Node Africa Meets Andela

Brian Muita, CTO and Co Founder at Node Africa Ltd, led a workshop with Andela developers on the basics of cloud infrastructure and opportunities of development on Wednesday, 29th June, at their Nairobi campus. The Node Africa team gave the developers a sneak peek at what it takes to deliver the popular tools they are accustomed to.

Starting from basics, the team demystified the term cloud by looking at its origins, the central role the Internet plays, and the various service models in the market. With that background in place, they dove straight into infrastructure; the basis of any cloud offering.

Moreover, the team shared experiences on what it takes to build an IaaS offering from the ground up. The discussion hovered over the core components of Infrastructure(compute, storage, networking) and the various options available. This then progressed into data centers, highlighting the various types and the options available in the region. Connectivity , what exactly the Internet is and the roles played by IANA and Afrinic as relates to the cloud was a natural next topic. Brian made an attempt to demystify virtualization and the role it plays in enabling the cloud as we know it today. This prompted a look into orchestration tools and what day to day ops of a core cloud infrastructure would look like.

Lastly, platforms and APIs, a hot topic for software developers, was a great choice to conclude the day’s discussion. Most developers love to develop but not to configure servers and ‘IDEs’ which often serve as a distraction. Companies such as Node Africa Ltd exist to abstract these configuration details. In addition, App Engine, Heroku and Docker are some of the tools that cloud providers provide to make life easier when Infrastructure needs to be dealt with. The sessions ended with a lively Q&A from the developers.

Node Africa is pleased to be a part of Andela’s mission as they grow the best software developers in the region.