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Successful cloud projects are often also the ones that grow over time to serve more users and offer more capabilities. Unfortunately, this capacity for growth can be limited by a lack of flexibility or ability to adapt. Commonly-used development practices can lead to a sprawling infrastructure that’s hard to manage efficiently, and difficult to update. In this blog, we’re going to share our proven ‘Blackbird way’ of setting up a cloud project. Built on years of experience with demanding cloud projects, this methodology crystalizes everything we know about making it easy to manage your project over time.

The possibilities of the cloud are nearly endless – but it comes with a bewildering array of tools, methods, and systems. Platform engineering has emerged as a way of giving you mastery over this complexity without restricting developer freedoms or creativity. It’s a cloud-native approach that gives developers a proven DevOps pathway equipped with a complete suite of self-service tools. But there’s a significant investment involved in platform engineering – so, when is it needed, and what’s the best way of doing it? In this edition of my newsletter, we’ll look at this important issue and highlight how to get the maximum value with our proven approach.

Cloud-based infrastructure can support highly complex processes and incredible scalability. However, the rapid growth of cloud technologies has also led to a proliferation of tools and systems. To wield these successfully requires deep and wide-ranging expertise – and this expertise is scarce. Platform engineering has evolved as a solution to this, because it enables all developers to use a variety of self-service tools so that development, deployment, and maintenance processes follow the same verified path. In this blog we dive deeper into the advantages of platform engineering, highlight suitable use-cases, and explain our preferred methods.

In this blog, we’re going to focus on how you can optimize the storage of streamed data in the cloud. The warm storage provided by AWS Kinesis or Azure Event Hubs will only hold partitioned data for a limited time. After this, your non-current data must be automatically packed up and sent to a more cost-effective storage solution by the off-loader.

Time series and event-based data streams are rapidly growing in importance. More than ever, these data streams are a vital component of applications – from core mission-critical applications to consumer games and social media apps that constantly measure behavior and engagement. We’ll look more at the storage side of this equation in a later blog, but for now let’s focus on how you can optimize the processing of data streams with analytics streams solutions.

There are few things more satisfying than completing a software project - but getting there can take some serious work. Hand-coding gives you the greatest control over the end-result, but it’s a laborious and time-consuming process. Also, carefully checking and debugging code requires considerable patience and a wide knowledge on common security pitfalls. But what if an AI tool could take care of the most boring parts, leaving you with the satisfaction of applying your creativity and vision? This is exactly what Amazon Q Developer can do.

Backups are important, but how do you make a backup and restore backups when needed? Learn how to secure your cloud with backup and a disaster recovery plan.

Learn about specific ways you can use AI services like Comprehend and Textract, to discover the content of your data and how AI can extract and convert unstructured data sources it into insights.

AI is big business – and that shouldn’t be a surprise. As organizations become more and more reliant on interdependent systems and exponentially growing volumes of data, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a crucial tool for navigating this complexity. What this means for you as a developer or IT professional is that you can expect to be asked to build this kind of capability. Discover how easy it is for developers to build AI solutions with AWS AI services. Up and running in minutes, fully customizable, and no special expertise needed.

As we touched on with our previous blog about cloud disaster recovery, you can’t afford any disruption of your cloud. Your business continuity and reputation are on the line, so any situation needs to be resolved quickly and fully. Your disaster recovery plan is a much-needed insurance policy. It’s there to cover you in case the unpredictable happens. And this is the crux of the matter: you don’t know what issue will occur. What level of protection does your cloud need for when disaster strikes? Learn which roles your DR team needs for rapid cloud disaster recovery and continuity.

When disaster strikes, there’s not a moment to lose. Every second of downtime will cost money and your reputation. You need a plan to get back on your feet - fast. Without knowing what disaster might strike - or when - you must be prepared for anything. With a solid Disaster Recovery Plan, you can get your cloud back to ‘business as usual’, without breaking a sweat. Let’s have a look at how you can go about this.

Cloud Governance guardrails are essential for enabling your developers to work fast, without having to second-guess each change for how it aligns with your security posture or compliance. You need to know what guardrails you can put in place using AWS Organizations and what Network Access Management measures are needed to secure your network.

As your cloud grows, so does the complexity and risk. This is why, when a project really starts to take flight, it’s important to reassess the way your team works and how you manage it. The best strategy is one that seeks to minimize the size of your development team while ensuring they have the freedom to work as quickly as they are capable. Cloud Governance Guardrails are essential for this. By taking a little time to set up and configure these correctly, you can save a lot of headaches (and time) further down the road.

In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of cloud computing, staying ahead doesn’t just mean keeping pace with technology, but also proactively ensuring the security, scalability and efficiency of your cloud environment. At Blackbird Cloud, we understand the significance of these aspects and are committed to providing continuous development insights and tools to enhance your cloud experience. This blog will guide you through a series of strategic steps and resources, designed to fortify and streamline your cloud infrastructure.

Organizations and businesses of every kind are making a speedy transition to widespread cloud adoption, with almost all businesses using at least some cloud elements in their IT infrastructure. As businesses make this move, hackers and cybercriminals follow closely behind, like hyenas tracking a herd of juicy gazelle; as their targets move, so does the focus of their attention. However, the rise in cloud attacks cannot be explained by this shift in targets alone. For starters, don’t underestimate the importance of workload scanning.

Complex cloud projects need special attention. Learn how to guide a development project to completion with a proven approach for high-data use cases, and what’s the best way to approach a cloud task with this complexity. At Blackbird Cloud we’ve worked on a lot of different projects, including ones with incredible data complexity and volumes – so we’d like to share our experience of these. This way, your project can get straight onto the track to success and avoid the common problems people usually encounter on their own.

When it comes to building and maintaining a solid foundation for your cloud infrastructure, there are 3 essential ingredients you can’t do without: Compliance, Security, and Governance. Each of these pillars is needed to support a reliable cloud environment and avoid major problems in the future. In this article, we’ll look at how you can implement these essential elements, and give you some practical tips that make a developer's life much easier!

Cloud environments can get complex fast; GitOps can help you with change management for your infrastructure, and help you build a more reliable infrastructure that’s automated and easier to maintain. To get the full benefits GitOps can bring, we recommend following some best practices. By following these, you can avoid many of the common problems that people experience with this approach, while also getting the most positive effects from it.

Identity and access management (IAM) is a tool that can help you wield full control over who can access your AWS services and resources, and what they can do with them. Most importantly, it enables you to manage complex access privileges from a centralized place. In this article we will discuss the importance of IAM, benefits, common pitfalls, best practices and we share some of our open-source modules and resources to help you get started.