Accompanying an infographic of results from our 2020 NGINX user survey, we present key takeaways about the state of app delivery: the rising dominance of microservices and containers, the most popular associated technologies, and the challenges faced by app delivery professionals.

We explore some difficulties in developing cloud-native apps, and explain how NGINX software helps you solve them by reducing tool sprawl, controlling costs with lightweight solutions, and enabling SecOps to provide DevOps with self-service security that integrates into CI/CD pipelines.

We feature answers from our experts to three key questions about NGINX automation asked at the panel discussion we held during AnsibleFest 2020: how official roles and collections add value, how to choose which tasks to automate, and why community input is so important.

Guest blogger Paul Stringfellow outlines some of the challenges to modernizing app delivery and development, including the conflict between speed and stability, and the weight of legacy infrastructure. He discusses how NGINX aims to bridge the app modernization gap wtih NGINX Controller.

Guest blogger Jason Benedicic describes several use cases from his daily life where real-time API performance is key to a satisfactory interaction with the app: his favorite dinner-delivery service, his home office with automated controls for lighting and connectivity, and his online-only bank.

We explain why traditional API management frameworks don't work in modern, microservices-based app environments. The NGINX API management solution embodies features our customers tell us they need now: decoupled data and control planes, multi-cloud support, and self-service.

Guest blogger Jeremy Schulman offers practical advice for network engineers charged with increasing automation. First, focus on tasks that reduce operational friction among teams. Become familiar with the tools used by various teams, and learn how to use their APIs.

As a network engineer, there are everyday hurdles you face, from outages to design to performance problems. Now you must learn API, too? How do you start understanding the new world? Guest blogger and network engineer Brian Gleason provides guidance on how go about it.

Guest blogger and musician Caleb Dolister discusses an unexpected consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic: how hard it is to play music together remotely. Turns out the variable latency introduced by networks makes it nearly impossible to keep everyone on the beat.

Application security is hard, but there are some best practices to help you achieve it: automate as much as possible, build security as a guardrail instead of a gate, select solutions that provide easily understood insights, and make security adaptable, scalable, and reliable.