NetFoundry, at the recent KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2019 conference, announced the general availability of a developer platform designed to make it easier for organizations to bake a zero trust networking framework within their applications.
Company CEO Galeal Zino said NetFoundry has created a network fabric overlay to manage and secure communications between endpoints and applications. Developers now can embed a programmable zero trust networking framework within their applications using a NetFoundry Developer Platform, which consists of software development kits, application programming interfaces (APIs) and connectors, said Zino. DevOps teams can either consume the entire NetFoundry Developer Platform or only the open source components that have been included.
At the same time, NetFoundry announced it has joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to advance the adoption of open source networking services for containerized applications.
Rather than having to become intimately familiar with networking protocols, Zino says NetFoundry provides a layer of abstraction using software to eliminate the need to rely on virtual private networks (VPNs) or network address translation (NAT) tools.
As the number of endpoints and applications they need to connect to have significantly increased, DevOps teams are finding they need to master each type of dedicated network established for endpoints ranging from mobile computing devices to internet of things (IoT). That endeavor can be cumbersome at best. NetFoundry is making the case for a programmable network overlay that allows endpoints to access applications over public internet connections securely.
As programmable overlays become more widely available, the rate at which network operations will be incorporated into best DevOps processes is likely to increase. Network managers will continue to set up the physical underlay that enables networking; however, how applications employ that underlay increasingly will be determined by invoking a programmable overlay. A programmable network overlay also provides the benefit of further separation of duties between DevOps teams and networking professionals in a way that doesn’t require networking teams to become deeply involved in every application development project.
That approach should reduce significantly the amount of time now required to deploy or update a distributed computing application. DevOps teams today may be able to push code into production faster than ever. However, configuring the networking services those applications require remains a set of manual tasks that have become a significant bottleneck to making IT teams more agile.
It remains to be seen to what degree programmable network overlays will provide something of a demilitarized zone (DMZ) between DevOps teams and networking professionals. Today most networking services are provided via either directly on top of networking infrastructure or using network overlays controlled by networking teams. But it still takes days to weeks for networking professionals to respond to requests for services from DevOps teams. It’s clear the way networking services are provisioned across the enterprise needs to change substantially.
