Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Bare metal is BACK! For years virtualization has absolutely dominated the cloud market. The market for virtualization is still 10x larger than bare metal ($8B USD vs$100B USD). But now consumers are demanding MORE for their workloads. … and the signal from the data suggest that this trend isn't going away anytime soon. If we look a bit deeper, we might see another story enabling the avalanche of (re) adoption in bare metal.

Search is the signal. If you want a glimpse into where things are headed, just take a peek at this graph of search interest for Kubernetes Alternatives from the last few years. Cycle is a direct Kubernetes alternative, and having been part of building this company since 2018, I can tell you that this graph is so much more accurate than you can ever imagine. Until late 2021, talking about not using Kubernetes was met with an almost dogmatic intransigence.

Software engineering is trending, and the latest fads come and go with passionate adoption. Remember the OpenStack craze? Kubernetes? On-prem v cloud? I could go on and on, but one trend in software engineering that has surfaced in the last few years is DevOps & Platform Engineering.

Federation allows for distributing control and services across not just multiple regions, but multiple providers and environments as well. This is a critical capability for today's multi-cloud and bare metal deployments, and the idea has gained momentum for several practical reasons such as compliance, resilience, and latency. Now, more than ever, teams are expected to support multi-cloud deployments, navigate regional compliance requirements, and deliver those low latency experiences to users globally.

Believe it or not, we are in the middle of one of the biggest cloud repatriation movements of the past decade. More than ever, companies are rushing to find infrastructure solutions that better suit their needs. Over the past decade, hyperscalers have dominated the market, generating trust and, in some cases, overconfidence in software development. Drawn in by promises of reliability, ease of use, and ultimate flexibility, teams turned to providers like AWS, GCP, and Azure.

In the last few months I've had the privilege to implement and witness new and exciting Cycle platform workflows emerging. Some of these come from the evolution of our own internal work, while others I've learned from our users. Reflecting on this, I thought it would be beneficial to the community to share! In this article, I'll walk through a handful of the neatest patterns we've seen in action. So I hope you'll join me for a no fluff, real, and practical look at how to get more out of Cycle.

Consistent with the words of Darwin, there is a "survival of the fittest" mentality in the DevOps and container orchestration ecosystem. Back in 2019, when Cycle came to market, Kubernetes was among the popular choices for managing containers and remains one of the most prominent players in the space today.

As software grows ever more complex, the growing trend of Internal Development Platforms (IDPs) is becoming undeniable. It doesn't matter if you are the next AI super company or a small tech startup—if you are building software, you should consider having a repeatable set of practices and tooling in place to remove developer friction and supercharge operations. IDPs can be used to solve a number of issues, from context switching and lack of collaboration to lack of visibility and security risks.

For many, Cloudflare provides an essential suite of network security tools that their organization integrates with deeply. One such tool is "Cloudflare Tunnel" - a secure way to connect resources to Cloudflare without a publicly routable IP address. When deploying sensitive applications to Cycle, Cloudflare Tunnel can be leveraged to ensure all traffic is routed through Cloudflare before reaching your environment's load balancer. This extra layer of security provides quite a few benefits.

The customer is the lifeblood of any company, and a good customer has the potential to make a huge impact on the direction and success of your business. Here at Cycle.io, we are no exception. We believe that when you come to Cycle, you are not only getting great tech but also receiving an excellent customer experience. The customers we work with every day are paramount in driving innovation and keeping us honest.