DEVOPSdigest

CloudBees introduced new enhancements for its CloudBees Accelerator platform that will help IT teams get products to market even faster. For the first time, teams can use the acceleration platform to burst workloads to all three major cloud providers and shorten build and test times for devices running the new Android Q operating system from hours to minutes.

CloudBees Accelerator 11.1 accelerates build, QA and testing cycles by distributing the build over a large cluster of inexpensive servers. Adding support for cloud bursting on Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform and for the development of Android Q devices, it will help organizations get to market quicker and create more time for experimentation and iteration.

Trying to accelerate build and test cycles with dedicated build clouds is inefficient. CloudBees Accelerator previously enabled developers to burst workloads from a data center or private cloud onto an AWS cloud platform, enabling them to cut build and test times in those environments. Now, with support for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, teams can shift workloads to any of the three major cloud providers on-demand, giving them greater efficiency and eliminating vendor lock-in.

Meanwhile, Android device makers are under huge time – and cost – pressures to release new devices concurrently with Android Q, the new Android operating system now in beta and scheduled for release in Q3 2019. Using CloudBees Accelerator, they can shorten their build and test times to minutes instead of hours, allowing them to get to market faster and potentially avoid fines for releasing devices after the delivery date of a new Android system.

CloudBees Accelerator 11.1 also includes the following new features:

- Support for the SSL and TLS cryptographic protocols – This ensures secure communication between EMake tools – which control executables and other non-source files of a program from the program’s source files – and agent components, making CloudBees Accelerator public-cloud ready. This enables security-sensitive organizations in financial services and other vertical industries to ensure their builds aren’t hacked or intercepted.

- Improvements to CloudBees Electrify – This allows users to accelerate non-EMake build tools, such as MSBuild and Scons.

- Improvements for the Linux Foundation’s Yocto Project – The Yocto Project is an open source project aimed at producing tools and processes that enable the creation of Linux distributions for embedded and IoT software that are independent of the underlying architecture of the embedded hardware. CloudBees Accelerator enables developers to at least triple the speeds of builds using BitBake build tools or Buildroot files and patches.

- Improvements to out-of-the-box CloudBees Accelerator support for Windows with native support for distributing and caching Visual Studio projects.

“Shortening the time to market and creating more flexibility is what digital transformation is all about,” said Shawn Ahmed, VP of Product Marketing, CloudBees. “This new version of CloudBees Accelerator enables all companies, especially Android device manufacturers, to drive their delivery processes faster than ever. It also gives them more flexibility to embrace multi-cloud environments by using whatever cloud provider they choose for build and test acceleration.”