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Fifteen Metrics for DevOps Success | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Serverless

The word DevOps means different things to different people

Fifteen Metrics for DevOps Success
By Matt Watson

How is DevOps going within your organization? If you need some help measuring just how well it is going, we have prepared a list of some key DevOps metrics to track. These metrics can help you understand how your team is doing over time.

Define what DevOps means to your organization
The word DevOps means different things to different people. Some say it a culture and every vendor in the industry claims that their tools help with DevOps. Depending on how you define DevOps, some of these metrics may matter more or less to you and your team.

I define DevOps as everything that relates to deploying and monitoring your applications. In many ways, this bleeds over to site reliability engineering. At Stackify, we don't even have an operations team to collaborate with. Our developers deploy directly to the cloud and we operate in more of a "NoOps" style. Check out my blog post to learn more about my views on what DevOps is.

Identify your DevOps challenges
Before you figure out what DevOps metrics to track, you need to identify what challenges your organization has and what problems you are trying to solve. At Stackify, our biggest issue has been not deploying often enough and lowering our defect escape rate. Our executive team is putting a big focus on those specific metrics for 2018.

Types of DevOps metrics
DevOps is all about continuous delivery and shipping code as fast as possible. You want to move fast and not break things. By tracking these DevOps metrics, you can evaluate just how fast you can move before you start breaking things.

  1. Deployment frequency
  2. Change volume
  3. Deployment time
  4. Lead time
  5. Customer tickets
  6. Automated test pass %
  7. Defect escape rate
  8. Availability
  9. Service level agreements
  10. Failed deployments
  11. Error rates
  12. Application usage and traffic
  13. Application performance
  14. Mean time to detection (MTTD)
  15. Mean time to recovery (MTTR)

Goals of DevOps: Velocity, Quality, Performance
The main goals of DevOps are velocity, quality and application performance.

You want to ship code as fast and often as possible. How fast you can do this will vary wildly based on your type of product, team, and risk tolerance.

Even if you don't track any DevOps metrics around your velocity, you should at least measure how you are doing on quality. Perhaps you try to ship when you can, and you don't really care how fast exactly. However, you always care about quality. The last thing you want is to be chasing production fires all the time.

The third piece of the equation is performance. You could argue that it is also at odds with your goals of high velocity and quality. Performance is also related to quality, but perhaps a little different.

Deployment size
Tracking how many stories, feature requests, and bug fixes are being deployed is another good DevOps metric. Depending on how large your individual work items are, their counts could vary wildly. You could also track how many story points or days' worth of development work are being deployed.

Deployment frequency
Tracking how often you do deployments is a good DevOps metric. Ultimately, the goal is to do more smaller deployments as often as possible. Reducing the size of deployments makes it easier to test and release.

I would suggest counting both production and non-production deployments separately. How often you deploy to QA or pre-production environments is also important. You need to deploy early and often in QA to ensure time for testing. Finding bugs in QA is important to keep your defect escape rate down.

Deployment time
This might seem like a weird one, but tracking how long it takes to do an actual deployment is another good metric. One of our applications at Stackify is deployed with Azure worker roles and it takes about an hour to deploy. It is a nightmare. Tracking such things could help identify potential problems. It is much easier to deploy more often when the task of actually doing it is quick.

Lead time
If the goal is shipping code quickly, this is a really key DevOps metric. I would define lead time as the amount of time that occurs between starting on a work item until it is deployed. This helps you know that if you started on a new work item today, how long would it take on average until it gets to production. This is also a good metric to help with BizDevOps.

Customer tickets
The best and worst indicator of application problems is customer support tickets and feedback. The last thing you want is for your users to find bugs or have problems with your software. Because of this, they also make a good indicator of application quality and performance problems.

Automated tests pass %
To increase velocity, it is highly recommended that your team makes extensive usage of unit and functional testing. Since DevOps relies heavily on automation, tracking how well your automated tests work is a good DevOps metrics. It is good to know how often code changes are causing your tests to break.

Defect escape rate
Do you know how many software defects are being found in production versus QA? If you want to ship code fast, you need to have confidence that you can find software defects before they get to production. Your defect escape rate is a great DevOps metric to track how often those defects make it to production.

Availability
The last thing you ever want is for your application to be down. Depending on your type of application and how you deploy it, you may have a little downtime as part of scheduled maintenance. I would suggest tracking that and all unplanned outages.

Service level agreements
Most companies have some service level agreement (SLA) that they operate with. It is also important that you track your compliance with your SLAs. Even if there are no formal SLA, there probably are application requirements or expectations to be achieved.

Failed deployments
We all hope this never happens, but how often do your deployments cause an outage or major issues for your users? Reversing a failed deployment is something we never want to do, but it is something you should always plan for. If you have issues with failed deployments, be sure to track this metric over time. This could also be seen as tracking mean time to failure (MTTF).

Error rates
Tracking error rates within your application is super important. Not only are they an indicator of quality problems, but also ongoing performance and uptime related issues. Good exception handling best practices are critical for good software.

  • Bugs - Identify new exceptions being thrown in your code after a deployment
  • Production issues - Capture issues with database connections, query timeouts, and other related issues.

Errors are a fact of life for most applications. At Stackify, we process millions of messages an hour across a couple hundred servers and over a thousand SQL databases. A few errors here and there are just part of the noise of a busy system. It is important that you keep a pulse on your error rates and look for spikes.

Application usage & traffic
After a deployment, you want to see if the amount of transactions or users accessing your system looks normal. If you suddenly have no traffic or a giant spike in traffic, something could be wrong.

The last thing you ever want to see is no traffic at all. You could also see a spike in traffic if you are using microservices and one of your applications is causing a lot more traffic all of a sudden.

Application performance
Before you even do a deployment, you should use a tool like Retrace to look for performance problems, hidden errors, and other issues. During and after the deployment, you should also look for any changes in overall application performance.

It might be common after a deployment to see major changes in the usage of specific SQL queries, web service calls, and other application dependencies. Tools like Retrace can provide valuable visualizations like this one below that helps make it easy to spot problems.

Mean time to detection (MTTD)
When problems do happen, it is important that you identify them quickly. The last thing you want is to have a major partial or broad system outage and not know about it. Having robust application monitoring and good coverage in place will help you detect issues quickly. Once you detect them, you also have to fix them quickly!

Mean time to recovery (MTTR)
This metric helps you track how long it takes to recover from failures. A key metric for the business is keeping failures to a minimum and being able to recover from them quickly. It is typically measured in hours and may refer to business hours, not clock hours.

Having good application monitoring tools in place to quickly identify issues and quickly deploy the fix is important to reducing your MTTR.

Application metrics
Beyond the DevOps metrics listed above, there are dozens of other metrics you can track that are specific to your applications. Most of them are not necessarily relevant to DevOps in regards to deploying your application. However, they are very critical for monitoring the usage and performance of your applications in production.

For example, at Stackify, we use custom metrics to track how many log messages are received via our API per minute. This is a critical metric that helps us understand the volume of data flowing through our system. Depending on your application, you may have similar custom metrics that are critical to your application.

Read more:

After a deployment, you will want to keep an eye on all of your critical application metrics to ensure that everything still looks normal.

Summary

If you want to take DevOps to the next level, I'm sure that our list of DevOps metrics will help give you some ideas of what to track and improve. The goal of DevOps is collaboration and getting developers more involved in the deployment process and application monitoring. If you need some help with monitoring your applications, then be sure to check out our product Retrace.

Related articles:

The post 15 Metrics for DevOps Success appeared first on Stackify.

CloudExpo | DXWorldEXPO have announced the conference tracks for Cloud Expo 2018, introducing DXWorldEXPO.

DXWordEXPO, colocated with Cloud Expo will be held June 5-7, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, and November 6-8, 2018, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA.

Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with the introduction of DXWorld Expo within the program. Successful transformation requires a laser focus on being data-driven and on using all the tools available that enable transformation if they plan to survive over the long term.

A total of 88% of Fortune 500 companies from a generation ago are now out of business. Only 12% still survive. Similar percentages are found throughout enterprises of all sizes.

Cloud Expo | DXWorldEXPO 2018 New York
(June 5-7, 2018, Javits Center, Manhattan)

Cloud Expo | DXWorldEXPO 2018 Silicon Valley
(November 6-8, 2018, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA)

Full Conference Registration "Gold Pass" and Exhibit HallHere (Register ▸ Here via EventBrite)

DX World EXPO, LLC., a Lighthouse Point, Florida-based startup trade show producer and the creator of DXWorldEXPO® - Digital Transformation Conference & Expo has announced its conference agenda, with three major themes:

* Technology - The Revolution Continues
* Economy - The 21st Century Emerges
* Society - The Big Issues

"DX encompasses the continuing technology revolution, and is addressing society's most important issues throughout the entire $78 trillion 21st-century global economy," said Roger Strukhoff, Conference Chair. "DXWorldExpo has organized these issues along 10 tracks with more than 500 of the world's top speakers coming to Istanbul to help change the world."

There are 10 tracks running throughout the event and following the major themes. More than 500 breakout sessions will be featured, along with keynotes and general sessions from some of the world's top technology, business, and societal leaders. The event will be held over five days in Istanbul, reflecting the global nature of Digital Transformation and the city's long and historic role as a key business and intellectual center and linchpin between East and West.

Full Conference Registration "Gold Pass" and Exhibit HallHere (Register ▸ Here via EventBrite)

DX World Expo's Global Themes and Tracks are as follows:

Technology - The Revolution Continues

DX Tech: Data-Driven Global 2000
DX Tech: The Blockchain Challenge
DX Tech: AI and Cognitive
DX Tech: The Global Cloud

Economy - The 21st Century Emerges

DX Econ: Software is Rewriting the World
DX Econ: Smart Cities, Nations, and Regions
DX Econ: FinTech and the Token Economy
DX Econ: The Industrial Internet and Industrie 4.0

Society - The Big Issues

DX Society: Environment
DX Society: Education
DX Society: Agriculture
DX Society: Health Care

Call for Papers -speaking opportunities- as well as sponsorship and exhibit opportunities will open on November 1, 2017.

World's Most Important Tech Event
DXWorldEXPO® will be the world's most important tech event with 1,000 exhibitors in its first year and 2,000 exhibitors in its second year, as it guides Global 2000 companies through their Digital Transformation journey for the next two decades. The global event is set to launch September 17-20, 2018 in Istanbul. It will be sponsored by Fortune 50 companies, and more than 30 international banks will be among sponsors of its FinTech/InsurTech track.

Gaining a better understanding of customers and acting upon this information is the foundation of Digital Transformation (DX) in the enterprise. Applying the latest technologies in this area is the key to driving new topline revenue opportunities.

Global 2000 companies have more than US$40 trillion in annual revenue - more than 50% of the world's entire GDP. The Global 2000 spends a total of US$2.4 trillion annually on enterprise IT. The average Global 2000 company has US$11 billion in annual revenue. The average Global 2000 company spends more than $600 million annually on enterprise IT.

Governments throughout the world spend another US$500 billion on IT - much of it dedicated to new Smart City initiatives. There are more than a dozen Global 2000 companies in Turkey, including Isbank, Garanti Bank, other financial institutions, Turk Telecom, Turkcell, Turkish Airlines, and ENKA.

Cloud Expo | DXWorldEXPO 2018 New York
(June 5-7, 2018, Javits Center, Manhattan)

Cloud Expo | DXWorldEXPO 2018 Silicon Valley
(November 6-8, 2018, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA)

Full Conference Registration "Gold Pass" and Exhibit HallHere (Register ▸ Here via EventBrite)

More Management Quotes
"For the past 10 years at Cloud Expo, we've helped drive the migration to modern enterprise IT infrastructures, built upon the foundation of cloud computing. Today's hybrid, multiple cloud IT infrastructures integrate Big Data, analytics, blockchain, the IoT, mobile devices, and the latest in cryptography and enterprise-grade security," said Fuat Kircaali, Chairman and founder of DX World Expo, LLC.

"As a report from the World Economic Forum and Accenture recently stated, 'Companies need to fundamentally change the way they identify, develop and launch new business ventures.' We agree," said Carmen Gonzalez, president of DX World Expo, LLC.

"Digital Transformation is the key issue driving the global enterprise IT business," said Roger Strukhoff, Conference Chair and Executive Director of the Tau Institute for Global ICT Studies. "DX is most prominent among Global 2000 enterprises and government institutions. Our new event in Istanbul brings together the top companies and delegates from around the world, who are transforming the world."

2018 Conference Agenda and Tracks, June 5-7, Javits Center

Track 1 | Cloud Expo - Enterprise Cloud
Track 2 | DXWorld Expo - Digital Transformation (DX)
Track 3 | The API Enterprise | Mobility & Security
Track 4 | DevOps | Containers & Microservices
Track 5 | Cognitive Computing | AI, ML, DL
Track 6 | Big Data | Analytics
Track 7 | IoT | IIoT | Smart Cities
Track 8 | Hot Topics | FinTech | WebRTC

Cloud Expo covers all of these tools, with the most comprehensive program and more than 120 top world-class speakers throughout our Industry presenting Keynotes, General Sessions, Breakout Sessions along eight focused tracks, as well as our signature Power Panels. Our expo floor brings together the world's leading companies throughout the world of Cloud Computing, DX, and all they entail.

As your enterprise creates a vision and strategy that enables you to create your own unique, long-term success, learning about all the technologies involved is essential. Companies today not only form multi-cloud and hybrid cloud architectures, but create them with built-in cognitive capabilities. Cloud-native thinking is now the norm in financial services, manufacturing, telco, healthcare, transportation, energy, media, entertainment, retail and other consumer industries, as well as the public sector.

Cloud Expo is the world's most important, independent event where technology buyers and vendors meet to experience and discuss the big picture of Digital Tranformation and all of the strategies, tactics, and tools they need to realize their goals.

Full Conference Registration "Gold Pass" and Exhibit HallHere (Register ▸ Here via EventBrite)

Only Cloud Expo brings together all this in a single location:

  • Cloud Computing
  • Big Data & Analytics
  • Software-Defined Infrastructure
  • Industrial IoT
  • Industry 4.0
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Cognitive Computing
  • Microservices
  • Machine Learning
  • DevOps
  • WebRTC
  • FinTech
  • Digital Transformation

Attend Cloud Expo. Build your own custom experience. Learn about the world's latest technologies and chart your course to Digital Transformation.

21st International Cloud Expo, taking place October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.

Download Show Prospectus ▸ Here

Full Conference Registration "Gold Pass" and Exhibit HallHere (Register ▸ Here via EventBrite)

Cloud computing is now being embraced by a majority of enterprises of all sizes. Yesterday's debate about public vs. private has transformed into the reality of hybrid cloud: a recent survey shows that 74% of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy. Meanwhile, 94% of enterprises are using some form of XaaS - software, platform, and infrastructure as a service.

With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing Cloud strategies, now is the perfect time to attend 21st Cloud Expo, October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is on the right path to Digital Transformation.

2018 Conference Agenda and Tracks, June 5-7, Javits Center

Track 1 | Cloud Expo - Enterprise Cloud
Track 2 | DXWorld Expo - Digital Transformation (DX)
Track 3 | The API Enterprise | Mobility & Security
Track 4 | DevOps | Containers & Microservices
Track 5 | Cognitive Computing | AI, ML, DL
Track 6 | Big Data | Analytics
Track 7 | IoT | IIoT | Smart Cities
Track 8 | Hot Topics | FinTech | WebRTC

Cloud Expo | DXWorldEXPO 2018 New York
(June 5-7, 2018, Javits Center, Manhattan)

Cloud Expo | DXWorldEXPO 2018 Silicon Valley
(November 6-8, 2018, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA)

Full Conference Registration "Gold Pass" and Exhibit HallHere (Register ▸ Here via EventBrite)

Download Show ProspectusHere

Every Global 2000 enterprise in the world is now integrating cloud computing in some form into its IT development and operations. Midsize and small businesses are also migrating to the cloud in increasing numbers.

Companies are each developing their unique mix of cloud technologies and services, forming multi-cloud and hybrid cloud architectures and deployments across all major industries. Cloud-driven thinking has become the norm in financial services, manufacturing, telco, healthcare, transportation, energy, media, entertainment, retail and other consumer industries, and the public sector.

Cloud Expo is the single show where technology buyers and vendors can meet to experience and discus cloud computing and all that it entails. Sponsors of Cloud Expo will benefit from unmatched branding, profile building and lead generation opportunities through:

  • Featured on-site presentation and ongoing on-demand webcast exposure to a captive audience of industry decision-makers.
  • Showcase exhibition during our new extended dedicated expo hours
  • Breakout Session Priority scheduling for Sponsors that have been guaranteed a 35-minute technical session
  • Online advertising in SYS-CON's i-Technology Publications
  • Capitalize on our Comprehensive Marketing efforts leading up to the show with print mailings, e-newsletters and extensive online media coverage.
  • Unprecedented PR Coverage: Editorial Coverage on Cloud Computing Journal.
  • Tweetup to over 75,000 plus followers
  • Press releases sent on major wire services to over 500 industry analysts.

For more information on sponsorship, exhibit, and keynote opportunities, contact Carmen Gonzalez by email at events (at) sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802-3021.

The World's Largest "Cloud Digital Transformation" Event

@CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo 2017 Silicon Valley
(Oct. 31 - Nov. 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA)

@CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo 2018 New York
(June 12-14, 2018, Javits Center, Manhattan)

Full Conference Registration "Gold Pass" and Exhibit HallHere (Register ▸ Here via EventBrite)

Sponsorship Opportunities

Sponsors of Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo will benefit from unmatched branding, profile building and lead generation opportunities through:

  • Featured on-site presentation and ongoing on-demand webcast exposure to a captive audience of industry decision-makers
  • Showcase exhibition during our new extended dedicated expo hours
  • Breakout Session Priority scheduling for Sponsors that have been guaranteed a 35 minute technical session
  • Online targeted advertising in SYS-CON's i-Technology Publications
  • Capitalize on our Comprehensive Marketing efforts leading up to the show with print mailings, e-newsletters and extensive online media coverage
  • Unprecedented Marketing Coverage: Editorial Coverage on ITweetup to over 100,000 plus followers, press releases sent on major wire services to over 500 industry analysts

For more information on sponsorship, exhibit, and keynote opportunities, contact Carmen Gonzalez (@GonzalezCarmen) today by email at events (at) sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802-3021.

Secrets of Sponsors and ExhibitorsHere
Secrets of Cloud Expo SpeakersHere

All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices - computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors - connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades.

With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing Cloud strategies, now is the perfect time to attend @CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo, October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-4, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is on the right path to Digital Transformation.

Delegates to Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo will be able to attend 8 simultaneous, information-packed education tracks.

There are over 120 breakout sessions in all, with Keynotes, General Sessions, and Power Panels adding to three days of incredibly rich presentations and content.

Join Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo conference chair Roger Strukhoff (@IoT2040), October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, for three days of intense Enterprise Cloud and 'Digital Transformation' discussion and focus, including Big Data's indispensable role in IoT, Smart Grids and (IIoT) Industrial Internet of Things, Wearables and Consumer IoT, as well as (new) Digital Transformation in Vertical Markets.

Full Conference Registration "Gold Pass" and Exhibit HallHere (Register ▸ Here via EventBrite)

Financial Technology - or FinTech - Is Now Part of the @CloudExpo Program!

Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 21st Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, will find fresh new content in a new track called FinTech, which will incorporate machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and blockchain into one track.

Financial enterprises in New York City, London, Singapore, and other world financial capitals are embracing a new generation of smart, automated FinTech that eliminates many cumbersome, slow, and expensive intermediate processes from their businesses.

FinTech brings efficiency as well as the ability to deliver new services and a much improved customer experience throughout the global financial services industry. FinTech is a natural fit with cloud computing, as new services are quickly developed, deployed, and scaled on public, private, and hybrid clouds.

More than US$20 billion in venture capital is being invested in FinTech this year. @CloudExpo is pleased to bring you the latest FinTech developments as an integral part of our program, starting at the 21st International Cloud Expo October 31 - November 2, 2017 in Silicon Valley, and June 12-14, 2018, in New York City.

@CloudExpo is accepting submissions for this new track, so please visit www.CloudComputingExpo.com for the latest information.

Speaking Opportunities

The upcoming 21st International @CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo, October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY announces that its Call For Papers for speaking opportunities is open.

Submit your speaking proposal today! ▸ Here

About @CloudEXPO and @DXWorldEXPO
SYS-CON Media (www.sys-con.com) has since 1994 been connecting technology companies and customers through a comprehensive content stream - featuring over forty focused subject areas, from Cloud Computing to Web Security - interwoven with market-leading full-scale conferences. The company's internationally recognized brands include among others Cloud Expo® (@CloudExpo), Big Data Expo® (@BigDataExpo), DevOps Summit (@DevOpsSummit), @ThingsExpo® (@ThingsExpo), and DXWorldEXPO® (@ExpoDX).

@CloudExpo® and @ThingsExpo® are registered trademarks of CLOUD EXPO INC.

DXWorldEXPO® is a registered trademark of DX WORLD EXPO LLC.

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Stackify offers the only developers-friendly solution that fully integrates error and log management with application performance monitoring and management. Allowing you to easily isolate issues, identify what needs to be fixed quicker and focus your efforts – Support less, Code more. Stackify provides software developers, operations and support managers with an innovative cloud based solution that gives them DevOps insight and allows them to monitor, detect and resolve application issues before they affect the business to ensure a better end user experience. Start your free trial now stackify.com

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Let's do a visualization exercise. Imagine it's December 31, 2018, and you're ringing in the New Year with your friends and family. You think back on everything that you accomplished in the last year: your company's revenue is through the roof thanks to the success of your product, and you were promoted to Lead Developer. 2019 is poised to be an even bigger year for your company because you have the tools and insight to scale as quickly as demand requires. You're a happy human, and it's not just...
"Opsani helps the enterprise adopt containers, help them move their infrastructure into this modern world of DevOps, accelerate the delivery of new features into production, and really get them going on the container path," explained Ross Schibler, CEO of Opsani, and Peter Nickolov, CTO of Opsani, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at DevOps Summit at 21st Cloud Expo, held Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Enterprises are adopting Kubernetes to accelerate the development and the delivery of cloud-native applications. However, sharing a Kubernetes cluster between members of the same team can be challenging. And, sharing clusters across multiple teams is even harder. Kubernetes offers several constructs to help implement segmentation and isolation. However, these primitives can be complex to understand and apply. As a result, it’s becoming common for enterprises to end up with several clusters. Thi...
Cavirin Systems has just announced C2, a SaaS offering designed to bring continuous security assessment and remediation to hybrid environments, containers, and data centers. Cavirin C2 is deployed within Amazon Web Services (AWS) and features a flexible licensing model for easy scalability and clear pay-as-you-go pricing. Although native to AWS, it also supports assessment and remediation of virtual or container instances within Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or on-premise. By dr...