Agile Stacks Unveils its SuperHub DevOps Tools

Enterprises that want to integrate DevOps into their clouds from the start can now build their secure deployments more easily using preconfigured components from Agile Stacks, which brings together a full range of DevOps tools and cloud services to help speed up cloud projects.

Using Agile Stacks' Cloud Automation Hub, enterprises will be able to easily assemble the DevOps tools and processes they need to bring their cloud projects together quickly, according to the company's announcement. So far, the DevOps automation services, which work presently with Amazon Web Services (AWS), are in beta, but are expected to be in general release within the next month. Similar services for Microsoft Azure and other public and on-premises clouds are also expected to be released in the future.

Business users will be able to include a wide range of DevOps tools and cloud services in their deployments, including Docker, Kubernetes, Git, Jenkins, Spinnaker, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, MongoDB, Prometheus, Sysdig, RDS, EFS, DynamoDB and others, according to Agile Stacks. The stacks can be created using stack automation templates that are based on machine-generated infrastructure code for cloud native applications, which provide easy configuration and deployment. Using the tools, stacks can be created and up and running in as little as 20 minutes, according to Agile Stacks.

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The Cloud Automation Hub, which is also called the SuperHub, creates stack templates and automatically schedules execution of scripts written in Infrastructure-as-code tools such as Amazon CloudFormation and Hashicorp Terraform, which helps speed the process and lessen the needs for manual operations.

The built-in DevOps capabilities mean that users can quickly and seamlessly integrate automatic upgrades, security patches, vulnerability scanning, backups, log management, continuous monitoring, single sign on, data encryption, access management, audit trail and other security features to protect their cloud infrastructure assets. Also included are pre-configured and pre-tested stack configurations to help users monitor and provide continuous audit and compliance policies and protections.

The aim of the new product is to make the process more of a point and click operation for busy IT departments, John Mathon, the CEO of Agile Stacks, told ITPro Today.

"We call it the 'happy meal,' you can pick and choose the components you want, and they are all integrated," he said.

The SuperHub services are aimed at small companies, which can use the services to help them accelerate their cloud services even when they have small IT departments, as well as at large companies that want to use various DevOps services for different groups inside their operations, said Mathon.

Related:Kubernetes on AWS Leads CNCF Cloud Native Survey

"This makes it easier for them for them because the DevOps tools are there in the cloud environment to deploy, configure and administer for those projects" on an individual basis, he said.

The Agile Stacks infrastructure can help enterprises deploy such systems quickly, instead of requiring five engineers and six months to configure them manually, according to Mathon.

"We give it to you out of the box," he said. "We also dramatically reduce your risk because we have already tested and brought together the options, tools and components you can use and proven they will work together. The things that you would have to spend a lot of time and energy to do are already done for you."

A starter package for the services is expected to begin at $300 a month to provide services for a development or test environment, while pricing for production stacks will be based on usage, required services and how many users are involved.

Agile Stacks competitors include companies such as Pivotal, OpenShift, and Bitnami.

Dave Bartoletti, an analyst with Forrester, told ITPro Today that the market for automated DevOps services is widening and he expects significant enterprise adoption of containerized microservices and fully-automated DevOps in 2018.

"Enterprises demand new cloud-native development platforms for both strategies – and they want the benefits of cloud-native tools and practices both in the data center and the cloud," said Bartoletti. "We're seeing strong growth in container-based PaaS, containers-as-a-service in the public cloud, and self-assembled collections of cloud-native tools in the data center."

It will be important for companies to adopt containers in the best way for their needs, from fully-curated PaaS stacks to DIY collections of DevOps tools, because no two companies have the same skill levels or tolerance for platforms-building, he said.

"This year we'll see increasing demand for any solution that makes cloud-native development easier, faster, and more standardized," said Bartoletti.