What is optimisation-as-code?

There’s code optimisation, which, obviously, is a process where software application developers focus on an existing code base and work to improve it in terms of its total number of executable lines, its demands upon memory and other system resources such as its need to perform input/output (I/O) operations.

Then there’s also optimisation-as-code, perhaps not quite so obviously.

The latter of these two processes is delivered as an often comparatively small chunk (lines) of code designed to empower cloud applications inside any given ‘instance’ with a degree of self-awareness of the cloud resources they need based upon both business and application demands.

Additionally, optimisation-as-code tools allow the application itself to automatically self-optimise in terms core execution based upon the higher-level ‘health check’ it has received in terms of system resource needs.

Product news to follow on subject — this story will be expanded on 15 October 2018.

Why the clarification?

Because cloud optimisation company Densify has now come forward with its Cloe Aware [it’s deeply backend, so the brand marketeers used a human name] optimisation-as-code product.

The company claims that Cloe Aware allows cloud operations teams to automate application optimisation by simply adding one line of code into their infrastructure-as-code template.

As we know, application demands can fluctuate every day, hour and minute of the week.

Equally and in parallel, cloud offerings, such as a compute instances can be purchased and configured in millions of different ways and new technologies are introduced on a monthly basis.

As such, it is reasonable to argue that it is near (if not completely) impossible to align each application’s needs with the right cloud technologies available while optimising each penny spent.

“Densify analyses cloud usage patterns and proactively makes applications self-aware of their resource needs – matching application needs to available cloud resources,” said Gerry Smith, CEO, Densify.  

A single line of code entered into ‘infrastructure-as-code’ templates such as Terraform, cloudforms and cloudformation tools, dynamically calls on Cloe Aware and means that  the cloud instances on which the application runs are now able to automatically and dynamically change in the cloud.

Also here, there is automatic generation of both machine-readable and human-readable output, enabling approval processes, flexible business intelligence reports and integration into Github or other repositories of choice.