VMware is happy to welcome Alex Ellis to the VMware Open Source Technology Center (OSTC). Alex, the creator and lead of the OpenFaaS project, joins VMware’s growing team of open source experts to continue his defining work in Functions as a Service (FaaS).
Alex’s résumé contains much more than just his technical contributions to OpenFaaS. He’s been a Docker Captain since 2016 as well, and enthusiastically blogs and gives presentations on these and other open source projects. His “getting started” guides and video walkthroughs are incredibly useful for those looking to easily access OpenFaaS and overcome that difficult first step when jumping into a new project or technology. Alex’s focus on community development and operational simplicity exemplifies the kind of developer engagement which sustains successful open source projects.
FaaS makes it possible to turn anything into a “serverless” function—from an existing legacy binary, to a Python or Node application, to examples like machine learning with TensorFlow. OpenFaaS builds on top of prominent open source container and orchestration projects, like Docker and Kubernetes, to simplify infrastructure and provide a scalable and fault-tolerant serverless platform. The project provides an implementation of the necessary scheduling, execution and runtime mechanisms designed with the OpenFaaS slogan in mind: “Serverless Functions Made Simple.”
At VMworld 2017, VMware presented FaaS as an exciting new way to develop applications. Since then, Pivotal (Dell Technologies) announced PFS (Pivotal Function Service) and Project Riff (FaaS). VMware recently announced the open source Dispatch functions framework, which provides enterprise features on top of existing FaaS implementations (currently OpenFaaS, Riff, and OpenWhisk).
The OSTC is committed to making meaningful contributions to open source projects in order to ensure their viability and grow the capabilities of an industry built upon open source technologies. We are excited that Alex will be dedicating his time to OpenFaaS and providing thought leadership while working with our Dispatch team in this emerging area.
Stay tuned to the Open Source Blog for more news out of the OSTC, and be sure to follow us on Twitter (@vmwopensource).
