Last week at re:Invent, Amazon Web Services CTO, Werner Vogels unveiled AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate during his keynote. We here at Chef are super excited and the initial reception has been amazing!
Previously, I covered what’s inside the new offering from a technical perspective. What may not have been entirely clear, are some of the reasons behind why this offering is truly exceptional and why it makes strategic business sense for AWS users.
AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate is a joint go-to-market effort between Amazon Web Services and Chef Software, Inc. That means, both companies are committed to your success with this service. We are proud partners and we’ve been hard at work to bring you the best of what each of our platforms has to offer. We’re going to continue to work hard together and you can count on seeing this offering continue to grow based on customer feedback. Two market leaders have teamed up to make sure you’re able to (as we’ve said all along) “rule the cloud.”
At Chef, we see a trend with our largest customers. Because we’ve transformed their organizations by helping them release code faster, safer, and more reliably, Chef Automate becomes a mission critical service. Like any mission critical service, ensuring its availability and data-integrity takes time, effort, and resources. Our Fortune 500 customers want to consume mission-critical infrastructure and application management platforms as managed services.
AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate provides the same level of efficiency, security, and reliability for Chef Automate that you’ve come to expect from any AWS service. Rather than second-guessing the reliability of your own hardware or the speediness of your network, you can choose to let AWS manage Chef Automate for you with 24x7x365 coverage and pay-as-you-go pricing. Let AWS manage your backups, restores, and software updates. That frees up you and your team to spend less time managing Chef Automate and more time focusing on outperforming your competitors.
AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate is a native AWS service. Like any service you purchase from AWS, they are the seller of record. AWS provides support, manages your service, and is your point of contact for all of your concerns. Chef Software Inc. is an AWS partner and we support their use of our products. With AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate, you are building on the existing relationship you already have with Amazon Web Services. Any usage of this service appears as a line item on your AWS bill. You get all the power of Chef, backed by the cloud provider you already know and trust. All of your Chef usage is integrated into one easy to understand, easy to use, and easy to see location. Like any other essential component of your application stack, it’s part of one cohesive solution pack brought to you by AWS.
This new offering is an easy way for AWS users to try Chef’s commercial product: Chef Automate. With up to 10 free nodes for one year, it’s a low-risk way to quickly get started and see how Chef Automate gives you visibility, compliance, and a common workflow when managing all change across your application deployments. With AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate, you’re also able to use all of the open-source tools commonly found in the Chef ecosystem including Supermarket cookbooks, test-kitchen, InSpec, Habitat, and (of course) Chef to manage your AWS infrastructure and applications. You get to leverage the best of both worlds and get started with the click of a button.
It’s never been faster or easier to get started with Chef Automate; available right now in the same AWS console as your other production services.
Try it for yourself and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear about your journey, answer questions, and get your input. You can contact us at feedback.chef.io.