solo.io Idit Levine - Solo.io CEO and Founder, 24 Apr 2018

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From YouTube: Idit Levine, Solo.io | Cloud Foundry Summit 2018

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Idit Levine (@idit_levine) CEO at Solo.io joins CUBE host Stu Miniman (@stu) at Cloud Foundry Summit 2018 at the Boston Convention And Exhibition Center in Boston MA

#CloudFoundrySummit #theCUBE

https://siliconangle.com/2020/05/21/solo-io-intros-api-management-tools-open-source-istio-service-mesh/

Solo.io intros API management tools for the open-source Istio service mesh

Cloud-native software company Solo.io Inc. today is making available what it says is the industry’s first Istio Developer Portal, which aims to streamline the onboarding process for developers in order to improve experiences and productivity.

Solo sells software that helps companies address the challenges of implementing microservices, which are the components of modern, containerized applications that can run in multiple computing environments. It offers a variety of tools that help with this, including its Service Mesh Hub, which helps organizations streamline the deployment, management and extensibility of any service mesh on any cloud, for any application.

Service meshes, of which the open-source Istio is one of the most widely used, are becoming increasingly prominent in modern information technology architectures. Essentially, they’re a dedicated infrastructure layer that’s used to control service-to-service communication over a network. They provide a way for separate parts of an application to communicate with each other.

As companies modernize their information technology around microservices, service meshes and application programming interfaces are gaining importance. But until today, they’ve had no way to effectively catalog their APIs, which makes it difficult for developers to use them in their application development process in a secure manner.

Solo’s Istio Developer Portal gives companies a way to catalog, manage and securely publish APIs within a custom, branded portal that can help to accelerate onboarding of developers, both inside and outside of their organizations. The new service also boosts security for Istio by integrating with authentication systems, Single Sign-On services and API Keys capabilities.

With the Istio Developer Portal, developers can take advantage of new management tools that enable them to curate, document, expose and secure APIs running in Istio to other users within their organization, and also third parties. The service also provides a clean and intuitive user interface that makes it easier for developers to search for, browse through and test the APIs they’re authorized to use.

Solo’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Idit Levine (pictured) said the Istio Developer Portal would make it easier and safer for companies looking to use Istio in their own IT environments. “With this release, we continue on our mission to help organizations on their cloud-native journey to modernize their critical applications,” Levine said.

Levine appeared on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the 2018 Cloud Foundry Summit, where she talked more about how the company is working to make service meshes such as Istio easier to work with:

A

From Boston Massachusetts, it's the queues covering Cloud Foundry summit 2018, brought to you by the Cloud Foundry foundation,.

B

Welcome back I'm, Stu minimun, and this is the cubes coverage of Cloud Foundry summit 2018 here in Boston Massachusetts, happy to welcome to the program first-time guests, founder and CEO of a start-up solo, IO needed Levine. Thank you. So much for joining us.

C

B

So one of the things we were talking in the open, Lauren Cooney, who you know and I, were talking about. Well, you know Cloud Foundry, talking about digital transformation, the enterprise for years, but there's always these new technologies. It was you know, kubernetes came this wave now serverless is the wave and you know Amazon's kind of overarching. You know discussion in the marketplace. It's why I'm glad to bring you in because your company, a start-up, plays across a number of these. You know emerging spaces in the cloud finder space.

B

So for give our audience a little bit about your background and what led to the foundation of so low a oh yeah.

C

I think so um so I was in startup all my life I work in a dynamic cop who got acquired by VMware, so virial ac4 and then I moved to another startup got acquired by Verizon, so cloud switch. Who was moving back on the day from microphone, prime to off-brand, um and then I moved today, EMC to the city office, and that was great because what I was doing is basically started the dojo of cloud foundry, so me and Brian Gallagher.

C

If you know him and they and Patrick Dennis, we are the three of started it and we we basically co-located with the cloud formerly team and we worked very very closely with them and what we did is what I was doing. A lot is bringing innovation, so we created some open source project like unique.

C

If you heard about it about unique a little building and running unique here now we worked with a lot of the ecosystem and the reason we started so low is because I really feel I felt that in EMC it's great place, but it's sometimes slow you down because of the big organization and I feel that we can do much faster outside. So that's why we open. We started solar and all the purpose which solo is basically playing two trucks. One of them is we really really want people to use our products.

C

We want to target the people who has the problem, which is the enterprise, so that's where we really target in and help them move to what we will be master, which is the open source community, so all the innovation. So that's exactly what we do basically help them to take their monolithic application, move them to micro services into service, but by using very, very unique and innovative technology like envoi and a lot of letters. Okay,.

B

So we hear a lot of times. It's you know, of course, companies they need to move faster. They I need to go through this, this transformation, it's the API economy and that's I- think we're glue, fits and they're, so glue spelled gooo.

B

What's a function gateway? How does this help with kind of you know? We say: is it API sprawl these days or you know all these various services? You know, how is this the the glue that brings everything together.

C

So, as I said, we're working in two echo system right, the first one is the enterprise. So there were main use case that we're trying to solve, as I said, is the movement. We wanted to make sure that people will be able to take them on analytic and at least extend them to micro services like cloud foundry and kubernetes, and to several s, and also in the free time to kind of like remove it.

C

So that was kind of like our purpose, but we needed some technology for that and we looked outside and discovered that the first thing that we need is probably a very good API gateway, but you need to route on the function level and you need to discover the function and a lot of technology that just wasn't exist back then. So what we did we basically built one which is blue. That's the first thing that went in it because we had no choice.

C

There wasn't anything that actually we seriously and trust me and looking very well all the open source project. There is nothing like what we will doubt there in terms of the quality of the technology and what we capable of doing. So. That's why we built it. We didn't plan to make it a product, but that was the purpose, and the second thing now now we're building more stuff and we'll need maybe to extend the service mesh or function mesh like we call it again, not because we want to because we have no choice right.

C

So this is not a core product. What is really building is about retargeting everything that related to this use case. I were trying to move okay.

B

So Google and Microsoft and their quino's talked about an API gateway. First project I hear servicemen from thinking about its do. How does how does glue fit so.

C

As I said, there's a beautiful earth company, as I said in the beginning. My purpose look I, go look at this yeah sure, that's awesome! We can use it but they're just not moving fast enough for us as a start-up, so we had to actually create it now when we created it, we created specifically to our use case right.

C

We needed a function that we knew that our purpose was to take all that those ecosystem of monolithic micro services and and sterilized, and look and see what is the smallest unit of compute that common between them and cut everything to it and that's a function. So basically, what we're doing we're taking all these ecosystem cut everything to function and then reassemble or movement between them. That's something that they just didn't give us. So we had to build it, but the beauty of it is because we are.

C

In fact you know we are really innovative and that's what we know how to do. We decided to leverage the open source so, for instance, is built on anvil right because it's the best proxy that exists today and and and we we extended it because we needed some functionality. So we created a lot of filter right because it was really important to us to make envoi basically has this functionality, and so we are not competing with none of them, because mainly that's not what we do and we're just focusing on the use case.

C

But theoretically, if you looking at API get way, I will say ends down with probably the best that exists out there, which is that's not what we really.

B

You know no small startups gonna do what we're gonna. You know in Silicon Valley. Maybe they think they're gonna take down the giant and break the world.

C

B

I, like you, actually spend some time working in the EMC CTO office, and there were certain things. We would always look at and say: there's this gap, here's what we have today and here's absolutely. We know where the market is going. So you know the analogy I hear today is like well, customers they've got their applications, they need to modernize them. So.

A

B

Been the last year or so, there's been this discussion of lift and shift and many people cringe. I said you know: I lived through the virtualization wave, one of the biggest challenges where was I took this old application which, to be frank, stunk, yeah,.

C

B

I kept it alive for years longer, even though the server was no longer supported, the OS was no longer part of, but I could just virtualize it. That was great. Hey I want to get to 12 factor micro service architectures. Maybe serverless might be the foundation that I'd like to build. This I cannot lift and shift to get to service. There is no path thank from old to there, so it sounds like you're trying.

C

B

Some of that that that there am I getting yes.

C

I mean basically I will give you an example of a customer left yeah right, so they came, they their monolithic application right and they really wanted to move, and you know it's really hard to maintain this. So they said you know what we really wanted to move to service. That's the engineering part right. They saying we wanted to move to change it to inherit. They came to their boss and they said well.

C

What we want to do is to take it, rewrite it and put it in the green field right basically, as a several s, so the bus said no problem go with valuate. How much tummins will take and then come back to me so the when did they did it and they basically came with nine months. So the boss said okay, so no and the reason is because nine months means ten a year and also and didn't get any feature in this year right they will fire me.

C

So what we're doing is we're saying, take this monolithic application, it's working, don't touch! It extend it first of all, extend on the new functionality going to the service and to micro services and we're supporting everything. I mean it's manual, I mean I can start telling you. What is their platform that we suppose you it's almost everything and then the second thing is that on your spare time start breaking it now. There is no magic, I, know people saying there's an algorithm.

C

It's never going to work, trust me and a lot of software in my life. You can guess this stuff. You actually need to rewrite them, but on your spare time, when you're available and on the way you know and your pace of learning and I feel that that's what we're giving we basically gave them the freedom to do that under spare time and we're giving a lot of other tools like, for instance, debug.

C

So we create we open source project called squash that basically be able to attach debuggers to micro services to several as an to monolithic and different language, different everything and jump between them. So you basically can create what I call I would happen. Jump process so I feel that what we targeting is basically make this movement easy with any technology that we can put out there. The.

B

Whole application modernization is a real challenge. If I look at you know, in this space, pivotal Zack was a ssin of pivotal labs. Does that help them a lot of services, things that we're looking at pivotal, going public? How much of their business is actually services? How much of it you know a subscription in software? How much are you is this just tooling, you're building? Are you helping customers get through some of the services? Maybe it's time for you to talk, how many people do you have on your team?

B

I, look at the website, I see like five people, so.

C

Specifically, we have.

B

C

We are started, we got actually really well funded from two adventures and great great investors, and- and what was important to me is not to do a lot of mistake of the other clouds startup doings, which is basically scaled too fast right, I wanted first and putting a product out there. I want to see what's going on and today, because we open source and because we all can use Amazon and so on. You don't need a lot of money to actually create additional projects.

C

So that's what we did specifically I can tell you I'm getting a lot of rezulin right now, actually pushing them back, because it's really really important to me to scale on the right side now we're starting to have customers who will have to scale right. So that's that in terms of how much so that's enough it, we are five minutes, as I said, is good, but we are not in the services. Actually, people don't know an amazing job. We don't want to touch that, but we do want to make sure.

C

Is that they're giving the tools to do them yourself and they will I? Are probably people taught to do? The services are.

B

You able to share how much funding is the true ventures is one of the funding so.

C

We got that 2.5 from to venture, and then we got sciFinder for haystack and another 250 form wave venture in.

B

Five people you you're hiring to what do.

C

Ya, so we are definitely going to I I read more. We need a full stack engineer. We need a system engineer right now. It's very flat architecture, a lot of really really good people, I mean my engineers or people who was in the Israeli army as an accurate. You know very, very technical people who are work with me, an EMC and so on very very good people and our purpose is to grow as system engineers a little bit. You I, and we also need some how you.

B

Located here in Boston, one.

C

Engineer is in Seattle, there were story, okay,.

B

And the the products itself, you know open source and things.

C

Are available so for now, so we started as an offer. We did put it as an open source project. This is the platform I feel it should be open source, but there will be feature that we will not open source a lot of more thing that it makes sense for the enterprise. We will not open stores, but here right now everything is open source and we wanted to share with the community. Okay.

B

And from the customers you're talking to what's their biggest challenge, things like server lists, you know: are they getting their arms around, especially? You know out here in the East Coast as opposed you know, some of the startups and the like, so.

C

Actually, it's people in the enterprise I mean I, think I nailed the use case because you know I when I'm talking a lot of in conference. Q Khan is one of the conference that I really really like. It talked a lot and when I talk there to the people, everybody has this problem, which everyone related. How do you most of them trying to move to container right now? That's where it is, but the beauty of our build glue, and that was totally in purpose.

C

It's the fact that and I have actually a diagram showing it today do is amplify eyes that are only using monolithic, I, don't know, like probably Bank of America I, think it's only monolithic, then, if you're looking there's people only using micro services, probably Google and others, and then there's companies like iRobot. For instance, it's going all the way to service. That's all there right band, which is amazing, but, and there is company, that's sharing it right.

C

I mean they're micro services, women and and several eyes, so monolithic and them and EMC friends, as we have like service micro services are monolithic. What we're trying to do is basically the beauty of what we build is basically a platform on top of an Android, so we can actually create a customized offer for you. That would be only what you need and what we will help you is to basically glue. This is ready, glue, your environment, so it will give you one experience that you can manage it all. You can mix and match.

C

You can do whatever you want and it's really clean. So so when I'm talking to customer today, mainly where they are, is like monolithic to micro services, but they love this use case I mean I, did I, don't I didn't meet a customer yeah that I show him the demo. Are we taking a spring boot application and move it, and he said that I don't want to push it. So it's good fascinating.

B

Stuff really appreciate you sharing it. Definitely we hear from customers all the time it's moving from the old to the new. It's I need to live in both of those worlds and it can't split those teams. It can't be Islands. I need to pull this together. It's definitely true in multi cloud and seems like it's happening in the development environment to itself. Ii don't mean solo. Congratulations on.

C

Where you've gone.

B

Look forward to catching up much more in the future, we're back with lots more covered here from the Cloud Foundry summit, Boston Massachusetts, I'm Stu minimun. Thanks for watching the cube.