The New Stack Podcast

Heroku has open-sourced its Twelve-Factor App methodology, initially created in 2011 to help developers build portable, resilient cloud applications. Heroku CTO Gail Frederick announced this shift at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, explaining the move aims to involve the community in modernizing the framework. While the methodology inspired a generation of cloud developers, certain factors are now outdated, such as the focus on logs as event streams. Frederick highlighted the need for updates to address current practices like telemetry and metrics visualization, reflecting the rise of OpenTelemetry.The updated Twelve-Factor methodology will expand to accommodate modern cloud-native realities, such as deploying interconnected systems of apps with diverse backing services. Planned enhancements include supporting documents, reference architectures, and code examples illustrating the principles in action. Success will be measured by its applicability to use cases involving edge computing, IoT, serverless, and distributed systems. Heroku views this open-source effort as an opportunity to redefine best practices for the next era of cloud development.Learn more from The New Stack about Heroku: How Heroku Is Positioned To Help Ops Engineers in the GenAI EraThe Data Stack Journey: Lessons from Architecting Stacks at Heroku and MattermostJoin our community of newsletter subscribers to stay on top of the news and at the top of your game. 

Falco, an open-source runtime observability and security tool, was created by Sysdig founder Loris Degioanni to collect real-time system events directly from the kernel. Leveraging eBPF technology for improved safety and performance, Falco gathers data like pod names and namespaces, correlating them with customizable rules. Unlike static analysis tools, it operates in real-time, monitoring events as they occur. In this episode of The New Stack Makers, TNS Editor-in-Chief, Heather Joslyn spoke with Thomas Labarussias, Senior Developer Advocate at Sysdig, Leonardo Grasso, Open Source Tech Lead Manager at Sysdig and Luca Guerra, Sr. Open Source Engineer at Sysdig to get the latest update on Falco. Graduating from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in February 2023 after entering its sandbox six years prior, Falco’s maintainers have focused on technical maturity and broad usability. This includes simplifying installations across diverse environments, thanks in part to advancements from the Linux Foundation.Looking ahead, the team is enhancing core functionalities, including more customizable rules and alert formats. A key innovation is Falco Talon, introduced in September 2023, which provides a no-code response engine to link alerts with real-time remediation actions. Talon addresses a longstanding gap in automating responses within the Falco ecosystem, advancing its capabilities for runtime security.Learn more from The New Stack about Falco:Falco Is a CNCF Graduate. Now What?Falco Plugins Bring New Data Sources to Real-Time SecurityeBPF Tools: An Overview of Falco, Inspektor Gadget, Hubble and CiliumJoin our community of newsletter subscribers to stay on top of the news and at the top of your game.

Jetstack’s cert-manager, a leading open-source project in Kubernetes certificate management, began as a job interview challenge. Co-founder Matt Barker recalls asking a prospective engineer to automate Let’s Encrypt within Kubernetes. By Monday, the candidate had created kube-lego, which evolved into cert-manager, now downloaded over 500 million times monthly.Cert-manager’s journey to CNCF graduation, achieved in September, began with its donation to the foundation four years ago. Relaunched as cert-manager, the project grew under engineer James Munnelly, becoming the de facto standard for certificate lifecycle management. The thriving community and ecosystem around cert-manager highlighted its suitability for CNCF stewardship. However, maintainers, including Ashley Davis, noted challenges in navigating differing opinions within its vast user base.With graduation achieved, cert-manager’s roadmap includes sub-projects like trust-manager, addressing TLS trust bundle management and Istio integration. Barker aims to streamline enterprise-scale deployments and educate security teams on cert-manager’s impact. Cert-manager has become integral to cloud-native workflows, promising to simplify hybrid, multicloud, and edge deployments.Learn more from The New Stack about cert-manager:Jetstack’s cert-manager Joins the CNCF Sandbox of Cloud Native TechnologiesJetstack Secure Promises to Ease Kubernetes TLS SecurityJoin our community of newsletter subscribers to stay on top of the news and at the top of your game. 

The tech industry faces a paradox: despite high demand for skills, many developers and engineers are unemployed. At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in Salt Lake City, Utah, Andela and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) announced an initiative to train 20,000 technologists in cloud native computing over the next decade. oss O'neill, Senior Program Manager at Andela and Chris Aniszczyk, CNCF’s CTO, highlighted the lack of Kubernetes-certified professionals in regions like Africa and emphasized the need for global inclusivity to make cloud native technology ubiquitous.Andela, operating in over 135 countries and founded in Nigeria, views this program as a continuation of its mission to upskill African talent, aligning with its partnerships with tech giants like Google, AWS, and Nvidia. This initiative also addresses the increasing employer demand for Kubernetes and modern cloud skills, reflecting a broader skills mismatch in the tech workforce.Aniszczyk noted that companies urgently seek expertise in cloud native infrastructure, observability, and platform engineering. The partnership aims to bridge these gaps, offering opportunities to meet evolving global tech needs.Learn more from The New Stack about developer talent, skills and needs: Top Developer Skills for AI and Cloud Jobs5 Software Development Skills AI Will Render ObsoleteCloud Native Skill Gaps are Killing Your GainsJoin our community of newsletter subscribers to stay on top of the news and at the top of your game.