Digital transformation strategies focus on reducing costs, upskilling - Highlights from Macroeconomic Outlook, Business Trends - ”Digital transformation focuses on employee productivity and automation. Nearly 44% of respondents either have a formal digital transformation strategy (32%) or are planning to develop one (11%). The primary drivers for adopting a digital transformation strategy are improving efficiency through process automation (59%), improving employee productivity (56%) and customer experience enhancements (47%). The main priorities in digital transformation are to improve workforce productivity and engagement experiences (44%), followed by intelligent automation to reduce/remove need for labor and manual processes (43%). Modernizing legacy back-office (e.g., ERP, supply chain) and front-office (e.g., customer relationship management, e-commerce) applications is also a top priority in digital transformation.”

Free ‘JavaScript’ from Legal Clutches of Oracle, Devs Petition - This seems like a don’t wake the sleeping bear situation.

The types information available on the internet and why AI is bad for all of them - ”For example, if I’m looking to buy an ergonomic chair and I read a review that says “I’m a 6’3” man and this chair is absolutely perfect for my size,” this anecdote provides helpful information to me in a way that simply reading the measurements does not.”

AI is great for churning out apps, but don’t forget to test - Enterprise AI needs testing just like code needs testing. // “Research published by Leapwork, drawn from the feedback of 401 respondents across the US and UK, noted that while 85 percent had integrated AI apps into their tech stacks, 68 percent had experienced performance, accuracy, and reliability issues."

IBM buys Kubernetes cost control startup Kubecost to expand its FinOps suite - They’ve bought a lot in this category - solution suite’ing. ”IBM said Kubecost’s capabilities will be integrated into an expanding FinOps Suite, enhancing the combined capabilities of Apptio, Cloudability, Instana and Turbonomic to provide what will perhaps be the most comprehensive cost monitoring toolset around. The company didn’t say so, but there is clear potential for Kubecost’s technology to be integrated with IBM’s OpenShift application development platform too.”

Customers don’t trust AI, and the rift might be hurting business - ”Participants were then asked questions to determine their willingness to buy the TV.  Those who saw AI in the product description were less likely to make the purchase.”

How PepsiCo capped cloud overspend - ‘“FinOps is all about evangelization,” Woo said. “This is probably the most difficult side of running a FinOps practice, because when you are a FinOps practitioner you’re trained to do IT work. You may have had a finance background. You weren’t trained to be a mediator or therapist.”'

CIOs: Get Tech Sprawl Under Control - “According to Forrester’s Q2 2024 Tech Pulse Survey, a staggering 77% of US technology decision-makers report moderate to extensive levels of technology sprawl. This sprawl can result in unsustainable costs, slower IT delivery, reduced operational resilience, and increased security risks."

Code to Production: From Cloud to DevOps to Platform Engineering, with Purnima Padmanabhan

There's not that many people who've worked through the early years of cloud, the rise of cloud and IaaS, DevOps, cloud native apps, and now platform engineering...but my colleague Purnima Padmanabhan sure has. So, it was fun to talk with her about the history of all of that - something I've been involved in and equally curious about these past 20+ years. We also discuss the differences between startups and large companies - most interestingly Purnima’s take on what large companies can learn from how startups operate. Listen to it here, it's was a fun interview

Here’s a more detailed overview:

In this episode, Purnima Padmanabhan, the general manager of Tanzu at Broadcom, talks with Coté about the evolution of DevOps and platform engineering. Purnima has worked at many interesting over the years LoudCloud, BMC Software, and VMware. That experience gives her a great perspective on the industry's ongoing journey to empower developers to deploy code into production quickly and reliably. The discussion follows the industry innovations and trends from early infrastructure automation to the rise of cloud computing and the emergence of platform engineering.

Purnima highlights the enduring challenge of bridging the gap between development and operations, emphasizing that the core objective remains consistent: accelerating the time it takes to move code into production. She underscores the importance of continuous improvement, noting that the industry is still striving for perfection. The conversation also delves into the nuances of platform engineering and DevOps, exploring the balance between standardization and flexibility, the role of automation in fostering trust, and the enduring need for both development and operations roles.

Purnima also discusses her experiences at various companies and the lessons she's learned throughout her career. Listen in to this 20+ year journey from LoudCloud's early foray into cloud computing to BMC's focus on process automation and VMware's cloud management solutions, all the way up the Tanzu's focus on cloud native development and platforms.

Listen in!

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I keep putting off rounding up interesting links and fun fines. It’ll finally be in the next episode! // I’m speaking at SREDay London this week. I’ve got plenty of time to actually take in the presentations and talk with people this time so I’m hoping to get a little snap-shot of what’s up with SRE now-a-days.

Let’s start with some good looking cheese:

Community is Mission Critical for Platform Engineering

Establishing an internal community is one of the keys to enterprise platform engineering. A lean platform team can’t support all the support and consultative requests from thousands of developers. When you create and garden an internal community you’re trying to get the developers to talk with each other and help solve each others problems. 

In a talk at Explore going over their general platform engineering group, Jürgen Sußner went over this tactic. I wrote-up my take on using internal communities for support and platform innovation over on the Tanzu blog.

Jürgen works at DATEV, a German company that makes widely used accounting software. They’ve been running on Cloud Foundry (via the Tanzu Platform) for over six years and now are supporting over 1,200 apps and services that span 18,000+ containers and 8,000 virtual machines. There’s over 2,000 developers using the platform. So, the stories and advice they have are pretty enterprise-y, exactly the kind of scale I like the study.

Anyhow, here’s my write-up of Jürgen’s story of the internal community their platform team relies on. This pattern comes up a lot in other organizations that have been running platforms for a couple of years, like Mercedes and Garmen.

Software Defined Talk #484: A Lot of USB Ports

Take a listen this week’s podcast episode:

This week, we discuss Dell's growth in AI servers, GEICO’s transition from VMware to OpenStack, and the concept of Kingmaking. Plus, plenty of thoughts on USB hubs.

Subscribe and enjoy!

Conferences

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

SREday London 2024, speaking, September 19th to 20th. SREday Amsterdam, Nov 21st, 2024. Coté speaking. Cloud Foundry Day EU, Karlsruhe, Oct 9th. VMware Explore Barcelona, speaking, Nov 4th to 7th.

Discounts! SREDay London and Amsterdam: 20% off with the code SRE20DAY. Cloud Foundry Day 20% off with the code CFEU24VMW20.

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There’s not enough links or wastebook entries to include, so I’ll ball up some more and put them in the next episode.