Building Better Platforms with Dapr: Abstractions, Portability, and Durable Systems
Cloud lock-in isn't just about where your data lives—it's about how deeply cloud-specific code permeates your applications. Mark Fussell, co-creator of Dapr and CEO of Diagrid, joins Cory O'Daniel to explore how Dapr provides clean abstractions for common distributed system patterns, enabling teams to build portable applications without sacrificing cloud-native capabilities.
The conversation covers:
- How Dapr creates a clean separation between application code and underlying infrastructure services like messaging, state management, and secrets
- Why platform teams struggle with tight coupling between applications and infrastructure, and how Dapr solves this problem
- The benefits of Dapr's sidecar architecture for local development, testing, and production environments
- How Dapr automatically handles cross-cutting concerns like security, observability, and resiliency without boilerplate code
- Introduction to Dapr's workflow engine for durable execution and the emerging world of stateful AI agents
Whether you're a platform engineer struggling with cloud lock-in or a developer tired of rewriting code for different infrastructures, this conversation demonstrates how Dapr can simplify your distributed systems while maintaining access to the unique capabilities of each cloud provider.
More podcast episodes
DevOps Paradox: Stop Reinventing The Wheel - Use Dapr Instead
Most microservices teams still rebuild the same distributed-systems foundations—service discovery, messaging, state management, and security—despite years of evolution in architecture. Dapr eliminates this repetition by providing standardized, language-agnostic APIs that abstract common patterns while preserving infrastructure flexibility.
/AI Agents: Keeping systems (and costs) in check
Can your AI agents survive production AND your budget? In this episode, Yaron Schneider, CTO and co-founder of Diagrid and creator of the foundational open-source tools Dapr and KEDA, unpacks what it takes to build AI agents that are durable, cost-aware and enterprise-ready.
Process Debt Swamps Platform Teams, A Conversation with Mark Fussell, SPaMCAST 879
Mark Fussell dives into a challenge that’s becoming increasingly common in modern engineering organizations: process debt — and how it’s quietly overwhelming platform teams.
