IBM (traditionally known as ‘Big Blue’) has enhanced its ‘
OpenWhisk’ serverless cloud platform. With headquarters in Armonk, New York, United States, IBM is a globally recognized brand. Traditionally known as a hardware and software company, it has over recent years shifted its emphasis to the cloud, especially with its purchase of Softlayer in 2013. The company is noted for cloud, analytics and ‘Big Data’ services, and the enhancement of OpenWhisk has included the addition of a number of new features.
Offering great benefits in terms of scalability and cost benefits, serverless cloud services are considered to be the next stage in cloud computing. The name is a little misleading as it does involve networks that include servers. However, the networks are designed in a fashion that allows developers not to have to involve themselves in server maintenance issues so they can focus on programming.
OpenWhisk leverages a number of architectural concepts to provide a “distributed compute service to execute application logic in response to events”. The recent enhancements to the platform include instant debugging with NodeJS, Python, and Swift actions. They also include integration with MessageHub, a “Bluemix-hosted Apache Kafka service for real-time build outs of data pipelines and streaming apps”.
“Developers are turning to the cloud for efficiency, but they also want choice,” explained the General Manager for IBM Cloud, Bill Karpovich, in a press release. “Since we’ve built OpenWhisk with open standards, it’s able to not only help resolve many problems associated with server management, but also gives developers the flexibility to pull in outside tools and data and run code wherever they choose.”
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