by David I | Sep 5, 2017 | Developer News, DevRelate |
Evans Data put out a press release on August 23, 2017 that reported results of a recent cloud development survey. The report showed that almost half of all developers working in and/or deploying to a Cloud are deploying and delivering environmental configurations as instances of immutable architecture (46%) in development testing and production, with only slightly less (42%) doing the same with microservices according to Evans Data Corp’s newly released Cloud Development Survey.

In addition to those currently delivering environmental configurations as immutable architectures an additional 37% are experimenting with this technology but haven’t put it into production yet. As for microservices, an additional 34% are evaluating and 15% expect to experiment with microservices in the next year.
“There’s an obvious affinity between microservices and immutable architecture,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data. “Containers in general as well as microservices can embrace immutability which enhances reliability and reduces the dependence on heavy weight installers and configuration management software. The developers are telling us the time for this evolution has come.”
The survey also showed that the most common types of applications that are containerized are Business to Business applications, followed by backend development, and while the vast majority of those who use containers use some kind of orchestration tools, the orchestrator that most use is the one that ships with the container software they use.
VMware, Pivotal, Google jointly announce PKS (Pivotal Container Service)
I attended VMWare’s recent VMWorld 2017 conference in Las Vegas. During the Tuesday morning keynote, Pat Gelsinger (VMware CEO), Michael Dell (Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO), Rob Mee (Pivotal CEO) and Sam Ramji (Google Cloud VP) were on stage to announce that the companies are working together to simplify the creation, deployment, orchestration and management of containers at enterprise scale.

Their work will allow enterprise developers to integrate “production ready” VMware vSphere, Google Container Engine, Bosh, Kubo and Kubernetes. During the keynote it was also announced that VMware and Pivotal were joining the Cloud Native Computing Foundation at the platinum level. Pricing and Availability information from the VMware press release: “PKS is expected to become available in calendar Q4 2017. Pricing details to be released upon general availability.”

Evans Data Cloud Development Survey 2017, Volume 1
The survey of developers currently developing in or deploying to the Cloud was fielded in June 2017 and provides a margin of error of 4.4%. The full 187 page report includes sections on Cloud Developer Demographics, Migrating to a Cloud, Containers, DevOps and the Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Mobile IoT and the Cloud, Security and Governance, and much more!
See the complete Table of Contents and Methodology here: Table of Contents

David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/
by David I | May 24, 2017 | Developer Relations, DevRelate |
With the recent WannaCry ransomeware attack on sites around the world, you might wonder whether your Developer Community site is secure. You might also consider helping your developer program members ensure that they are using security best practices as well.
Cyber security has become one of the hottest issues today, but Evans Data’s just released Global Development Survey shows that only 31% of software developers say their company has an overall formal security policy that is uniformly adhered to throughout the organization. More companies, 34%, have an informal policy that is adopted by various departments throughout the company, while another quarter either have no particular policy or one that is piecemeal and defined by the various departments themselves.
In last November’s DevRelate blog post, “Security Chops for your Developer Relations Program and Team Members“, I encouraged all developer relations team members, whether they are part of a security based company or not, to be able to speak to the security aspects of software development. DevRel advocates should also be able to assure their members that the developer community site and APIs developers use are safe from security problems.

Less Than a Third of Companies Have an Overall Cyber Security Policy
Evans Data’s recent press release, “Less Than a Third of Companies Have an Overall Cyber Security Policy“, reports that developers within the APAC region are the most likely to cite an overall formal cyber security strategy, according to the global survey of over 1500 developers in conducted in six languages over four major geographical regions. In North America and the EMEA region companies are more likely to have an informal policy that does not extend across the whole enterprise. EMEA is also the region where more companies with no particular policy at all are found.

In addition, only 26% of developers worldwide say they are developing their apps to run on secure and trusted systems. However an additional 19% expect to be doing this within the next 6 months.
“Recent events have highlighted the need for enhanced cyber security,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data, “but security has been a top issue for software developers for quite some time and across many disciplines. We have consistently seen the developers themselves citing security as a chief concern so there is frustration that their companies aren’t taking an overall approach.”
Evans Data Global Development Survey
The Global Development Survey is conducted twice a year with broad topic focus on issues such as Platforms, Languages, Development Lifecycle and Tools, Blockchain development, Artificial Intelligence and Big data, Mobility, Cloud, High Performance Computing, Databases, Security, Game Development and more.
See the complete Table of Contents and Methodology here: Table of Contents
Practice Secure Computing and Help your Developers Members Do the Same
Do your developer relations team members have security chops? Do your advocates keep track of the state of the art in secure computing? Does your developer relations site have the right security features? Do you help your developer community members practice secure computing? If your answers to some of these questions are no or I’m not sure, now is the time to increase your security chops!

David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
by David I | Apr 14, 2017 | APIs, Developer Community, Developer Community Interactions, Developer Outreach, Developer Relations, DevRelate, Evans Data, Internet of Things, Programming, Women in Computing |
Susie Wee, VP and CTO of DevNet Innovations at Cisco Systems, gave a presentation at our recent 13th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference. The following is a recap of her session, “Our Journey to a Growing Developer Program”. [David I note: the graphics used in this blog post were not part of the presentation slide deck]
Susie started her session by asking the audience a few questions to understand who was attending and what they wanted to get out of her talk. A great way to start any presentation in order to make any “course corrections” to help the audience.

Susie mentioned that the Cisco DevNet developer network started about 3 years ago. Before that time Cisco had a series of APIs and SDKs for developers but no real developer program and community. What Cisco had was more of a partner community to resell Cisco products. Certifications were offered for the partners. You could ask a couple of questions about the early outreach to developers: why does Cisco have a developer program and isn’t Cisco a networking hardware company?
She explained that Cisco DevNet is a developer community and an innovation ecosystem. Technologies that are available to developers include: Internet of Things, Software Defined Networking, Cloud computing, Collaboration technologies (many developers will recognize Cisco Jabber), Security solutions, Data Center offerings, DevOps solutions, Services and Open Source.
As part of Susie’s talk and also the main focus on the upcoming DevNet Create Conference (May 23-24, 2017 in San Francisco, CA), one of the main themes follows the sentence template of “Where Applications Meet xxx”. Developers who build applications should be able to easily fill in the “xxx” with some of the following: Infrastructure, Things (IoT), Places, People, Design, Architecture, Microservices, Deployment, Security, Analytics, etc. Between the apps that are developed there are interfaces to connect those apps to, well, everything! That is part of what Cisco provides beyond their traditional networking solutions.

Susie explained how Cisco DevNet focuses on helping developers:
She mentioned that DevNet has more than 415,000 members, who work in more than 24,000 companies, provides 252 learning labs, provides 80 active APIs and more than 170 yearly developer outreach events.
Key to the success of Cisco DevNet are a laser focus on solving three key challenges: how to operate as a developer program, provide a clear value proposition for developers, and continue to grow a fiercely loyal developer community.
One of the stories that Susie mentioned was how DevNet attached itself onto the popular Cisco Live conferences that are help throughout the world. They put together all of their developer learning materials and created a DevNet zone on the side of the main conference. Attendees walked past the area and started telling their friends that there are cool learning labs over in this corner of the conference area. The buzz started to spread among attendees that there was a lab where you could develop software to integrate with Cisco technologies. John Chambers and his Cisco management team stopped by and saw what was happening in the DevNet theater and hands on lab. Now, at Cisco Live, the DevNet zone is the busiest section – Cool!
DevNet – 5 Lessons Learned
Susie shared the 5 lessons that they’ve learned during DevNet’s journey:

5) Operate like a startup and build up your developer credibility
4) Play to your strengths and build a technically talented “extended” team
3) Make your developer members heroes inside their companies and also in their communities
2) Help your team be wildly successful and ensure that your community has a heart
1) Innovate, Innovate, Innovate.
Innovate or Be Left Behind

Developers have to solve big problems. A developer program’s mission is to help developers build innovative solutions for their companies and their customers. Your developer program has to continue to provide innovative features, content and tools that will help your developer members create innovative applications. Our industry moves forward, fast. Developers move forward, fast. If your developer program does not innovate to keep up with developer needs, your company and your developer program will be left in the dust.
Thank you, Susie Wee and Cisco, for being a part of our 13th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference.
Additional Information
Cisco DevNet – https://developer.cisco.com/
DevNet Create Conference (May 23-24, 2017 in San Francisco, CA)
Susie Wee’s session live stream replay is available on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ciscodevnet/videos/1962907540605184/
Session Title: DevNet: Fostering innovation where applications meet infrastructure
Session Description: How did a networking company start behaving like a software company and build a thriving developer community? How is DevNet achieving scale by engaging a broader internal and external community? The mission of Cisco DevNet is to provide developers with the tools, resources and code they need to create innovative, network-enabled solutions. But it’s more than just the technologies – DevNet is fostering innovation to help developers create seriously cool stuff. Join Susie Wee as she shares the successes, challenges and lessons learned in building a successful joint developer and innovation program, as well as what’s next for the DevNet community.

Susie Wee – VP and CTO of DevNet Innovations at Cisco Systems
Bio:
Susie is the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of DevNet Innovations at Cisco Systems. She is the founder of DevNet, Cisco’s developer program for infrastructure and application developers, which catalyzes innovation by the developer ecosystem. DevNet covers the breadth of Cisco’s portfolio including networking, cloud, data center, security, collaboration and IoT. The innovations from DevNet improve end user experience, the operational experience and developer experience with the network. Under her leadership, the DevNet community has grown to over 400,000 developers in less than three years.
Prior to her current role, Susie was the Vice President and Chief Technology and Experience Officer of Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group where she was responsible for driving innovation and experience design in Cisco’s collaboration products and software services, including unified communications, telepresence, web and video conferencing, and cloud collaboration. Before joining Cisco, Susie was the founding Vice President of Experience Software Business and CTO at Hewlett Packard, and Lab Director at HP Labs. Susie was the co-editor of the JPSEC standard for the security of JPEG-2000 images. She was formerly an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Circuits, Systems and Video Technology and IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. While at HP Labs, Susie was a consulting assistant professor at Stanford University where she co-taught a graduate-level course on digital video processing.
Susie received Technology Review’s Top 100 Young Innovators award, ComputerWorld’s Top 40 Innovators under 40 award, the Red Dot Design Concept award for augmented collaboration, the INCITs Technical Excellence award, the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame award, and was on the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. She is an IEEE Fellow for her contributions in multimedia technology and has over 50 international publications and 57 granted patents. Susie received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
by David I | Jan 24, 2017 | Developer Outreach, Developer Relations, DevRelate, Tools, Webinar |
As part of my DevRelate webinar presentation, “Developer Relations Best Practices and Tools of the Trade“, I am providing the links to the tools, websites, bloggers and other resources that I used for each of the seven best practices I cover in this week’s webinar. As I mention in the webinar, Evans’s Data Tactical Marketing – Developer Marketing and Developer Relations Programs – developer research reports provide hundreds of best practices that could have covered. Since I have to start somewhere, I’ve started with seven. My plan is to cover additional best practices and tools in future DevRelate webinars. Stay tuned to the DevRelate blog for news about additional webinars, dates and times.
Evans Data Tactical Marketing Reports
You can find the table of contents and a few sample pages from each report on the pages linked below. Contact our salesx team if you want to purchase the reports. The release schedule for all of our 2017 research reports can be found at https://evansdata.com/reports/release_schedule.php

Seven Best Practices Covered in this week’s Webinar
- Social Media
- Blogs
- Newsletters
- Webinars
- Videos
- Documentation
- Answers
Social Media
Blogging tools:
Books:
- The Art of Social Media, Power Tips for Power Users – Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick – http://artof.social/
Blogs
Blogs for developers and DevRel professionals (you should also follow and collaborate with):
Thought/Tech leader blogs:
Platform/Language blogs:
News/Press blogs/articles:
Newsletters
- Word Press Newsletter Plugin – free plugin to add newsletter features to your WordPress based site or blog. Integrates with WordPress standard login form.
- Newsletter Archive Plugin Extension – adds a smart tag that you can put on a page to create and update when you create new newsletters.
- Oracle Eloqua – cloud based marketing automation driving dynamic journeys.
- Marketo – marketing automation for companies of any size.
Webinars
Videos
Documentation
- MediaWiki – open source wiki project written in PHP. Used by Wikipedia and Wikimedia. You can use the Book Creator extension to select Wiki pages and create a book. You can use the Collection extension to create collections of Wiki pages and export them as a PDF or a book. You can take your collections and have a book printed on demand by PediaPress.
- Calibre – free, open source e-book management tool for creating and converting content for eBooks. You can create and edit eBooks for major eBook formats. It also has a feature to synchronize eBooks to book reading devices.
Answers
Email me if you need additional help, links, tools, info
You can find additional tools and links that I use on my earlier blog post, “Developer Relations Tools of the Trade“. I will keep updating this blog post throughout the week. If you have tools, links and other resources to add, send me an email.

David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/
by David I | Nov 3, 2016 | Developer Relations, Essential Features |
We read, almost daily, about sites being hacked, intellectual property being stolen and other security exploits. Company’s executive teams now include Chief Security Officers (CSOs). Developers inside companies focus ensuring the security of the systems they build. Companies with developer relations programs also have to make sure the APIs and services practice secure computing. Developer evangelists, whether they are part of a security based company or not, have to be able to speak to the security aspects of software development. Do your developer relations team members have security chops? Do your evangelists keep track of the state of the art in secure computing? Does your developer relations site have the right security features? If your developer program is located in a public cloud, does your provider give you the security you need? Is your community site still using HTTP instead of HTTPS? These are good and timely questions to ask of your company, your developer relations program and your evangelism team members.

Evans Data Global Development Survey and Security
In a recent press release, “North American Developers Are the Only Ones Worrying About Cyber Warfare“, Evans Data reported on recent global developer survey results related to security, cyber crime and cyber warfare. The survey, conducted in six languages across four continents showed that developers in both the emerging Latin American and Asia-Pacific regions view the largest threat as “Intellectual Property Thieves and Corporate Spies”, while those in the EMEA region cited “Cyber crime syndicates” as the threat we should be most concerned with. Only in North America was “Cyber Warfare from Nation States” cited by a significant number of developers. This concern was number one in North America. You can read about additional findings in the Evans Data press release.
Security and Developer Relations
I keep up to date on what is happening with software and security by reading the security news, reading a few security blogs and following some of the sites focused on secure computing. You should encourage your developer evangelists to spend some of their time keeping up to date as well. Here is a good starting list of top security related sites with articles, blogs and links.
- Krebs on Security – Brian Krebs, a former Washington Post reporter, is a prolific blogger and security industry luminary who writes about security news and investigations. On his About the Author page he writes “Much of my knowledge about computers and Internet security comes from having cultivated regular and direct access to some of the smartest and most clueful geeks on the planet. The rest I think probably comes from a willingness to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them.”
- Schneier on Security – “Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a “security guru” by The Economist. He has testified before Congress, is a frequent guest on television and radio, has served on several government committees, and is regularly quoted in the press.”
- Information Week’s Dark Reading – “Long one of the most widely-read cyber security news sites on the Web, Dark Reading is now the most trusted online community for security professionals like you. Our community members include thought-leading security researchers, CISOs, and technology specialists, along with thousands of other security professionals.”
- Kaspersky Labs’ Threadpost – “Threatpost, The Kaspersky Lab security news service, is an independent news site which is a leading source of information about IT and business security for hundreds of thousands of professionals worldwide.”
- Wired’s Threat Level – “Wired talks privacy, crime, and security online, delving into clever hacks and workarounds and reporting on the latest security news impacting consumers and professionals in the field.”
- US-Cert (US Department of Homeland Security) – “US-CERT strives for a safer, stronger Internet for all Americans by responding to major incidents, analyzing threats, and exchanging critical cybersecurity information with trusted partners around the world.”
- Norse Corp Live Attacks – World map with live attacks showing attack origins, types and targets. “Norse is dedicated to delivering live, accurate and unique attack intelligence that helps our customers block attacks, uncover hidden breaches and track threats emerging around the globe.”
- FireEye Cyber Thread Map – cool animated global map showing a live subset of real attack data. “FireEye protects both large and small organizations committed to stopping advanced cyber threats, data breaches and zero-day attacks. Organizations across various industries trust FireEye to secure their critical infrastructure and valuable assets, protect intellectual property and avoid bad press, costly fixes and downtime.” FireEye’s current threats and blog posts.
The platform and device vendors also provide articles and information for developers. Here are a few articles and sites:
Cyber Warfare Sites and Information
- RAND Corporation Cyber Warfare – Cyber Warfare research and insights – “RAND research provides recommendations to military and civilian decision makers on methods of defending against the damaging effects of cyber warfare on a nation’s digital infrastructure.”
- Financial Times Cyber Warfare news – reports and articles about cyber warfare, hacks and more.
Security Scanning for your Developer Relations Site
There are many tools you can use to check the security of your developer relations sites. Check out the following services.
Qualsys SSL Labs – SSL Server Test – “SSL Labs is one of most used tools to scan SSL web server. It provides deep analysis of your https URL including expiry day, overall rating, Cipher, SSL/TLS version, Handshake simulation, Protocol details, BEAST and much more.”
WordPress Security Scan by HackerTarget.com – online security test for WordPress sites. DevRelate, the community for Developer Relations Professionals uses WordPress. I suspect that other developer relations programs also use WordPress.
Developer Relations Programs and Security – tell me your story
I am always looking for stories about security and how developer relations programs and evangelists help their members. If you run a developer relations program for a security company send me an email. If your developer evangelists focus on secure computing I’d love to hear about their work.

David I.
VP, Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Twitter: @davidi99