As we are now 6 months into the year, I thought this would be a great time to sit and reflect on everything that has happened at Civo so far (and some of the plans we have in the pipeline).

If you’re interested in taking a look at our previous roadmaps:

What has happened so far

Moving from K3s to Talos Linux

Earlier this year, we began integrating Talos Linux alongside K3s. As we slowly begin to focus solely on Talos Linux as our tenant clusters, it is important to outline why the Civo team made this decision.

This decision comes from our continuous efforts to enhance our platform's robustness, customization, and advanced security. While we have appreciated the benefits of K3s - its lightweight nature and strong community support - we identified Talos Linux as better suited for larger, more complex deployments focusing on security.

This innovative move aligns with our commitment to always provide our users with the most secure, reliable, and forward-thinking services possible.

Watch this tutorial from Saiyam Pathak on how you can launch a cluster with Talos on Civo:

Machine Learning: KubeFlow As A Service

We’re excited to announce that our machine learning platform is now in beta! Civo ML, powered by Kubeflow, is our fully managed development environment that allows you to leverage the scale of Civo compute for machine learning and AI projects.

Over the past few months, our team has been working to finalize Civo ML to ensure we are lowering the effort required to run high-performance machine learning workloads as we do the heavy lifting.

Whilst we are still building upon our resources for Civo ML, you can already check out the following releases:

Civo Platform: Our fully-managed PaaS solution

While at Civo Navigate Tampa 2023, we announced the release of Civo Platform, our fully-managed PaaS solution that allows you to build, launch, and scale your app with ease.

Currently, Civo Platform is in Alpha and will be opening to Beta soon. In the meantime, our team will be releasing more information on Civo Platform and how you can get involved:

Civo PaaS

OpenCP (Open Control Plane)

OpenCP is an open source initiative initially developed by the team at Civo. It’s designed to offer a unified interface for managing infrastructure across various providers using the single tool, kubectl.

If you’re interested in learning more about OpenCP, check out the OpenCP GitHub Repository

At a recent Disruptive Tech event, Alejandro J. Nuñez Madrazo gave a live demo on the use of OpenCP:

Intel SGX

During Civo Navigate NA, we explored the concept of confidential computing and a new use case we’ve been working on related to the Kubernetes control plane in managed clusters.

For this, we’ve joined forces with Intel Corporation to introduce the Alpha version of our Kubernetes system operating in a secure enclave, as part of our Confidential Computing offering of a hardware-based security solution designed to help protect data in use via unique application-isolation technology.

In the demo shown below, you can learn all about confidential computing and how it applies to the Kubernetes Control Plane in managed clusters:

Civo Marketplace

Through the Civo Marketplace, you can install your favorite Kubernetes applications in seconds straight from the Civo dashboard or CLI. Since introducing the Marketplace, we have been working to grow the available applications.

Some of the recent additions to the Civo Marketplace include:

Heata Partnership

Earlier this year, we announced our partnership with Heata, a company that uses waste heat from servers, to offer compute resources. this collaboration allows Heata's units to be incorporated as edge nodes for Civo customers to execute workloads. From this, we are able to address the growing energy costs, particularly in social housing sectors where affordability is a significant issue.

Read more on our partnership with Heata here.

What is next for Civo

Over the past 6 months, we have been working continuously to release the wide variety of initiatives outlined above. From this, we have decided to spend the rest of the year focusing on improvements.

Here at Civo, we understand that one of the crucial elements for cloud native providers is the stability and security of their offerings. We are working more towards improving the platform's security and performance to provide users with a seamless experience.

The areas we are researching this year are more on confidential computing and WebAssembly. We are experimenting in certain areas on how to use the best of these technologies to provide even more user benefits.