched Shipa Cloud, the newest addition to a product line focused on offloading Kubernetes complexities.  Can you tell us a little more about that?

Bruno Andrade:  Organizations continue to pursue modernization-via-Kubernetes without anticipating the productivity drain and the (negative) impact on developer experience that often comes with it. Shipa Cloud is a cloud-managed developer platform built to alleviate the burdensome and ever-growing complexities that developers and DevOps teams face when wielding Kubernetes (and especially so at scale).

With Shipa Cloud, developers can deploy and manage their cloud native applications without needing to learn Kubernetes at all - let alone become experts. Instead, Shipa Cloud provides developers with a secure and straightforward platform that automatically creates and deploys all required Kubernetes objects. Developers don't need to grapple with building and maintaining YAML and Helm charts, and can instead focus on application development and iteration itself (which I'd wager 99.999% of developers would rather do). The Shipa Cloud platform also integrates into developers' existing workflows, and empowers DevOps to set policies and governance controls as they see fit. As an engineer by trade, Shipa was born out of the founders living these Kubernetes headaches day-in, day-out.

VMblog:  How does Shipa Cloud differ from what Shipa has released since launching its first product around a year ago?

Andrade:  Shipa Cloud is our SaaS offering - its control plane is hosted in the cloud. Users can still bring their own clusters and infrastructure, but the control plane is hosted by Shipa so that users don't have to worry about that.

The strategy with our SaaS control plane is to have all of the newest functionalities released first to SaaS and then migrate them over to the self-hosted version of Shipa on a set schedule. By doing this, we'll deliver value quickly to our cloud users while also providing a complete and stable version to organizations choosing to self-host (typically large, highly-regulated customers).

VMblog:  Whether organizations are new to cloud native application development or have been early adopters, how do you see cloud native strategies evolving over the next few years?

Andrade:  Forward-thinking cloud native strategies will push towards environments that are more efficient and effective for both DevOps and developers. CI/CD tools offer a clear example of this - many early adopters now use tools that weren't intended for cloud native operations, and will retool. Today, DevOps teams must carefully vet potential tools across the pipeline not only for their capabilities, but also for how well they work alongside other tools. Ideally, fully interoperable plug-and-play solutions will arise to define cloud native 2.0, allowing teams to simply select the most appropriate and powerful choices for CI, CD, release automation, governance and compliance, and more.

DevOps will also increasingly leverage application policy management tools and frameworks that limit developers' exposure to both Kubernetes complexity and risks. Such frameworks will automatically prevent developer errors and reduce danger. Development teams will become more likely to include embedded DevSecOps as well, building security into normal development processes. Finally, I expect those automation tools that abstract Kubernetes and reduce human errors to become increasingly valuable and effective. With experience, teams will come to understand that automation isn't automatic, and improve at the careful auditing required to make those solutions more accurate and productive.

VMblog:  You've been quoted as saying Kubernetes will disappear and become a "transparent commodity" - why do you believe that, and when do you think that will be the reality?

Andrade:  Many enterprise developers are of the opinion that simplicity is an essential feature for creating workable solutions. That's especially true of developers who have suffered through production issues due to Kubernetes complexity. Kubernetes eats up attention and resources that developers could much more efficiently (and would much rather) apply to actual innovative development. From an Ops perspective as well, Kubernetes' lack of visibility makes troubleshooting and maintenance challenging and often dangerously obscures security risks.

The way of the cloud is to make the challenges of operating generic infrastructure external. The cost and difficulty of Kubernetes make it a great candidate to become a transparent commodity that disappears into the cloud, just like data center hardware or any other infrastructure we no longer think about.

VMblog:  If VMblog readers want to get their hands on Shipa Cloud, how can they go about it?  Do you have a trial?

Andrade:  We do indeed - get a 14-day free trial of Shipa Cloud here: https://apps.shipa.cloud/

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