September 2021 Summaries

Today we’re releasing our production-ready implementation of Google Zanzibar: SpiceDB, an open source, Zanibar-inspired permissions database.` The company behind Authzed.com has developed a scalable and flexible permissions system called SpiceDB, which is based on the principles outlined in the Google Zanzibar paper. SpiceDB offers several advantages over traditional permission systems, including support for globally replicated backends, ACID semantics, and a permissive Apache License 2.0. The service is production-ready, has built-in monitoring, and provides a powerful Schema DSL to make it easier to write and reason about permissions configurations. It also includes features such as inverse permissions, ACL filtered lists, and developer conveniences like an in-memory test server command. SpiceDB can be used by anyone, including those who want to pay someone else to run it on their behalf, making it a unique solution for managing permissions in service-based architectures.

Authzed has released several updates in August, including live metrics on every permission system and guided tours for the dashboard and playground. The company has also made progress on its distributed systems that scale Authzed planet-wide. New team members have joined, including Evan Cordell, who is returning to his authorization roots after working at CoreOS. The company's philosophy on being a Cloud-Native SaaS was written about by Jimmy, while the playground has been updated with features such as guided tours and the ability to deploy straight to production when logged in. Authzed has also open-sourced its prom-authzed-proxy and posted job listings for ambitious SREs. Additionally, the company has shared news from around the tech industry, including updates on Facebook's metaverse, a new performance increase in Go 1.17, and reminders to consume responsibly when shopping around the CNCF landscape.