Meet the Fully Baked DevOps Platform That Transforms Infrastructure into Code

TL; DR: Do you ever feel like you’re racing against the clock while juggling 50 things at once? If you work in DevOps, then the answer is probably a resounding “yes.” That’s where Progress comes in. We spoke with Prashanth Nanjundappa, VP of Product, who shared how its new Chef product leverages automation to make the DevOps process simpler, compliant, and secure.

Like many people, I’m an unashamed Gordon Ramsay fan. While some of us have probably never eaten at one of his restaurants, I think it’s safe to say that it’s his TV persona that draws people in.

Between shows like “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Kitchen Nightmares,” and “Next Level Chef” — among dozens of other projects — Gordon is constantly firing on all cylinders. And yet, he still manages to find the time to manage his businesses.

In fact, he owns nearly 60 restaurants worldwide and has racked up 17 Michelin stars over his career. But of course, there’s no way he manages all these restaurants alone.

Gordon relies on his teams to help execute his vision for each and every restaurant. From routine inspections to secret diners, Gordon puts his trust in his expert managerial staff to follow and replicate his standards.

What Gordon does is not unlike what Progress does for DevOps. Prashanth Nanjundappa, VP of Product, said the company’s vision is to “propel business forward in a technology-driven world.” One piece of this is helping enterprises and organizations accelerate their DevOps journeys.

Progress does this specifically with its Chef product — basically, the Gordon Ramsay of DevOps — and the new Chef Courier tool — the back-of-house and front-of-house staff that execute the demands into action, across every single application, server, and infrastructure.

Take one look at the Progress homepage, and you’ll see it’s a massive brand. From creating digital experiences to automating management processes, it’s got just about everything under the IT infrastructure sun.

Specifically, Progress specializes in offering AI-powered platforms designed to help businesses transition into the fast-evolving digital world. With Progress, you can develop, deploy, and manage AI-powered applications and experiences.

Its numbers — and 40 years of experience — back up its success. The top 10 tech companies, the 30 largest companies, and 70% of the Fortune 500 companies use Progress products every day.

Impressive, right?

It also has a 4 million-strong developer community — and over the past five years, Progress’ revenue has doubled from $350 million to $700 million.

Prashanth said this was only possible because Progress keeps its customers central to the mission.

“We’re always ensuring our product stays relevant to our customer base and increasing revenue from existing segments and products,” he said.

In fact, Progress is set to acquire ShareFile, a document collaboration software platform. (To us everyday folk, it’s similar to Google Docs, but much more sophisticated.)

But this is just one example. Over the years, Progress has also expanded its portfolio, including the acquisition of some familiar products in the dev world, including WhatsUp Gold, Kemp LoadMaster, and Flowmon.

“Because of these additions, we are able to provide a wide array of infrastructure, automation, and management capabilities for our large enterprise customer base,” Prashanth added.

There’s a lot more to explore with Progress — and maybe one day, we’ll have talked about it all. But today, I’m excited to focus on one product in particular: Chef. It’s the only automated-based DevOps-inspired tool under the Progress umbrella.

Before we dive into Chef and its Chef Courier tool, let’s talk about who DevOps are. It’ll provide a bit of a clearer understanding of how Progress can integrate into its processes.

DevOps is a combination of development and operations. Rather than keeping these teams separate, the goal is to improve collaboration and improve communication between the two. I think we’ve all been victims of confusion between the two departments.

Think of it this way (because I can’t seem to get enough cooking analogies): The dev team is like the kitchen staff, who’s responsible for creating new recipes, testing them out, and cooking them to perfection every time a customer orders it. The ops team is like the front-of-house, who are responsible for delivering the food, managing reservations, and making sure everything is operating smoothly from a birds-eye view.

Progress Chef is a product that secures the entire application process and infrastructure, whether you’re working in the cloud, on-premises, or at the edge.

Actually, it operates under the philosophy of the “Whatever, Whenever, Wherever” concept, which basically means Chef has so much flexibility that it can adapt to any workflow or project.

Broken down, its key features center around three main missions:

• Configuration management
• Cybersecurity
• Regulatory compliance
• Job orchestration

Prashanth explained it a bit simpler, though. Chef’s duties can basically be split into two main sections: configuration/deployment/management and security/compliance.

Configuration, Deployment, and Management

Using the Chef Infra, Chef Workstation, and Chef Infra Server components helps you transform infrastructure into code.

Soooo…what do I mean when I say that? It basically enables users to write recipes (scripts) that automate the creation and management of infrastructure while securely storing them.

Here’s how it works:

1. Set up your Chef Workstation.
2. Create a cookbook and add it to your Cookbook Directory.
3. Write a recipe using Chef’s Domain Specific Language (DSL). In this context, recipes are scripts.
4. Define the attributes to customize your recipe. For instance, if you want to display a greeting message like “Hello, User!”, you would apply an attribute such as id to implement specific styles.
5. Test your recipe in the Test Kitchen.
6. If all goes well, upload your recipe to the Chef Server.
7. Apply your recipe to your nodes.

And that’s how you write and apply your own Chef recipe! (This is just a watered-down overview, but don’t worry — there’s plenty in the Progress Knowledge Base to help you out.)

You can also leverage Chef Courier to automate routine tasks, particularly actions on any set or subset of nodes. For example, if you want to order a security scan on all nodes in the staging environment, just define the job, target the subset, and let Chef Courier do the work. It’s one less thing for your DevOps team to handle.

Security and Compliance

With Chef Inspec and Chef Automate, compliance just got a whole lot easier. You can automatically check that all regulatory requirements are met, which gives you a simple view of your compliance status across your entire infrastructure.

But I think Prashanth made an interesting point when he said many people tend to confuse compliance with security.

Security is what we always talk about here at HostingAdvice: protecting your systems from cyberthreats. It focuses on strengthening your network and infrastructure to keep hackers out. Compliance, on the other hand, is different.

“While both fall under the office of the CISO, they serve different purposes. I think compliance is more of an obligatory responsibility, whereas security is much more serious. But people often think of security as something different,” Prashanth explained.

Chef Courier makes it easy to meet those security and compliance standards. It acts like a delivery service, helping users automate audits (so you don’t have to worry about surprise visits), find non-compliant resources, and frequently check systems.

Courier can track how many employees didn’t update their passwords according to new HIPAA requirements, for example.

From a security viewpoint, Chef Courier also helps with incident response, assessing impacts, and reducing risks, Prashanth said: “We provide tools that make it quick and easy to test your infrastructure for vulnerabilities or incidents that have happened or could happen.”

Take the recent Polyfill JS supply chain attack for example. Harmful code was hidden in JavaScript files from the Polyfill content delivery network (CDN). If the affected users had used Chef Courier, it could have quickly identified the problem, reduced risks by disabling the CDN, and carefully rolled out fixes.

“Again, it all comes down to the three dimensions of ‘Whatever, Whenever, Wherever,’” said Prashanth. “Chef Courier can help with all of that.”

When we talk about the future in tech settings, we’re usually talking about AI. But Prashanth said Progress takes a “cautious approach” to integrating AI. Although AI has the potential to enhance productivity, it also poses some risks to infrastructure.

For example, Prashanth said AI could issue an [rm - rf /] command and wipe out an entire infrastructure. I’m not a coder, but the fact it’s that easy is a bit alarming.

Of course, this doesn’t just stop Progress in its tracks just because there are some risks. Take its Chef Courier tool, which basically runs on automation. In fact, Prashanth said Progress is planning to introduce natural language interaction capabilities into Courier.

Let’s go back to the Polyfill JS incident again.

Instead of having to perform multiple complex queries to assess the incident, the user could ask the Courier Co-Pilot a question as simple as, “How many nodes are using Polyfill JS in the U.S.?” Knowing this answer would create a much clearer picture of how many users were affected.

“LoadMaster is an enterprise-scale load balancer that hosts mission-critical applications. These applications require configuration management, along with backup and restore capabilities, and that’s where Courier is integrated,” Prashanth explained.

Until then, there’s so much to explore with Progress if you’re a developer or just curious about integrating AI-powered applications and infrastructures.

As more organizations dive into the world of automation, tools like Chef that simplify internal processes are becoming increasingly important. After all, we only have 24 hours in a day — and I don’t think anyone wants to feel like they’re racing against the clock like a Tesla employee…

If you ask me, it’s a classic case of causality, and we all have the responsibility to move with it. Learn more about Progress here.