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Beyond the Sea of No’s, with Jon Osborn

As always, with Jon, this is a great conversation:

Demonstrating the value of software, how it contributes to revenue, is no easy feat. Staffing can be difficult, especially with an eye to sustaining teams over the years. Jon Osborn returns as a guest to discuss these and other transformation hurdles, plus successes they’ve had at the Great American Insurance Group.

Check it out, and subscribe to the podcast for more stuff like this every week.

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Product management in the enterprise

Inside this interview, there’s an excellent explanation of what product management means in an enterprise. By “enterprise,” I mean a company who’s product is not technology. That is, most every company and organization out there. To that end, there’s a great example of doing product management and design at a food services company: discovering the actual problem to solve to meet business needs, and solving it by experimenting with a small batch loop.

See also the original show notes.

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What’s knative? Serverless, functional programming, and the like’

I finally got a good overview of what exactly knative is and how it fits into things. Now that I think of it, I’ve forgotten a lot of what it is. But, at the time, this seemed like a satisfying definition by interview.

Serverless! Functions! Knative! What’s it all mean? Nate Schutta explains it all to Coté in this episode, wrapping up with a good explanation of what Knative is and how it fits in with Pivotal Function Serviceand Spring Boot.

And, see the show notes.

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Optimistic About Innovation, an interview with Duke Energy’s John Mitchell

To improve the way you do software, I recommend starting up a new organization. It’s not always the right tactic, but it probably is if you’re having problems changing the “culture” at your organization.

Duke Energy has had success with this approach over the years. In one of my recent Pivotal Conversations podcasts, I talked with John Mitchell, who’s been involved in their transformation over the years. They’d just opened a brand new (well, renovated from an old factory) office to host the existing teams (something like 4 or 5 if I recall) and the supporting teams.

Here’s a summary:

Duke Energy has been working on their software capabilities for some time now. They’ve recently reached a milestone by opening a brand new innovation center in Charlotte. Coté took a tour of it recently checking out the numerous product teams and their approach to exploring and building strategy, all the way from corporate strategy down to writing code. John also shares a couple of new examples of how lean product management and design in action. Also: gingham.

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Pumping the digital transformation bunny at the US Air Force, an interview with Bryon Kroger

Few organizations have or rely on as much software the US Air Force. There’s plenty of it around and, thus, plenty to be improved. In recent years, one of the more spectacular digital transformation stories has come from the USAF’s work modernizing their Air Operations Control software. In this episode, USAF’s Bryon Kroger goes over how they’ve moved multi-year release cycles to just weeks in the Kessel Run projects. Much of the work is in the “fuzzy front” end of planning and procurement, but as Bryon says, an equally, hearty serving has to do with building up people’s skills, moral, and the overall culture.

One of my recent Pivotal Conversations episodes. There’s a play list collecting together other “customers” talking, rather than the usual of us Pivotal people just talking to ourselves.

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Software Defined Talk: Cloud is just “jigglin’ wires”

This week’s episode is up! Listen below:

Calling in hot from New Braunfels Texas, we got a country mile’s worth of topics this week: we have container services from Microsoft, a lengthy discussion of how enterprise software companies organize their global sales regions, the possible emergence of a new private cloud meme, and rumors that BMC is no longer in acquiring CA.

See the full show notes for links and subscription info.

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Pivotal Conversations: A hopeful view of cloud-native enterprise architecture

Another discussion about what enterprise architecture might mean in a cloud-native world:

It’s probably a good idea to learn about enterprise architecture by talking to someone who’s actually done it. In this episode, we talk with Stuart Charlton, now of Pivotal, but previously of roles where he EA’s, even back in the SOA era! We discuss the mapping of traditional EA to cloud-native, and also some strategies for Coté to increase his Twitter followers, and, as ever, some recent cloud-native news.

Be sure to subscribe!

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Coté Show: North-bound Enterprise Architecture with Matt Walburn – that business/IT alignment dance

Further on the quest to figure out what a “cloud-native enterprise architect” is:

What’s the “business” side of enterprise architecture? And how does EA’ing start mapping to DevOps, cloud-native, and all the new stuff? In part one of this discussion, I talk with Matt Walburn about how EA’s fit into The Business.

Check out the full shows notes, and be sure the subscribe!

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Software Defined Talk: is The Hot Dog incremental innovation, or disruptive innovation?

This week:

Sniffing out a huge market in hot dog apps, Amazon might start a messaging app. Also, Google has their ant-data gravity device out and Basho seems to be shutting down. We discuss the wonders of Snap’s hot dog app, the mystery of Amazon’s lack(?) of brand allegiance, and giving up on kale.

Check out the full show notes, and be sure to subscribe!

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Software Defined Talk: Microsoft’s Private Cloud

This week:

Microsoft will ship it’s private cloud stack, Azure Stack, in September. Will this work? Will people buy it? What could you even put in that cloud? You can feel that pull people have towards private cloud, so we’re looking forward to what happens. On a related topic, by our reckoning, kubernetes to small to have already fallen. Also: the elusive Baltimore accent, Oracle and containers, and recommendations.

See the full show notes for all sorts of goodies, and make sure you subscribe in your podcast app.

Enjoy!

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Pivotal Conversations: It’s private cloud all over again

With no guest, this week Richard and I cover all sorts of things:

There’s some exciting private cloud news on the horizon with Microsoft’s Azure Stack coming out in September. We discuss the brief history of private cloud and several models people have tried, along with some other news from the infrastructure software world. With no guest, Richard and I discuss some projects we’re working from cloud-native .Net, enterprise integration, and enterprise architecture.

Check out the episode!

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Software Defined Talk: “Do I just need some better medication?” or, advertising, antitrust, and talking to strangers

This week’s episode:

Without advertising, there would be no capitalism, and, if you’re not constantly afraid of the DoJ knocking at your door, you’re probably doing it wrong. Those are two whacky theories about advertising and antitrust, at least. With Matt Ray on vacation, Brandon and Coté talk about The Attention Merchants and the recent Google EU antitrust ruling. We also discuss several other books, and how to talk to non-tech people at parties. Surprisingly, no container talk!

Check the full show notes, download the episode directly, and be sure to subscribe too!

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Pivotal Conversations: The management perspective on transforming Allstate, with Opal Perry

I’m always interested to hear how management manages to change how software is done in large organizations – it can seem impossible! As ever, Allstate provides a fascinating stream of information here, and I was lucky to get the chance to interview Opal Perry there on how Allstate has been doing with all that cloud-native stuff.

Check out the listing on SoundCloud, and be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you like it.

Also, if you want to hear more, Matthew Curry and I had a similar conversation a few weeks ago at OSCON.

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Pivotal Conversations: Cloud-native monitoring & PCF Metrics, with Todd Persen

This week’s podcast:

In this episode we talk with Todd Persen on the topic of monitoring cloud-native applications with Pivotal Cloud Foundry Metric. We discuss the changing nature of monitoring in cloud-native platforms, how developers can now turn black-boxes into white-boxes, why time-series dominates the thought-technology in this space now, and the benefits of open source taking over most innovation in systems management. Richard is out this week, so Andrew Shafer returns to fill in as co-host.

Listen above, download the MP3 directly, and/or subscribe to the podcast feed if you haven’t.

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Software Defined Talk: The Donnie Berkholz Episode, “Freedom in health-care: a regular ‘heck of a job, Comey’ situation,” DevOps & security, & Canonical’s IPO ambitions

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In a too rare spate of social commentary, we start talking about the price of hipster avocados in Australia and US health insurance. With one of our favorite analysts moving over the enterprise side, we talk about what it’d be like going through that door. We then wrap up talking about Canonical’s IPO talk, related OpenStack market discussion, and then use CyberArk’s acquisition of Conjur to discuss the state of privileges access management (PAM). We end, as always, with recommendations, including some CostCo discussion.

Check out the full show notes for more.

Be all civilized and modern by subscribing to the feed, or just download the MP3 directly if you prefer utter, complete control over your ear-holes.

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Software Defined Talk: Cloud Rules Everything Around Me – Red Hat, Moby, Docker CEO, and Halo Effect’ing The First Cloud Wars

There’s much news in the container world with DockerCon and Red Hat having had conferences, plus Docker gets a new CEO. We also do a hind-sight analysis of what wrong with the losers of the Cloud Wars. And, as always, recommendations from the three of us.

Be all civilized and modern by subscribing to the feed, or just download the MP3 directly if you prefer utter, complete control over your ear-holes.

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Pivotal Conversations: Debunking Cloud Foundry Myths

Our podcast this week:

There’s a whole slurry of myths about Cloud Foundry. With the platform updating so quickly, many of the issues behind these myths have long been addressed, and many were just false from the get-go. Coté and Richard talk about a recent post dismissing common myths. We also discuss recent news from the infrastructure software world and go over a bunch of upcoming events that Pivotal will be at.

If you use something like Overcast, be sure to check out the overly-extensive chapters and links right inside the podcast.

You should subscribe to the podcast!