Ambassador Labs Unveils New Ambassador Cloud Developer Edition

Ambassador Labs announced it has launched Ambassador Cloud Developer Edition to give application developers and small teams building cloud-native applications the power to code, ship, and run applications on Kubernetes faster than ever. Ambassador Cloud Developer Edition will be showcased this week in Los Angeles at KubeCon + Cloud NativeCon NA at Ambassador Labs booth #S25 and online. 

“Digital transformation has helped propel Kubernetes adoption as organizations re-imagine how they deliver and manage infrastructure for cloud-native architectures. At the same time, application developers have been left behind as part of an industry shift to Kubernetes. The ever-growing ecosystem of tools and patterns around Kubernetes make it difficult for developers to abstract away complexity as they code, ship, and run applications,” said Richard Li, Founder and CEO at Ambassador Labs. “Ambassador Cloud Developer Edition lets developers and small teams quickly set up a developer control plane for Kubernetes that spans the workflow across development, staging, and production environments. The result is an integrated development experience that removes dependency on specific domain knowledge of Kubernetes while boosting productivity and quality.”

Kubernetes has evolved beyond more than simply a container orchestration tool for DevOps teams. It has become an entire operating system for coding, shipping, and running cloud-native applications at scale. Application developers are now faced with the challenge of “shifting left” as they are responsible for writing code and managing Kubernetes at the same time. This often requires developers to navigate a variety of open source tools across their GitOps workflow and struggling with artifacts of Kubernetes like YAML.

As part of Ambassador Cloud Developer Edition, key features include a context-aware Heads-Up Display that allows developers to quickly visualize complex Kubernetes environments, suggests important actions to prevent disasters, and automates repetitive tasks across the development lifecycle.  

Unlike Kubernetes tools for operators which are infrastructure-centric, Ambassador Cloud is purpose built for a developer-first workflow. The developer experience is based on apps and services vs. clusters and compute resources. As developers progress from development to production, Ambassador Cloud enables: 

• Fast local development & testing for Kubernetes on any platform – now with Windows support: Combining Telepresence and the Kubernetes API, developers can build and debug locally using their favorite tools and operating systems including Linux, Mac, and now Windows. Iterate and test instantly without compromising between a production environment and local resource constraints. Develop locally using personal intercepts of relevant services without disrupting teammates and production environments. Share that service directly with your team and collaborate using preview URLs.
• Easy canary releases into CI/CD processes without writing YAML: Ambassador Cloud is fully integrated into GitOps workflows and lets developers deploy canary releases with push-button simplicity using CNCF open source projects Argo and Emissary-ingress. Developer Edition includes new support for GitLab in addition to GitHub workflows.
• High-confidence production deployments and incident management: Ambassador Cloud includes Automated Configuration Analysis (as part of the Edge Stack 2.0) that inspects configuration changes that may impact production clusters and sends alerts to resolve conflicts before merged into production. Developers get a clear picture of all their services in the Ambassador Cloud Dev Portal. It visualizes real-time data from the Kubernetes API, Swagger, and OpenAPI docs and translates into human-readable metadata to help developers discover, inspect, and take action on critical information to resolve incidents across all environments.

“Kubernetes offers a vast ecosystem of tools which span the entire development lifecycle,” said Dave Sudia, CTO of UPchieve. “Assembling these components is a daunting task for individual developers. “Ambassador Cloud Developer Edition frees our team to use the tools they love while maximizing velocity, quality, and developer productivity.”

Ambassador Cloud Developer Edition is available today – the first 1,000 users to sign up will receive a free subscription for twelve months. Starting at the end of year, pricing for Developer Edition will begin at $30 USD per month (prepaid annually).

Developers can also advance their Kubernetes knowledge by visiting the new Ambassador Labs Kubernetes Developer Learning Center (KDLC) which combines practical resources, open source tools, and access to expert mentors to help developers learn practical skills as they adopt Kubernetes. Additionally, Ambassador Labs is hosting Dev House this week, a free virtual event with hands-on workshops and technical sessions for developers who are looking to improve how they code, ship, and run applications for Kubernetes.