Behind the Scenes: Payara Cloud Development

Originally published on 25 Nov 2020
Last updated on 25 Nov 2020

If you haven't heard yet, the Payara Team has been hard at work developing Payara Cloud, The Next Generation of Cloud-Native Application Server. Payara Cloud makes it easier to run your applications on the cloud - and eliminates the need to learn how to use Kubernetes. With Payara Cloud, you simply select your war, click deploy, and watch your apps run on the cloud, automagically! (Have you seen the Payara Cloud teaser video yet? Take a look here.)

I sat down (virtually!) with the lead developer of the Payara Cloud project, Patrik Duditš, and graphic designer, Denisa Zettlova, to get a "behind the scenes" look at what's been going on as the team brings this product idea to reality. To see the product in action, register for our live demo to take place on December 2, 2020.

Interview with Patrik Duditš

Where did the idea for Payara Cloud come from?

"The idea comes from realizing that the concepts behind the application server – configuration and resource management – still apply in the cloud era, but the infrastructure technology has evolved. Therefore, we're creating a product that updates what an application server looks like when it is built upon current infrastructure tech."

Why should developers get excited about Payara Cloud?

"They should be excited about how boring it is! Meaning, Payara Cloud just does the hard work for them. If their application would run with Payara Micro, it will run in Payara Cloud. That means they don’t need to build containers, configure reverse proxies DNS, SSL certificates, or log and metrics collection for each environment they need to run. That’s is all handled for them and they can concentrate on developing their application."

How will businesses benefit by having their developer(s) use Payara Cloud?

"When developers can focus on what they do best - developing applications - the business gets their application to market faster. Businesses using Payara Cloud can leverage their developers existing skillset, since they won't need to learn how to configure Kubernetes or worry about how to get the application to run on the cloud. Payara Cloud separates the infrastructure technology from the development, so businesses benefit from improving the efficiency of the organization along with faster development and deployment of applications."

What area(s) of product development has been the most challenging so far?

"Hardening the Kubernetes cluster to sufficiently isolate applications, while still allowing cooperation between those that are parts of the same system."

What area(s) of product development/design has been the most rewarding or fun so far?

"We’ve put up a small challenge for us finding a user interface technology that gives us a nice design, yet is progressive and mostly works without Javascript. We might have found that in combination with MVC and Facelets and it feels good to think about UI in a browser in terms of plain old form submissions and trying to fulfill the intended semantic of HTML."

Interview with Denisa Zettlova

What does the Payara Cloud logo represent?

"As Payara Cloud is a new product, we wanted the logo to focus on the product itself rather than our already prevalent Payara fish. The cloud in the logo represents the services that Payara Cloud will offer, of course, and we’ve paid homage to our beloved fish in a subtle way that might not give it away immediately. The waves in the logo signify where the fish came from and how far it has come in its journey. We’ve added colour separation to the fish scale peeking out from the cloud to add visual interest and tie the design into our brand. We’re hoping the logo brings a whiff of fresh air into the brand for something new and exciting to look forward to."

How did you get to the final design?

"After a lot of trial and error following numerous discussions with the team, we’ve gone over the options for the new design. There are many stages to design, the first being the actual discussion of what you expect the final product to be. We are very open within our team and thanks to that we managed to speed up the process by being honest with each other and trying new options when the initial ideas weren't going anywhere. The final design involved visualizing and understanding what the product is, how to maintain our overall branding, and a lot of tweaking and modifying design ideas until we came to our final version."

Register for the Payara Cloud Interactive Demo

If you'd like to learn more about how Payara Cloud can make it easier to run your apps on the cloud, join us on December 2, 2020 for our interactive product demo. (Register here)

The Payara Cloud demo will take you from the log in to creating your namespace, adding an application, and deploying it.

Afterward, we’ll have a Q&A session to answer any questions you have about the features and benefits of Payara Cloud, and invite you to apply to be a product tester with the Payara Cloud Beta version and be among the first to use the product and give us your feedback and suggestions for improvements.