Event-Driven Architectures and Cloud DevOps – re:Invent 2022

After two years of virtual and reduced-size events, AWS re:Invent was in full swing for 2022 with over 50,000 attendees — more than double 2021’s in-person attendance. Among the many new service and feature announcements, there were two themes that resonated (re:Sonated?): event-driven architectures and cloud-powered innovation. These uniquely position AWS partners to accelerate their customers’ business transformations.

Something that stood out across the myriad of attendees were the many different paths to digital transformation — and each organization’s journey is unique. For example, a company might introduce AI or cloud computing to enhance its customer experience. Or it might redesign its supply chain to make better use of machine learning. A company can even make spot-on predictions about the products customers will want in a few months’ time, then shift production to meet demand that wasn’t seen previously. For most enterprises, a competitive advantage lies in their software supply chain — for both IT and the business.

Cloud strategies and the business are now one

re:Invent continues to grow in attendance and relevance as a result of this business-wide effect of cloud. And it probably won’t slow down. According to IDC, organizations will continue to accelerate their pursuit of a digital-first strategy, in both internal operations and external direct engagement.

The investments in internal operations are largely focused on improving efficiency and resilience, while customer experience transformation has become a digital transformation (DX) priority for many companies. In his keynote, Dr. Werner Vogels highlighted, “The world is complex…but we should always be able to make progress, no matter the circumstances.”  He added that in order to build the workflow your business needs to succeed, you need a number of key patterns to bring together the system that you want. Then you listen, learn, and improve.

By moving to more event-driven themes, businesses of all sizes can get more out of their data. Today’s development model relies on technologies — like microservices and cloud-native development — that make distributed systems and applications possible. The secret to making distributed computing work is solid communication between these components. This approach helps maximize the benefits of these technologies and translate them into true business value. AWS customer Trustpilot gave an example of how this type of event-driven architecture helped them ensure users get the most accurate and useful reviews. The example illustrated a mosaic of event-driven microservices. Event-driven architectures enable their global scale.

The Amazon CodeCatalyst announcement

Adopting an event-driven architecture can make it much easier to understand code relationships and interdependencies, due to the modular character of the application.  With AWS’s new service announcement, dubbed “Amazon CodeCatalyst,” AWS aims to take away a lot of the heavy lifting around developers’ processes. It’s great to see the level of innovation and focus on event-driven architectures, and how both AWS and JFrog share this automated vision.

Looking forward as release cycles get shorter and microservices get even more modular, we can imagine a world in which all of our systems’ software is being continuously updated.

JFrog’s vision is that software will become liquid, in that products and services will be connected to “software pipes” that constantly stream updates into our systems and devices; liquid software will be continuously and automatically updating our systems with no human intervention.

“Automate everything” is of course the key principle of DevOps. Hence, DevOps with automation encourages greater speed, accuracy, consistency, reliability and extra-fast deliveries. They are the tools you need to go from ideas to production faster. We’re excited to see more innovation from AWS that increases developers’ productivity and delivers a Liquid Software vision-driven reality.

What about software supply chain security for DevOps?

Our asynchronous world creates “new producers or consumers,” which adds new potential attack surfaces for vulnerabilities. The security of the software supply chain is fundamental to ensuring the fortification of modern applications — a fact not lost when talking to our JFrog customers and re:Invent attendees.

According to IDC, the delivery of software supply chain security capabilities as part of a DevOps platform is a key differentiator for JFrog. Both AWS and JFrog continue to innovate for our customers to help deliver on the vision illustrated in Vogels’ keynote while maintaining a high security posture.

The power of the cloud marketplace for partners

The most emphasized opportunities for companies in the cloud centered around AWS Marketplace. JFrog has offerings for development teams and complete DevSecOps platforms available in the AWS Marketplace today, and we will continue to grow our services and extend to our growing ecosystem. There is ample opportunity for companies to monetize their cloud partnerships with the marketplace due to simplicity of procurement, easy consumption of software, and building of rapid solutions.

Back in July, JFrog — already part of the DevSecOps category under the AWS DevOps competency — revealed support for the new AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights, which streamlines the complex third-party software risk assessment process by enabling JFrog to make security and compliance information available to customers through AWS Marketplace. By using AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights, customers can reduce the vendor assessment cycle from months to hours. For example, you can access JFrog’s validated security profile in an instant. These efficiencies and protections are what make marketplaces so valuable to partners and customers alike.

Ruba Borno’s announcement, as it relates to AWS Marketplace and the launch of both Marketplace Data Visualization Dashboards in preview and AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights in GA, is also a game changer for partners like JFrog. These offerings provide us with new capabilities to understand which Marketplace offers are successful and which business metrics need to be measured. These services allow us to focus our offers and accelerate our capabilities in the Marketplace at a much faster pace.

Taking advantage of your committed spend

As we approach the end of the year, many companies are looking to burn down committed spend dollars — the contractually-obligated spends companies are committed to with providers like AWS. The good news is that products and services that can help position you for your next transformation are already in the marketplace, and eligible for committed spend dollars.

Contact us at cloud@jfrog.com to learn more about your DevOps transformation and how a marketplace-offered, private, and customized offer can catalyze your organization’s development process.