What’s Next for the Cloud Foundry Foundation? A Talk with New Executive Director Abby Kearns – InApps Technology 2022

In her new role as executive director of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, Abby Kearns plans to focus on working more closely with developer communities across different markets throughout 2017.

On today’s episode of InApps Technology Makers podcast, Kearns discussed how Cloud Foundry has brought its service broker API into the forefront of its toolkit to help developers connect their services quickly and simply in an ecosystem that is all about cross-platform compatibility and highlights some of the future goals of the Cloud Foundry Foundation.

What’s Next for the Cloud Foundry Foundation in 2017 with Executive Director Abby Kearns

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It is the Cloud Foundry service broker API that is quickly gaining traction among developers. “I think services are going to be huge. Having the ability to connect and leverage services as you build that application, at the end of the day you can’t create an application without availability of services,” said Kearns.

While the Cloud Foundry service broker API is under the Cloud Foundry Foundation umbrella and has its own project management council, the Foundation welcomes community contributions to the software. “You don’t have to be a member of the Cloud Foundry Foundation to participate. We’ve set it aside, in a way, to allow for that accessibility. We want more people to participate,” Kearns noted. While some projects may iterate on and expect their projects to change rapidly, Kearns explained that the Cloud Foundry service broker API is the opposite of this, changing incrementally as it is a held to both a standard and an API specification.

Kearns explained that the Cloud Foundry service broker API offers true cross-platform flexibility to allow developers to monitor their services in addition to connecting them. “I think particularly of smaller software companies that are writing and developing software. They want to make it accessible to someone that’s writing their software on a platform. Isn’t it easier to write against a single API and have that service accessible across a variety of platforms? For them, that makes their lives easier. They’re not having to customize their software for each individual platform.”

Ultimately, organizational transformation is the thing Kearns looks forward to the most for the ecosystem in 2017. Where rapid innovation and iteration was once only the domain of startups, enterprises are now coming onto the scene with their own creative ideas and challenges to solve. “I am super excited for the next couple of years as more of these organizations transform the way they write software, and what software they write. How do they engage? How do they leverage the data they’ve got, and expose that in new and interesting ways to their user base? I think we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg for that.”

The Cloud Foundry Foundation is a sponsor of InApps Technology.