Deploying to the cloud without Ops
Tags: cloudcomputing, infrastructure, automation, productivity
Published: 2023-05-08 17:03:35

As a technical leader you need to be creative in how you juggle the fine line between remaining productive & laser focussed on app dev versus time spent correctly provisioning infrastructure. Every minute spent on infra is another minute you aren't spending on your core value.

You are probably seeing a lot of attention around developer portals, however, in my experience the first step to take should focus on immediate productivity gains through automation and developer self-service. Once you’ve established a self-service provisioning process, consider setting up a portal to further streamline the process and provide a centralized location for developers to manage their resources.

Developer self-service and provisioning is critical to infrastructure management because it allows developers to deploy and manage their own applications and services autonomously, bypassing traditional IT teams and support tickets. This approach increases organizational agility and reduces deployment time.

There are several things you need to take into consideration when trying to build a self-service provisioning process.

- Identify infrastructure needs
- Choose infrastructure provider
- Set up self-service provisioning

The [Nitric framework](https://nitric.io) can help you automate and solve all of the above challenges so that your team can focus on other challenges, like writing, testing and supporting your application.


![Nitric ci/cd](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/83aw5okxvdni6mhol0mj.png)

**Identify infrastructure needs:**

Nitric supports some of the most commonly used resources on the cloud. These resources were selected based on analyzing the requirements of hundreds of real world projects which the Nitric team have previously deployed. The resources supported include: Compute, Secrets, Documents, Storage, Messaging (Events & Queues) and Schedules.

**Choose infrastructure provider:**

Nitric supports multiple cloud providers, including AWS, GCP, and Azure. This allows you to choose the provider that best fits your needs and provides a consistent experience for developers across different environments. The ability to delay your decision until you are ready to deploy is a huge advantage for those who want to begin development from day one, especially when all of the resources are simulated locally for rapid iterative development.

**Set up self-service provisioning:**

Nitric supports self-service provisioning of infrastructure by automatically inferring a spec of infrastructure required by your application directly from your code. This allows you to define your infrastructure as code, which can be version-controlled and automated for faster provisioning and maintenance. The end result is 100% less boilerplate configuration, less brittle provisioning of infrastructure without the need for a totally separate deployment project.

Nitric serves development teams by elevating the developer experience through automating repetitive or complex activities which are time consuming and require a lot of time. If you’re working on a project without a dedicated infrastructure team, then using a strongly opinionated framework with a focus on performance, scalability and security can simplify your team's workload and time to market for your product features and innovations.

For development teams without access to a dedicated platform engineering team, effectively managing infrastructure can be a challenging task. By leveraging the Nitric framework, these teams can streamline their infrastructure management processes, enabling them to focus on their core competencies and deliver value more quickly. Nitric's support for multiple cloud providers, self-service provisioning, and automation of repetitive tasks makes it an ideal solution for enhancing the developer experience and accelerating the development cycle. By adopting Nitric, teams can ensure that their infrastructure is reliable, secure, and scalable, ultimately contributing to the success and growth of their applications and services.