I believe it was John F. Kennedy who said, “Ask not what VMware Tanzu CloudHealth can do for you – Ask what you can do with VMware Tanzu CloudHealth.” I might have incorrectly paraphrased the late President JFK, but you get the idea. The newest feature available for Tanzu CloudHealth kicks off the initiative to help customers “Shift Left” the management of their cloud infrastructure: – Webhooks. “Shifting Left” is sometimes described as “putting data into the path of engineers,” and with the release of webhooks, Tanzu CloudHealth puts the platform’s power into the hands of engineers, developers, and the organization as a whole and provides data visibility in ways that are most meaningful and impactful.
Per Fortune Business Insights, the global Software as a Service (SaaS) market was valued at $237B in 2022, and it is expected to grow to over $904B by 2030. Tools like Slack, JIRA, Microsoft Teams, ServiceNow, Zendesk, and countless more that demand data ingestion are designed to help customers get the most out of their solutions, streamline their operations, and ultimately make the business more money. The question becomes, “how can I bring all of these independent pieces together into a single workflow?” Webhooks inside Tanzu CloudHealth allow customers to take their data from the platform and integrate it with some of these other mission-critical SaaS applications to provide a comprehensive view into their environment.
What is a Webhook?
When we talk about Webhooks, it is essential to take a step back and understand what a Webhook is and what it isn’t. Webhooks were aptly named because they require the web (HTTP-based communication) and the hooking technology that allows programs to intercept calls based on events of interest. Sometimes, Webhooks have been referred to as “reverse APIs” or “push APIs” because webhooks put communication responsibility on the server instead of on the client. While webhooks are not APIs, they do, however, work together, as webhooks require an application to have an API to work.
Webhooks have several benefits that make them appealing to work with:
- First is the ease of setup. Once an app supports webhooks, it is generally straightforward to configure the webhook URL and parameters, such as the event they would like to be altered on.
- Second, webhooks save resources. Because webhooks only trigger when an event occurs, it eliminates the need for the client application to be continuously polling.
- Third, webhooks allow for automated data transfer. Because webhooks are event-driven, they allow automated data transfers to happen once an event occurs. The event triggers the exchange of information and is therefore as real-time as data can be shared.
- Fourth, webhooks are ideal for lightweight, specific payloads. Because webhooks are used for targeted pieces of data, it allows the client to process and use the data in particular ways, like receiving a notification.
Webhooks Inside Tanzu CloudHealth
Inside Tanzu CloudHealth, we find Webhooks in two different places. The first place is under ‘Setup -> Admin’ where you can configure webhooks with third-party applications such as JIRA or Slack.
The Tanzu CloudHealth Webhooks user interface guides you through the steps to configure your integrations:
Once you have configured your webhooks, the next step is configuring a policy to send these events to your applications. After defining our policy condition, we can select ‘Send Webhooks Message’ and configure the Message to be sent to the application of your choice.
When policy conditions are met, the policy will push a notification via the newly created webhook to your desired application (such as Slack, Teams, JIRA, etc.) at weekly, daily, or even hourly intervals. This near real-time visibility allows your teams to get out in front of issues before they become anything more.
Another use-case that has been resonating with customers leverages webhooks with an Anomaly Detection policy. In Tanzu CloudHealth, our Anomaly Detection engine was built to alert customers when anomalous cost spikes or dips occur inside their cloud infrastructure. By combining Anomaly Detection with a webhooks policy, customers can alert engineers and developers of their anomalous cloud spend sooner. Hierarchical rules inside of policy can trigger multiple actions at different condition thresholds. For example, customers can build a policy that would send cost anomalies over $500 to an application like ServiceNow to be addressed as part of an existing workflow. But the same policy can take a different action for bigger anomalies that require a quicker resolution. For example, if the cost anomaly is over $5,000, an action can be triggered to send a notification to PagerDuty for immediate attention.
In its simplest form, the goal of shifting left is to address potential issues sooner by providing insight through data to the engineers and developers earlier. Using VMware Tanzu CloudHealth, webhooks help teams improve their cloud management practice by bringing their SaaS applications together to solve operational challenges in real time.
To learn more about webhooks, policies, and Tanzu CloudHealth, please visit VMware Tanzu CloudHealth and sign up for a free 14-Day Trial.
