Make developer’s life easier

Petr Svoboda, CEO of Stratox Cloud Native, explains how CodeNow makes cloud native development fast and fun for everyone.

First, can you tell us a little more about CodeNOW?

CodeNOW is a true startup. This means that we are working hard to create a platform that simplifies cloud-native software development, especially when based on a microservices architecture. We try to make cloud-native development fast and fun for mere mortals. Especially for developers who are not yet familiar with their infrastructure and setup needs.

Abstract the complexity of cloud infrastructure management and automate many of the common, repetitive tasks. We hope that a platform like this will increase your productivity and make cloud-native development fun again.

When and how did you start?

CodeNOW was founded in 2019 and the platform exited beta in 2020. We are currently looking to expand our company to the US, where we founded our company.

Setting up a shop in the US is a big step forward for you and your company.

yeah you can say that We just opened a small office in San Francisco and hired our first sales staff. The process is still slow, but I’m glad it seems to be on track. We got great feedback and were able to win our first customer. We are very confident in the future and continued expansion.

Is CodeNow part of Stratox, a software distribution company?

exactly. Stratox is basically a series of companies. CodeNOW was originally bootstrapped out of my own pocket along with the revenue generated by Stratox’s professional services offering. The market and investors saw the potential, not just us, and as CodeNOW continued to grow, we decided to take the investment and use it to scale up.

So how can businesses benefit from using CodeNOW?

CodeNOW was conceived while I was working as an architect at IBM. At IBM, he was primarily responsible for delivering large conversion projects. I encountered a lot of inefficiencies in the development and deployment process and was basically shocked at the wasted time caused by developers messing with their thumbs and waiting for others to finish their work. This led me to wonder if we could save money by providing smart self-service technology for developers.

As a developer, when you need to spin up a new database, cache, message broker, or similar infrastructure component, you don’t have to wait for someone else. Eliminating this delay in the development process greatly improves overall productivity and the value created during the software development process.

So that was the original idea. Additionally, developers, especially those employed by large companies or working as contractors, typically have less time to self-learn or be properly educated about cloud-native technologies, tools, and best practices. It turns out not.

By abstracting a lot of the complexity underneath Kubernetes and giving these developers all the tools and best practices they can understand and use “out of the box”, we see a huge opportunity here. I thought.

I hear everyone saying cloud-native development is a complex beast. We want to prove the opposite, and our mission at CodeNOW is to make the development of microservices and distributed software architectures smooth and sustainable.

A lot is said about Kubernetes, but not many people know exactly what it is.

That’s right. Unfortunately, not many people know exactly when it’s a good tool to use and when it’s not.

So when would it be the right tool to use?

It is especially suitable for solving horizontal scalability problems. When you need to work with hundreds or thousands of instances of business logic. Kubernetes can be very helpful in that regard. As a means of achieving high availability, resilience, etc. I think it’s mostly focused on the backend. Front-end developers are accustomed to slightly different tools, and it’s easy to survive with CDNs and other technologies. So he doesn’t necessarily say Kubernetes is the best thing for them. But for backend developers, especially when it comes to integrating with Microsoft, I believe this is the best tool.

Are there any particular trends you’ve noticed regarding DevOps this year?

Yes, one of the trends we’re seeing is that our approach to DevOps needs to be almost split. On the one hand is the enterprise or platform level where a high level of automation is required within the enterprise. The other approach is to DevOps, which is much closer to application development practices and primarily requires automation of processes around the application under development.

Many companies consider their DevOps practices in place as soon as they have a CI/CD pipeline. Sometimes you’ll find people wearing DevOps badges telling organizations they’re “DevOps guys.” I think there is still a lack of understanding…

Fundamentally, DevOps is about collaboration and automation, regardless of who is in charge. It is certainly difficult, especially for developers, as it requires a vast amount of knowledge and skill. Because it has huge infrastructure and operational aspects. Developers typically don’t want to be bothered with them and want to focus on writing the business logic of their app.

As a result, many companies are looking to hire DevOps specialists to be part of their development teams. Personally, I think this is probably not the best idea.

Whenever we talk about technology, we talk about skills. Do you have enough people in DevOps?

It’s a really scarce resource. Looking at what is required and involved during typical application development, we find that even the developers themselves struggle to get the job done. Any specialist, let’s say, he can serve 10 people, but after that he will be inundated with requests. So there is no doubt that the number of people needed with the right skills is much higher than what is currently on the market.

And I think that’s why we’re currently seeing this strong wave of upcoming development platforms looking to automate different parts of the process for developers.

You are still a relatively new company and have already moved to the United States. Is there anything else you would like to focus on in the next few years?

We have finalized the SaaS version of our product and it is readily available for small businesses. We think this version is very valuable, especially for non-tech savvy founders. The ideal customer for this product is a startup who needs to manage a remote team or a founder who needs to take care of their remote developers. Companies where speed to market and ease of development are important.

Meanwhile, we continue to serve businesses. Enterprise businesses have proven successful by offering CodeNOW as a rapid prototyping tool for MVPs and prototypes built cloud-native from the ground up.

I also think it is important to mention that we have reached ISO27k certification. Therefore, we can provide businesses and businesses with the certainty that CodeNOW is safe and secure from a data perspective.

Thank you for your time!Good luck with your adventure in America

Thanks for this interview. Yes, I’m sure this will be great.

Stratox Cloud Native will be at TechEx Europe September 20-21 in Amsterdam.Register for free tickets here.

tag: coding, developer