Copado Launches DevOps COVID-19 Initiative

Copado, a provider of a DevOps platform building and deploying applications on top of Salesforce software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, will make its platform available for free to anyone working on applications to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition, Copado has launched a virtual DevOps training center and opened its DevOps community to anyone in the Salesforce ecosystem by making DevOps certifications available for free for 90 days to anyone who can pass an online examination. Previously, Copado charged $250 per certification.

Andrew Leigh, senior vice president for marketing and alliances for Copado, said the goal of the Copado Cares program is to train more than 10,000 individuals how to implement best DevOps practices on Salesforce platforms this year.

In terms of providing free access to its platform for building applications, Leigh said Copado is following the lead of Salesforce, which has launched its own Salesforce Cares initiative that provides free access to select cloud applications.

Leigh said that Salesforce applications will prove more relevant in the weeks and months ahead as fledgling digital business initiatives that organizations have launched rapidly become the foundation on which business continuity plans are now based. With more individuals working from home, many businesses need to deploy additional digital marketing and customer support applications rapidly, he noted.

The only way to achieve that goal is to embrace low-code development tools such as the ones provided by Salesforce, Leigh added. Those tools are already integrated with a suite of core applications, which Leigh said means IT organizations don’t need to write entire applications from the ground up. Instead, they can use low-code tools in combination with best DevOps practices to accelerate the development and deployment of applications.

In the case of health care, Leigh added that a foundation of battle-tested software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications is crucial because new COVID-19 applications being rolled out need to work reliably the instant they are deployed. Beyond the reliability of the core platform, it’s more critical than ever to employ best DevOps processes to ensure those applications have been thoroughly tested, he said.

Of course, network access to cloud applications can be uneven when everyone is working remotely, However, in time many organizations will increase the amount of bandwidth being made available to critical customers and end users alike. In fact, the economic uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to accelerate the rate at which organizations have been embracing cloud applications that are consumed on a per-user basis.

In the meantime, it remains to be seen how long the adverse economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic might be or to what degree relief measures being put in place by countries around the world might mitigate it. Regardless, it’s apparent that organizations that rely on digital processes are more resilient. In some cases, such as the online delivery of entertainment and education services, there has been dramatic growth. The degree to which that growth can be sustained, of course, depends heavily on how much money consumers are willing to allocate to these services when millions of people are unemployed. Whatever the outcome, however, it’s going to be a brave new world of application software.

— Mike Vizard