Foreword
When we think of transformative innovation, it’s easy for our minds to grasp the tangible and
overt technologies—the television, the personal computer, the smartphone. These inventions
are visible, material commodities that serve a physical purpose in our lives. These
technologies start small and then eventually gain widespread adoption, at which point they
change the way we interact and engage with the technology—and often with the world
around us. When we talk about strides in technology to most people, these are the gadgets
they envision: separate objects that can be picked up, plugged in, and turned off.
But for those of us who are quietly enabling digital transformation across multiple industries,
we know what innovation can look like. It can be invisible and intangible—the velocity
behind a high dive into the pool. The operators and developers of the world no longer reside
in the technology aisle. You are leading the change at every kind of company across every
industry. It’s one thing to demonstrate how a printing press increases the pace of printing
papers exponentially. It’s another thing entirely to explain how a platform that is not visible
has the ability to transform a company’s ability to compete in a quickly changing
marketplace. This book is a resource for you as you lead the digital revolution within your
organization.
This is undoubtedly a technical book devoted to the underlying concepts of Cloud Foundry
and how it works, but it is emblematic of something larger at play. The author, Duncan Winn,
has spent a career helping customers achieve more with technology. Most recently, at Pivotal,
he helped customers implement, deploy, and get apps up and running on Cloud Foundry. He
saw such incredible results that he took it upon himself to begin the project of cataloging,
explaining, and evangelizing the technology. Duncan saw the monumental benefit of Cloud
Foundry to everyone, from the business itself right down to the developer. He saw how
cloud-native application, architecture, and development are driving and accelerating digital
innovation, and that Cloud Foundry was the invisible platform that could take this process
from days to minutes.
Cloud Foundry is dedicated to improving the ability of developers to code and deploy new
applications. The collaborative nature of this open source project facilitates cooperative,
interactive creation, driving innovation. A platform that expedites the deployment of
applications does so with the understanding that an iterative approach to development enables
a user-first mentality. Cloud Foundry’s support of continuous delivery empowers developers
to iterate applications based on user feedback, eliminating the need for late-night adjustments
during limited change windows. It minimizes risk around release failure because incremental
change is easier to perform and less drastic. In short, Cloud Foundry makes a developer’s job
faster and easier.
Cloud Foundry is the standard for application platforms with the noble vision of unifying the
market for enterprise software. Cloud Foundry: The Definitive Guide is an integral rulebook
for building the software of the future and maintaining the momentum of digital
transformation across industries. The power of open source is self-evident in the potency of
Cloud Foundry, with a commitment to sharing and continuous innovation.
It is my hope that you use this book as your digital transformation encyclopedia. Read it,
revisit it, learn from it, and challenge it. Cloud Foundry is for you.
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