Forem: DuploCloud

What Is SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance?

Zach Gover — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 21:28:23 +0000

summary
What you need to know about SOC 2 cloud compliance and how to shore up security without impacting time to market

In an age of sweeping data breaches, companies simply can’t afford to treat security as an afterthought. Clients want to know that you’re treating their data with care before signing on the dotted line. Going through the SOC 2 type 2 compliance process can help start-ups and small-to-midsize businesses earn client trust and ensure proper security measures are in place before going to market.

In this article, we’ll cover what SOC 2 type 2 compliance is and what it covers, and then discuss typical timelines and costs.

Jump To a Section…

What Is SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance?
- What’s the Process Behind SOC 2 Type 2?
Does My Company Need to Meet SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance?
What’s Covered in a SOC 2 Type 2 Report?
- Security
- Availability
- Processing Integrity
- Confidentiality
- Privacy
Logistics of SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance: How Long Does It Take and How Much Does it Cost?
Automating SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance

What Is SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance?

SOC 2 Type 2 compliance is an audit process that tests how a cloud-based service or platform handles sensitive data. SOC stands for System and Organization Controls, a framework for auditing a provider’s ability to handle customer data. It was first developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to ensure that accounting firms were managing client data responsibly. However, SOC has since become a standard compliance framework across tech industries, from fintech to dating apps.

There are three types of SOC reports: SOC 1 is an audit specifically for financial transactions, SOC 2 is for data security, and SOC 3 is a public-facing version of SOC 2.

To further complicate things, there are two types of SOC 2 compliance: Type 1 and Type 2. SOC 2 Type 1 describes an organization’s system for handling client data. SOC 2 Type 2 compliance (sometimes called SOC 2 Type II compliance), which we’ll be covering in this blog, tests a software provider’s operational efficiency over a period of time. Usually, a client’s legal or IT team will reach out to you for a SOC 2 Type 2 compliance report to ensure your cloud-based service meets security standards for handling customer data.

What’s the Process Behind SOC 2 Type 2?

SOC 2 Type 2 audits are conducted by a third party to eliminate conflicts of interest. Once the auditor’s report is ready, you can share it with potential customers. Most companies complete an SOC 2 Type 2 compliance report before going to market and continue to issue compliance reports on an annual basis.

Does My Company Need to Meet SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance?

If your team is building a cloud-based solution, you will very likely need to meet SOC 2 Type 2 requirements. Though SOC 2 Type 2 compliance is not legally mandated in the U.S., it has developed into a common industry standard, and many clients in North America will expect you to provide a SOC 2 Type 2 report before doing business with you.

If you’re building a solution for the healthcare, finance, cybersecurity, or government sectors, SOC 2 Type 2 compliance is a must because companies who work in these industries handle vast amounts of sensitive data (people’s Social Security numbers, medical records, credit card numbers, and so on). You will need to prove that your cloud-based solution meets basic security protocols in order to remain competitive in the SaaS market. Getting SOC 2 Type 2-compliant is one way to do just that.

Besides winning over clients who deal with sensitive data, getting compliant can help protect your brand, increase customer trust, improve your product, and save you time and money in the long run.

Learn how small and mid-size businesses can achieve SOC 2 Type 2 compliance with DuploCloud.

What’s Covered in a SOC 2 Type 2 Report?

SOC 2 Type 2 compliance reports can cover five different Trust Services Criterias (TSCs): security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Let’s go through these in more detail.

Security

Security is the only criteria required in an SOC 2 Type 2 report. But that alone can entail hundreds of controls (password security, employee onboarding, multi-factor authentication, etc.). This criteria focuses on data access and how confidential data is protected from unauthorized parties.

Availability

The availability criteria determines if your clients and employees can rely on your systems to work correctly. That includes measuring the efficacy of data backups, data recovery, and business continuity capabilities. You may be required to include this criteria if your product offers a continuous delivery or deployment platform or if a disruption to services (like a power outage) will prevent your clients from building their products.

Processing Integrity

This criteria looks at whether or not your systems can function without delays, omissions, or errors. Processing integrity is especially important if you provide solutions for ecommerce companies, financial institutions, or any other use cases where a customer needs to complete a certain set of transactions in the correct order (such as going through a checkout or sign-up process).

Confidentiality

The confidentiality criteria measures how well your systems protect sensitive information. This part of the report will look at how you designate and authorize parties to access sensitive information (such as legal documents, medical records, intellectual property) and what protocols you have in place to protect it (for example, limiting access to archived client profiles). You may need to add this criteria if your company deals with intellectual property, financial reports, or other types of confidential information.

Privacy

The privacy criteria looks at how well your organization protects personally identifiable information (PII). That includes names, emails, physical addresses, demographics, driver’s license numbers, and Social Security numbers. If your organization is handling a lot of consumer data, this criteria may be required on your SOC 2 Type 2 compliance report.

Logistics of SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance: How Long Does It Take and How Much Does it Cost?

Because SOC 2 Type 2 reports look at how your security systems perform over time, they can be a lengthy process. If you’re not using automation tools to speed up compliance, the average audit process can take anywhere from two months to a year.

There are three phases to a typical SOC 2 Type 2 compliance process. In the pre-audit phase, you define the audit scope, run a gap analysis, configure remediations, and get your documentation in order. In the audit window phase, you’ll collect evidence and finalize what you’d like to cover in your report. In the audit phase, the auditor analyzes your systems and issues a report.

On average, this process can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 per audit. The report is considered valid for 12 months, after which time you’ll need to repeat the process.

Automating SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance

Unsurprisingly, becoming compliant can be a financial burden for startups and small-to-midsize businesses, not to mention the delay in time to market a lengthy compliance process can create. Some out-of-the-box DevSecOps platforms, including DuploCloud, automate SOC 2 cloud compliance, which can reduce your audit time to a matter of weeks. As of this writing, DuploCloud is also the only automation platform spanning both provisioning and security, which ensures your cloud-based solution is built with 90% adherence to the required security controls.

How to Build a Platform Engineering Team

Zach Gover — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 22:41:45 +0000

summary
Platform engineers make everyone on your team more successful by developing tools and standards that support consistency at scale

Platform engineering paves the way for successfully building and scaling DevOps initiatives. When set up correctly, a platform team can make every engineer across your entire organization more effective in designing and deploying applications. That’s because platform engineers are devoted to building and managing the underlying infrastructure that supports your organization’s work, while abstracting engineers away from unnecessary code tasks and cognitive load with tools designed to create consistency and efficiency at scale. In this article, we’ll introduce everything you need to know about hiring the right people to establish a successful platform engineering team structure.

Jump to a section…

What Is a Platform Engineering Team?
How To Get Platform Engineering Team Structure Right
The Necessary Skills for Platform Engineering

What Is a Platform Engineering Team?

Platform engineering teams are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure used by an organization’s other engineering and IT teams. The term “infrastructure engineering” is typically used to denote physical or hardware infrastructure, while “platform engineering” refers primarily to software infrastructure. In the cloud-first era, platform teams are tasked with building the tools, workflows, and platforms that empower engineers with self-service capabilities like golden paths and paved roads. Platform engineers are typically focused on building internal developer platforms (IDPs) to help individual engineers and entire organizations become more efficient and productive with fewer mistakes along the way. IDPs do this by creating a level of abstraction between the complexities of cloud-native infrastructure and the everyday work of developing and deploying applications.

Want to learn more about how you can purchase an off-the-shelf IDP rather than building your own from scratch? Read a free IDP whitepaper here.

How to Get Platform Engineering Team Structure Right

Structurally, platform engineers support every other aspect of your enterprise’s software development. All your product engineering teams and even your organization’s IT department will likely sit on top of your platform engineering team in a hierarchical sense. To build your platform engineering team structure correctly, consider these five key steps:

Have a mission: Define your platform engineering team’s purpose and create a clearly stated goal that can guide all your future projects and help earn company-wide buy-in.
Balance standards & autonomy: Standardization is one of the platform team’s primary goals, but it can’t come at the expense of autonomy. Find the right balance for your organization between necessary guardrails and the freedom to execute independently.
Adopt a product mindset: Although it may never see the light of day outside your company, your IDP is still a product in and of itself. Focus on the features that provide value, incorporate feedback from your engineers, and constantly iterate and evolve.
Increase iteration speed: Speaking of iterating, make sure you’re optimizing testing, iteration, and deployment so they happen as quickly as possible. Engineers can get stuck waiting for platform teams to solve problems, so efficiency is absolutely critical.
Identify shared issues: Understanding the issues plaguing engineers across your organization will make for better platform engineering solutions. Platform teams aim to reduce friction company-wide, which likely means killing multiple birds with one stone.

The Necessary Skills for Platform Engineering

In order to embrace platform engineering, you’ll need to hire professionals with the right technical skills. The hard skills required will continue to change as the DevOps landscape shifts and evolves, but having an interest and experience with software infrastructure will always remain. Disciplines pertaining to the underlying systems that allow software engineers to do their jobs will also be crucial; today, those priority fields might include experience with Kubernetes, SQL systems, data storage, etc.

In many ways, it’s the soft skills that make for good platform engineers that are likely to remain more consistent as time passes. These have more to do with the mindset of effective platform teams; no matter how technology grows and what new tools arise, that mindset will continue to be a necessary component in the development of internal software infrastructure. Here are some of the most important soft skills necessary for platform engineers:

Empathy: Even though platform engineers aren’t serving external customers, they still need to be able to empathize with the colleagues that will be using what they build. Product engineers come to platform teams with problems, and the platform teams need to be able to grasp their situation in order to design and build a solution.
Partnership: Platform engineers need to be able to anticipate how their code will be interpreted by others. In the spirit of partnership, they should be designing code that other engineers can easily read, understand, and employ for their specific use case. Code that’s only accessible to an individual engineer is virtually impossible to scale, share, and repurpose, making it a poor platform engineering tool.
Patience: Support is also an important part of the platform engineering team’s job; even the most senior engineers might not have deep training and expertise in infrastructure topics like distributed databases, for example. A patient approach to educating engineering teams to use internal platform tools will propel forward everyone involved.
Perspective: Platform engineers need to be able to zoom out far enough from the tool they’re building to be able to understand what works about it and what doesn’t and identify what’s missing and what can be improved. Taking a long-term view of how the internal platform is going to be used over time will make it easier to build tools that are extendable and scalable.
Operational focus: Compared to product teams, platform engineers tackle longer-term projects with greater import in many ways; their work enables entire departments to do their jobs more effectively. That means platform teams need to be more dedicated than other engineers to measurable issues like performance, efficiency, reliability, and operability.

One of the most important benefits of platform engineering is that it addresses the skill-demand gap; skilled cloud computing engineers are hard to come by and expensive to employ. With a powerful platform engineering team in place, organizations can more easily achieve key technical outcomes without having to staff a massive brain trust of cloud engineers. IDPs reduce the need for specialized engineering talent, because they can be custom-built for each individual organization to lessen the code required to design and deploy its applications.

When it comes to the low-code/no-code approach, it helps to have a dedicated partner with experience in the space. DuploCloud’s low-code/no-code IDP is designed to help startups and small- to medium-sized businesses introduce DevOps principles like platform engineering by amplifying their DevOps teams. If you’re ready to tackle platform engineering at your company while speeding deployment times tenfold and reducing operating costs by 75%, find a vendor like DuploCloud.

What Is Platform Engineering?

Zach Gover — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 18:53:42 +0000

Platform engineering simplifies software development by consolidating common engineering resources into a single internal tool

Software development has always been complex, but the rise of cloud computing and the proliferation of engineering tools have made things more complicated than ever — slowing down deployment rates in an era where time-to-market is of paramount importance.

By simplifying the development process, platform engineering addresses some of the most difficult challenges software engineers face. But what is platform engineering? Keep reading to learn everything you need to know.

Jump to a section…

What Is Platform Engineering?
- What is an Internal Developer Platform?
- Platform Engineering vs. DevOps
What Are the Benefits of Platform Engineering?
What Are the Best Platform Engineering Tools?
- DuploCloud
- MongoDB Atlas
- Kratix
The Power of an Out-of-the-Box IDP Solution

What Is Platform Engineering?

Platform engineering is the practice of building and maintaining a comprehensive, proprietary software development tool — usually called an Internal Development Platform (IDP) — that provides a company’s engineering team with everything they need to deploy applications.

Platform engineering has risen to prominence because of the increasing complexity of the modern software development process, which over recent decades has grown to include a long list of different applications, tools, etc. While it certainly has its advantages, the downside of this ever-growing toolkit is a fractured development environment that can be hard for engineers to navigate efficiently. Platform engineering is a direct response to this trend. Platform engineers streamline the development environment by building an IDP that makes it much easier to utilize the right resources.

What Is an Internal Developer Platform?

An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) combines and organizes the company’s software development resources into a unified, self-service application. For platform engineers, the company’s development team is the client, and the IDP is the internal product they design, build, and optimize to support that client. IDPs are typically a synthesis of APIs, services, tools, knowledge, and anything else that could help the development team bring new products and features to market. A successful IDP provides what is known as a “golden path”: It makes the software development journey as smooth and straightforward as possible.

It’s important to note that not all organizations choose to build their IDP themselves. Some companies utilize out-of-the-box IDPs to reduce the investment required to leverage the efficiency gains of platform engineering. Read our free whitepaper to learn how to use this approach to save millions of dollars and years of effort.

Platform Engineering vs. DevOps

Although some may suggest platform engineering is the next phase of DevOps, it’s probably more accurate to understand platform engineering as an activity that supports the goals of DevOps.

DevOps is an approach to software development that aims to improve a company’s ability to rapidly deploy new applications through the implementation of a comprehensive set of philosophies, practices, and tools.
Platform engineering supports that approach by building tools — the IDP — that accelerates the software development process.

What Are the Benefits of Platform Engineering?

Companies that use platform engineering have several advantages over those that use more traditional software development tech stacks. These advantages include faster software development, enhanced security, and lower operational complexity.

Faster software development: Traditional software development tech stacks are a fractured collection of specialized tools and resources that often require a high degree of expertise and manual labor. By uniting these tools and resources in a single platform — and automating formerly manual processes — IDPs accelerate software development by making it easy for anyone on the development team to get to work.
Enhanced security: Traditional software development tech stacks can lack the proper security controls when provisioning infrastructure, requiring extensive manual security work to shore up vulnerabilities. Some IDPs, however, can incorporate the proper security controls out of the box so developers can be confident that every infrastructure component they provision meets rigorous security standards.
Lower operational complexity: Traditional software development tech stacks can become unruly and overly complex, especially for large companies or companies that develop innovative technology. Platform engineering simplifies the development environment by organizing and consolating resources into the IDP.

While these benefits have prompted large companies like Capital One, Intel, Cisco, and General Motors to aggressively hire platform engineers, mid-sized businesses are also embracing platform engineering. This is partly because platform engineering can help them get an edge in the market by minimizing deployment times and avoiding compliance dependencies.

What Are the Best Platform Engineering Tools?

DuploCloud

Capable of functioning as an out-of-the-box IDP, DuploCloud enables development teams to significantly increase cloud application deployment rates through DevOps automation and orchestration.

DuploCloud key features:

DuploCloud’s no-code/low-code IDP accelerates cloud application development by transforming high-level descriptions into detailed and fully managed cloud configurations. The engineering platform’s rules-based engine has built-in knowledge of over 500 cloud services and automatically generates the necessary Infrastructure-as-Code for modern cloud applications. Additionally, the platform integrates directly with your existing DevOps toolchains, popular cloud services, and open-source tools. These integrations include Prometheus, Grafana, Elasticsearch, ClamAV, Wazuh, and more. Finally, everything provisioned by DuploCloud meets the highest security, availability, and compliance standards.

DuploCloud is best for:

As a cloud platform engineering tool, DuploCloud can help organizations of all sizes increase time to market and lower development costs, but it’s particularly well suited to help startups and other resource-constrained companies address some of their biggest development roadblocks — like stringent software compliance requirements.

MongoDB Atlas

Used by companies like Sega, Boxed, and Liberty Mutual, MongoDB Atlas is a suite of cloud database and data services designed to streamline how engineering teams handle database deployment and utilization during the development process.

MongoDB Atlas key features:

MongoDB Atlas has numerous features that support simplified database deployment, such as in-app analytics, relevance-based search data, and power transactional processing. These robust and innovative features are delivered via a user-friendly, developer-optimized platform that allows teams to tackle data according to their internal processes and preferences.

MongoDB Atlas is best for:

MongoDB Atlas is ideal for larger businesses with extensive database management issues. Mid-sized companies will probably be better served by a complete IDP solution.

Kratix

Accessible via GitHub, Kratix is an open-source framework that helps platform engineers create IDPs for development teams.

Kratix key features:

Kratix allows platform engineers to build IDPs that cater to every developer via multiple levels of abstraction and Kubernetes access controls. The framework also enables self-service API access, efficiently defines business logic for IDP stakeholders, and supports multi-cluster deployment via any infrastructure.

Kratix is best for:

Intended for organizations with large platform engineering teams, Kratix is a good tool for enterprise tech companies looking to empower dedicated platform engineers.

The Power of an Out-of-the-Box IDP Solution

For some organizations — especially large enterprises — platform engineering is an activity that will involve staffing, internal development, and ongoing support. But for other organizations, particularly mid-sized companies, platform engineering will primarily involve investing in an out-of-the-box IDP solution that provides the advantages of a home-grown platform without the necessary allocation of internal resources.

Supplying the self-service and automation features modern engineering teams need, DuploCloud is an ideal out-of-the-box IDP for businesses of all sizes. Read our white paper to learn how to accelerate deployment rates with DuploCloud.

Low-Code/No-Code: A Comprehensive Guide for Software Development

Zach Gover — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 16:38:08 +0000

The innovations behind low-code/no-code platforms are driving more effective and cost-efficient software development practices

Software development expertise has been the driving force of contemporary innovation, yet Gartner predicts that by 2024, 80% of technology products and services will be built by people who are not traditional development professionals. How is this possible?

Because people can now create software using no-code and low-code platforms, quickly producing enterprise-grade applications at a fraction of the cost. These low-code/no-code solutions, including everything from prototyping to cloud infrastructure automation, can help businesses minimize time to market and overcome skill/demand gaps when developing new digital products.

Jump to a section…

What Are No-Code Platforms?
What Are Low-Code Platforms?
What Are the Benefits of Low-Code/No-Code Development?
3 Examples of No-Code Development Platforms
- Cloud Application Development: DuploCloud
- Web Application Development: Betty Blocks
- Mobile App Development: Adalo
3 Examples of Low-Code Development Platforms
- Cloud Development: DuploCloud
- Web Development: OutSystems
- Mobile App Development: Appery
Choose the Unified Low-Code/No-Code DevOps Solution

What Are No-Code Platforms?

No-code platforms allow users to create software applications and their requisite underlying infrastructure without writing code. They accomplish this task with simple graphical interfaces that don’t expect users to have pre-existing knowledge of programming languages or software development tools.

On a practical level, no-code software often features templates and simple menus that designers can customize for different applications, allowing citizen developers to build simple programs from scratch or aid larger development teams, who can then focus on server integration, database management, or other complicated and time-consuming work. This versatility lets the platforms support various applications, including interactive forms, online payment processing portals, websites, infrastructure for cloud-based development, and more.

For an in-depth history of no-code software development, check out “What Are No-Code Platforms?”

What Are Low-Code Platforms?

Low-code platforms produce applications using lean code that is either auto-generated or prefabricated. They include simple graphical interfaces that intelligently interpret code to fill in required details automatically and account for commonly used features. As a result, software products designed using low-code platforms are often of similar or higher quality than manually-designed applications at a fraction of the time and cost.

According to Gartner, enterprise-grade low-code application platforms include:

UI capabilities through responsive web and mobile applications.
Orchestration or choreography of pages, business processes, and decisions or business rules.
A built-in database.
“One button” deployment of applications.

By relying on a combination of lean code and prefabricated resources, low-code platforms reduce the chances of human error in the finished product. In doing so, applications are less likely to suffer security breaches while complying fully with specific compliance standards, such as GDPR, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and others.

For examples of low-code software development solutions, check out “What Are Low-Code Platforms?”

What Are the Benefits of Low-Code/No-Code Development?

Traditional software development can be both costly and time-consuming, especially when performed at scale. Completing a single application might require months or years of development with contributions from dozens of developers. These kinds of demands for creating any given piece of software are becoming increasingly unrealistic when there are 900,000 unfilled IT positions in the United States, and demand for IT professionals is projected to increase 13% by 2030.

Low-code/no-code development, on the other hand, supports lean development teams, which reduces annual costs and labor especially in the case of cloud automation platforms like DuploCloud. In addition, research suggests these platforms can speed up development pipelines by 10 times. These results can help large companies become more efficient by tearing down organizational silos and empowering citizen developers who can handle routine functions while dedicated development teams devote time and energy to more complex tasks. Meanwhile, small teams and startups can remain competitive while achieving otherwise impossible levels of productivity.

Read white paper for more in-depth information on how no code/low-code applications can cut development time and streamline operations.

The potential benefits of no code/low-code development apply across industries, but are particularly notable when deploying cloud-based applications which otherwise require a massive organizational investment in traditional development environments. Platforms that are purpose-built for cloud technology and provide native support for services — such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform — shave entire months from development time.

For a more detailed comparison of no-code/low-code platforms, look at “Low-Code vs No-Code: What’s the Difference?”

3 Examples of No-Code Development Platforms

The principles driving low-code/no-code software aren’t new. In 2022, many kinds of development teams can find well-established enterprise platforms to serve their purposes, from CRM to video game creation and beyond. To better understand these features, it can be helpful to look at examples of these platforms in detail. Let’s start with cloud, web, and mobile app development.

Cloud Infrastructure Deployment: DuploCloud

DuploCloud is a cloud infrastructure automation platform designed to reduce configuration and deployment times from six months to just a few weeks. Under traditional development, DevOps teams must manually compile thousands of lines of code to handle configurations across the CI/CD pipeline, app provisioning tools, diagnostic and security controls, and cloud platform services. To address these issues, DuploCloud relies on an easy-to-use web application that provisions Infrastructure-as-Code to align with your application’s needs, allowing development teams to focus on the part that matters most: building world-class, cloud-native software at scale. It also continuously monitors security and compliance standards to stay up-to-date with the latest regulations and best practices.

Web Application Development: Betty Blocks

Betty Blocks is a web development tool that uses a drag-and-drop interface to arrange prefabricated code blocks intuitively. This approach gives users a solid foundation for building robust web software for enterprise use and is accessible to novice developers. Betty Blocks can generate NDAs for legal departments, manage risk assessment processes, or create knowledge bases for customer service teams. Just as important, Betty Blocks is a complete tool that doesn’t require additional software, limiting security concerns.

Mobile App Development: Adalo

Adalo streamlines the technical elements of app design — such as windows, videos, images, and buttons — into sequences of reusable components that users can arrange through a graphical interface. It’s also capable of generating internal databases that house inventory, collect user data inputs, and more. In addition, Adalo’s robust tools help developers manage user permissions, deliver push notifications, access camera functions, and seamlessly publish to Google Play and Apple’s App Store.

For more examples of no-code platforms, read “The 10 Best No-Code Platforms That Accelerate Development.”

3 Examples of Low-Code Development Platforms

Low-code solutions can be especially potent and flexible for users who have a baseline grasp of coding fundamentals. Here are some more examples of platforms that can serve as a force multiplier for development via low-code interfaces.

Cloud Infrastructure Deployment: DuploCloud

DuploCloud isn’t just a no-code platform — it also acts as a low-code development solution with its Terraform provider. DuploCloud includes a CI/CD framework to build, test, and deploy applications using GitHub commits and PRs. The platform lets developers quickly provision secure and compliant cloud infrastructures by writing a fraction of the Terraform Infrastructure-as-Code.

Web Development: OutSystems

OutSystems uses AI to assist in the creation of web applications at any scale. Its low-code tools help developers produce in-house operational software, massive consumer products, and everything in between while maintaining a high-quality and secure user experience. OutSystems also provides complete support to assist developers in back-end, front-end, process orchestration, integration, and data development.

Mobile App Development: Appery

Appery is a low-code development platform that simplifies the process of designing iOS and Android apps. Appery includes robust support and customization features tailored for experienced developers, along with a similar drag-and-drop interface to tools such as Betty Blocks. With these tools, tech teams can enhance existing workflows, add custom code, and access valuable resources at any step in the development process.

For more examples of low-code platforms, read “The 5 Best Low-Code Platforms for Shortening Development Timelines.”

Choose the Unified Low-Code/No-Code DevOps Solution

Despite all the advancements in software development, there is still a significant skill-demand gap between designing and building cloud-based applications. Low-code/no-code solutions are essential for DevOps teams to remain competitive in this environment.

DuploCloud’s DevOps-as-a-service platform accomplishes this goal by automating the provisioning of resources, integrating CI/CD pipelines, and maintaining strict security and compliance standards in your application. These low-code/no-code processes dramatically reduce configuration and deployment times while increasing your team’s effectiveness. Read white paper to learn more about how the low-code/no-code movement will help you deploy cloud applications 10x faster.

The 10 Best No-Code Platforms That Accelerate Development

Zach Gover — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 02:31:26 +0000

Build a website, design a database, and more, all without writing a line of code

For SMBs and start-ups, designing functional apps and bringing them to market is increasingly turning into a race against the clock. Resources are tight, and finding and maintaining a team of developers with the specialized skills needed to bring web, mobile, and cloud-native apps to market is time-consuming and expensive. All the while, other organizations are attempting to do the same to be first to market.

For this reason, no-code platforms have become increasingly popular among smaller teams looking to iterate their ideas rapidly. In fact, Gartner estimates that non-professionals will build 80% of all technology products and services by 2024. No-code platforms aid teams of skilled and citizen developers alike to bring websites, forms, and fully-featured applications to market much more quickly than if they’d been built from scratch. Read on to learn about the best no-code platforms available, whatever your needs may be.

Jump to a section…

What is a No-Code Platform?
The Best No-Code Platforms
- Cloud Application Development: DuploCloud
- Web Application Development: Betty Blocks
- Desktop Application Development: FileMaker
- Mobile App Development: Adalo
- Web Design: Wix.com
- Inventory management: Caspio
- Game Development: BuildBox
- Event Automation: IFTTT
- Ecommerce Platform: Shopify
- Data Gathering: Formstack
Extra - Automate Cloud Infrastructure Set-Up in Days Instead of Weeks

What is a No-Code Platform?

A no-code platform is a software development environment that allows users with little to no technical skill to build fully-functional applications by dragging and dropping interactive elements within a graphical user interface.

Instead of relying on code to build and maintain the application, no-code software development platforms abstract necessary functions into code blocks, which citizen developers can manipulate through visually-detailed graphical user interfaces. Users can move these code blocks into the necessary order and adjust important settings through easy-to-access menus to design a functioning product.

Similar to no-code development platforms, no-code infrastructure platforms like DuploCloud obviate the need for writing infrastructure-as-code by offering efficient, compliant, and powerful DevOps functionality right out of the box. Developers still need to write their application code, but with these platforms, all of the cloud infrastructure automation is taken care of. To learn more about how you can accelerate cloud application deployment by a factor of 10 with a no-code DevOps platform, click the banner below to read the free whitepaper.

The Best No-Code Platforms

Cloud Application Development: DuploCloud

Developing the infrastructure necessary to build and deploy cloud-native apps requires a dedicated staff of highly-specialized engineers and a lot of time — two things many start-ups and SMBs simply don’t have. Enter DuploCloud: a no-code/low-code cloud infrastructure automation platform that can reduce configuration and deployment times from six months to a handful of weeks.

Previously, DevOps teams needed to manually stitch together thousands of lines of code to handle hundreds of configurations across the CI/CD pipeline, app provisioning tools, diagnostic and security controls, and cloud platform services. With DuploCloud, an easy-to-use web application automatically provisions the Infrastructure-as-Code your application needs. Plus, it has stitched together best of breed cloud services and open source solutions to continuously monitor security and compliance standards, ensuring your application stays up-to-date with the latest regulations and best practices.

Web Application Development: Betty Blocks

Betty Blocks combines a drag-and-drop interface with a block store, allowing citizen developers to build the applications they need rapidly. The provided code blocks give users a solid foundation to work from, and users can add additional modular functionality by downloading first- and third-party blocks from the store. Since nothing is installed outside the Betty Blocks platform, IT departments don’t need to worry about security concerns arising from approving additional software.

Clients have used Betty Blocks to generate NDAs for legal departments, automate risk assessment processes, and even build knowledge base platforms for customer service departments. It’s a great choice for businesses looking to automate important functions or provide tools for clients without needing to code an entire application from scratch, and the platform is fully accessible anywhere a user has internet access.

Desktop Application Development: FileMaker

Claris FileMaker has provided businesses with the ability to build and customize database applications since the 1980s and has evolved to become a fully-featured no-code business application development platform.

Users can drag-and-drop pre-built tools like calendars, kanban boards, and photo galleries, along with text fields and other inputs to instantly create versatile applications based on their needs. FileMaker even includes ready-made templates for CRMs, content libraries, project management platforms, and more. Integrate interactive charts and graphs, which dynamically generate based on the information stored in your database. Finished programs are built to deploy across desktop and mobile devices and feature industry-standard protections to keep data secure.

Mobile App Development: Adalo

The mobile app landscape moves incredibly fast — the less time you spend tinkering with code, the better. Adalo abstracts the technical parts of building functional apps into reusable components — like buttons, windows, videos, and images — and allows users to link them together through its graphical interface. Users can also easily generate databases to house inventory or collect user data inputs with interactive forms.

Adalo makes it incredibly easy to set up login pages and user permissions, send push notifications to specific users, set transition animations between pages, or access the customer’s camera, photos, and other mobile device functionality where necessary. Adalo also integrates with Zapier to provide integration with over a thousand other popular mobile apps. When you’re all done building, easily publish your app to Google Play and Apple App Store marketplaces.

Web Design: Wix.com

Virtually every business needs a website, but not all business owners have the time, money, or staff to design their own from scratch. Wix.com provides hundreds of professionally-designed templates and an editing tool that allows users to drag, drop, and reshape any element on the page for full customization.

On top of its editing features, Wix.com also offers online payment and point of sale features for storefronts, event management, booking features, and analytics tools to ensure you’re getting the most out of your website. Wix.com even integrates email marketing and social media tools to enhance your online presence.

Inventory management: Caspio

Caspio allows for a wide range of cloud-based applications, but it specializes in providing robust data gathering and presentation capabilities. Its combination of searchable databases, KPI dashboards, and extensive reporting and pivot table capabilities make it a great option for designing cloud inventory software with a no-code platform.

Game Development: BuildBox

Despite the vast array of genres available, video games tend to share many constituent parts. Running, jumping, defeating enemies, collecting coins, the ability to pause a game or change settings — these functions are all built out of the same core concepts.

BuildBox takes these components and provides a development environment that allows non-coders to drag and drop assets and game logic to build their games from scratch. Budding designers can get started with a handful of templates that can be further customized with bespoke animation and event scripting to make games truly unique. Create 2D or 3D games with homemade art assets or purchase assets from the BuildBox Shop to speed up development time.

Event Automation: IFTTT

Short for If This Then That, IFTTT allows users to automate actions across hundreds of different apps. Simply choose a trigger (like posting a photo to Instagram or creating a task in Asana), then choose the action that will happen as a result (posting a reminder to your calendar, uploading to Dropbox, etc.), then name and save your applet.

IFTTT features integration into hundreds of services out of the box like Trello, GitHub, Google Drive, and more. If a service you need isn’t listed, Webhooks allow manual integration for virtually anything you can think of. Automate simple tasks to improve developer workflows or build complex if/then statements that embed directly into the tech stack.

Ecommerce Platform: Shopify

Instead of building an entire online storefront from scratch, Shopify makes selling items online as easy as listing your items, setting a price, and hitting publish. Shopify features professionally-designed templates and built-in integration with over 100 payment gateways, allowing businesses to quickly get their inventory online and easily available to the public.

Data Gathering: Formstack

Even building simple forms is time-consuming, so Formstack decided to make the process faster. Insert and reorder form fields by dragging and dropping blocks in its robust editor and easily create conditional statements that react to user input with a few simple setting adjustments. Plus, data is secure and HIPAA-compliant, whether forms are embedded in company websites or shared over email or social media.

Extra - Automate Cloud Infrastructure Set-Up in Days Instead of Weeks

The DevOps automation lifecycle involves numerous integrations across thousands of lines of code. Manually stitching together the necessary tools to build, provision, monitor, and deploy code involves months of work from employees with specialized skills. DuploCloud automates this process, providing a low-code/no-code DevOps-as-a-Service platform that can help smaller teams stay competitive and go to market faster. Read the whitepaper to learn how DuploCloud can speed up deployment times by 10x while lowering costs by up to 75%.

Low-Code vs No-Code: What’s the Difference?

Zach Gover — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 18:58:16 +0000

While they are similar, low-code and no-code development have key differences

While both low-code and no-code are meant to shorten development pipelines and break down organizational silos, business managers need to be aware of the differences between low-code vs no-code. The two expedited forms of development have nuances, with implications for how they’ll impact a company and its processes. Here’s an overview of the differences between the two methods, how they differ from traditional development, and examples of no-code/low-code platforms currently on the market.

Jump to a section…

The Differences of Low-Code vs No-Code Software Development
- What Is No Code Software Development?
- What Is Low-Code Software Development?
How Traditional Development Differs From Low-Code and No-Code
No-Code vs Low-Code in Real Life
- Choosing a Low-Code Application
  - DuploCloud
- Choosing a No-Code Application
  - Caspio
  - Claris Filemaker
Low-Code vs No-Code for Complex Software

The Differences of Low-Code vs No-Code Software Development

Gartner predicts that 80% of technology products and services will be built by people other than development professionals by 2024. Ultimately, this is a good thing; more people are transitioning from traditional development to low-code and no-code, which means more people are able to innovate in the tech industry. But what is low-code/no-code development, and how do the two terms differ?

What Is No-Code Software Development?

No-code platforms allow users to create applications and/or underlying technical underpinnings through simple graphical user interfaces, all without writing code. Creators with no pre-existing knowledge of software development can build applications that fit their needs, and those in supporting roles can build and automate the systems necessary to run applications, including those native to public cloud infrastructures like AWS or GCP.

No-code platforms often feature templates and simple menus for application customization. While some no-code platforms provide the framework for designing front-end applications, such as website builder Squarespace, others focus on providing citizen developers with the tools they need to automate simplistic and menial internal tasks, allowing dedicated development teams to direct their energy on more specialized, time-consuming work.

For a more detailed explanation, check out the full article, “What are No-Code Platforms?”

What Is Low-Code Software Development?

Low-code software development allows for lean code that is either prefabricated or auto-generated, typically created in a simple graphical interface that can interpret and fill in the blanks. The finished product can be of similar or better quality as something hand crafted, all at a fraction of the time and cost.

According to Gartner, an Enterprise Low-Code Application Platform features:

UI capabilities through responsive web and mobile applications.
Orchestration or choreography of pages, business processes, and decisions or business rules.
A built-in database.
“One button” deployment of applications.

From-scratch development is becoming more complicated, increasing the chances of human error-caused security breaches, as well as other issues. Low-code development reduces the likelihood of those issues reaching the final product, and can ensure compliance with standards such as GDPR, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and more.

For more information, check out the article, “What are Low-Code Platforms?”

How Traditional Development Differs From Low-Code and No-Code

Traditional development is costly, complicated, and time-consuming, requiring large teams of developers and months — if not years — to complete. Traditional development also requires significantly more maintenance than no-code and low-code. The latter two will typically have automated maintenance procedures baked into the software service, while the former has to have maintenance performed manually.

No-code and low-code development allow for lean teams, reducing annual costs and labor. In October 2019, there were more than 900,000 unfilled IT positions in the US alone, and the situation hasn’t improved. Demand for IT professionals is expected to grow 13% by 2030, while demand for software developers is expected to grow by 22%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The industry is currently ill-equipped to meet these needs.

Thus the need for no-code and low-code development platforms, which allow less-specialized employees to assist dedicated development teams with building and maintaining complex applications. Because many rudimentary tasks can be standardized and automated, no-code and low-code platforms provide opportunities for organizations to decrease deployment speeds, rapidly test and iterate, and reduce the chance of introducing human error.

If you’re a leader looking to minimize time to market and accelerate your organization’s ability to release competitive software at a competitive rate, click below to check out DuploCloud's free whitepaper on how to deploy cloud applications 10x faster with a no/low-code DevOps platform.

No-Code vs Low-Code in Real Life

No-code and low-code development isn’t new; the term “low-code” originated in a 2011 Forrester report on emerging productivity platforms. These services are now accessible for both companies and consumers, making it far easier to launch and maintain applications.

Choosing a Low-Code Application

DuploCloud

By DuploCloud, Inc.
Website: duplocloud.com

Designing cloud-native applications requires months of manual configuration to ensure security and regulatory compliance. DuploCloud offers low-code cloud Infrastructure-as-Code automation with built-in security and compliance with their terraform provider, reducing development times by a factor of ten.

Organizations still require development teams with dedicated coding knowledge to build their applications. However, the DuploCloud platform greatly reduces the time needed for coding cloud infrastructure, and automates diagnostics, reporting, CI/CD pipeline implementation. These tools allow development teams to build, migrate, and deploy their on-premises applications to the cloud with ease.

Choosing a No-Code Application

Caspio

By Caspio, Inc.
Website: caspio.com

Caspio specializes in providing a no-code platform for creating cloud-based, fully searchable database applications. Citizen developers can use the visual point-and-click development and automation tools to design flexible applications, while dedicated development teams can integrate them — along with any necessary data — into any web property.

Claris Filemaker

by Claris International Inc.
Website: claris.com/filemaker

Claris Filemaker was originally developed in the 1980s, and has since evolved into a fully-featured no-code business application development platform. Users can drag-and-drop pre-built elements like calendars and photo galleries to customize programs to their needs, or rely on templates for quickly designing business-ready CRMs, content libraries, and more.

Low-Code vs No-Code for Complex Software

Typically, no-code development is intended for simple, front end applications, though several organizations are making strides in providing more robust tools within a no-code framework. That said, more complex operations should look to low-code software development solutions for their increased flexibility and customizability.

Low-code development gives developers finer control over their end product, while simultaneously reducing operational strain. Traditionally, developing complex software is costly, and prone to human error. Low-code software can reduce the financial cost of deploying cloud applications and speed up the development pipeline by 10x while minimizing mistakes.

For organizations to be successful with low-code development, they need to find a manageable, intuitive partner platform. DuploCloud meets those needs, helping organizations create cloud compliant applications at a fraction of traditional development’s cost and time investment. DuploCloud eliminates human error from the equation with its low-code solution, enabling a faster go-to-market time without sacrificing quality or security.

What Is Cloud Migration?

Zach Gover — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 19:38:57 +0000

Moving to the cloud requires up-front investment, but cloud computing unlocks major benefits and measurable savings in the long run.

Cloud computing has practically become the norm in today’s business world, and its popularity is only expected to grow. According to McKinsey, most companies expect $8 out of every $10 they spend on IT hosting to go toward the cloud by 2024. There’s less friction ahead for companies launching in the cloud on day one, but for established companies and legacy brands that have already invested in legacy infrastructure, cloud migration is the way forward. In this article, you'll look at what cloud migration is, the benefits it can unlock, and the costs and savings associated with moving business processes and development operations into the cloud.

What Is Cloud Migration?

Cloud migration is the process of moving digital assets and business operations into the cloud. Storing and processing data, applications, IT resources, and development workflows in the cloud is generally considered the norm in today’s business landscape, since it makes technology more accessible and benefits companies and consumers alike. This cloud migration overview typically refers to an initial wholesale move from on premises infrastructure into the cloud, but it can also describe the kind of cloud-to-cloud transfer that occurs when a company chooses a new cloud provider and moves from one cloud platform to another.

What Are the Benefits of Moving to the Cloud?

There are many sound business reasons to complete a cloud migration. Here are a few of the key benefits to consider:

Reduce costs

Migrating to the cloud reduces IT overhead because most cloud platforms offer pricing structures that only require companies to pay for the resources they use. Cloud providers also manage everyday maintenance, upgrades, and the day-to-day of running and sustaining their systems in the cloud.

Increase scalability

It’s easier to scale up to support more users, data, and resources in the cloud than it is on premises, because there’s no need for companies to invest time, effort, or financial resources in expanding their infrastructure as they grow or their needs change.

Improve performance

Hosting data and workflows in the cloud shortens the distance they need to travel to reach end users, reducing network latency and improving overall user experience without impacting performance.

Expand flexibility

Migrating to the cloud makes it easier for both internal employees and end users to access the data they need anytime and from anywhere. That flexibility enables remote and hybrid work, since employees no longer need to be located in the office to connect to business systems, and also unlocks farther flung business verticals since companies can reach customers around the world.

Maintain agility

Cloud operations keep companies agile and ready to respond to the rapidly changing tech landscape, whether that means introducing new tools and systems or scaling up and down as traffic and use patterns evolve over time.

Strengthen security

Simply by reducing the risks associated with physical data centers, cloud systems can provide stronger security protocols than on premises infrastructure. Most cloud providers also offer built-in regulatory compliance, managed updates, and self-service security analytics.

How Much Does Cloud Migration Cost?

The cost of any cloud migration depends almost entirely on the size and scale of the project. Here are some crucial factors to consider while anticipating how much moving to the cloud will cost:

Volume, complexity, and type of data, resources, and workloads to be migrated
Migration readiness and preparation, configuration, and refactoring required
Migration strategy (rehosting, refactoring, revising, rebuilding, or replacing)
Type of cloud (public or private cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid cloud)
Data transfer fees
Licensing costs for migration management software and tools
Cloud platform services, infrastructure, and support fees
Training and education to get your team up-to-speed on cloud operations
Development costs once your operations are migrated to the cloud

How Much Can Cloud Migration Help Me Save?

While there are many elements that contribute to the total cost of a cloud migration, moving business workflows and development operations into the cloud can also unlock huge savings. To calculate your exact savings, take the time to calculate your current IT and infrastructure costs and compare that figure to the projected costs of your cloud migration (and post-migration operations). In general, plan on reducing your expenses in categories like these:

Hardware and real estate costs associated with physical data centers (vs. cloud-hosted services that don’t require additional office space or huge investments in tech hardware)
Maintenance and labor associated with supporting owned systems (vs. managed services that are the responsibility of cloud providers and third-party vendors)
Increased productivity and near-immediate output (vs. forcing entire workforces to wait months for deployment to be complete before they can get back to business)

What Tools Can Help Me Move to the Cloud?

Cloud infrastructure is challenging, and it can sometimes seem like there aren’t enough technical experts available to help get your products off the ground and into the cloud. DuploCloud DevOps automation platform puts cloud deployment within reach, without having to hire new IT staff or train your team in a whole new discipline. DuploCloud helps small- and medium-sized businesses achieve cloud provisioning at 10x the speed and reduce costs by 75% with a fully-compliant low-code/no-code solution with security and compliance out-of-the-box.

What are No-Code Platforms?

Zach Gover — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 21:12:14 +0000

Here’s how to get started with tools that let you build software without writing any code

As organizations search for ways to bring products to market faster, no-code development is becoming ever more popular and essential. These types of tools make software development accessible to a wider range of people, regardless of computer science experience, allowing anyone the opportunity to bring their ideas to reality. Keep reading to learn about the importance of no-code programming, some high-profile examples of no-code tools, and more.

Jump to a section…

What is No-Code Development?
The History of the No-Code Movement
What are Some Examples of No-Code Platforms?
- Bubble
- Composer Pro
- DuploCloud
- HoneyCode
No-Code Cloud-Based Development from DuploCloud

What is No-Code Development?

The answer to “what is no-code development” is simple, though the work that goes into making the tools function is anything but. In short, no-code platforms allow users to create applications through simple graphical user interfaces, all without ever writing any code. Even creators with no pre-existing knowledge of software development can make their own fully functional programs.

To meet G2’s standards for the category, a No-Code Development Platform must:

Offer drag-and-drop or point-and-click elements to assemble applications
Allow non-developers and non-technical users to build applications
Integrate with databases, web services, or APIs to connect data

No-code platforms may allow users to select from templates and navigate simple menus to further customize applications to their needs, much the same way that Microsoft PowerPoint allows presenters to start with the big picture then tweak and insert details. No-code tools can be used for crafting interactive forms, creating online payment processing portals, designing websites, providing infrastructure for cloud-based development, and beyond.

The History of the No-Code Movement

In the early days of personal computing, hardware manufacturers and software developers alike realized the importance of reducing barriers to entry. The easier it was for people to create software, the more people would want to buy a computer to realize their visions.

Early software like Microsoft Excel or HyperCard from Apple in the mid-1980s paved the way forward for no-code development environments. Both programs gave users a way to process complex tasks — data sets in the case of Excel and software development with HyperCard — with little to no programming experience required. Web browsers came onto the market in the early 1990s, letting users navigate the rapidly expanding World Wide Web with easy-to-remember uniform resource locators (URLs). Programs such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver soon allowed virtually anyone to build a website, regardless of their coding capabilities.

The rise of Software as a Service in the 2010s and today inspired a fresh approach to no-code platforms, helping a new generation of creatives, development teams, and business owners realize their ideas. Gartner predicts that 80% of technological products and services will be built by non-programmers by 2024, thanks to no-code environments.

DuploCloud is already working to make the no-code future a reality. Find out more by reading our whitepaper about how DuploCloud’s No-Code DevOps automation platform helps organizations deploy applications 10x faster and reduce costs by 75%.

What are Some Examples of No-Code Platforms?

If you’d like to try no-code programming for yourself or your teams, here are four prominent examples to start with.

Jump to a platform…

Bubble – Application Development
Composer Pro – Application Development
DuploCloud – Cloud Infrastructure Development
HoneyCode – Application Development

Bubble

by Bubble Group, Inc.
Website: bubble.io

Bubble lets users create SaaS platforms, marketplaces, and CRMs without code, right from their browsers. Bubble hosts all web apps on its cloud platform.

Composer Pro

by AppGyver, Inc.
Website: www.appgyver.com

AppGyver is the world’s first professional no-code platform, and it supports building apps for a range of form factors, including mobile, desktop, browser, and TV.

DuploCloud

by DuploCloud, Inc.
Website: duplocloud.com

DuploCloud offers no-code and low-code automated cloud infrastructure provisioning with built-in security and continual compliance.

HoneyCode

by Amazon Web Services, Inc.
Website: www.honeycode.aws

Amazon HoneyCode is built to quickly create applications that simplify the way your team works. No programming required.

No-Code Cloud-Based Development from DuploCloud

A severe skill-demand gap exists between organizations with great ideas for cloud-based applications and the resources required to build them. There simply aren’t enough cloud development experts available, making staffing up DevOps teams both expensive and time-consuming.

DuploCloud’s DevOps-as-a-Service platform allows teams to automate the provisioning of resources, integrate CI/CD pipelines, and maintain compliance and security standards. This can reduce configuration and deployment times from six months to as little as two weeks. Contact us today to schedule a demo and see how DuploCloud can make cloud-based development easier for your organization with no-code infrastructure automation.

What are Low-Code Platforms?

Zach Gover — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 17:58:54 +0000

Shortening development pipelines saves money, but tighter deadlines can also lead to cutting corners to achieve goals on time. Thankfully, low-code platforms have made it easier for companies to shorten their time to market without sacrificing quality. But what is low code development, exactly, and what are its major benefits?

Jump to a section…

What is a Low-Code Platform?
The Rise of Low-Code Development
Development Across Software Categories
- Low-Code Traditional Development
- Low-Code Video Game Development
- Low-Code Cloud Infrastructure Development
What are Some Examples of Low-Code Platforms?
- DuploCloud
- GameMaker
- Mendix
- OutSystems
- Power Pages
Low-Code Infrastructure Automation from DuploCloud

What is a Low-Code Platform?

Low-code platforms allow users to create applications with lean code that is either prefabricated or auto-generated, and they commonly feature a simple graphical interface that intelligently interprets lean code to fill in required details. Think of it like building a house with prefab components rather than from scratch. Using prefabs, your finished home — or code — can be of similar or better quality as most builders would get by starting from zero, all at a fraction of the time and cost.

According to Gartner, an Enterprise Low-Code Application Platform supports the following:

UI capabilities through responsive web and mobile applications
Orchestration or choreography of pages, business processes, and decisions or business rules
A built-in database
“One button” deployment of applications

As cloud-based software applications gain popularity, the from-scratch development process is becoming more complicated. This increases the risk of security breaches stemming from human error, among other problems. Low-code development solutions help to reduce the likelihood of those issues reaching the final product, and can automatically ensure compliance with standards such as GDPR, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and more.

The Rise of Low-Code Development

The term “low-code” originated in a Forrester report on emerging productivity platforms, with the organization officially adopting the term in 2014. By 2018, the no-code/low-code market hit a valuation of $6 billion, with major tech industry figures including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella singing its praises. Since then, low-code software development has exploded in popularity, and its use is expected to triple by 2025. Competing tech conglomerates, startups, and companies of all sizes are fueling growth in the low-code industry, creating a new service category focused on innovation and ease of use.

Low-code development also eases the strain caused by the shortage of skilled developers, which is predicted to get worse before it gets better. By automating development, companies can keep their developers assigned to higher-level tasks. Low-code solutions can reduce the headcount necessary for development teams, resulting in significant savings (for instance, just one DevOps professional’s salary runs $116,000 in the US on average).

You can find out more of the business benefits of low-code with our white paper, which is all about how to use low-code or no-code DevOps to deploy applications up to ten times faster.

Development Across Software Categories

Low-code software can be a boon for developers across platforms and software categories. Let’s take a look at some of the most common examples.

Low-Code Traditional Development

Low code automation is particularly useful for tearing down organizational silos in traditional development settings, bridging the gap between IT and other departments. Low-code keeps companies lean and productive by enabling business teams to create their own applications without relying on other departments.

Low-Code Video Game Development

Unreal Engine is a prominent example of a low-code game engine helping game developers create all manner of experiences without building features from scratch. This allows both veteran and inexperienced developers to make bigger, more advanced games.

Low-Code Cloud Infrastructure Development

One of the most potent benefits of low-code is how accessible it makes deploying applications to the cloud. Development platforms that are purpose-built to construct and deploy cloud-based applications, with native support for services such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, can shave months off of development pipelines, all while reducing the required headcount for projects.

What are Some Examples of Low-Code Platforms?

Want to see how low-code could help your business reach its goals? Here are some great platforms to start with.

Jump to a platform…

DuploCloud – Cloud Development
GameMaker – Game Development
Mendix – Application Development
OutSystems – Application Development
Power Pages – Website Development

DuploCloud

by DuploCloud, Inc.
Website: duplocloud.com

DuploCloud offers no-code and low-code cloud infrastructure automation with built-in security and compliance.

GameMaker

by YoYo Games Ltd.
Website: gamemaker.io

Built for beginners and professionals alike, GameMaker’s intuitive features provide you with the tools you need to make your game your way.

Mendix

by Mendix Technology B.V.

Website: www.mendix.com

The Mendix low code platform is a fast and easy low-code platform used by businesses to develop mobile and web apps at scale.

OutSystems

by OutSystems
Website: www.outsystems.com

The OutSystems platform simplifies application development and delivery. Using low-code infused with AI, OutSystems helps teams develop applications that scale to reach hundreds of millions.

Power Pages

by Microsoft
Website: powerpages.microsoft.com

Power Pages helps users create secure, low-code business websites. It’s currently in preview, but is already demonstrating its utility for creators of all technical levels.

Low-Code Infrastructure Automation from DuploCloud

DuploCloud is built to reduce the time spent managing cloud infrastructure, especially for organizations struggling to find skilled developers in the current market. Furthermore, the DuploCloud platform allows application developers to provision their cloud infrastructure 10 times faster than with traditional Infrastructure as Code (IaC), ensuring consistent compliance with security standards such as SOC 2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, HITRUST, NIST, and others. If you want to save time, money, and effort all while guaranteeing a smooth transition to the cloud, contact us today.

Are You Spending Too Much on DevOps?

Zach Gover — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 20:13:55 +0000

The DevOps function in an organization is responsible for deploying, securing and maintaining applications in the cloud. Let’s dissect the DevOps costs and the factors that influence them to understand the question, “Just how much should I spend on DevOps?” We also look at approaches the organizations have taken to reduce the cost.

Cost Categories: People and Tools

People and tools are the two cost categories in the DevOps budget. Our survey of 500 customers tells us that in most companies people account for 80% of the cost versus 20% spent on DevOps tools. One DevOps engineer is needed to operate an average of 50 virtual machines or an application stack of 10 microservices. The reason for this lopsided split is that DevOps is still largely DIY (Do-It-Yourself), i.e. DevOps engineers spend extensive staff hours writing scripts tying various point solutions and configurations together. This is rather ironic given that DevOps automation is probably the most crowded among the cloud software categories.

People

An average DevOps engineer in the United States costs in the range of $180K to $250K a year. The DevOps profile requires the same individual to have an expertise in operations and security, as well as programming (to write IaC). These three skills have never traditionally been unified in a single role. From college education to certifications to job profiles these have always been three independent silos. Now we are in a state where the current industry demand for DevOps engineers outstrips supply.

Tools

DevOps tools can be categorized into Automation, Security and Developer Productivity. In an early stage company the cost of these tools relative to the people’s cost is rather small. In fact mainstream automation tools like Terraform and AWS CloudFormation are free. Foundational security software like AWS Security groups, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Security Hub, AWS WAF, Amazon GuardDuty, and AWS KMS are either free or have minimal cost. Examples of software that improve developer productivity are code editors, CI/CD and observability tools. CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, AWS CodeBuild, and others also have minimal cost. Observability tools like Datadog, Splunk, and New Relic can get expensive but then there are open source alternatives like Elasticsearch, Grafana and Prometheus. Larger organizations have larger budgets for tooling, especially security, but the cost of their DevOps and IT workforce is proportionately higher. As a rule of thumb, the cost of DevOps tools should not exceed 10-15% of the cloud infrastructure spend and would map to about 20% of the overall DevOps budget.

Factors that Influence DevOps Spend

The complexity of the DevOps function can vary significantly from one organization to another. Following are the key factors that influence how much one would spend in DevOps:

Compliance Standard

Operating in non-regulated industries is far easier as one can skip the work involved to meet the compliance requirements. Some standards are also easier than the others. SOC 2 and ISO are the easiest, while PCI-DSS and HIPAA are much harder. If you are required to have PCI-DSS or HIPAA prepare to have additional headcount focussed on security and compliance which are separate roles under the DevOps category and often called SecOps. If you are selling to the government and need to abide by FedRAMP, that is a multi-year process and would require you to even engage third parties with the cost running into several hundred thousand dollars.

Microservices and Kubernetes

Most modern application stacks today are adopting Microservices as there are clear advantages to the quality of the product. But that puts an additional burden on the DevOps team. Kubernetes, the industry’s de facto container orchestration tool, is a management beast by itself. Kubernetes experts are yet another niche within DevOps. Prepare to pay an additional 30% to the DevOps engineers if you have an application stack that is heavy on Kubernetes and microservices.

Developer Self-Service

While in most organizations Developers have little to no access to cloud infrastructure, some want to operate at great agility and hence require their Developers to have the maximum extent of self-service possible without compromising the security and other operational best practices. This requires fast response time to their change requests and can be achieved either by having a higher degree of automation or simply by having more DevOps engineers to serve the developer needs. Higher degrees of automation mean more seasoned (read expensive) expert DevOps engineers. In fact, DevOps engineers who can build an automation “platform” are called infrastructure engineers. We have seen them only in large modern organizations flush with cash like Uber, Intuit, Airbnb, LinkedIn and others. In most small organizations developers wait on DevOps engineers to run scripts for infrastructure change requests.

Infrastructure Size

While automation is the talk of the town, DevOps workloads never seem to decrease. The size of the DevOps team largely grows linearly with the size of the infrastructure and is a simple measure of total virtual machines and/or the count of microservices.

Approaches to Reducing DevOps Spend

There have been two main approaches organizations have taken:

External PaaS

Smaller organizations have deployed their application on Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions which have substantially reduced or almost eliminated DevOps efforts. Heroku is probably the most popular PaaS. The key limitation of this approach is that users don’t have access to native cloud services like S3, SQS, Kubernetes etc and are limited to the abstractions exposed by the PaaS. These work only for very small organizations and most of them migrate out of these PaaS to run directly on public cloud by hiring Devops engineers.

Build Internal Developer Platform (IDP)

Very large organizations have dedicated an experienced team of engineers often called the Platform team who over multiple years custom build and maintain an inhouse automation platform aimed at developer self-service. Uber, Netflix, Spotify are examples of a few companies that built this. The main disadvantage of this approach is this investment payoff only if the infrastructure is really big in organizations that generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to be able to justify this investment.

At DuploCloud we have built a general purpose automation platform that can be used across the board as a Desecops-as-a-service platform in SMBs and an IDP for larger organizations. We are a team of engineers who were the original inventors of public cloud or Infrastructure-as-a-service at Azure and AWS. We repurposed that vast experience and expertise to build DuploCloud.

Conclusion

DevOps is a niche skill set that is hard to find and expensive to hire. Automation is still in its infancy and is largely about engineers taking a DIY approach to stitch together point solutions. About 80% of the DevOps cost is people cost and 20% is tools. The rule of thumb is for every 50 virtual machines or 10 microservices, an organization would need one DevOps engineer. The cost of tools is about 10% of overall cloud infrastructure spend. If you need to operate in compliance with standards like HIPAA, PCI-DSS or HITRUST, one needs to staff additional engineers focused on security operations.

We anticipate the DevOps automation space to evolve from point solutions to an end-to-end DevOps-as-a-Service platform that eliminates 90% of DIY. “as-a-service” platforms have revolutionized most aspects of software from infrastructure and data to observability. It is inevitable that DevOps-as-a-Service and IDPs are the future but they don’t have to be built in house.

The 4 Best Cloud Compliance Tools for Startups & SMBs

Zach Gover — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 15:59:49 +0000

Stay on top of the latest regulations and keep your data secure with these helpful tools

Security and compliance are vital steps in the software development life cycle, but many developers see them as the enemy of productivity. Staying on top of the latest regulations while maintaining data security across multiple access points is a Herculean task for small teams and start-ups looking to beat competitors to market, and time spent researching and addressing those concerns is time taken away from product development and feature implementation.

Investing in cloud compliance tools and integrating them earlier in the development cycle can reduce production cost and effort by 50% and ensure teams take a holistic approach to cloud security and compliance by implementing checks across the stack. Read on for a breakdown of the best cloud compliance solutions currently available.

Jump to a section…

Best Cloud Compliance Tools by Category

Cloud Infrastructure Automation for Security and Compliance: DuploCloud

Cloud Access Security Broker: Symantec CloudSOC

Cloud Security Posture Management: Lacework

Cloud Workload Protection Platform: Trend Micro Deep Security

Streamline Cloud Compliance With DuploCloud

Best Cloud Compliance Tools by Category

Cloud Infrastructure Automation for Security and Compliance: DuploCloud

Whether you’re processing credit card payments, storing sensitive medical information, or merely trying to adapt to the increase in state, national, and global data regulations, maintaining security and compliance by hand requires a level of time and effort out of reach for many start-ups and small to medium-sized businesses. That’s where DuploCloud comes in.

DuploCloud is a DevOps-as-a-Service platform that provides no-code/low-code infrastructure automation software for cloud security and compliance, reducing total implementation hours from six months to one week.

Each layer within the taxonomy of cloud operations — such as network infrastructure, identity and access management policies, encryption, Kubernetes, as well as logging and monitoring — requires controls to ensure compliance and security. DuploCloud allows developers to provide a high-level specification, which the system uses to auto-generate a fully secure and automated infrastructure with compliance controls in place. Engineers can then interact with either a no-code web-based user interface or a low-code terraform.

DuploCloud implementation maps line-by-line to the specifications of security and compliance regulations like SOC 2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, HITRUST, GDPR, and more. Most security platforms only provide controls post provisioning of the core infrastructure, meaning DevOps engineers are left to deal with the remaining controls while provisioning or updating the infrastructure. This limits coverage to 30% of the full required security controls set. Because DuploCloud is an end-to-end DevOps automation tool, it ensures continuous adherence to 90% of the controls set, with minimal work required to cover the remaining controls. DuploCloud also provides audit-ready proof of control reporting.

Click the banner below to read our PCI and HIPAA compliance whitepaper and learn more about how DuploCloud’s automated implementation reduces the friction between product development and staying secure and compliant while decreasing the time for provisioning and deployment.

Cloud Access Security Broker: Symantec CloudSOC

As organizations increasingly adopt cloud-centric approaches to operations and development, the need for increased scrutiny on data transactions is crucial. Symantec CloudSOC is a cloud compliance tool that aids teams in pursuing a Zero Trust framework.

With API integration into SaaS platforms like Google Workspace, Box, and Office265, CloudSOC ensures the protection of sensitive data across cloud apps, email, and the greater web. This allows you to provide CASB controls to unsecure devices and increased visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned apps, ensuring maximum security coverage regardless of how users interact with your cloud services.

Regarding sensitive data, CloudSOC can classify data as PHI, PCI, or other regulated tags, then enforce cloud sharing and access policies, protecting data via encryption and multi-factor user authentication.

Symantec CloudSOC also includes continuous risk monitoring and security response, providing you with all the information your team needs to shore up weak points and monitor usage to prevent malicious access. Should a security incident occur, contextual data covers every aspect of the breach to help you respond and mitigate damage quickly.

Cloud Security Posture Management: Lacework

Improper configurations across cloud tools can act as potential vectors for malicious activity. However, as teams rely on a vast array of tools in their workflow, it’s unrealistic to manage and keep track of all of these options manually. Lacework is a cloud security posture management platform that helps teams maximize security by ensuring tools are configured based on declared specifications or best practices.

Lacework integrates and collates configuration data across Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and multicloud environments into a single platform. It then continuously scans them to detect changes to policies and roles to prevent unauthorized access. For example, if an S3 bucket is changed from private to public, Lacework will note that the change took place and generate an alert. These posture and compliance policies can be customized based on your needs, or you can set them to out-of-the-box frameworks like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, and more.

In addition to discovering IAM vulnerabilities and unauthorized API calls, Lacework can automate checks to identify IAM users without multi-factor authentication enabled, misconfigured security groups, and more. Plus, it offers daily audits of your entire cloud infrastructure, allowing you to adjust your configuration as needed to tighten security.

Cloud Workload Protection Platform: Trend Micro Deep Security

When working across multiple cloud platforms, you must ensure your data remains secure. Trend Micro Deep Security protects data against vulnerabilities across hybrid cloud, virtualized data centers, and microservice environments with machine learning and virtual patching techniques via a single interface.

Streamlining is the name of the game here, as Deep Security applies a unified set of security controls across your development stack with runtime protection. Deep Security provides anti-malware tools, behavioral analysis, intrusion prevention, a robust firewall, and more. These tools can be implemented on current workloads, and automated, host-based security allows for seamless auto-scaling as new workloads are brought online. Plus, you can ensure your stack meets compliance requirements for GDPR, FedRamp, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA.

Deep Security is also optimized for DevOps, with baked-in API integration with Azure and AWS and CI/CD pipelines and integration with orchestration tools like Chef, Puppet, and Ansible. Built-in container image scanning at build-time and continuous registry scanning help move risk detection and management into the pre-deployment process, ensuring problems are found before they hit users.

Streamline Cloud Compliance With DuploCloud

As developers build increasingly complex applications using off-the-shelf components and services, managing cloud infrastructure is becoming more and more difficult. Building fully automated and compliant infrastructures can demand huge investments of time, funding, and already overtasked engineering resources. DuploCloud is a cloud infrastructure automation and compliance solution that makes cloud provisioning ten times faster and lowers costs by 75%, all with low or no code required. To learn more about how DuploCloud’s DevOps-as-a-service platform helps companies of all sizes achieve these benefits and others by building and deploying cloud-native applications at scale, read our No-Code/Low-Code DevOps whitepaper.

Avoiding Conflicts Between DevSecOps and Developer Productivity

Zach Gover — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 15:14:16 +0000

Developers in a technology company are responsible for innovating customer facing features and fixing errors. Their efforts are distinctly visible within and outside the organization. DevOps and Security teams (DevSecOps), on the other hand, are responsible for a defensive posture to protect the organization from threats that could lead to irreparable damage to the business. The very nature of this responsibility means there is a substantial lack of visibility. While major developer milestones are celebrated, in the DevSecOps world no news is good news. Nobody wants to hear about an intrusion attempt that was prevented or worse, a security incident that was mitigated.

What is the Conflict?

In many modern organizations, the developers feel that their productivity is hindered by DevSecOps teams who have justified blocking self-service and access to critical systems for developers citing irresponsible behavior and hence a security risk. Developers raise support tickets to DevSecOps and have to wait days for them to be fulfilled. In organizations where developers are allowed unfettered access, the security of the cloud infrastructure is in shambles. Open ports, unchanged passwords, untracked keys, unencrypted disks and the list goes on.

What led to the Conflict?

Microservices and the Death of Local Environment

In the pre-cloud world applications were largely monolithic. A single binary could be spun up in a developer’s laptop supported by a SQL server and practically all developer needs would be satisfied. With the advent of the cloud and microservices, the application split into many components. Some were owned by other developers and run as independent containers with their own packaging processes and even frameworks, while other components were provided by cloud providers as SaaS, for example S3, DynamoDB, Azure Tables, Service Bus, etc. It became very difficult to run a local stack. Access to cloud services also required access keys and provisioning in the cloud account that were no longer local and owned by the developers. What would sometimes work locally may not work in the cloud.

“The developer’s basic development lifecycle now required IT and security operations, who traditionally operated at a different (slower) cadence and were not used to the level of volatility that software development required.”

High velocity of the Cloud Era

In the pre-cloud era it was common for a popular banking website to go into maintenance for long hours and sometimes even for a whole weekend. In today’s world a momentary outage requires a root cause analysis. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployments are mantras that further add to the woes of traditional security teams. To some extent this was addressed as long as the changes were limited to the application code and no infrastructure component was touched. But any change in the infrastructure would add multiple days of delays.

The Solution: Empathy and Automation

While the problem at hand is not something that can be designed in a single blog post, here are two foundational elements worth considering:

Empathy

The starting point towards a solution is for the developers and DevSecOps teams to have empathy towards each other’s cause as well as skill sets. Developers are not operators or InfoSec experts. Infrastructure-as-Code might be a coding tool, but the subject matter expertise in terms of IAM policies, Virtual Networks, subnets, WAF, and other such details are lost to the developers so it’s unfair to expect them to write and maintain it on their own. Similarly expecting operators to be highly proficient in Programming in unfair. Most infrastructure automation Tools like IaC, Ansible are scripts that don’t asynchronously and require a human being to execute. This unlike a self service SaaS software that developers build daily. Thus seamless self-service or fast turnaround time is unfair as well.

“Developers are not operators and Operators are not developers”

Automation

Every organization believes in automation. But most build automation for the consumption of DevSecOps rather than Developers. Further, user access to the cloud is still largely an unsolved problem. The automation has to be thought through from the lens of developer self-service with DevSecOps focusing on guard rails. Techniques like application centric abstractions, trust zones, and Just-in-Time access are fundamental to this approach.

“DevOps teams should build automation with an aim of Automating themselves out of the daily developer workflows a.k.a provide DevOps-as-a-Service.”

We understand that it is probably beyond the means of most organizations to solve this problem on their own. The industry needs a new category of automation software on top of public cloud that could be used to build a fully secure and compliant infrastructure without manual labor and subject matter expertise. A Devops-as-a-Service of sorts. We at DuploCloud claim to solve this with our We at DuploCloud claim to solve this with our DevOps-as-a-Service software platform.