Tag Archives: pivotal

Presentation: Rapidly Deliver the Software That Matters

Check out this recording of a recent talk of mine. Here’s the abstract:

Many Government organizations are getting better at software development, deployment and management by using techniques like DevOps, agile development, and product management. Cloud native technologies are making organizations’ software supply chains more efficient and reliable. Our substantial experience with open-source technology and continuous deployment approaches, offers a powerful accelerator for contact tracing and integrated citizen response solutions. Improvement is fragile, and scaling up in large organizations is difficult. This talk will discuss bottlenecks, challenges, and how Government agencies and organizations are succeeding.

There’s even a transcript!

🗂 Link: Top Quotes from Cloud Foundry Summit Europe 2019

“We need to think about three things with Pivotal now that it is part of VMware: a common substrate (Kubernetes), the ability to manage it, and a build overlay. The cf push experience is important, making the experience better for developers.” —Craig McLuckie, VMware

Source: Top Quotes from Cloud Foundry Summit Europe 2019

🗂 Link: The superpower to change one thing about Kubernetes

“It’s optimized for cloud native applications – those that follow the patterns that are in my book for example. That represents only a subset of the applications that our enterprise customers need to address. Our 2020 strategy is to broaden the definition of our platform. To be more than just Cloud Foundry, but to broaden it to a larger range of use cases. To broaden it to a larger market.”

Source: The superpower to change one thing about Kubernetes

🗂 Link: Waity K8-y no more Pivotal: We’ll unhook Application Service from VMware

“The urgency was more around understanding the long term vision than an immediate need,” said Andrews. “We’re still very early. Everybody is talking about K8s all the time, but if you look at who is actually using it in production, the list is much shorter. Our technology stack works incredibly well, we have customers with over 100,000 containers working on the current platform. If we forecast out 3 to 5 years in the future though, it seems clear that K8s is going to be a de facto component in the architecture.”

Source: Waity K8-y no more Pivotal: We’ll unhook Application Service from VMware

🗂 Link: VMworld 2019: VMware expands its multicloud, security, Kubernetes strategies | ZDNet

VMware in the span of seven days set its strategy to grab more multicloud deployments, positioned itself in case developers favor containers over virtual machines in the future and reiterated its case as a go-to enterprise engine for digital transformation.

Source: VMworld 2019: VMware expands its multicloud, security, Kubernetes strategies | ZDNet

🗂 Link: Pat Gelsinger and his calculated plan for VMware

“Three years ago, your biggest risk was cloud; six years ago, your biggest risk was Open Stack. If you look at it now, you can clearly say, ‘Hey, these next-generation applications, are you going to be the enterprise supplier of choice?’. So in that sense, I think we had a bit of defensive risk … our platform was at risk.

“At the same time, if you look at the dollars, the business value at play in the developer layer — a lot of money there. It’s a very rich, offensive opportunity as well — both defense and offense — and if we expand the value proposition for all of the VMware operators today, to be able to effectively reach the developers and the application in a much more effective way than they do today … if we can bring those worlds together, that’s a pretty huge benefit for our customers as well.”

Source: Pat Gelsinger and his calculated plan for VMware

🗂 Link: Silicon Valley software techniques modernize 75-year-old plant

Raytheon Systems Engineer Sam Sauers and her team spearheaded one of the latest DevOps transformations on the program, introducing Silicon Valley-like processes like paired programming and pipeline development to help the Air Soldier team rapidly develop the technology.

“We’re using commercial software best practices, including Agile and DevOps, to get new capabilities in days instead of years,” said Sauers. “We’ve also been implementing user-centered design: getting ahead of the users and figuring out the next thing they’re going to need. We then develop toward that rather than getting something out there and getting feedback that it wasn’t what they wanted.”

Source: Silicon Valley software techniques modernize 75-year-old plant

Link: Pivotal Build Service, Now Alpha, Assembles and Updates Containers in Kubernetes

The service provides the layer of automation and operational control enterprises need to utilize Cloud Native Buildpacks at scale. In particular, Build Service includes three key capabilities: automated image updates, image promotion, and build configurations.

Source: Pivotal Build Service, Now Alpha, Assembles and Updates Containers in Kubernetes

Link: DICK’S Sporting Goods Poised to Continue its Successful Digital Transformation Journey

Another important aspect of the new retail experience is buy-online, pickup in-store. This is an easy way to bring consumer gratification that even free two-day shipping can’t match. Shoppers are using stores as pickup points at record rates during the holiday season, especially those on a time crunch or placing orders too late for on-time delivery.

Anticipating the percentage of e-commerce orders placed for pickup in-store would skyrocket as the holiday grew closer, DICK’S wasted no time revamping elements of its buy-online, pickup in-store option and began running them on PCF. Now, store associates spend less time running around and picking pack slips because the experience is integrated into an app on the mobile devices they carry known as “MerchSearch.”

Source: DICK’S Sporting Goods Poised to Continue its Successful Digital Transformation Journey

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.

Link: Pivotal Cloud Foundry 2.5, Now GA, Harnesses the Power of Istio and Envoy to Make Your Developers More Productive

Whole lotta features:

> – Weighted routing uses Istio and Envoy to simplify blue-green deployments (beta)
> – Platform Automation for PCF, the engine of your perpetual upgrade machine (beta)
> – Windows Server 2019, Microsoft’s most container-friendly OS yet, now powers PAS for Windows (coming soon)
> – Consume upstream Kubernetes your way with the new PKS family
> – Got apps that need multiple custom ports? Run ‘em on PAS.
> – Use metadata on API resources throughout PAS to share context
> – Keep tabs on all your apps, wherever they run with multi-foundation Apps Manager (coming soon)
> – Steeltoe 2.2 improves the stability of your microservices, simplifies connections to MongoDB
> – Spring Cloud Data Flow for PCF 1.4: Wire up data pipelines across Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry (coming soon)
> – Single Sign-On for PCF 1.9 will help you get more done faster with a new, streamlined dashboard (coming soon)
> – Detecting manifest changes with Ops Manager is much easier
> – Other Enhancements
> – Public Service Announcements
> – Try Pivotal Cloud Foundry for Free

Source: Pivotal Cloud Foundry 2.5, Now GA, Harnesses the Power of Istio and Envoy to Make Your Developers More Productive

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.

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.