We are happy to share that we have attained the Microsoft Azure Data & AI Solution Partner designation. This achievement complements our existing portfolio of Microsoft Solutions partner designations, which includes Azure Digital & App Innovation with Kubernetes Specialisation and Azure Infrastructure. The Data & AI designation strengthens our teams’ ability to collaborate seamlessly with our customers and data engineering/analytics partners to deliver enterprise-grade platforms capable of supporting big data and AI-infused workloads.

We are pleased to announce that we have achieved the Cyber Essentials Plus (CE+) certification on our first attempt, following our earlier Cyber Essentials achievement. It's been an interesting experience, providing a good opportunity to reflect on our progress and how we went about achieving our goal.

BlakYaks have proudly become a signatory of the Tech Talent Charter (TTC), showcasing our commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. The TTC, a government-supported initiative, unites over 700 organisations to drive diversity and inclusion efforts. We actively promote gender diversity, continuous skills development and equitable career progression, ensuring all employees have equal opportunities to thrive. Read more about our recent partnership and our D&I commitments.

Welcome to our blog series "Meet the Herd!". In this section, we will give you a closer look at the wonderful people that make BlakYaks so great. By way of fun interviews and spotlights, you will get to see the faces behind the business and find out what drives and inspires them.

Explore the transformative concept of Platform Engineering, bridging the gap between innovation and DevOps. It simplifies infrastructure provisioning, allowing developers to concentrate on code, but it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. While it offers simplicity, it complements, rather than replaces, DevSecOps strategies.

BlakYaks has been recognised as the 'Best Overall' company in the ‘Small’ category of the UK’s Best Workplaces in Tech™ 2023 List, as awarded by Great Place to Work® (GPTW®). This recognition underscores BlakYaks' commitment to fostering a transparent and inclusive workplace culture.

Microsoft has taken AKS ingress to the next level with the latest addition to its Application Gateway family. With its advanced traffic distribution, SSL termination, and MTLS capabilities, Azure Application Gateway for Containers ensures seamless and secure traffic routing, optimising and simplifying app delivery for Azure customers. Read our new technical blog by Craig Hurt, Cloud and DevOps Lead at BlakYaks, to discover how this update not only aligns perfectly with Azure and AKS but also elevates your cloud native platforms to new horizons.

BlakYaks has been shortlisted as a finalist in the prestigious Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Awards 2023, in the New Business category. This recognition highlights our exceptional growth, successful services, innovative approaches, and ethical practices. The awards program celebrates business brilliance and innovation, with the final ceremony taking place in November 2023.

Discover the exciting world of AI innovation at BlakYaks as we delve into the realms of Artificial Intelligence and explore the Azure OpenAI service. In this blog, we share our early insights and success with the YakBot OpenAI console, a seamless gateway to the Azure OpenAI service, tailor-made to enhance productivity within our business.

Short blog article on a couple of noteworthy features in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) that recently became generally available: Azure CNI Overlay & Azure CNI Powered by Cilium.

BlakYaks, a UK-leading Microsoft Azure specialist building, migrating and operating secure cloud-native platforms, today announced that is now a Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP). By becoming a KCSP, BlakYaks joins an elite group of service providers in the UK recognised for their excellence in helping organisations leverage the full potential of Kubernetes. The KCSP program, managed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF®) in partnership with the Linux Foundation, is a pre-qualified tier of vetted service providers who have deep experience helping enterprises successfully adopt Kubernetes.

Having used Azure AD Pod Identity for the last couple of years, Microsoft have now made the replacement product - Azure AD Workload Identity (AZWI) - generally available. With the GA release of AZWI, Azure AD Pod Identity has been deprecated, and will officially stop receiving security patches in September 2023. If you're using the legacy solution in production, now would be a good time to start planning its replacement.

Security is a top priority for organisations in today's rapidly evolving threat landscape. That's why DevSecOps has gained traction as a critical approach to building secure software products. Unlike traditional DevOps, DevSecOps incorporates security practices right from the development phase, addressing security issues as they happen. In this blog, we delve into the nuances of DevSecOps and explore why organisations should consider adopting this approach.

At BlakYaks we believe in giving back to our community and we wanted to celebrate our second anniversary in a meaningful way, so we decided to volunteer with Heath Hands, a charity organisation that works to preserve and protect the natural environment of Hampstead Heath.

A technical guide on how to bootstrap Flux onto an existing Azure AKS cluster using Terraform. This step-by-step article covers the full installation process, from checking your requirements, set-up deploy keys and using our Flux configuration to bootstrap the cluster with Terraform. We also delve into some examples of using Flux to deploy your resources.

We are offering free-of-charge Azure workshops to celebrate our second business anniversary! Speak to us during the month of March and book a session to optimise your Azure cloud-native platform.

BlakYaks turns two years old!