Bluemix is IBM’s Cloud Foundry-style platform as a service based on SoftLayer, which adds Continuous Delivery and places IT personnel at the center of the ability to configure and view custom and pre-configure toolsets to help develop and operate. For example, the example toolchain might support GitHub as a code repository and problem tracker, Orion as a network IDE, IBM Pipeline for delivery, and Bluemix for running basic container applications for containers.
It may support micro services by combining Sauce Lab’s cloud-based automated test services, Pager Duty’s event response, Slack’s collaboration and communication, and other elements.
Templated service groups provide an easy way for organizations to start projects with a set of consistency tools. Bluemix provides some prefabricated templates, including services from companies working with IBM, such as GitHub and Slack. But it also allows people to build their own set of development and deployment services.
In any case, thermostatic element IBM would not mind if other services such as Watson and its On Demand Artificial Intelligence were integrated.
Another new Bluemix service, Delivery Pipeline, can automate software build, test and deployment processes to reduce development time, which is usually captured before errors are published to production systems. Automating these processes is at the core of DevOps spirit. The third addition to Bluemix is Availability Monitoring, which is used in conjunction with Continuous Delivery to continuously simulate user interaction with Web applications and their APIs from around the world in order to detect potential problems.
It can be integrated with other applications in the toolchain to ensure that the appropriate person is notified of exceptions.
Availability Monitoring may soon have its own life: IBM says it intends to work with Slack to improve the Slack platform’s communication tools, including Slackbot, supported by Watson’s dialog capabilities, and robots capable of identifying and reporting IT and network operations.
In an e-mail sent to The Register, IBM’s DevOps and Randy Newell, director of cloud management, said that although the new services did not really change the type of project best suited for Bluemix, they would make the DevOps toolchain easier to expand and ensure cross-project consistency. “In today’s competitive environment, the DevOps team is under constant pressure to quickly and seamlessly create and deploy applications and updates to keep up with end-user expectations and needs,” Newell said.
However, developers often have to rely on different tools, which are not easy to work with each other. Overall, we want developers to be able to create applications in the cloud more easily and faster. A new developer joined Bluemix.