Kubernetes resource management software firm StormForge added a new feature to its platform today called StormForge Optimize Live, allowing it to automatically and intelligently improve the efficiency of application’s production environments.

StormForge, officially known as Gramlabs Inc., sells a cloud-based performance testing platform that companies use to quickly create load tests and scale from tens to hundreds of thousands of requests per second. It helps developers to ensure their applications will work as expected when they scale. It provides extremely useful information to developers as to how their apps will perform when under an increased load.

What it doesn’t do, however, is solve issues when an app’s performance is not sufficient enough. That’s where StormForge Optimize Live comes in.

The new feature uses machine learning to analyze the observability data generated by the performance testing platform. Through this analysis, it can recommend real-time configuration changes to resources such as memory and compute that will minimize usage and cost, while still improving application performance. All of this can be automated and implemented with a single click, the company added.

“StormForge Optimize Live builds out the StormForge platform to deliver the first intelligent optimization for cloud-native pre-production and production cloud-native environments,” said StormForge founder and Chief Executive Matt Provo. “StormForge informs, optimizes and operates throughout the entire cloud-native development cycle for both developers and operations managers who require an intelligent and comprehensive platform that maximizes their returns on Kubernetes investments.”

The platform is versatile too. StormForge Optimize Live is designed to work specifically with cloud-native environments based on any Cloud Native Computing Foundation-certified Kubernetes distribution. Its machine learning algorithms extend beyond simply balancing cost versus performance, enabling “intelligent business tradeoffs” to be made, the company said.

Kubernetes is open-source software that’s used to manage the components of modern, cloud-based software. The popular software serves as the foundation of most modern applications used by enterprises today. It can, however, also be very expensive to implement, so StormForge believes there will be a lot of demand for its new tool.

CNCF Chief Technology Officer Chris Aniszczyk said the foundation’s most recent FinOps and Kubernetes survey found that Kubernetes-related bills are on the rise. The most reliable way to mitigate those rising costs, he said, is to monitor Kubernetes environments accurately and effectively.

“Intelligent and automated solutions like those we see coming from StormForge and others can help optimize cloud native infrastructure and reduce unnecessary spending,” Aniszczyk said. “We’re encouraged by these technological advances.”

The launch of StormForge Optimize Live is just one new feature available in the company’s platform today. Other capabilities include role-based access controls, 24/7 production support, air-gapped deployment options and improved visualizations of observability data.

Provo stopped by SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming platform theCUBE during October’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA event, where he elaborated on Kubernetes overspend and the other problems his company is trying to solve:

Image: StormForge