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Seaplane Introduction

Seaplane is a global control plane that uses the optimal combination of public clouds, bare metal providers, and edge resources to deliver applications when and where they are needed to end users all over the world. Seaplane operates a bit like a CDN, but for a much richer set of workloads and full-stack applications.

Seaplane currently has solutions for compute, data, coordination and more. For a complete list of Seaplane products, take a look at our documentation below. If we’re missing something please let us know or have a look at our upcoming beta products. If you see something you like, be sure to request early access!

Why Seaplane?​

Instead of deploying your app to a single zone, region, or cloud provider, with Seaplane you deploy your app to the Seaplane Global Network, which consists of multiple clouds (AWS, GCP, Azure), edge, and bare metal providers. Our control plane then automatically deploys the app where it is needed within that network based on end-user demand and cost.

Seaplane abstracts away unnecessary infrastructure complexity and only exposes what you need to run your applications. You can manage high level expressions of operational constraints to standardize your deployments across teams, ensure data residency compliance, or exclude specific providers. Basically, you have as much control as you need without the YAML you don't.

Here’s what that looks like for a standard compute workload:

Suppose you have a compute workload that serves users in the US and Europe. Without Seaplane, deploying that workload on your average cloud provider will go something like this.

  • Pick a cloud provider.
  • Provision infrastructure in at least two regions — likely one in the US and one in Europe.
  • Set up load balancing, routing, autoscaling, fail-over solutions, etc.
  • Set up monitoring (and hope there aren’t any major outages).

Alternatively, you could use Seaplane and reduce all those steps into a single command:

seaplane formation create \
    --name "my-app-formation" \
    --include-flight-plan "my-compute-workload" \
    --public-endpoints "/"="my-compute-workload":"80"\
     --launch

When executed, Seaplane deploys your workload globally when and where it’s needed. Load balancing, routing, autoscaling and rescheduling is all taken care of for you while Seaplane continuously optimizes the underlying infrastructure based on end user demand and cost. If one of Seaplane’s underlying cloud providers suffers an outage, your workloads will be automatically rescheduled.

All Seaplanes products are deployed on the same global control plane, meaning our services all benefit from being multi-region, multi-cloud, and disaster resistant. Have a look at the product-specific documentation if you want to learn more about individual offerings.

You are in control​

Every business has to contend with its own set of rules, restrictions, and regulations — especially businesses that operate across regions, countries, and continents. Seaplane gives users the power to institute compliance on the organizational, rather than individual, level.

For example, you can restrict most Seaplane products to run only in specified regions, countries, or clouds to comply with legislation like the GDPR, CCPA, and PIPEDA. For more information have a look at the restrictions section of our documentation.

Thank you for flying with Seaplane!