How To Streamline, Enhance, & Optimize Enterprise Developer Experience in Multi-Cloud

Cloud computing is rapidly becoming the default environment for developing and deploying applications. However, it can be difficult to determine the best way to create an optimal developer experience in a multi-cloud environment. This blog post will explore how businesses can take advantage of key Enterprise Cloud Technology levers to streamline their development process and enhance developer experience.?To name a few benefits of optimized developer experience: (1) a streamlined and automated workflow that works across cloud providers drives engagement and skill dexterity, (2) application code is effective, optimized, and delivered within planned schedule, and (3) rapid onboarding across multiple platforms and tools while minimizing process errors.

In this blog, I/we will try to talk about automation along the software delivery lifecycle: Generative AI for Reusable Code Snippets, Application Stack Templates (Architecture Blueprints), and CI/CD Toolchain including Infra as Code as key levers for streamlining, enhancing, and optimizing the Developer Experience.

Key Lever 1 – Generative AI

Generative AI can take application design specifications to generate reusable code snippets. This makes it easier for developers to build complex systems while reducing coding errors. Additionally, generative AI can also be used to predict what features need updating or which components are performing inefficiently so developers don’t have to guess or waste time troubleshooting issues that could have been detected earlier in the process.?

Reusable code snippets from existing applications make it easier for developers to quickly deploy new versions of their software without having to start from scratch each time. Reusable code snippets enable developers to quickly spin up similar projects without worrying about compatibility issues between different languages or frameworks. These snippets also enable teams of developers working on different parts of an application project to easily collaborate and not encounter integration issues down the line.

Generative AI has the ability to identify patterns and generate new solutions based on existing data sets, to adapt code across different clouds making it an invaluable asset for any organization looking to maximize their efficiency.

Some of the typical examples of using Generative AI are:

·??????Automatically generating HTML tags according to user input

·??????Generating SQL queries based on user-defined parameters

·??????Creating modularized JavaScript functions with predefined arguments

·??????Automatically generating REST APIs from existing databases

·??????Generating custom CSS stylesheets based on user preferences

·??????Creating automated unit test cases for existing software components

·??????Dynamically generating configuration files for various cloud platforms

·??????Automatically translating source codes into multiple languages

·??????Creating reusable components such as login forms or navigation menus

·??????Automatically generating detailed reports about coding performance metrics???

Key Lever 2

Integration platforms can also help streamline development workflows across multiple cloud providers. These platforms allow developers to integrate multiple cloud services into one unified platform, which makes it easier for them to manage their applications across different clouds. This eliminates the need for manual data transfers between different clouds or having to write custom code to transfer files each time they need access. Integration platforms also provide visibility into application performance across multiple cloud providers, which allows developers to quickly identify issues and address them before they become major problems.

Key Lever 3

Application stack or architecture blueprint as code (ABAC) can help streamline the development process by automating adherence to architecture blueprints. A blueprint provides an overview of a stack design defined by archetypes and serves as a guide for building out necessary environment. This eliminates potential errors resulting from manual effort to construct the stack for each application, identifies drifts, and ensures consistency across multiple environments.

Key Lever 4

There are several tools available today to manage & automate each step of the CI/CD pipeline to enhance the developer experience in a multi-cloud environment.?Configuration management tools complement this experience by automating routine tasks such as setting up environments or deploying applications across multiple clouds.?Containerization and container management tools eliminates the compatibility issues between different cloud providers or versions of software being used by each provider.?The challenge however is selecting and integrating these tools.

There are solutions that configure the toolchain for all the different environment types and pipelines that you’ll need for your common enterprise software team workflows: development environments, branch preview environments,?CI/CD pipelines ?to deploy to those and then pipelines to promote your builds to production — and pipelines include things like database seeding, database migration, integration tests.?Enterprises must balance the compromise (e.g., not able to use cloud provider managed services) from creating developer experience and increased cost of support.?Sometimes it may be better to depend on your Cloud provider for infrastructure reliability and security and not on your own infrastructure team especially if your infrastructure team is in its early stages of maturity.

Single Integrated Pipeline for CI, CD, feature tracking, change tracking & much more allow developers to automatically build and deploy applications without having to manually build each component. These tools help automate various stages of the software delivery pipeline including code testing, build integration, deployment validation, and monitoring post-deployment changes. This automation helps ensure that applications are consistently tested before being released into production while also providing visibility into any potential issues that may arise during deployment or operation of the application. By leveraging CI/CD tools in conjunction with IAC and ABAC technologies, enterprises can quickly create reliable application environments with minimal effort from developers. Integrating and automating tools along the CI/CD pipeline, injecting reusable code snippets for activities like Infrastructure provisioning (using IaC), configuration management, security policy operationalization (we will not discuss this in the current blog as this is vast topic by itself), and system monitoring creates a fluid user experience from development to deployment and operational monitoring.

Summary

There are a vast array of tools and technologies today to streamline, optimize, and enhance the Enterprise Developer Experience.?The plethora of choices can make it confusing to choose the right path.?Having a set of guiding principles including (i) consider the maturity of one’s IT organization and Line of Business / Business Unit Developers, (ii) leverage the choices one has already made, and (iii) have the optimal balance between Cloud agnostic methods vs. using the Cloud Provider tools, to stitch together the right experience for the Developers & recognize that it is a journey that will constantly evolve.

Acknowledgement: My esteemed colleague, Sriram Sabesan, has co-authored this blog with me and is a result of several discussions & debates.

Disclaimer:?This blog represents the views of the authors only and does not in any way represent views of our respective current and/or past employers.