Monday, December 31, 2018

2018 Year in Review

Show: 378

Description: Aaron and Brian review the biggest news, trends and topics of 2018.

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Cloudcast Housekeeping:

  • Thank you to our sponsors, both A Cloud Guru and DataDog
  • 64% of Krispy Kreme Funding - http://bit.ly/Cloudcast-Donuts2019
  • 51 Shows, Avg Listens (show): 18-20k (+19%), Avg Rank iTunes Technology: 63
  • Over $50B in M&A and VC Funding for guests (all-time)
  • Acquired: Red Hat, Rightscale, CoreOS, GitHub, Evident.io, Loggly, CloudHealth, VictorOps, Bonsai
  • IPO: Pivotal
  • Funding: SWIM.AI, Stryth Leviathan, Atomist, Kasten, Lightstep, Rubrik, Hashicorp, A Cloud Guru

Show Notes:

Big Trends:

  1. Gartner IaaS MQ is down to 6 companies (AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba, IBM, Oracle)
  2. AWS growing +40% ($25B revenues) and Azure revenues ~ $28-30B (but not explicitly broken out) - AWS claimed at re:Invent to have 51% market-share.
  3. Big acquisitions around Open Source (Red Hat, GitHub, Hortonworks)
  4. A new push by Open Source companies (Redis, Confluent) to change their licensing model to help protect them from public cloud providers taking their software and not giving back - http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2018/12/14/open-source-confronts-its-midlife-crisis/
  5. Big funding and investments around HCI and Backup HCI
  6. Kubernetes continues to dominate containers and cloud-native (see: @PodCTL podcast)
  7. New CEO at Google Cloud (Thomas Kurian)
  8. Blockchain seems to need a new PR agency
  9. Interest rates are rising (2 more raises are projected in 2019), which changes all the VC models

Tech Stocks (2018):

Friday, December 21, 2018

CI/CD and Drone.io

Show: 377

Description: Aaron talks with Brad Rydzewski (@bradrydzewski, Co-Founder of Drone.io) about the current state of CI/CD in our industry.

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Thursday, December 13, 2018

Application Delivery and Snapt

Show: 376

Description: Aaron talks with Dave Blakey, CEO and Founder of @SnaptADC, about the international startup scene, the evolution of application delivery and the emerging trends around the intersection of networking and DevOps.

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Thursday, December 6, 2018

Serverless Management and Knative

Show: 375

Description: Brian talks with Mark Hinkle (@mrhinkle) and Sebastien Goasguen (@sebgoa), Co-Founders of @TriggerMesh, about the evolution of serverless and functions-as-a-service in the Kubernetes ecosystem, the new Knative framework, and how companies are considering the use of functions for new applications.

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Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Both of you are Cloudcast alumni. Tell us about this new company that you’ve started.

Topic 2 - Sebastian, the last time we spoke with you, you had created the Kubeless project (at Skipboxx), just before selling it to Bitnami. That was when “Serverless on Kubernetes” was beginning to get very fragmented. Since then, Knative has come along to try and bring some unity around Serverless on Kubernetes. Give our listeners some basic understanding of how Knative works.

Topic 3 - Let’s talk about TriggerMesh. Introduce us to the technology, and the role it plays in a Serverless or Knative or FaaS management environment?

Topic 4 - Where do you expect to see the most innovation around Knative - Serving, Builds or Events? What are some of the areas where TriggerMesh is focused?

Topic 5 - What are some of the serverless use-cases that you’re hearing about from early customers?

Topic 6 - What are some of the things that customers are beginning to ask for that have surprised you?


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Saturday, December 1, 2018

All of the 2018 AWS reInvent Announcements

Show: 374

Description: A review of all of the AWS 2018 re:Invent announcements

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Categorizing The AWS Roadmap

  • The retail approach to all shapes and sizes (EC2, DBs, etc)
  • The combined features (“solution”) approach
  • The “we don’t know” approach - becoming “serverless” (e.g. DB, LBs, AI)
  • Customers - what do we hate about a big vendor we use
  • Amazon is the 1st customer in a new business


AWS re:Invent 2018 Announcements (it's hard to get them all) 


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Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Revolutionizing Big Data Apps

Show: 373

Overview: Aaron and Brian talk with Venkat Venkataramani (@iamveeve, Co-founder and CEO of @RocksetCloud) about building apps without pipelines, and serverless search and analytics with native SQL.

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Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Give us a little bit of your background and what motivated you to start Rockset.

Topic 2 - Sometimes we have founder guests that have a past of previous startups. And sometimes we have founder guests that are introducing something that sounds like it breaks most of the previous rules we’ve known. Let’s walk through what Rockset is attempting to deliver - “Apps without Pipelines”, “Serverless search”, “Schemaless ingest”, “natively uses SQL.”

Topic 3 - Let’s talk about some of the use-cases that might not have been possible before Rockset, or were overly complex or expensive before Rockset?

Topic 4 - You highlight that all of this is accessible via SQL, which is widely known and used by both technologists and typical data analysts. When you combine this with serverless concepts, is the focus of Rockset very much on making it easier for the masses to build and use data-centric applications?

Topic 5 - What is some of the early feedback that you’re getting from users or the community about how the RockSet approach is different for them?


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Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Reinventing Software Collaboration

Show: 372

Overview: Aaron and Brian talk with Kurt Schrader (@kurt, Founder/CEO of @Clubhouse) and Mitch Wainer (@MitchWainer, CMO of @Clubhouse) about the evolution of project management for software development teams. 

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Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, both us you. Give us a little bit of your backgrounds, and how you got together to start Clubhouse. 

Topic 2 - Tell us about the Clubhouse platform. It’s focused on helping companies build software more rapidly and with better collaboration. What was broken about software development before Clubhouse came along? 

Topic 3 - Both of your have been involved in software development for many years. We love talking to founders that have a built a product that they need/want to use. What were some of your moments that convinced you that it was time to build something new vs. being frustrated with what existed?

Topic 4 - Let’s talk about the Clubhouse platform. What makes it unique, and what are some of the benefits of bringing together things like Stories, Project Metrics, Kanbana boards, integrated Collaboration into a single platform vs. many tools.  

Topic 5 - The Enterprise version of Clubhouse just shipped. The company already has more than 1000 active customers. What have you learned from them that helped shape the Enterprise product?

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Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Getting Started with UX Research

Show Number: 371

Overview: Aaron talks with Melissa Eggleston (@melissa_egg, Director of UX @teamworks | Co-founder of @ladiesthatuxDUR) at All Things Open about her work on UX research, how to ask the right questions, and balancing past research vs. analytics and new research

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Show Notes

  • Aaron and Melissa talk about her talk "Getting Started with UX Research", from the All Things Open event in Raleigh, NC - October 22nd, 2018.

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Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Tales From a DevOps Journey

Show Number: 370

Overview: Aaron talks with Lee Eason (@leejeason; Director of DevOps at Ipreo and the co-founder of Tekata.io) at All Things Open about his DevOps transformation for all of the organization’s 30+ products and 65+ scrum teams leading to a dramatic reduction in manual work and an increase in quality and customer satisfaction across the board.

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Show Notes

  • Aaron and Lee talk about Lee's talk "Tales from a DevOps Journey", from the All Things Open event in Raleigh, NC - October 22nd, 2018.

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Thursday, November 1, 2018

What We Know (now) About Serverless

Show Number: 369

Overview: Aaron talks with Pam Selle (@pamasaur; Software Engineering Lead at @IOPipes) at All Things Open about the current state of Serverless applications, Serverless monitoring, and the evolution of Serverless DevOps.

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Show Notes

  • Aaron and Pam talk about Pam's talk "What We Know (now) About Serverless", from the All Things Open event in Raleigh, NC - October 22nd, 2018.

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Thursday, October 25, 2018

The Cloudcast #368 - MetLife Digital Accelerator Powered by TechStars - Part 3

Show Number: 368

Overview: Brian talks with Mee-Jung Jang (@MeeJungJang, Managing Director @TechStars) about starting the program, engaging with MetLife as a corporate partner, the structure of the TechStars program, how the companies move forward beyond Demo Day, and what's next. 

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Show Notes

  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background and how you came to be part of TechStars and this program at MetLife?
  • Topic 2 - In our previous shows, we’ve spoken to all of the founders and gotten their perspective. What were your early goals as the leader of this program, and what has surprised you throughout the process?
  • Topic 3 - Walk us through the stages of the program for these companies? It’s more than just, “Have an idea, go execute that idea.”
  • Topic 4 - You’ve been both a Founder/Entrepreneur and Attorney, so you’ve seen your fair share of ideas. How do you manage to know when you listen, when to give advice, and when to hold your tongue?
  • Topic 5 - What has been your perspective, as an outsider to the area, of the RTP/Triangle area in terms of culture, people, community, etc.?
  • Topic 6 - What happens next for all of these companies that we profiled, and when does the program get started again for Year 2?

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Wednesday, October 17, 2018

The Cloudcast #367 - MetLife Digital Accelerator Powered by TechStars - Part 2

Brian talks with the founders from FIX Health, Portabl and Safely, as part of a behind-the-scenes engagement with TechStars and the MetLife Digital Accelerator in Cary, NC. This show is Part 2 of a series of interviews with companies that are innovating and disrupting the insurance industry, in cooperation with corporate partner MetLife in Cary, NC.

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Show Notes:

Company 1: FIX Health
[Update] FIX has secured a MetLife pilot to build a new short term disability product.
CEO: Mike Tinney
Atlanta, GA

  • Use game based entertainment to help a person re-prioritize physical activity and well being.
  • Already in the market. Launching a second product.
  • 92% success rate vs. 56% typically from corporate programs
  • Do you target companies with certain demographics - enjoy playing games?


Company 2: Portabl
Founders: Mike Minnet and Ali Lanning
London, England

  • Creating Insurance and Benefits for Freelancers and the Gig Economy
  • Safety net with big company benefits
  • Offer traditional company well-being for freelance workers


Company 3: Safely
[Update] Safely grew their revenue by more than $500k since joining Techstars.
Founders: Andrew Bate and Lui King
Atlanta, GA

  • The Trust and Safety Company for the Rental Industry
  • Insurance development/change is very slow
  • Insurance isn’t top of mind for people’s needs
  • Algorithms help find the bad renters
  • This builds on the growth of AirBnB or VRBO?


Feedback?

Email: show at thecloudcast dot net
Twitter: @thecloudcastnet and @ServerlessCast



Wednesday, October 10, 2018

The Cloudcast #366 - MetLife Digital Accelerator Powered by TechStars - Part 1

Brian talks with the founders from Buddy, Enroll Hero and FitBliss, as part of a behind-the-scenes engagement with TechStars and the MetLife Digital Accelerator in Cary, NC. This show is Part 1 of a series of interviews with companies that are innovating and disrupting the insurance industry, in cooperation with corporate partner MetLife in Cary, NC.

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Show Notes:

Company 1: Buddy
[Update] Has a signed reinsurance commitment from their Lloyd's syndicate, so their product is fully backed
CEO: Charles Merritt
Richmond, VA
On-demand accident insurance to enable people to explore the world and have adventures.

  • Adventure/outdoor people
  • Extreme sports

Company 2: Enroll Hero

[Update] Secured pilots with MetLife and Northwestern Mutual
Founders: Mark Lee and Bryan Kocol
Santa Monica, CA
Helping people make it easier to get the right Medicare
“The TurboTax for Medicare”

  • 10,000 people a day are turning 65
  • Direct to consumer business; challenges of building trust
  • “Total costs of care” vs. “Monthly Premium” costs

Company 3: FitBliss
[Update] Closed Salesforce as a customer and 10x'ed their revenues
CEO: Navid Rastegar
San Francisco, CA
"Optimize Well-Being and Productivity"

  • Integrate with many devices and services 
  • Like a personal trainer or financial planner for well-being 
  • Both an employee and employer tool 


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Wednesday, October 3, 2018

The Cloudcast #365 - Taking Spinnaker for a Spin

Brian talks with Andy Glover (@aglover, Director of Delivery Engineering @Netflix) about Spinnaker, release automation, the challenges of multi-cloud platforms, and how the community around the Spinnaker project has evolved.
 
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Show Notes

  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background and how you came to be involved in the Spinnaker project.
  • Topic 2 - For anyone that’s not familiar with Spinnaker, can you give us the basic concepts of the technology, and some of the problems that it tries to solve?
  • Topic 3 - Lots of people are familiar with CI/CD tools like Jenkins. How does Spinnaker compare, or is it complementary to CI/CD tools?
  • Topic 4 - Let’s talk about the Spinnaker community. Obviously Netflix released the project (back in 2015), but how has it evolved and expanded through the community?
  • Topic 5 - What are some of the common ways that companies are using Spinnaker today?
  • Topic 6 - Are there easy ways for Developers or Ops teams to get started with Spinnaker today?


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Wednesday, September 26, 2018

The Cloudcast #364 - Interactive Learning for Cloud-Native

Brian talks with Ben Hall (@Ben_Hall, Founder of Ocelot Uproar, creator of @TeamKatacoda) about the evolution of helping developers learn new Cloud-native technology skills, and how Katacoda is making that an online, browser-only reality.
 
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Show Notes

  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Let’s talk a little bit about your background in founding Ocelot Uproar, and how Katacoda got started.
  • Topic 2 - Katacoda is similar to a concept that I had a while ago, I called it Cloud Garage Labs, and I’m really glad Katacoda exists now. Tell us about all of the technologies that engineers can interact with today?
  • Topic 3 - Let’s walk through the user's experience. Beyond the browser and reading the interactive tutorial, what does a user have to do?
  • Topic 4 - Some of the topics are vendor-specific (e.g. Weave, OpenShift, etc.), but many are more generic. Who is creating them, maintaining them, and how do you choose to add new things? Are there costs to adding new topics?
  • Topic 5 - What is some of the backend technology that you’ve built in order for all these topics to be hosted and delivered in just a browser-based experience?
  • Topic 6 - Where do you want to see Katacoda expand to over the next couple years?

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Thursday, September 20, 2018

The Cloudcast #363 - IoT and APIs

Aaron talks with Stuart Mitchell (@mokanix_api, CEO of Mokanix) about emerging trends in the IoT transport layer and the intersection of IoT and APIs.

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Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Stuart, tell the listeners a little about yourself and your background
  • Topic 2 - With your background in telco and specifically Tata Communications, how did you develop your interest in IoT as the “next big thing”?
  • Topic 3 - Your company is called mokanix. It appears to have a different take on many other IoT guests we’ve had in that it has a focus on the intersection of SIM cards and APIs. Help folks that aren’t familiar with the basics of that need understand the problem.
  • Topic 4 - Would customers embed your API into their existing apps? How would this typically be implemented?
  • Topic 5 - Why would someone choose SIM technology over other tech for the transport layer
  • Topic 6 - How is security handled by the product? Can you lock out a card for instance if it is lost?
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Wednesday, September 12, 2018

The Cloudcast #362 - Security & Service Meshes

In a joint show between The Cloudcast and PodCTL, Brian and Tyler Britten talk with John Morello (@morellonet, CTO at @TwistlockTeam) about how Service Mesh technologies, such as Istio, can be used for more advanced security of containerized applications and Kubernetes environments.

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Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background, and introduce us to Twistlock for anyone that isn’t familiar with the company.
  • Topic 2 - One of the most popular concepts in the world of containers and Kubernetes is “Service Mesh” (projects like Istio). Let’s talk about the basics of what a service mesh does.
  • Topic 3 - Service mesh provides routing capabilities, so let’s talk about where security comes into the picture.
  • Topic 4 - Service mesh introduces a concept in Kubernetes where you deploy multiple containers in a pod, one the application and one the service-mesh proxy. Does security introduce yet another container/agent into a pod?
  • Topic 5 - What sort of tools are available today for security professionals are service meshes are introduced into a container environment?
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Wednesday, September 5, 2018

The Cloudcast #361 - Single Pane of Glass at USA Today

Brian talks with Bridget Lane (@bridgetnomnom; Software Developer, Gannett & USA TODAY) about how USA Today | Gannett has transformed their internal teams over the past 3 years to be more agile and able to deliver software faster to support 100s of publications. We also discuss career evolution and advice to anyone wanting to quickly advance their skills.

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Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about yourself and some of the things you’re working on at Gannett | USA Today.
  • Topic 2 - You’re still very young, but yet you’re working on API Management, complex automation, CDNs, containers, CI/CD pipelines. How did you gain experience in so many areas so quickly?
  • Topic 3 - You’re talking about how USA Today has been evolving to break down organizational silos and adopt new technologies to make the team more efficient. Can you walk us through some of that evolution?
  • Topic 4 - What does a day-in-the-life or a week-in-the-life of an environment like USA Today look like, with constantly new content, crazy deadlines, demand for 24x7x365 availability, etc.?
  • Topic 5 - What have been some of the lessons learned over this transformation - good lessons, mistakes, things that might be applicable to any company?
  • Topic 6 - The transformation is both organizational/cultural and technology? What technologies tended to give you the biggest improvement or new advantage?
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Wednesday, August 29, 2018

The Cloudcast #360 - Multi-Cloud Cost Modeling

Brian talks with Joe Kinsella (@joekinsella, Founder and CTO of @CloudHealthTech) about public cloud evolution, and how customers are viewing multi-cloud (or hybrid-cloud) as their planned architecture, and how well they are able to manage costs across multiple cloud environments.

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Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Welcome back to the show. It’s been nearly a year since you were last on. How are you seeing the public cloud evolve in 2018?
  • Topic 2 - Looking at market share reports, there’s still a distribution of usage - from AWS to Azure to GCP to “Other”. Are you seeing companies want multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud, or is it a matter of them really aligning with a single public cloud?
  • Topic 3 - Do you think companies understand that each public cloud does billing and cost modeling differently?
  • Topic 4 - Any tips or tricks you’ve seen that help to make it possible to normalize the differences between the billing and cost models? Tools exist, but how much friction is that creating on usage decisions?
  • Topic 5 - Do you think the public clouds are doing enough to make public cloud usage understandable, or is cloud-cost complexity just an extension of how complex IT cost modeling has always been? Are there areas where this is getting better?
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Wednesday, August 22, 2018

The Cloudcast #359 - Exploring the Realities of Innovation at Scale

Brian talks with Dr. Bruce Davie (@_drbruced, VP & CTO, VMware Asia Pacific & Japan) about differences in APAC markets, what drove large-scale adoption of new technologies, how to rethink scaling new innovation, the variety across APAC and how to be constantly learning to grow your career.

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Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. For our audience that hasn't been around networking as much, can you share with us some of your background.
  • Topic 2 - Sometimes our perspective on things is too US-centric. You’ve worked around the world and are now back in APAC (Melbourne). What are some of the technology things in that part of the world that would surprise people in North America?
  • Topic 3 - You’ve been speaking about IoT recently. Is it just the population density that makes APAC a faster adopter of IoT technologies, or are there other considerations that are creating this trend? Are regulations a factor, or mobile-phone usage, or something else?
  • Topic 4 - IoT tends to be a conversation that’s driven by a new business opportunity - it’s less about connectivity (e.g. old IT needs). How is the conversation happening between the business leaders asking for IoT and the technology leaders that have to implement it?
  • Topic 5 - We used to (sort of) think about networking (bandwidth, routing, device density) somewhat separate than security. But if densities get really high, or IoT devices are involved in country-mission-critical functions, can people afford to think about them separately?
  • Topic 6 - Are you finding that the APAC region is doing unique things to train up the skills needed for IoT / denser networking / SDN, or is the pace of change happening so fast that they have to learn on the job?
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Wednesday, August 15, 2018

The Cloudcast #358 - Exploring the Business Side of Open Source Software

Brian talks with Joseph Jacks (@asynchio, advisor to CNCF, creator of KubeCon, co-Founder Kismatic, Entrepreneur) about different ways to view OSS business models, and how he's been tracking commercial OSS companies through his COSSCI Index.

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Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Give us some of your background and some of the things you’re working on these days?
  • Topic 2 - You created a tracking of Commercial Open Source Software Company Information (COSSCI, “cozy index”). How did you go about collecting the information, some of which isn’t public?
  • Topic 3 - Let’s talk about “open core” and how you’re thinking about the thickness of the core.
  • Topic 4 - To a certain extent, OSS velocity relies on VC funding to gain traction. VC funding typically wants an exit. Do you think there are enough successful OSS exists to keep seeing VC funding flow in, or do you think public cloud making OSS-as-a-service will slow that down?
  • Topic 5 - Looking out a few years, you obviously have some models in your mind about how Commercialization of OSS could play out. What are some of the “truths” that you believe are not up for debate, and what are some areas you think might significantly change?
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Thursday, August 2, 2018

The Cloudcast #357 - NFV, SDN, IoT from a Hacker's Perspective

Aaron talks with Ray Watson (@RayRedacted, VP of Global Technology, Masergy) about a wide range of emerging technology topics, including NFV, SDN, IoT, Hybrid Networking and Managed Security. They also explore the evolution of Hacking.

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Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Ray, tell the listeners a little about yourself and your background. Your day job sounds cool, what does a VP of Global Technology do day to day?
  • Topic 2 - We haven’t done an independent trends show in awhile. I wanted to step back today and pick your brain on a few topics. We’ve talked a good bit about most of these topics over the years but I admit some of these areas have lost their “buzz” in recent years. So, A bit of a lightning round: NFV, SDN, IoT
  • Topic 3 - You spoke at Black Hat in 2017, what was your topic and how was the experience? I’ve never been and pretty sure I shouldn’t go...
  • Topic 4 - Your company, Masergy, was names as a Gartner Magic Quadrant Visionary for Network Services. I’m really interested in this category as I haven’t followed it much in the past. Masergy seems to be an intersection of hybrid cloud networking and security. Does this mean you are more of a services/consulting organization utiliting other products or are you developing your own products? (lots of follow on questions to ask here based on answers) Hybrid Networking? Managed Security?
  • Topic 5 - What are some of the design and solutions challenges you face today? What pitfalls would you recommend listeners avoid when thinking about this space?
  • Topic 6 - I suspect this topic may be a little non-traditional for some of our listeners, where can folks go to learn more?
Feedback?

Thursday, July 26, 2018

The Cloudcast #356 - Arrcus disaggregates Networking Software

Brian talks with Devesh Garg (Co-Founder/CEO of @arrcusinc) about the launch of Arrcus, the evolution of data networking and variations in market segments, and what makes ArcOS unique in a world of network operating systems.

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Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show and congratulations on the launch. Tell us a little bit about the founding team and what market gap Arrcus saw when starting the company.
  • Topic 2 - Before we get into discussing the company and the technologies, let’s talk about some recent shifts in the market. We’ve seen companies moving more workloads into the public cloud, consolidation in the chip market, as well as some of the web scale companies starting to be involved in networking gear. How do some of these changes influence your thinking about the market opportunity?
  • Topic 3 - Let’s talk about the core product, ArcOS. Gives us the basics, and some of the focus areas where you believe it provides unique differentiation in the market.
  • Topic 4 - Networking has always been a hardware-centric game. SDNs eventually sort of skewed towards security. We’ve watched the software-defined storage market struggle with software-only solutions, because of performance or ops-consistency or just how people expect to buy (HW+SW). You have people on the team with experience in the white box technologies. How do you overcome some of those challenges?
  • Topic 5 - With the network having very distinct areas (core data-center or leaf-spine; access, 5G edge, CDNs, etc.), what are some of the critical business-case decisions that the network directly impacts? What does that conversation look like with the business owner?
  • Topic 6 - We’ve seen where networking skills are a very distinct category in the past, and things like CLI-awareness are critical. Do you expect the market that you’re selling to will have the need for this being a strong affinity?
Feedback?

Friday, July 20, 2018

The Cloudcast #355 - Exploring IoT Edge with EdgeWorx

Aaron talks with Farah Papaioannou & Kilton Hopkins (@kiltonhopkins), co-founders at @EdgeWorxIO, about the evolving architecture of edge computing and some of the common misconceptions, where and how to store, run, and transport data while being mindful to security.

Show Links:

Show Notes

 Topic 1 - Introductions: Farah - VC turned Entrepreneur - Also involved with SolidFire early? Kilton - IoT for the City of San Francisco and IoT program director for Northeastern University

Topic 2 - What can you tell us about the new venture?

Topic 3 - Before we dig into the platform, what is your definition of edge? Do you see it as Stacey did in her article as multiple layers of edge (device, gateway, processing cluster, cloud)

Topic 4 - What problem are you trying to solve? Explain what you mean by running applications at the data source and solving the problem of latency on round trips?

Topic 5 - OK, with the basics out of the way… Do you envision this as a platform? If so, what kind of platform and what applications (or micro services) would be a good fit? Are some/all of this open source? Where is the secret sauce (proprietary mesh framework between edge and cloud?)

Topic 6 - Lastly, what security measures do we have to worry about and what challenges do customers face in this space at present?

Feedback?

Thursday, July 12, 2018

The Cloudcast #354 - Prepping for a Product Launch

Aaron and Brian talk about some of the behind the scenes details on product launches - both new products and on-going updates.

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Show Notes

Topic 1 - Topic 1 - Let’s start with the basics. What’s the typical checklist before a product launch?
  • Timeline and schedule (New Product Introduction (NPI) Checklists/Supply Chain aspects)

  • Multiple groups (internal & external) involved

  • Early customer involvement and feedback

  • Go-to-Market (GTM) planning
 • Multiple Transfers-of-Information (TOI’s) end to end

Topic 2 - The product is ready to go to market. How much “stuff” has to be created for all the groups that might care about the product?
  • Documentation & Message Guides

  • Pricing Models (and SKUs)

  • Field Training

  • Customer Training

  • Support Training

  • Sales and Technical content

  • Demos

  • Press and Analyst Content

  • Competitive Content
Topic 3 - What do you consider a successful product launch?

Topic 4 - How have product launches changed over the years, for things you’ve worked on?

Topic 5 - What are some commons mistakes you see companies make with launches?

 Feedback?

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

The Cloudcast #353 - The 2018 Mid-Year Show

Aaron and Brian talk about the first half of 2018: Acquisitions and IPOs, Rating and ranking the Public Cloud, a look at aspects of Private Cloud, Containers and Kubernetes, HCI and GDPR, as well as their perspectives on AI and IoT.

Show Links:

Show Notes:

 Topic 1 - It’s been a busy year for Cloudcast alumni in 2018  
  • Microsoft acquires GitHub - 7.5B
 
  • BonsaiAI acquired by Microsoft

  • Pivotal IPO - $555M

  • Evident.io acquired by Palo Alto - $300M

  • CoreOS acquired by Red Hat - $250M

  • Splunk acquires VictorOps - $120M

  • Elastic (formerly ElasticSearch) - announced IPO plans

  • Loggly acquired by Solarwinds
Topic 2 - How would you handicap the public cloud market (leaders, laggards, emerging trends)?
  • Gartner only has 6 companies in their IaaS Magic quadrant

  • AWS keeps growing (apparently 30-35% of public cloud spending)

  • Microsoft keeps acquiring

  • Google is still TBD, but we’re going to GoogleNEXT in July

  • Alibaba is growing and starting to hear about more US companies using AliCloud

  • IBM and Oracle still seem like large Enterprise vendors
Topic 3 - Brian’s involved with containers, Aaron’s involved with Storage and HCI and some cloud integration, what’s interesting in those areas? What are the biggest trends you’re seeing in the private cloud / data center market?
Topic 4 - We’ve been trying to incorporate more AI and IoT into the shows this year. What have you learned so far, what has surprised you, where do you still have questions?
Feedback?

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

The Cloudcast #352 - Considering New Hosts for The Cloudcast

Brian talks with Amy Lewis (@commsninja) about the World Cup, women in tech events, and brainstorming about potential new hosts and formats for The Cloudcast.

Show Links:

Show Notes
  • Topic 1 - Welcome back to the show.
  • Topic 2 - I want to talk about “women in tech” events, or sub-events at other events. I also want to talk about women on panel discussions.
  • Topic 3 - I’d like to bounce an idea off you about having some new hosts on the show, and potentially a different format for shows.
  • Topic 4 - How would you suggest we go about finding potential hosts?
  • Topic 5 - Your kids play soccer. You’re starting to play soccer. Do you have a pick for the upcoming World Cup? Do you have a favorite soccer podcast?
    Feedback?

    Monday, June 18, 2018

    The Cloudcast #351 - Reviewing DockerCon 2018

    Brian talks with Kendrick “Kenny” Coleman (@kendrickcoleman) about DockerCon 2018 - the announcements, the overall vibe of the event, and how the community is evolving around the event.

    Show Links:

    Show Notes
    • Topic 1 - Welcome back to the show. First off, before we get into DockerCon, give us an update on Bourbon Pursuit.
    • Topic 2 - Many years ago, when you first came on the show, you were attending one of the first Cloud Foundry Summits, so I guess you’re sort of becoming one of our official Cloudcast event correspondents. Give us an overview of DockerCon 2018 in San Francisco.
    • Topic 3 - Last year (in the US) it was all about “Moby”. Then in Europe it was beginning to be about Kubernetes. This year it seemed to be, as Darren Sheppard (@ibuildthecloud, Rancher CTO) put it “an enterprise sales pitch”. Obviously a lot has changed with Ben Golub and Solomon Hykes leaving Docker.
    • Topic 4 - What were some of the technologies or talks that interested you this week?
    • Topic 5 - Docker has always tried to be the “Apple” of containers - focused on simplicity, clean design. Did you hear any feedback from attendees about how they are accepting the shift to Kubernetes, or other changes they are making?
      Feedback?

      Thursday, June 7, 2018

      The Cloudcast #350 - Accenture Cloud Platform

      Aaron and Brian talk with Michael Liebow (@mliebow, Global Managing Director, @AccentureCloud) about evolving the Accenture culture to deliver on-demand cloud services, working across multiple cloud platforms, managing complex cloud billing models, and leveraging serverless technology to improve operations.

      Show Links:

      Show Notes
      • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. You’ve done some fairly significant things (Gov’t, VC/Board, CEO, International Business, Startups, etc.) prior to joining Accenture. Tell us about your background and some of your focus areas at Accenture.
      • Topic 1a - Let’s start by talking about the Accenture Cloud Platform (ACP) and how it has adapted to the Accenture culture (consulting). How do you bridge a culture of broad projects to a cloud offering with defined services?
      • Topic 1b - What do Accenture clients expect from the Accenture Cloud Platform both in terms of technology as well as culture/organizational shifts (e.g. DevOps, Digital Transformation, move into new markets, etc.)?
      • Topic 2 - In large corporations, what are realistic timelines before technology changes or cultural changes start to make a material impact on the business?
      • Topic 3 - Recently the ACP team was recognized for some new innovation around “tagging” cloud assets in multiple environments. How important is it to be able to bring basic concepts like tagging to corporations for consistency (terminology, asset management, compliance, billing, etc.)?
      • Topic 4 - We’ve heard that there is some pretty unique technology behind the scenes of the ACP - e.g. the entire platform runs as a set of serverless functions. Is this true, or what other tidbits can you share with us about building a global, multi-tenant cloud platform?
        Feedback?

        Thursday, May 31, 2018

        The Cloudcast #349 - VMware Cloud Networking

        Aaron and Brian talk with Peder Ulander (@ulander, VP Marketing, Networking and Security @VMware) about still being interesting, the evolution of software-defined networking, how to interconnect cloud networks, and which roles and skills are needed to manage today's cloud networks.

        Show Links:

        Show Notes
        • Topic 1 - Welcome back to the show. You were once the Most Interesting Man in the Cloud, so what are you doing now?
        • Topic 2- VMware pioneered virtual networking back when VM Admins and Network Admins had to figure out how to network virtual machines, but the world has moved well beyond on-prem VMs. Where is VMware bringing software-defined networking now? Follow Up: As someone who pioneered the concept of cloud (and owned cloud.com), where do you see the future of networking? Is it all software? Do you own www.cloudnetworking.com?
        • Topic 3- Walk us through the basics and differences between NSX-V and NSX-T?
        • Topic 3 - Public clouds have their own internal networks, so help us understand what role VMware plays in networking once a company gets outside the 4 walls of the data center?
        • Topic 4 - Is this where VMware Virtual Cloud Network comes into play? Help listeners out that aren’t familiar with the product?
        • Topic 5 - Who is a Virtual Cloud Network Admin? Is that a VM-admin or Container-admin or SRE or DevOps team or something else?
        • Topic 6 - Have you ever seen Dom Delfino and the singer Pitbull in the same room together?
          Feedback?

          Thursday, May 24, 2018

          The Cloudcast #348 - Bringing Serverless to Rock 'n Roll

          Aaron and Brian talk with Michael Garski (Director of Software Engineering @FenderDigital) about building serverless applications for their Fender Play digital learning platform. He explains how the Lambdas are built, version controlled and tested, as well as provides into the broader architecture and how their Dev and Ops teams are integrated.

          Show Links:

          Show Notes
          • Topic 1 - We appreciate you reaching out to tell us about your experience. So let’s talk about your background prior to Fender and some of the things you focus on at Fender.
          • Topic 1a - Are you a guitar player? Do you have a favorite guitar riff?
          • Topic 2 - We’re going to talk about how you use serverless (AWS Lambda) for Fender Play, but before we do that, I want you to walk us through that the guitar player experiences in the Play framework.
          • Topic 3 - Let’s talk about the challenges in delivering this framework that lead you to consider using Lambda (and other AWS services).
          • Topic 4 - Let’s dive into the architecture that you’ve built. What have been easier to evolve and what challenges have you run into?
          • Topic 5 - Fender Play starts with a free trial and then can evolve to a paid service. How much did your engineering team connect those subscription requirements with your choice of using serverless technologies?
          • Topic 6 - What are some lessons or best-practices that you’d recommend to someone new to serverless (either in development or ops).
            Feedback?

            Thursday, May 17, 2018

            The Cloudcast #347 - The Critical Skills for AI and ML

            Aaron and Brian talk with Chao Han, (VP & Head of R&D at @Lucidworks) about critical Data Science skills for AI and ML, how Data Scientists engage with Business Leaders, the Lucidworks AI platform, and emerging research in the AI/ML space.

            Show Links:

            Show Notes
            • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Let’s talk about your background, as it’s very rich both in the breadth of technology as well as the industries where you’ve applied your skills.
            • Topic 2 - Let’s start with the basics of what companies do when they hire or engage data scientists. At what point do they typically shift their thinking (or problem solving) from needing Statistical Analysis to understanding when and where AI or ML are a better fit?
            • Topic 3 - Lucidworks specializes in Enterprise Search, and is one of the primary sponsors of both Apache Lucene and Solr. How do those technologies fit into the Enterprise today, and who are newer AI/ML frameworks being built in conjunction with them?
            • Topic 4 - As you’re working with Data Scientists, where do you see their interests evolving, or what types of problems interest them today? How do you connect and communicate this to business challenges and business leaders?
            • Topic 5 - Can you share some of the research that you’ve been recently focused on that begin to start making it easier for non Data Scientists to start answering questions in a faster or easier manner?
              Feedback?

              Wednesday, May 9, 2018

              The Cloudcast #346 - What is Observability?

              Brian talks with Christine Yen (@cyen, Co-Founder at @honeycombio) about the concept of Observability, why it's needed with new application and failure patterns, how to think about testing in production, and how to manage the collection of Observability data.

              Show Links:

              Show Notes
              • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Before we get into the topic of Observability, tell us about your background and how you ultimately came to founding Honeycomb?
              • Topic 2 - Let’s start with the basics - what is “Observability” and is this new or different from the thing we’ve called “Monitoring” for a long time? What’s changing that is driving the need for Observability?
              • Topic 3 - Digging into Observability, there seems to be this question of “how do we know if something is up?”. That seems both simple and complex (in context). Let’s talk about what that means in a distributed system.
              • Topic 4 - So Honeycomb collects data about applications in a bunch of different ways - logs, agents, monitoring APIs, etc. - What does Honeycomb do to all that information to start making it useful?
              • Topic 5 - I’ve heard your co-founder Charity Majors (@mipsytipsy) talk about this idea that Honeycomb allows people ask questions of the data. What does this mean?
              • Topic 6 - I was reading your blog about Fender Guitars using Honeycomb for their applications. Fender isn’t a Silicon Valley company. How are non-Valley companies beginning to use these Observability models?
                Feedback?

                Wednesday, May 2, 2018

                The Cloudcast #345 - Understanding Google Cloud Databases

                Brian talks with Dominic Preuss (@deesix, Director Product Management @GoogleCloud) about the breadth of GCP's database portfolio, the adoption of GCP within the Enterprise, Big Data usage, and how the concept of "serverless" applies to database infrastructure.

                Show Links:

                Show Notes
                • Topic 1 - Welcome back to the show. Tell us about your background, as well as your area of focus at Google, because you’ve done some pretty interesting things in a bunch of different disciplines.
                • Topic 1a - What’s the general mood at Google Cloud Platform these days, and what’s some of the sentiment that you hear from customers?
                • Topic 1b - For anyone that hasn’t dug into GCP, give us an overview of the various types of database services that GCP offers today.
                • Topic 2 - Does GCP see more demand for DB-migrations or new DBs in the cloud? What are the top couple of usage models?
                • Topic 3 - How are you finding that DBAs adapt to working on DBs in the cloud, or are the consumers of the services now application developers because the DBs are managed?
                • Topic 4 - It seems like we hear more about “big data” use-cases with GCP than traditional SQL DB usage. What are some of the things that attract companies to GCP for NoSQL, Analytics, or global-scale DBs?
                • Topic 5 - We’re starting the hear the concept of “serverless” being used in the context of operations of the underlying infrastructure - different from a function for an application. Can you give us a sense of how you see this trend in the context of databases?
                  Feedback?

                  Wednesday, April 25, 2018

                  The Cloudcast #344 - Bringing AI to Edge Computing

                  Aaron and Brian talk with Simon Crosby (@simoncrosby, CTO) and Simon Aspinall (@saspinall, CMO) at new AI startup SWIM.AI about the changing landscape of the cloud and edge, the vertical industry opportunities with edge computing, how AI is being applied to real-time events, and how SWIM is enabling new thinking for those use-cases.

                  Show Links:

                  Show Notes
                  • Topic 1 - Welcome back to the show. Let’s put some voices with names, since we have two Simons today.
                  • Topic 1a - You’re both coming off of successful companies that you built or grew (Simon Crosby - Bromium, Zen Source), (Simon Aspinall, Virtustream). What motivated you to get involved in both the AI and Edge Computing space?
                  • Topic 2 - Let’s start with the basics. There’s lots of data happening at the edge. This means there is lots of potential value at the edge. But the computing and network at the edge is different than the centralized cloud. Walk us through how to extract that potential value?
                  • Topic 3 - SWIM’s technology is called EDX. How does EDX get deployed, and what needs to live around it to make it valuable to companies. Are there edge and cloud components?
                  • Topic 4 - We were learning about EDX and came across the concept called “digital twins”. What does this mean and what does it do?
                  • Topic 5 - What are some of the initial use-cases that you’re finding interesting in EDX?
                    Feedback?

                    Wednesday, April 18, 2018

                    The Cloudcast #343 - Container Vulnerability Scanning

                    Aaron and Tyler Britten talk with Liz Rice (@lizrice, Technology Evangelist @AquaSecTeam) about what's easy—and what's not—about finding and patching security vulnerabilities in containers. This is a cross-over show with @PodCTL podcast.

                    Show Links:

                    Show Notes
                    • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show Liz. Tell us a little bit about your background and the types of things that you’re working on these days.
                    • Topic 2 - Let’s start with the basics. A container is defined by a file (e.g. Dockerfile) that the user/developer/operator defines. How can a vulnerability get into that file?
                    • Topic 3 - Is it up to the CI/CD system or  host OS (where the container runs) or container orchestrator (e.g. Kubernetes) or container registry to figure out if a vulnerability exists?
                    • Topic 4 - How do most container registries today manage vulnerability lists, container scanning and potential mitigations? What are the difficult parts of those tasks?
                    • Topic 5 - Most containers today are Linux containers. Are you seeing anything happening (yet) around how to manage Windows containers vulnerabilities? Is the assumption that Microsoft will fix this through one of their existing tools, or are things happening in the open source community as well?
                      Feedback?

                      Thursday, April 12, 2018

                      The Cloudcast #342 - Understanding Databases in AWS

                      Brian talks with Steve Abraham (Principal Solutions Architect @ Amazon Web Services) building and migrating databases in the cloud, how companies are managing migrations, the demands for open source databases, and how the worlds of database and serverless are intersecting.

                      Show Links:

                      Show Notes
                      • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about your background and also the areas you focus on at AWS.
                      • Topic 2 - Let’s start by talking about the difference between new and existing databases. Does AWS see more demand for DB-migrations or new DBs in the cloud?
                      • Topic 3 - What are some of the tools or services to migrate existing databases to AWS databases
                      • Topic 4 - You’ve been a DBA in the past. How have you seen DBAs adapt to work on DBs in the cloud?
                      • Topic 5 - What are some of the ways that AWS is improving or eliminating some of the need for constant DBA interactions and tuning, or "improving" the DBA experience? “Serverless databases”?
                      • Topic 6 - Any tips for how companies address databases in a microservices world? Can you break up a monolithic database?
                      • Topic 7 - How does AWS think about wiring together data-sources (databases, storage, etc.) with some of the advanced AI/ML services?
                        Feedback?

                        Thursday, April 5, 2018

                        The Cloudcast #341 - Modeling & Managing Enterprise Applications

                        Aaron talks with Rahul Ravulur (@ravulur, Co-Founder & CEO of @AppOrbit) about how companies are managing the transition from Legacy applications to Cloud-native applications, the challenges of modeling new environments, and how deployments have changed in the past decade.

                        Show Links:

                        Show Notes
                        • Topic 1 - Rahul, welcome to the show; give everyone a brief introduction and your background
                        • Topic 2 - Tell us about your journey to leave VMware and found AppOrbit
                        • Topic 3 - What are the common issues are you seeing the industry today around application deployment? What is going well and what challenges remain?
                        • Topic 4 - How are the deployment challenges around “Cloud Native” applications different from “Legacy” applications in 2018? How has this thinking evolved over the last few years as customers are educated on the differences?
                        • Topic 5 - How are customers using AppOrbit today?
                        • Topic 6 - Where and how does application security fit into this model?
                          Feedback?

                          Thursday, March 29, 2018

                          The Cloudcast #340 - Adding AI into Software Platforms

                          Brian talks with Srinivas Krishnamurti (@skrishna09; Founder/CEO of Zugata) about the evolution of workplace management, how companies should think about problems that might require AI, the level of complexity needed to add AI to existing platforms, and how to manage the Human-to-AI interactions in software.

                          Show Links:

                          Show Notes
                          • Topic 1 - Welcome to back the show. Remind people about Zugata and give us some updates on Self-Improvement as a Service.
                          • Topic 2 - Zugata recently launched “Zugata Insights”
                          1. Improve Company Culture
                          2. Eliminate Gender Bias
                          3. Better Understand the Skills & Attributes of Top Performers
                          • Topic 3 - Zugata is a SaaS-based platform. How do you add AI-centric services to a SaaS platform?
                          • Topic 4 - What is the state of available technology to add AI capabilities (e.g. existing open source tools, or cloud-based services) vs. having to hire that skill vs. retraining in-house developers?
                          • Topic 5 - Your tools directly interact with human-centric issues. How much adaptation has to happen to steer AI around human-centric decisions vs. non-human-centric decisions?
                            Feedback?

                            Thursday, March 22, 2018

                            The Cloudcast #339 - Understanding Cryptocurrencies & Markets

                            Aaron talks with Jesse Proudman (@jesseproudman; Founder of @StrixLeviathan) about entrepreneurship, his new company Strix Leviathan, the basics of cryptocurrencies and markets, how these markets are evolving and what's next for their platform.

                            Show Links:

                            Show Notes
                            • Topic 1 - Jesse, catch everyone up on the last few years. You had a good exit at BlueBox and then went on to a DE (Distinguished Engineer) position at IBM.
                            • Topic 2 - Tell us about your journey to founding Strix Leviathan and this interesting intersection of AI and cryptocurrency. Was this a hobby that turned into a passion which turned into your next thing?
                            • Topic 2a (Lightning Round) - Some cryptocurrency basics
                            1. What is a cryptocurrency? What does it use as it’s basis of value?
                            2. How do the cryptocurrency markets work? What are the basic elements someone needs to understand?
                            3. Cryptocurrencies have been crazy volatile for the last few years. Is it good to have currency be so volatile? 
                            • Topic 3 - Cryptocurrency is in the early days. What are some of the struggles today you see and the challenges folks entering this market are facing. For instance in a TechCrunch article you mention API issues with trading as an example of the infancy of the platforms. What do you think happens to the market in the both the short and long term?
                            • Topic 4 - What problem is Strix Leviathan ultimately trying to solve for?
                            • Topic 5 - It appears the engine today is two parts: a cryptocurrency tracker (data ingestion) and a trading engine. Correct? Where does the AI part fit into all of that? Is it doing the analysis and making recommendations on trades or does it actually perform the trades?
                            • Topic 6 - Just this week you received a $1.6M funding round. What’s next for the platform and where are you headed?
                            • Topic 7 - You took a slightly unconventional approach to startup with BlueBox, what lessons did you learn that you will bri

                            Thursday, March 15, 2018

                            The Cloudcast #338 - Governance and DevSecOps

                            Brian talks with Josh Stella (@joshstella, CEO of @FugueHQ) about what DevSecOps means, how companies manage the tension between Developer agility and Operations stability, how to codify Governance via code, and early steps to success in DevOps culture.

                            Show Links:

                            Show Notes
                            • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background and why you decided to focus on DevOps, Security, Compliance and Governance.
                            • Topic 2 - DevOps is culturally hard. Moving to the cloud is technically hard (move data, refactor apps, etc.). How do you guide people about what areas of those changes to tackle first, or put more focus on?
                            • Topic 3 - DevOps is two opposing motivations trying to work in harmony. How does “Sec” fit in to create this DevSecOps concept?
                            • Topic 4 - In the past, Governance and Compliance were primarily Security functions, and somewhat  periodic “validation” functions. Now the technology allows them to potentially be constant guardrails and checks. What’s the state of Governance and Compliance?
                            • Topic 5 - What guidance do you gives customers that ask how to get started in DevOps, Security, Compliance and Governance?
                              Feedback?

                              Thursday, March 8, 2018

                              The Cloudcast #337 - Cultivating IoT From Farm to Cloud

                              Brian talks with Steve Ridder (@saridder, CEO @teralytic) and Dan Casson (VP Engineering, @teralytic) about #AgTech, nanofabrication, engaging with large, complex ecosystems, building modern IoT platforms, and how data is helping to advance one of the oldest industries in the world.

                              Show Links:

                              Show Notes
                              • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background and how people from NYC and Silicon Valley know more about soli than farmers with their boots in the dirt?
                              • Topic 2 - Let’s talk about soil, NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) levels and how frequently the “playing field” in farming is changing? What are the big challenges in managing soil? How significant are soil differences around the world?
                              • Topic 3 - Before we get to the technology (in the sensor and the cloud), let’s talk about the business side of IoT sensors. You have to have mass production (edge devices), ridiculously simple sensor installations, run wireless infrastructure (?), run a cloud SaaS infrastructure (or just sell the data to brokers?) and do farmers have IT departments to translate all this techie stuff?
                              • Topic 4 - Let’s talk about the technology in the IoT edge sensors. They have to be precise, inexpensive, and future proof? How much is industrial engineering vs. computer science?
                              • Topic 5 - Let’s talk about the technology in the analytics cloud?  These devices only transmit every 15mins. What does a cloud stack look like?
                              • Topic 6 - Any advice for techies, or industry experts, to find the people to collaborate with in these vertical solutions?
                                Feedback?

                                Thursday, March 1, 2018

                                The Cloudcast #336 - The Evolving Role of Cloud Communities

                                Brian talks with Amy Lewis (@commsninja, Director Influence Marketing @VMware, Co-Host @Siftspod podcast) about the change dynamics of tech communities, how people self-select into new communities (or channels), the changing rules of IT buying, whether techies needs some business skills, and tips/tricks for mentoring the next generation.

                                Show Links:

                                Show Notes
                                • Topic 1 - Introduction of Amy, what’s new, blah, blah, blah...
                                • Topic 2 - The world has become a fragmented place; people find their safe “communities”. We can sort of do that in tech, but not as much because people change jobs more now. What’s your State of the Union for tech communities these days?
                                • Topic 3 - Are you seeing the interactions with communities change (good or bad) as the rules within tech change - open source, public cloud, work in the office, etc..?
                                • Topic 4 - We talked for a while, to technical communities, about “moving up the stack”, where the stack was all technology. Do you think we should be talking more about “moving across the cubicles” from technical awareness to business awareness?
                                • Topic 5 - As you’ve moved around and upwards, you’re now mentoring people within the industry. Any success stories to share, or tips & tricks that might relate well to a newer generation, or just someone making a new change?
                                  Feedback?

                                  Thursday, February 22, 2018

                                  The Cloudcast #335 - Managing Waste in the Cloud

                                  Brian talks with Andy Richman (Product Manager @ParkMyCloud) about which groups are responsible for cloud costs, how expectations and behaviors are changing as applications move to the cloud (Finance vs. DevOps), do we need DevFinOps, the technology that's making it easier to reduce costs, and tips for driving better cost management.

                                  Show Links:

                                  Show Notes
                                  • Topic 1 - Introduction of Andy
                                  • Topic 2 - This survey was focused on “waste” in a public cloud environment. Public cloud was supposed to be less expensive and more agile. Are you seeing people having to reset expectations?
                                  • Topic 3 - There seem to be two phases of managing costs in the cloud. One is focused buying the right instances at the right time. The other is focused on more day-to-day operations. Are you seeing this sort of separation of functions, and is one a finance function and other a DevOps function?
                                  • Topic 4 - Let’s get back to “waste”. We went down this road with virtualization many years ago - just turn off what you don’t use. It was the “turning it back on” that actually scared people. What are you learning about more intelligent ways to manage the “turning off/on” process?
                                  • Topic 5 - AWS has started making more of their services “Ops-less” (sort of), like Lambda, and now Aurora, where you don’t have to think about the infrastructure planning as much. Do you find that people ask why more of the cloud isn’t like this, or they understand that not all workloads run (as before) in these environments?
                                    Feedback?

                                    Thursday, February 15, 2018

                                    The Cloudcast #334 - The Future of Edge Computing

                                    Brian talks with Derek Collison (@derekcollison, Founder and CEO at Synadia Communications) about the future of edge computing, the impact of AI/ML on edge systems, and how Telcos and open source communities will evolve with edge computing opportunities.

                                    Show Links:

                                    Show Notes
                                    • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. We’ve spoken with you many times over the years, but first time on the podcast. Your background is very well documented, so maybe give us a little glimpse into your latest company - Synadia Communications.
                                    • Topic 2 - (Public) Cloud Computing has grown in lock-step with the growth of the smartphone (since 2007), creating a specific pattern of application/communication and data collection. What are the forces that are driving all the attention around the Edge Computing evolution (e.g. sensors, smart cars, peer-to-peer patterns, etc.)?
                                    • Topic 3 - What do the economics of Edge Computing look like today? Where are the big bottlenecks, or areas for big disruption? Does it vary widely depending on the application (e.g. sensor data vs. streaming vs. telemetry) , or geography (e.g. dense cities, transportation networks, rural areas, etc.)
                                    • Topic 4 - You’ve talked about the Google Brain project for a long time. We’ve seen growth around centralized AI/ML for the last 5-7 years. Do you expect a different mode of AI/ML that has to emerge because Edge Computing patterns will be significantly different than centralized models, or do they need small adaptations?
                                    • Topic 5 - You’ve need heavily involved with messaging technologies over the years, from TIBCO to NATS. Can you share some insight into how messaging (or async communications) that might need to evolve at the edge, in more distributed types of systems?
                                      Feedback?

                                      Thursday, February 8, 2018

                                      The Cloudcast #333 - Infrastructure 3.0 for AI and ML

                                      Aaron and Brian talk with Lenny Pruss (@lennypruss, Partner at Amplify Partners) about the evolution of application and infrastructure architectures, how AI/ML are radically changing how applications are designed, the new inputs to application systems, and how VCs are investing in companies that can augment new cloud services.

                                      Show Links:

                                      Show Notes
                                      • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background and how you eventually got into the VC side of the business.
                                      • Topic 1a - Infrastructure and applications evolve in 'lock-step', so where are we today in terms of this evolution and where are we going?"
                                      • Topic 2 - You mention this concept of “connectivity vs. cognition” is what makes ML/AI radically different from software of previous generations. Let’s discuss what that means.
                                      • Topic 3 - “The result is an application that is “smart,” but exceptionally data-intensive and computationally expensive”. What are the problems this creates on today’s infrastructure?
                                      • Topic 4 - “For ML/AI to reach its full potential, it must graduate from the academic discipline it is today into an engineering one. What that means in practice is that there needs to be new abstractions, interfaces, systems, and tooling to make developing and deploying intelligent applications easy for developers.” - Give us some of the first steps that will make this happen.
                                      • Topic 5 - As a VC, you’re in the business of finding the companies that might turn this into a reality. Who are some of those companies that are on your radar?
                                        Feedback?

                                        Friday, February 2, 2018

                                        The Cloudcast #332 - A Cloud Perspective from Israel

                                        Brian talks with Ariel Munafo (@ArielMunafo, TotusCloud) and Amit Dunsky (@amit_dunsky, high-T Cloud Computing), co-hosts of the CloudTalk Podcast about the Cloud Computing market in Israel. This is a co-branded show and will also be published on CloudTalk podcast channel.

                                        Show Links:

                                        Show Notes
                                        • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background in Cloud Computing and what drove you to create your podcast?
                                        • Topic 2 - Let's talk about the differences in cloud cultures between the US vs Israel, in terms of venture-capital, adoption, support, innovation, etc.
                                        • Topic 3 - Let's discuss the regulatory issues affecting cloud adoption in each country.
                                        • Topic 4 - You both do some work with Israeli government agencies, what about cloud adoption by the government offices and agencies?
                                        • Topic 5 - Let’s also discuss local tech conferences as an index to how much the cloud is presence and how it indicates the cloud vendors' plans ahead.
                                          Feedback?

                                          Thursday, January 25, 2018

                                          The Cloudcast #331 - Has SRE replaced DevOps?

                                          Aaron and Brian talk with Rob Hirschfeld (@zehicle, CEO @rackngo; Kubernetes Cluster Ops Co-Chair) about the consistency, continuum and confusion between the concepts of DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).

                                          Show Links:

                                          Show Notes
                                          • Topic 1 - What is the State of DevOps today? On one hand, there’s Gene Kim’s DevOps Reports (all is great), on another hand is DevOps Days which has become about Empathy, and somewhere in between are companies struggling with all of this silo-busting and automation and constant change. So where are we?
                                          • Topic 2 - The DevOps community seemed to want to reject all sort of labels and titles (DevOps engineer, DevOps certified, etc.) and how there is this “SRE” (Site Reliability Engineering) concept. Is this just a new name for DevOps?
                                          • Topic 3 - Like NetFlix had microservices, so everybody needed microservices - Google has SRE, so now everyone needs SRE? How does SRE fit into a non-Google company?
                                          • Topic 4 - Many Infra/Ops-centric people have been trying to learn automation and some basic programming (e.g. Python, Powershell/Scripting). SREs are often described as programmers that live in the Ops world. Can these current Infra/Ops people evolve to SRE?
                                          • Topic 5 - Do you find that DevOps or SRE apply more (or less) to using certain types of technologies vs. other technologies?
                                            Feedback?

                                            Thursday, January 18, 2018

                                            The Cloudcast #330 - Oracle’s Next-Generation Cloud IaaS

                                            Brian talks with Clay Magouyrk (@cmagoyrk, Vice President at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) about the architecture of the Oracle cloud, how it manages bare-metal VMs and containers, how Oracle integrates on-premises and cloud workloads, and how it integrates with PaaS and SaaS services.

                                            Show Links:

                                            Show Notes
                                            • Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Can you tell us about your background prior to joining Oracle and how it helped you design the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure?
                                            • Topic 2 - There was a lot of buzz about Oracle redesigning their infrastructure cloud. Can you walk us through the architecture and how Oracle delivers bare-metal, VMs and containers? Are they separate environments, or all integrated?
                                            • Topic 3 - How does Oracle Cloud deliver networking - intra-cloud, from region-to-region, and integrated with on-premises applications?
                                            • Topic 4 - Oracle often talks about “same cloud architecture in both public and private”. Other public clouds are designed differently than most on-premises environments. Can you talk about what’s the same and what is typically different in the Oracle Cloud? What do customers have to adjust to in the Oracle Cloud?
                                            • Topic 5 - How do Oracle customers manage to integrate different Oracle Cloud services (e.g. containers, PaaS services, SaaS services, security, etc.)?
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                                              Thursday, January 11, 2018

                                              The Cloudcast #329 - Tech Trade Shows in 2018

                                              Aaron and Brian attend a lot of technology events throughout the year. They give their suggestions to trade show organizers and attendees for getting the most of out 2018 events.

                                              Show Links:

                                              Show Notes
                                              • Topic 1 - What events do you enjoy attending? Not enjoy attending?
                                              • Topic 2 - What works for you at events?
                                              • Topic 3 - What could be improved or added?
                                              • Topic 4 - What should be eliminated, or re-imagined?
                                              • Topic 5 - Should we see more “independent” events combined (or parallel to) “vendor” events?
                                                Feedback?

                                                Thursday, January 4, 2018

                                                The Cloudcast #328 - Creating a Tech Podcast

                                                Aaron and Brian give some tips and suggestions for anyone wanting to start a tech podcast.

                                                Show Links:

                                                Show Notes
                                                • Topic 1 - Why are you podcasting? (motivation, goals, understanding the marketing)
                                                • Topic 2 - How much of a commitment is podcasting? (scheduling, recording, editing, publishing)
                                                • Topic 3 - How do you get started? (costs, tools, determine format, finding guests, awareness)
                                                • Topic 4 - What are the most difficult aspects of hosting a podcast? (scheduling, prep-work, consistency)
                                                • Topic 5 - What is involved in recording, editing, publishing? (sound quality, edits, tools, studio vs. on-the-road recording)
                                                • Topic 6 - How do you manage to do this along with a day job? (timing of guests, conflicts of interest, topics)
                                                  Feedback?