Speaking
I speak a lot at conferences, internal events, and meetings here and there for work.
Here are few of the talks I’ve been giving recently:
Platform Engineering for Private Cloud
Recording, 20 minute version, 15 minute version.
“Platform engineering” is the art of building and managing the infrastructure that powers your applications: a mix of cloud, a handful of DevOps, a pinch of SRE, and a thick glaze of product management. While it’s “nothing new,” many organizations are just starting to practice it—and for good reason. But what happens when your platform is running on private cloud? - With around 50% of enterprise apps still running on private clouds, platform engineering for private platforms is surprisingly under-discussed. This talk dives into real-world examples and stories from large organizations tackling this challenge. The hurdles often lie in adapting platform engineering to existing IT stacks and processes—most organizations can’t simply start from scratch, nor would they want to abandon what’s currently driving revenue. If you support your organization’s apps, platform engineering is something you’ll probably be doing soon. Come learn how your peers are navigating these challenges and share your own experiences.
There’s also a more general platform engineering talk. See my platform page for more platform related stuff.
The State of Spring
Thriving, Modernizing, and (Finally) Upgrading
“No one ever got fired for using Spring”. It turns out, that’s more true than ever. Spring and Java remain the absolute core of the enterprise, running the critical infrastructure of our civilization.
But this stability creates a new challenge. The top priorities for organizations aren’t just “keeping the lights on.” They’re modernization, security, and adopting artificial intelligence. You can’t do any of that when 60% of the Spring in use is out of support.
This session covers the real “State of Spring” in large organizations, focusing on three key areas:
- Thriving: Why Spring developers are in a great position as Java continues to dominate enterprise surveys.
- AI Platforms: How Spring AI provides the framework needed to move beyond a “blinking cursor”, especially for the private cloud AI platforms most enterprises are building.
- The Upgrade Path: The massive performance, cost, and security gains from upgrading, and how tools like App Advisor are automating the process and making it 70% faster.
This is a practical look at how the framework you already use is ready for the future, as long as you can get off the old versions.
7 Ways to Fail at Building a Platform
Building your own internal developer platform can seem attractive, but it’s a risky proposition. In a platform as a product approach, when you build it, you own it, and now you’re in the business of developing a product instead of your actual business. In this talk, drawing from 10 years of platform engineering case studies of large organizations, Coté will go over seven risks of building your own platform: expansive scopes, underestimating cost, project mindsets, death by customization, skills, security and compliance, resume-driven development. You can learn from the many people who’ve suffered these risks already and, hopefully, avoid them yourself.
Based on “The Upside-Down Economics of DIY PaaS” paper.
We Built It, and No One Came: How to Market Your Internal Developer Platform
You’ve built the perfect platform, but those pesky developers aren’t using it. Sound familiar? Over the years, I’ve heard this story countless times. More often than not, it boils down to one thing: the platform team forgot to market it. Branding, t-shirts, platform advocacy, community management, even staffing for marketing—it’s all part of the game. I get it: you see the word “marketing” and cringe. But here’s the truth—if you want a successful platform in a large organization, you need it.
Thankfully, there’s a rich history of companies figuring this out. In this talk, I’ll demystify what platform and product marketing really mean, sharing practical tactics and lessons learned from organizations like Mercedes-Benz, ING, BT, Garmin, and others. Learn how to get developers not just using, but loving, your platform.
See also my paper on this topic, “Internal Developer Platform Marketing."
Escaping the Legacy Trap
76% of executives say they’re too invested in legacy systems to modernize. That’s because older applications and services often stifle business innovation, leaving organizations stuck in a legacy trap. Escaping the legacy trap isn’t just about rewriting apps; it’s about changing how you build and run software.
This talk covers the strategies and tactics organizations use to modernize their applications–beyond simply rewriting code. You’ll learn how to:
- Use portfolio analysis with SWIFT and apply the Seven Rs to prioritize which apps to modernize.
- Introduce platforms and platform engineering to modernize operations and better support developers.
- Establish practices like platform engineering to ensure your organization doesn’t fall back into the legacy trap.
Packed with real-world examples and actionable advice, this session will show you how to escape the legacy trap and help your organization thrive with modern, innovative software.
See my legacy trap page for recordings of this talk and related stuff.
Tanzu on VCF: the platform devs love and ops can secure
To developers, VCF is just infrastructure. It’s a “blinking cursor” waiting for a platform that doesn’t exist yet. Developers need more: a platform as a service.
Without a PaaS, your devs become accidental platform engineers, gluing together their own container and services stack on top of your pristine infra. That’s not their job, nor what they’re good at. You’ll be the one getting paged when their accidental platform inevitably breaks.
This session presents the solution: Tanzu Platform. We’ll show how the Tanzu PaaS layers directly onto VCF and completes your private cloud stack. You’ll see how you can provide a true, self-service developer experience while taking back control of security. Tanzu shifts you from hoping apps are secure to making them secure with platform-managed buildpacks and daily repaving. Learn how to bridge the gap from IaaS to PaaS and see how our customers maintain incredible efficiency, like supporting 30,000 developers with just 50 ops people.
More
Most of the talks I currently give are listed on my sessionize page. You can see a selection of recordings of my past talks in YouTube. Some of the slides are available if you like to collect such stuff.
Bio and picture
Here is a short bio of me:
Michael Coté studies how large organizations improve how they build software to run and grow their business. His books Changing Mindsets, Monolithic Transformation, and The Business Bottleneck cover these topics. He’s been an industry analyst at RedMonk and 451 Research, done corporate strategy and M&A, and was a programmer. He also co-hosts several podcasts, including Software Defined Talk. His daily-ish newsletter is at newsletter.cote.io.
Here are two pictures, feel free to use whichever you think is appropriate:
