Cosmonic, creator of the Cosmonic WebAssembly (Wasm) PaaS and maintainer of CNCF project wasmCloud, announces the Cosmonic Platform has reached Open Beta and now features Cosmonic Connect – a new way to integrate the most popular third party technologies with Wasm. First to launch at KubeCon EU is Cosmonic Connect Kubernetes, with more to come.
Cosmonic continues its commitment to open source innovation with Wadm – declarative application management for wasmCloud applications, built to bring the familiarity of Kubernetes to Wasm. Taylor Thomas, Cosmonic’s Director of Engineering, says the focus is to support a variety of industrial needs, rather than locking companies into one use case.
“Applications run in the most complex architectures and remote physical locations so we’re designing the Cosmonic PaaS to cater to this diversity,” he says. “Building Cosmonic and wasmCloud around the Component Model means complete flexibility to run Wasm applications everywhere, whether that’s in serverless or FaaS scenarios, in event-driven architectures, in both microservices and monoliths, running on bare metal, in the cloud or on devices at the edge.”
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Cosmonic Connect
Creating a fertile environment for popular technologies to integrate with Wasm is key to adoption. Now in Open Beta (open to all with a ‘free forever’ tier), the Cosmonic PaaS now features Cosmonic Connect. This is a set of third party connectors designed to make Wasm integration simple. The first Cosmonic Connect integration to launch is Cosmonic Connect Kubernetes.
Kubernetes has its limits, particularly at the edge, and is often associated with resource underutilization and excessive costs. WasmCloud’s extensible, low-boilerplate and highly portable development methodology resolves these issues so Cosmonic Connect Kubernetes was created to connect large Kubernetes estates to Wasm to drive savings and efficiencies. Adobe was one of the first companies to see real-world value.
According to Roy Illsley, Chief Analyst, Omdia: “Cosmonic Connect is the bridge between Kubernetes and WebAssembly. This will be particularly useful in edge scenarios where Kubernetes is too resource hungry, whereas Wasm is secure, tiny and portable enough to shine at the edge.”
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Colin Murphy, Senior Engineer at Adobe, says: “A huge advantage of WebAssembly on the back end is that it enables high performance and efficiency with greater security. For companies like ours, with significant and ongoing investment in Kubernetes across the business, the ability to integrate WebAssembly directly into our Kubernetes infrastructure would provide a straightforward path to unlock that potential. We’re capitalizing on new technologies today while understanding that the future could look completely different.”
Wadm: Familiar, Declarative Application Management for wasmCloud Applications
Wadm lowers the entry barriers to Wasm by providing developers with a familiar way to manage their cloud native applications. This is particularly important for DevOps and GitOps teams, operating in IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) environments, who expect declarative state application management.
Built on the Open Application Model, Wadm is declarative application management for wasmCloud applications. It brings all the familiarity of Kubernetes to Wasm via an open and agnostic interface. This is a boon for Kubernetes operators used to being able to declare an application as a single file and be able to launch it anywhere. Wadm brings the tooling they love to wasmCloud with the latest and greatest updates.
This, Thomas believes, will encourage Wasm adoption. “We think of this like upgrading your car with the latest technology. Your car might be years old but it still works great and you really enjoy driving it. But you also really like the idea of a push-button start and a hybrid engine. Wadm allows you to keep what you love about your infrastructure – familiar, easy maintenance, reliable, runs forever – updated with the latest features.”
Evolution of WASI Standards and the Component Model
Also at KubeCon EU, Bailey Hayes will be on hand to talk in-depth about the evolution of server-side Wasm standards, such as WASI, wasi-cloud and the component model. Through her role as Bytecode Alliance Technical Standards Committee Director, she’ll have a host of technical updates to share as language support and messaging starts to take shape. Bailey will give an in-depth talk on the Evolution of Wasm: Past, Present and Future, at Cloud Native Wasm Day (18th April at 9.50 in Hall 7, Room C). She’ll chart the history, evolution and future of Wasm and explore the component model – its current capabilities and use cases. Join her and the team at Wasm Day and stop by booth SU36 to find out more.
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