Guest: Mark Fussell (LinkedIn) 
Company: Diagrid (Twitter)
Show: Let’s Talk

Diagrid is a company focussed on app developers building modern, distributed microservices applications. They recently announced the beta release of Catalyst, a new offering designed to simplify the complexities of building distributed microservices applications.

Catalyst is based on the open source Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime) project and provides APIs for service discovery, invocation, and workflow coordination, hosted as a service. It allows developers to build applications on various platforms, including Kubernetes, serverless, and container-based environments.

Catalyst reduces the total cost of building microservices, abstracts infrastructure complexities, and simplifies development workflows. Mark Fussell, CEO and Co-Founder of Diagrid, says, “Catalyst lowers the total cost of building microservices solutions yet with the flexibility of choice, of changing infrastructure services and enabling faster time to market, all based on the Dapr project.”

The roadmap of Catalyst includes integrating new APIs, enhancing security, and achieving general availability for production use.

Introduction to Diagrid and Catalyst

• Diagrid focuses on building developer technologies, particularly for building modern, distributed microservices applications.
• Diagrid is deeply involved with the CNCF project, specifically the Dapr project.
• Fussell talks about Catalyst, a new offering from Diagrid, and its significance in simplifying the complexities of building distributed applications.

Overview of Catalyst and Its Impact

• Fussell describes Catalyst as a tool that greatly simplifies the ability to build distributed applications with microservices architectures.
• Catalyst is based on the Dapr open-source project, which includes APIs for service discovery, service invocation, pub/sub messaging, and a workflow coordination engine.
• Catalyst allows developers to host these APIs as a service, enabling them to build applications that can run wherever they choose.
• The announcement of Catalyst as a beta aims to lower the total cost of building microservices solutions while providing flexibility and faster time to market.

Fitting Catalyst into the Diagrid Ecosystem

• Fussell explains that Catalyst fits into the larger Diagrid offering by running on top of Kubernetes, which is managed by Diagrid Conductor.
• Diagrid Conductor simplifies the management and deployment of Dapr on top of a Kubernetes environment.
• Catalyst breaks out of the Kubernetes ecosystem, allowing developers to build applications on other platforms like functions-based platforms, container-based platforms, and cloud-based applications.
• Catalyst enables coordination between different platforms and services, providing a single API for comprehensive workflow management.

Benefits for App Developers and Use Cases

• Fussell discusses how Catalyst makes life easier for app developers, particularly in modernizing existing applications and adding new functionalities.
• An example is given of modernizing an application running on VMs by adding an LLM model, which can be achieved more easily with Catalyst.
• Catalyst allows developers to make simple API calls to invoke code running on other platforms, handling all the heavy lifting of messaging, security, and retries.
• The plug-in component model of Catalyst and Dapr reduces the amount of code developers need to write, simplifying their workflow and reducing complexity.

Integration with Existing Workflows and Future Roadmap

• Fussell explains that Catalyst allows developers to run their code on any platform of their choice, abstracting the underlying infrastructure.
• Catalyst provides a workflow engine that simplifies writing business code, allowing developers to focus on their application logic rather than infrastructure details.
• The roadmap for Catalyst includes adding new APIs, integrating with underlying infrastructure, and achieving a stable state for production use.

Addressing Complexity and Future Plans

• Fussell clarifies that Catalyst eases complexity by allowing developers to do complex things with simple API calls.
• Catalyst provides design-time flexibility, allowing developers to choose their message brokers and handle secure messaging, retries, and observability.
• The goal is to provide a platform that layers on top of existing compute platforms, integrating a suite of APIs for event-driven messaging, service-to-service calls, and workflow coordination.