Earlier today, I had the opportunity to keynote the Cloud Foundry Summit Asia with Cloud Foundry Foundation CEO Sam Ramji. Notably, this is the first year that Cloud Foundry is governed by an independent industry board as a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project. Under this leadership, Cloud Foundry has become the de facto industry standard for developers of cloud native applications.
Cloud Foundry has become the largest community driven, open source project for the development of cloud native applications. Many successful commercial Cloud Foundry service options are available today and easily accessible by developers. The services are supported by leading enterprise IT vendors including EMC, IBM, HP, Microsoft, SAP, VMware, and Pivotal. Many enterprise organizations have built and deployed modern mobile, web, and big data applications using Cloud Foundry, particularly in the financial services, manufacturing, and retail industries.
However, the development of custom software that delivers differentiated capabilities requires more than just new tools and technology skills. To achieve the full benefits of cloud native application development, enterprise IT needs to embrace new agile development methodologies and confront several organizational challenges.
The primary focus by the IT industry in 2015 has been on implementing the transformation to IT infrastructure needed to support modern cloud native mobile, web, and big data applications. Successful businesses realize this capability must be a core IT competency that can not be outsourced. In fact, many organizations are already at work reconstituting their in house capabilities.
The good news is that the Cloud Foundry community is helping enterprise IT learn and implement the new tools, as well as the technology skillset and the modern software development methodologies to use them.
The Cloud Foundry Foundation was wildly successful this year with the establishment of the independent governance board, growth of community participation, and the release of new functionality that has allowed the industry to rally around a standard platform for the development of cloud native applications.
The challenge for 2016 will be continuing to expand Cloud Foundry’s technology capability while enterprise IT organizations build their software development capacity, implement modern software development methodologies, and develop their organizational skills. Companies that do this successfully will be the winners not only in 2016, but also in the new digital economy.
John Roese currently serves as the chairman of the Cloud Foundry board of directors.
