Chances are you relax by streaming your favorite television show, use a fitness tracker to see how that diet is going, order and pay for pizza on a mobile app or website, tap to pay for your cappuccino, and tell your smart speaker when to wake you up in the morning. Technology is an inherent part of our daily lives. It probably doesn’t matter to you if the software powering this technology was programmed with JavaScript or C++. But nonetheless, the code behind it is part of your life. If you think about it, code is at the heart of our products, services, and of course, our open source community. And code, in the broader sense, doesn’t just influence our work lives: it influences who we are, what we do, and how we act.
At NGINX, we have shown at several recent events, including NGINX Conf, that the code we create and collaborate on, with our customers, partners, and open source community, has a great impact on our society and our livelihoods. From simple things like tracking where your taxi is, to helping medical professionals treat patients, the tools and platforms we create at NGINX and F5 have a real impact on how people carry out their daily lives. It’s why our rallying cry – Code Connects Us All – rings true for us at both professional and personal levels, making sure that we ultimately work to help you and your customers in the best way we can. We’ve previously mentioned on our blog that the digital world is changing our lives at incredible speeds, which means that we consistently set our expectations higher and higher, and with them, our goals.
“Think of code as the atomic unit of value,” Rob Whiteley, VP of Marketing for NGINX, explains. “That may be in an app – that’s what customers value – but it’s also our atomic unit of value for our ethics and how we treat each other internally at F5.” That cultural code shines through in various initiatives such as F5’s Global Good program and our #Life@NGINX and #Culture@NGINX blog series. It is reflected in even more recent actions, such as making free resources available to organizations that have been impacted by the global outbreak of COVID‑19. In short, we at NGINX value our open source community heritage as much as our business partners and customers, and we make every effort we can to develop ourselves and our products for the sake of both.
The motivation behind Code Connects Us All is not new. Last September, I wrote about the human impact of the work some of our wonderful customers have done by using NGINX at the heart of their digital infrastructures. For example, the Kenyan National AIDS and STI Control Programme (NASCOP) works with systems integrator DataposIT to deploy NGINX in a Kubernetes environment on bare metal, creating an entire app infrastructure in a single container. Why is this important? Because of its simplicity and reliability: the application is used in labs and clinics across Kenya working to test people for HIV/AIDS and effectively treat those living with HIV, by reducing the time it takes to get lab results. The service’s simple design also improves accuracy and record retention, making it reliable for both medic and patient. As Kenya’s digital infrastructure improves, the team at DataposIT is working with the Kenyan Ministry of Health and NASCOP to prepare their system to move to the cloud.
This is just one example of the fantastic work done by our customers, our partner network, and our open source family, but it’s by far my personal favorite. It’s also a great example of how code connects us all – not just from code to customer, but from idea to meaningful impact.
To find out more about how NGINX can help your business improve its digital infrastructure, request a free 30-day trial of NGINX Controller.