In a short amount of time, AI has transformed life, work, and how we think about the future. These rapid advancements have left many of us wondering how to integrate AI into our existing workflows and what it means for the future of app development. The apps we're building today are more than lines of code; they're becoming dynamic, intelligent, and increasingly autonomous. To navigate this new landscape, we need to bring our current skills and technology into this AI-driven future.

As part of the Salesforce portfolio, Heroku has always been a trusted platform for building apps in any language. Our mission remains focused on helping you deliver value faster, greater reliability,...

For years, Heroku has been empowering developers to deploy and scale their applications with ease. Now, we're thrilled to introduce the general availability of the next generation of the Heroku platform, codenamed Fir, launching later this month April 2025. Built on open source standards and cloud-native technologies, Fir accelerates your development like never before.

Over the past year, Heroku has been on a journey of reflection as we rebase the platform to address the changing needs of app teams toward the future without disrupting your business. In the Heroku way, we want to be thoughtful about your experience as we evolve.

When we started Heroku, it was the early days of cloud computing, before Docker and Kubernetes were household names in IT. We launched Heroku (and the platform-as-a-service category) to help teams get to the cloud easily with an elegant user experience in front of a powerful platform that automated a lot of the manual work that slowed teams down. To do that then, we had to build a lot of the tooling ourselves, like orchestration...

Cloud platforms have come a long way since Heroku first set out to empower developers. Today’s cloud native development demands even greater flexibility, openness, and scalability. A fun fact about Heroku is that we use trees to denote the generation of the platform technology stack (aka version). In the tradition of Aspen, Bamboo, and Cedar, we are introducing Fir, the latest Heroku technology stack built on open source standards and cloud native technologies.

When we launched Cedar, we introduced a new way of thinking about application development and popularized principles like stateless applications, automated builds, and other twelve-factor principles; encouraging developers to build...

Heroku is joining the CNCF at the platinum level, upgrading the long-held CNCF Salesforce membership. This marks my third time serving on the CNCF board for different companies, and I’m excited to participate again. Joining the CNCF at the Platinum level signifies a major commitment, reflecting Heroku’s dedication to the evolving landscape.

My three board stints aligns with significant shifts in the cloud-native landscape. Two are behind us, one is happening now, and it’s the current one that motivated us to join now. Quick preview: It’s not the AI shift going on right now - the substrate underlying AI/ML shifted to Kubernetes a while ago.

As to why we are joining and why now, let’s take...