Enterprise customers of DevOps tool provider HashiCorp can now order special service packages to help them getting started with the company’s sometimes tricky to use infrastructure as code and secret management offerings.
The first wave of the Professional Services Program services available are FastTrack Implementation Packages for private Terraform and Vault Enterprise installations. Engagements run four to eight weeks and include help with the installation of a private Terraform Enterprise server, integration with version control systems, and setting up authentication for the Terraform package.
Terraform is HashiCorp’s tool for provisioning infrastructure. It is often mentioned in the context of infrastructure as code, since it makes use of templates that define the topology of a system in code. This helps for example to use versioning on infrastructure, but often requires training.
Vault on the other hand is the company’s project for secret management. It can be used to secure and control access to passwords, certificates, tokens, and keys in low-trust environments such as public clouds. The FastTrack package for Vault therefore includes cluster creation for development and production, integration with other tools, as well as assistance with the setup of replications, authentication, and secret engines.
Professional services have to be requested via the company’s enterprise account managers, but won’t however be provided by HashiCorp directly. Instead HashiCorps sub-contracts consultants to help their users out, thus staying the prime point of contact. In the EMEA region, ECS Digital and HeleCloud are the sole launching partners, while customers in the US and Canada seem to get slightly better coverage with six consultancies at hand.
Consulting as well as hands on help have been requested for quite a while now, since knowledge of how to best use HashiCorp’s tools right is thin on the ground. The company however seems to want to keep its focus on technical aspects, which is why it has decided to take on the facilitator role instead.