Are platforms pointless? - ‘So much of “platform engineering” treats the application process itself as the main event. Sure, great, you make it easy for me to run hundreds of Nginx’s with whatever-the-fuck behind them, and restart and blue-green deploy and autoscale. Great. That’s not my performance bottleneck.’ // He says: (1) It’s just a way to avoid Terraform, and, (2) database management is a more important problem.

…right?

I’ve been looking around for estimates on how many custom written apps run on private vs. public cloud. There’s a lot of coverage and estimates of people using multiple clouds, but finding breakouts is tough. IT IS VERY HARD TO FIND!

Here’s what I’ve found recently:

• "According to Forrester’s Infrastructure Cloud Survey in 2023, 79% of roughly 1,300 enterprise cloud decision-makers surveyed said their firms are implementing internal private clouds.” Here. // This doesn’t answer my question, but is useful.

• Spend is a bad proxy for workload placements, but: "IDC forecasts that global spending on private, dedicated cloud services — which includes hosted private cloud and dedicated cloud infrastructure as a service — will hit $20.4 billion in 2024, and more than double by 2027. Global spending on enterprise private cloud infrastructure, including hardware, software, and support services, will be $51.8 billion in 2024 and grow to $66.4 billion in 2027, according to IDC." Ibid. // Spend isn’t a great proxy for actual usage, but there’s that.

• IDC Cloud Pulse from last year: it’s something like 40% to 50% public cloud, but this also includes SaaS, which is not exactly what I’m interested in. (See the chart.)

  The IDC numbers are pretty good. I’d want to redo them and throw out COTS apps and SaaS, but good enough.

  So, what’s the split between public and private cloud? I don’t know: 50/50? But, again, this doesn’t track organization’s custom written apps. I could see that it’d go more in either direction.

  Furthermore, if you went off what the Goldman Sachs CIO surveys imply (mentioned last episode), it’d be more like 70% private cloud, 30% public cloud.

  I think I’ll start going with mildly uncertain 50/50 with a percent or so going to public cloud each year.

  Still, if I were to say “half of the enterprise IT world is largely ignored by the chattering class,” you’d hopefully think “well, that’s weird.”

  

  Software Defined Talk #475

  This week, we discuss Mary Meeker's AI & Universities report, the CD Foundation's State of CI/CD Report [see below], and share a few thoughts on DevRel. Plus, Coté gets fiber and is forced to watch soccer.

  Listen to it now! (You can also watch the unedited video recording.)

  Wildly Different Version Control Usage Results in Developers Surveys

  Speaking of estimates and surveys, a tale of being careful with surveys:

  • Slashdata’s survey reports that 30% have used “source code management” in the last 12 months. This means that 70% of people haven’t checked inter code for a year or more, or at all? There is more nuance to it than that, but that’s what’s implied.

  • The 2023 JetBrains survey reports that 76% of people “regularly” use a “source code collaboration tool.” This means that 24% of people don’t “regularly” check in code?

  • The Stackoverflow 2022 survey says that 95.69% of people use version control (it doesn’t say the frequency of interaction). This means that 4.31% people do not use version control. They didn’t track this in the 2023 survey.

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  ---

  You should watch this talk I’ll be doing in a few weeks, FREE in the comfort of your own home/RTO-job!

  

  Register to watch it for free here, or in LinkedIn. Also in YouTube, if you prefer that.

  ---

  Wastebook

  • “Clicks to Bricks.”

  • “IDC Links & IDC Blinks.”

  • “Beloved Austin local Leslie Cochran.” Here.

  • I used to listen to The Lounge Show every Saturday morning. It’s still there! Also, archives here and here.

  • “An enquiy, based on the author’s intimate diary, into the conditions for obtaining happiness and person start of values.” Here, for this.

  • If not better, at least the same. The enterprise software buyer’s lament.

  • “the riffiest of the raff.” Here.

  • I’m usually not “chill out and watch video of people just doing random shit” guy, but I’ve really been liking MrT’s breakfast service marathons. He makes an English breakfast burrito, which I do not agree with, but I’m not here to yuk your mums.

  Relative to your interests

  • Understanding the Rise of Platform Engineering and Its Relationship with DevOps - Printer-friendly - US50199923 - Platform engineering definition from IDC: ”the discipline of designing, building, and maintaining a platform of curated tools, services, and knowledge, called an IDP, that enables development teams' self-service access to the resources needed to build, test, and operate digital solutions. Platform engineering aims to optimize software delivery by removing friction from the developer experience by offering blueprinted, supported approaches to building and deploying software. The platform team, made up of platform engineers, is responsible for building and maintaining the IDP.” // A key point is self-service, you know, less tickets. // This seems like a lot for one team to take on.

  • Does Social Media Cause Anything? - It’s difficult to collect data about social media’s effects (good or bad). // “the ever-present spiderweb of the social graph, the network of accounts, RTs and likes that lets me understand not only what someone thinks but what everyone else thinks about them thinking that.”

  • The Product Model in Traditional IT - ”Outcomes vs Predictability” is good framing for switching from traditional IT to “digital transformation.”

  Conferences, Events, etc.

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

  Our analysis of the State of Cloud Native Platforms 2024 survey, online, speaking, July 24th, 2024. SpringOne/VMware Explore US, August 26–29, 2024. DevOpsDays Antwerp, 15th anniversary, speaking, September 4th-5th. SREday London 2024, speaking, September 19th to 20th. VMware Explore Barcelona, speaking(?), Nov 4th to 7th.

  Discounts. SREDay London (Sep 19th to 20th) when you 20% off with the code SRE20DAY. And, if you register for SpringOne/VMware Explore before June 11th, you’ll get $400 off.

  

  Logoff

  I’ve been thinking about an addition to my Bullshit Business Dictionary entry for “executize.” Maybe something like “the pre-read.” In theory, you put together a memo, document, maybe slides, that you send to an executive ahead of a meeting or for planning. You’ll put a lot of work into this, often with an executized summary at the front (bullet points), and then many pages of longer notes, research, etc. Or, you know, a “slide-bank” after the closing slide.

  In my ~30 years of experience, the pre-read is actually read only 30% to 50% of the time. There are many executives who will never read it. They want to a sort of “have the meeting in the meeting.” It’s “sort of,” because if you’re doing that you will have read the pre-read so that you can discuss your reaction to it, ask questions, and focus on making a decision.1

  You may think this means you don’t need to do a pre-read: who knows what the executive wants, what they’ll ask for, what will be in their head at the moment. Why waste time on things that never get used. However, I think do an extensive pre-read is important so that you know what to say and suggest during the meeting, at the very least so that you have context and can form opinions.

  Also, there’s a chance that your pre-read will be converted to a “post-read” if the executive ends up being interested in the topic.

  All that said, if you’re operating an unread pre-read environment, what’s more important is to be spontaneous and use improve tricks to kick around ideas - the old “yes, and” thing. There’s a view that working for an executive means you’re helping them solve the problems they have, no steering them towards the problems they should be focusing on and the solutions you think are right. I think that’s mostly right; it’s a hard thing for nerds to reconcile.

  In the “my job is to augment the executive, not help the corporate achieve outcomes/etc.” mode of operating, you might want to save your energy and time for the post-meeting work, and just do a small amount of pre-read work. Indeed, if you keep things unclear/high-level, you can likely achieve that “executize” level of bullet points right away.

  1

  There’s other executives who will read the pre-read and/or expect a very direct, structured in-meeting “read out.” These executives usually follow the American-style of just wanting to know the conclusions, the exact actions to take next. “Application-first reasoning,” they calls it. They may or may not care why, and will instead use intuition (or trust in the process) to know that something good will happen as a result of taking actions. (The opposite of this is “principles first,” where you build up a case right-side up pyramid style.) Anyhow: figure out your executives style, there are many types.

The Product Model in Traditional IT - Silicon Valley Product Group : Silicon Valley Product Group - ”Outcomes vs Predictability” is good framing for switching from traditional IT to “digital transformation."

Does Social Media Cause Anything? - It’s difficult to collect data about social media’s effects (good or bad). // “the ever-present spiderweb of the social graph, the network of accounts, RTs and likes that lets me understand not only what someone thinks but what everyone else thinks about them thinking that.”

I don’t know. I’ve been trying to sort out what platform engineering is for awhile.1 It matters a lot for my job! While I haven’t verified it, it seems like it started as a marketing campaign from Humanitec and then took on a life of its own. Now the likes of Gartner have practice areas for it and are hiring analysts to cover it.

This means that people in enterprises are trying to sort out what to do about platform engineering. Surely they need it! The category is now loaded with everything, pulling in the all the stuff, including internal developer portals, CI/CD (I don’t think people [read: vendors] explicitly discuss foundational practices like build automation anymore, but I suspect actually putting CI/CD in place is the primary driver of the benefits people get with platform projects), getting Kubernetes to work, and all the usual cloud native platform stuff.

That is, what platform engineering is has become too expansive and is, ironically, driving too much cognitive load. Here’s my simplification:

And if you don’t have 2 minutes and 36 seconds to spare, here’s a shorter version.

Wastebook

• “the AI-infused journey” Gartner.

• Teamperature.

• “Audience Acquisition Rep II”

Relative to your interests

• The AI summer - Several charts of technology adoption, including the Goldman chart that shows CIO’s intentions to move workloads to public cloud is always high, and not well executed. // Un-clickable citations, though.

• Gartner Survey Finds 64% of Customers Would Prefer That Companies Didn’t Use AI For Customer Service - “Many customers fear that GenAI will simply become another obstacle between them and an agent. The onus is on service and support leaders to show customers that AI can streamline the service experience.” // I mean, that’s the point right: otherwise “productivity” wouldn’t improve. The hope is that the AI things are better at solving problems. The problem is that you usually need a human to actually change things, make things happen, and deal with exceptions. Otherwise, you get stuck on an accountability sink.

• DevRel’s Death as Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon - A list of how to show marketing value. // This whole time all the devrel people just needed to integrate into the finally tuned, perfectly functioning, incredibly accurate, much beloved, and simply existent customer journey management CRMs out there. Also, they should have been listening to all the feedback the sales people gave them about how their activities helped close deals and clamp down churn. And if they had just engaged with the product people who were eager to work with them! Instead, just think of all the money that was wasted on teal-haired people’s sticker collection? // But, yeah. Yes, and: You can definitely always focus on selling the product more.

• Jevons paradox - When you automate something very valuable (or just “costly”), people demand more, and more complex product. This pulls in more need for labor that can do the more complex work. Hopefully.

Logoff

This is a bit of a weird recording since there’s no slides (“technical difficulties”), but if you want to see the second version of my “Why We Fear Change” talk, here it is, from SCaLE 21x. The first time I gave it (at cfgmgmtcamp) I ran out of time because I’d packed some of my Business Bullshit words in as interludes for fun.

//

I’ve been hunting down “private cloud” usage numbers - just anything, at this point. Specifically, I want to know which in-house apps run where. I don’t care about enterprise applications like ERP systems, nor SaaS apps: just the applications that organizations code and run themselves.

There’s not that many out there in the easy to find, free surveys. Essentially, what you see is that something like 70% to 80% of people use multiple clouds - various public ones, on-premises, “private cloud,” etc.

There’s this from Slides Benedict:

If you read this chart, you’d say “something like 25% to 30% of ‘enterprise workloads’ are running in public cloud. This, 70% to 75% of apps are running on-premises.” Does that seem right? If it is, the lack of conversation around on-premises is bizarre. That’s the majority of IT and movement away from it is very slow.

But, it’s hard to have confidence in such a contrary statement because I can’t find the surveys cited to make sure (a) I focus just on apps, not SaaS, etc., and , (b) I’m reading it right, the geographies and industries/demographics (is it 100 F500 CIOs, or just rando’s who answered a survey online?), etc.

In large organizations, this isn’t too much of an insight: they’re so long, so long lived, have so many geographic groups that have their own IT stack, not to mention both centralized/planned IT and YOLO line of business IT, and have acquired so many companies…that of course they have everything. What I’m more interested in are how many apps are in the public2 cloud versus not.

I just got a pile of recommendations from people, so perhaps I’ll have more to report back.

Gartner Survey Finds 64% of Customers Would Prefer That Companies Didn’t Use AI For Customer Service - “Many customers fear that GenAI will simply become another obstacle between them and an agent. The onus is on service and support leaders to show customers that AI can streamline the service experience.” // I mean, that’s the point right: otherwise “productivity” wouldn’t improve. The hope is that the AI things are better at solving problems. The problem is that you usually need a human to actually change things, make things happen, and deal with exceptions. Otherwise, you get stuck on an accountability sink.

DevRel’s Death as Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon - A list of how to show marketing value.

Jevons paradox - When you automate something very valuable (or just “costly”), people demand more, and more complex product. This pulls in more need for labor that can do the more complex work. Hopefully.

This is a good talk listing some tactics for changing how organizations work. It’s targeted at executives. What’s bonkers is that, as the screenshot below, it has just 27 views.

In the talk, we have a former group CIO at American Airlines. She’s telling you her tips for how to introduce change in a large organization. As Gene “The Phoenix Project” Kim says in his intro, American Airlines is the biggest airline in the world. This is also from the most famous DevOps/IT conference for executives that exists now (probably).

What’s bonkers is that it has only 27 views. And that one like is from me!

Executives and management at enterprises are always asking how to make change easier, and here’s a whole bunch a tips from their peers. And most of them cost nothing, or in the scheme of an American Airlines budget, nothing (like buying some pizza, rubber duckies, stickers, etc.). Also, she tells jokes and has some gags!

Now, maybe those 27 views are from CIOs of Global 2,000 companies who watched the video 100% of the way through. But, come on…

Are these great tips that will instantly solve all your problems, that fit to any situation. Hardly! But, with that few views, no one was even curious enough to check it out. More to the point: probably no executive has come across this video.1

My point here is that getting enterprise IT improvement content like this out is so, so hard as to be nearly impossible. Of course, you have to match your mediums to the type of content and channels you have.2 But, in general: do videos work? How about 60 second videos? Do white papers work? Blog posts? How about a webinar? How about a webinar with an analyst from Gartner, Forrester, or IDC? LinkedIn posts? License a PDF from an analyst shop? Pay a small analyst firm to write a white paper? Maybe emails?! What if I email a short video?

Some of those work sometimes, but I have the feeling that the main thing that works to reach an “executive audience” is just meetings. Which is to say, being face-to-face in a conference room or just having a meal together. And, yes, as in this instance, in-person at a conference.

The enterprise software sales process is incredibly frustrating and inefficient. But, when the hundreds of videos like that are ignored each year, you can see that being in-person is perhaps the most “efficient” way to do the job of marketing and selling because it’s the only way.3

Also, you should watch all my most excellent videos with such tips, not only 100% of the way through, but three to five times each to make sure they really, like, sink into your brain.

Anyhow. It’s a good presentation, you should check it out.

Wastebook

• The catsup paradox. Everyone loves catsup on fries, on burgers, hot dogs, etc., even meatloaf. But, on its own, most people find catsup disgusting, it stinks. For example: after a meal, no one ever wants to be the one who cleans the ketchup ramekin. (Mustard and mayonnaise don’t invoke that kind of reaction, let alone pickles.)

• “I would love to be a, sort of, Mr. Rogers for adults.” Noah.

• “I feel like the world is burning, and I’m wearing polyester.” Ibid., but Peter from Germany.

• “I have no idea who that is!” said ever closet Gallagher fan ever. // He probably could never tour Europe because the watermelons were too small. “That just won’t be funny,” he said, taking off his hat and rubbing his head, “It’ll be like I’m smashing a baby’s head. Just cancel the shows, Garry. Just do it.” // Months later, Garry sits in front of Pauly Shore: “now, I like what you got, kid. Your mom says great things. Say hi to her, by the way. You don’t smash any large fruit in your act right? No? Great. Have you ever thought of the Europe circuit?”

• ”My gf, upon finding out there is not only one but in fact TWO sequels to Taken: “Somebody needs to put an AirTag on her”” kwon.

• “Premium Economy – access a lounge where they provide materials to make your own ham sandwiches.” Here.

• “He was scanning the horizon.”

Relative to your interests

• AI transforming banking, reports UBS executive - ”The Swiss bank has integrated AI into its services, launching a pilot last year for instant credit tailored to small and mid-size companies requiring liquidity. This service enables bypassing credit officers to expedite the process for this standardised product.”

• Japan’s digital minister claims victory against floppy disks - ”Japan’s digital minister, Taro Kono, confirmed that the Japanese government has finally rid itself of floppy disks.”

• The World Is Eating Software - The software bubble. Also commentary on power steering.

• Why Supercloud Architectures Could Upend Cloud Computing – Or Not - ”IDC’s March 2024 Cloud Pulse Survey (n = 1,350) shows that 74% of cloud buyers have multicloud strategies. It’s no longer a big deal to use multiple clouds.”

• Join the public beta for GenAI on Tanzu Platform today! - Get your own private AI in a box sandbox going on.

• Accountability Sinks - ’“accountability sink”: a situation in which a human system delegates decision-making to a rule book rather than an identifiable individual. If something goes wrong, no one is held to account.’ // That’s a good phrase to point out something people seem blind to. Humans set policies, humans can decide to un-set policies. // It’s a version of “it’s just business,” which people who have/use that sentiment forget is a catch-phrase for mafia movies when they kill people.

• Frontline workers split on AI’s workplace impact - ”Nearly 3 in 5 workers using generative AI say the technology has saved them around 5 hours of work per week.”

• How To Measure Platform Engineering - Suggested metrics: “Market share. Onboarding time. Net Promoter Score (NPS). Key customer metrics.”

• The Blue-State Wealth Exodus Continues - State income tax flight: “The IRS last week published its annual data on the migration of taxpayers and adjusted gross income (AGI) between states. California ranked, again, as the biggest income loser ($23.8 billion) in 2022, followed by New York ($14.2 billion), Illinois ($9.8 billion), New Jersey ($5.3 billion) and Massachusetts ($3.9 billion). The top gainers were Florida ($36 billion), Texas ($10.1 billion), South Carolina ($4.8 billion), Tennessee ($4.7 billion) and North Carolina ($4.6 billion).” // It’d be buck-wild if far right cultures in southern states changes because progressive people migrated due to taxes.

• DevOps Isn’t Dead, but It’s Not in Great Health Either - Round-up of surveys showing that the benefits of DevOps are flattening/slowing. Perhaps it’s not dead, it’s just had the final victory. That is: it’s much better than 15, even 10 years ago.

• How Much Revenue Must a Company Generate to IPO? - “Before 2018, only one company IPOed with more than $200m in revenue. In fact, the median revenue at IPO at $90m. Today, the median revenue at IPO is $189m (corrected for inflation), more than double.”

Logoff

A few items in my “topic ideas” queue:

• I’ve had a lot4 of conversations recently about the fallacy of collapsing silos in large enterprises.

• This is different than the “DevOps is Dead” meme that’s going on around, which I’m slowly building up some commentary around (I think my take is: what if it’s not “dead,” but just wildly successful? AKA: do you not remember how terrible things were in the 2000s? I don’t really like that take too much - way too counter-counter-take - hence still rolling around in it.) Recent DeathOps pieces: the Eulogy one, and some survey digging. Brandon and Matt discussed them on last week’s Software Defined Talk.

• If we were to look at the original, NIST PaaS definition, is it different than the cloud native platform definition? Is it some kind of really nerdy trolling to start using the phrase PaaS again?

AI transforming banking, reports UBS executive - ”The Swiss bank has integrated AI into its services, launching a pilot last year for instant credit tailored to small and mid-size companies requiring liquidity. This service enables bypassing credit officers to expedite the process for this standardised product.”