Earlier this week the third annual DevOps Days Austin took place. Given that it was Cinco de Mayo, and given that it was Austin, as we walked in on the first day we were greeted by a mariachi band.
Also on the first day we were treated to an opening keynote by Andrew Clay Shafer. Shafer, aka Littleidea, is among other things a DevOps bon vivant and all around muser on concepts and systems big and small.
Take a listen as Andrew gives an overview of his talk and answers questions. For your reference, his slides are embed below.
Some of the ground Andrew covers:
The history of the Japanese Samurai and how this parallels DevOps’ trajectory
How will DevOps evolve over the next three years
What needs to happen for DevOps to ultimately be successful
Still to come
You’ll want to stick around over the next few weeks as I post 10 more interviews from DevOps days Austin. I’ll be talking to people from Puppet, Chef, CFEngine, AppDyamics, New Relic, SumoLogic, Rackspace, Pager Duty, Dell Cloud Manager and Cote.
This is the final video clip from the Dell Services Application think tank held earlier this year. Today’s clip features the always enlightening and entertaining Jimmy Pike. Jimmy, who is a Senior Fellow at Dell and was once called the Willy Wonka of servers, was one of the 10 panelists at the Think Tank where we discussed the challenges of the new app-centric world.
In this clip, Jimmy talks about the fundamental differences between “purpose-built hyperscale” and the cloud environments that most organizations use.
As Jimmy points out, when moving to the cloud it is important to first understand your business requirements and what your SLAs need to be.
This week is the last set of videos from the Dell Services Application think tank held earlier this year. These last two snippets focus on cloud and infrastructure and today’s clip features features Jay Ferro, CIO, American Cancer Society and Barry Libenson, SVP and CIO, Safeway.
Jay and Barry respond to the question, how would you set up your IT environment today if you had the luxury of starting completely afresh. One thing they are both quite adamant about is that they would own as little as possible. Take a listen.
While owning no servers is not a reality for the majority of existing enterprises, there is quite a bit of traditional IT functionality that does make sense to outsource. Whether outsourcing takes the form of managed services, BPO or cloud-based systems, its something to seriously investigate.
Stay tuned
Tune in later this week and we’ll have the final video clip from the application think tank. In it Jimmy Pike, a Dell senior fellow and chief architect, will talk about cloud and hyperscale and the difference between the two.
The Think Tank, Sessions one and two
Think Tank Session 1– Welcome to the application-centric world – best practices in the ‘greenfield’
Think tank Session 2– Nexus of forces – CIOs under pressure and the rise of the enterprise developer
Today we conclude the mini-series of videos around the topic of application and software strategy. Today’s segment features Barry Libenson, SVP and CIO at Safeway talking about legacy platforms vs. modern cloud-based systems like the loyalty platform they have implemented. Take a listen as Barry talks about the differences between the two.
While it might not make sense to cloud-enable everything, when you’ve got a 20-year old mainframe system like Barry describes you’ll want to look to app modernization and moving to a standard and open architecture.
Stay tuned
Next week is the last topic culled from our App Think Tank: cloud and infrastructure thoughts. You’ll want to tune in to see how CIOs and tech companies are viewing and thinking about these areas 🙂
The Think Tank, Sessions one and two
Think Tank Session 1– Welcome to the application-centric world – best practices in the ‘greenfield’
Think tank Session 2– Nexus of forces – CIOs under pressure and the rise of the enterprise developer
Today, Das Kamhout, IT Principal Engineer at Intel and their lead cloud architect talks about Intel IT’s program to make all of their traditional applications into services. (This video was taken from the Application think tank that Dell Services held back in January.)
The world is turning to services. As Das points out, after you rationalize your application portfolio you want put together a strategy to start modifying at least some of your traditional applications to be services based.
Stay tuned
Tomorrow is the last entry on the topic of software and application strategy. Safe’s CIO will discuss legacy applications and which you want to modify and which you want to leave alone.
The Think Tank, Sessions one and two
Think Tank Session 1– Welcome to the application-centric world – best practices in the ‘greenfield’
Think tank Session 2– Nexus of forces – CIOs under pressure and the rise of the enterprise developer
Today’s topic, taken from the Application think tank held by Dell Services early this year, is application rationalization. Take a listen as Ranga Jayaraman, Associate Dean and CIO of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford talks about the importance of application rationalization and shifting the way you do development.
The bottom line is if you are not pursuing an aggressive application rationalization strategy, you should be. As Ranga suggests, you also need to be taking a hard look at how you are doing development.
Stay tuned
Tomorrow, tune in to hear how Intel turns its applications into services.
The Think Tank, Sessions one and two
Think Tank Session 1– Welcome to the application-centric world – best practices in the ‘greenfield’
Think tank Session 2– Nexus of forces – CIOs under pressure and the rise of the enterprise developer
This week’s theme is applications and software strategy and yesterday’s post dealt with the value of going “open source”all the way” from start-ups to large enterprises. Today we’re taking a look at the major guidelines that two large organizations have put in place for all applications being developed.
Take a listen to Das Kamhout, IT Principal Engineer at Intel and Jay Ferro the CIO of the American Cancer Society as they talk about what their organizations are requiring. (This video was taken from the Application think tank that Dell Services held back in January.)
Consumerization has raised the bar and set new standards for what employees and customers expect from applications both internal and external. In a nutshell they need to be intuitive and available everywhere. Intel and the American Cancer Society understand this and I would agree 🙂
Stay tuned
Starting tomorrow, the next three entries this week will center around dealing with the applications that already exist within your organization and how you modify them or know which ones to get rid of.
The Think Tank, Sessions one and two
Think Tank Session 1– Welcome to the application-centric world – best practices in the ‘greenfield’
Think tank Session 2– Nexus of forces – CIOs under pressure and the rise of the enterprise developer
This week I’m continuing with the video series from our Application think tank earlier this year. The videos this week are centered around the topic of applications and software strategy: what should your foundation be, what should your strategy be going forward and how do you deal with what you have.
To kick this topic off, here is a video featuring Barry Libenson, SVP and CIO at Safeway. The question posed was what role does Open Source play in your software strategy. Barry says what he never thought he would say, “Open source all the way.” Take a listen as he explains one man’s conversion.
As Barry explains, open source isn’t just for the bleeding edge anymore, its for mainstream enterprises. It features a robust ecosystem and is where the talent is. Whether you’re a start-up or Fortune 50 company, as Barry says, Open Source all the way.
Stay tuned
Tomorrow we’ll look how the American Cancer Society and Intel have set up their guidelines for new applications being created.
The Think Tank, Sessions one and two
Think Tank Session 1– Welcome to the application-centric world – best practices in the ‘greenfield’
Think tank Session 2– Nexus of forces – CIOs under pressure and the rise of the enterprise developer
This is last video on the topic of CIO and IT skills needed for success. It, like the previous two, was taken from the think tank Dell Services hosted earlier this year in Silicon Valley. It features Jay Ferro, CIO, American Cancer Society and Barry Libenson, SVP and CIO, Safeway.
Both Jay and Barry agree that the CIO of the future will need very different skills than today but they differ on how much technical knowledge he or she will need. As Jay says, “I don’t need to understand the nuance of the digestive system to know how to eat.” Take a listen.
Business first
I would say that now, as in the future, the CIO and IT in general need to be business people first, and technologists second. And the same goes for other functions as well whether you’re marketing or finance or HR, you need to be business people first.
Stay tuned
Next week I will have five videos from the think tank that all focus on software and applications.
The Think Tank, Sessions one and two
Think Tank Session 1– Welcome to the application-centric world – best practices in the ‘greenfield’
Think tank Session 2– Nexus of forces – CIOs under pressure and the rise of the enterprise developer
Yesterday I featured the first of three videos that tackle the topic — the skills CIOs and IT need for success. Today’s video features Ranga Jayaraman, Associate Dean and CIO of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford.
Ranga responds to the question, how would you set up your IT environment today if you had the luxury of starting completely afresh. With regards to the people and skills he would assemble, Ranga talks about the importance of IT people who understand the business and can act quickly. He also discusses the difference between developers in an IT shop and those in a product shop and how open source and reusable frameworks have served to make the IT developer much more powerful. Take a listen.
Ranga’s right
I would say whether your starting from a greenfield environment or improving on your current set up that Ranga is right, you need IT people who understand the business and not just the technology. Its no longer ok to simply be a tech expert, its about what’s most important for the customer and business and being able to move and adapt quickly. These messages will continue to crop up as we go through the rest of videos.
These videos were taken from a think tank Dell Services held back in January in Silicon Valley which featured a panel representative of old school and new school companies, big and small.
Still to come
Later this week, I will have the last video on this initial topic, What the CIO of the future must do. Next weeks’ series will focus on the topic Applications and software strategy and the week after that I will conclude with Cloud and Infrastructure thoughts.
The Think Tank, Sessions one and two
Think Tank Session 1– Welcome to the application-centric world – best practices in the ‘greenfield’
Think tank Session 2– Nexus of forces – CIOs under pressure and the rise of the enterprise developer
A couple months ago Dell Services held a think tank out in Silicon Valley at the venture firm, NEA. We had 10 panelists representing both old school and new school organizations, both big and small: Intel, Safeway, American Cancer Society, Puppet Labs, NGINX, Stormpath, Stanford Business School, 451 Research and TechCrunch (check out the complete list of participants and session questions).
A cross-section of voices
The idea was to use this cross-section of the tech industry to really learn what was happening in IT today and where it will be tomorrow. As a group we discussed the challenges of the new app-centric world as well as how to leverage both the four mega trends: Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data, and the “three enablers”: Open Source, DevOps and APIs.
We have a series of 10 videos from the event, grouped into three, sections that I will be posting over the next few weeks:
CIO and IT skills needed for success
Applications and software strategy
Cloud and Infrastructure thoughts
Today’s Topic
This week’s topic is, CIO and IT skills needed for success and this first video features Jay Ferro, CIO, American Cancer Society and Barry Libenson, SVP and CIO, Safeway.
As Barry points out, the role of the CIO is completely different from how it was five years ago and the ability to be agile and nimble are no longer nice-to-haves but rather, essential for success. Additionally, as Jay states, it is imperative for the CIO of today to simplify their architecture and virtually become an app shop themselves.
Dell would agree with both Barry and Jay. IT is in a big period of transition and you can learn a lot from the these gentleman and the rest of the think tank :-).
Coming up this week:
What skills and types of people does IT need today
What skills does the CIO of the future need
Watch the entire Think Tank
Here are the two sessions that made up the think tank. Each are about 90 minutes:
New Age of Apps and the Delivery Gaps
Session 1– Welcome to the application-centric world – best practices in the ‘greenfield’
Session 2– Nexus of forces – CIOs under pressure and the rise of the enterprise developer
Im currently downtown at SXSW after having had lunch with a customer, AllDigital. AllDigital delivers digital content from the cloud to multiple endpoints for corporations and entertainment properties. They are here at SXSW to support some of their customers and prospect for new ones.
Before Tim Napoleon, AllDigital’s Chief of strategy, took off for his next meeting I grabbed a couple of minutes of his time. He explained what they do and why they made the trek from LA to Austin. My take away, both mobile and video are big deals and we are only going to see more.
The event, which will take place at the #DellVenue, kicks off on Monday, March 10th and ends 24 grueling hours later at noon next day.
The Challenge
The task at hand is for the developers to create an app against the Revolt API that is based around Music, Videos, and/or Artists and their data. Revolt has put together their wish list of apps and functionality they’d love to see created, but sky’s the limit (within 24 hours 😉
Applications that can be used
Windows Phone 8
Xbox
Android
Node.js
.NET
Databases that can be used
MS SQL Server
MySQL
MongoDB
Redis
The competition is limited to 50 developers who can form teams of up to five people. At noon on March 11th the teams will present their work to a panel of judges and 3 team-finalists will be chosen. All panelists will receive a badge to the Fader Fort for the preview party that night, with the winning team announced at the event.
The Reward
The top finalists will receive products and swag from Revolt and Dell.
The grand prize winning team receives $2,500 and the chance to work with Revolts’ team to integrate their app.
Im also particularly proud to say that each member of the winning team will receive the Ubuntu-based XPS13 developer edition aka Project Sputnik. But wait, there’s more…all developer finalists get a free 1 year license of Dell Software’s Toad Data Point. 🙂
Want in?
If this sounds like something you like to take part in, we are taking the first 50 devs who sign up here. Who knows, you could be one of Dell’s first ever Hackathon champions.
Here is the last in a series of videos from the Dell Services Think Tank.
During the event’s first session I posed the question — given the chance, how would you set up it for the CIO, CMO, business and developers to work together?
NGINX tech evangelist, Sarah Novotny jumped right in, having had a chance to do just this previously at a start up. The model which she proposed, which many of the room liked, was one where IT would act as a consultancy to the business and provide an ecosystem of services.
The third short video from the Dell Services Think Tank features the always enlightening and entertaining Jimmy Pike. Jimmy, who is a Senior Fellow at Dell and was once called the Willy Wonka of servers, was one of the 10 panelists at the Think Tank where we discussed the challenges of the new app-centric world.
In this clip Jimmy talks about what he terms the “persistently, ubiquitously connected to the network era” and what this means for applications going forward.
Here is the second video snippet from the Think Tank that Dell Services held the week before last. At the event we assembled 10 panelists representing both old school and new school organizations and discussed the challenges of the new app-centric world.
The short clip below features Barry Libenson, CIO of Safeway, Luke Kanies, CEO of Puppet Labs and Jay Ferro, CIO of the American Cancer Society. The three men talk about the pressure IT is under these days as consumerization drives up expectations and shadow IT has crept in.
Videos still to come
The persistently, ubiquitously connected to the network era
The week before last, Dell Services held a think tank in Silicon Valley with 10 panelists representing both old school and new school organizations. The group discussed the challenges of the new app-centric world as well as how to leverage both the “Four horsemen of IT du jour”: Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data, and the “three enablers”: Open Source, DevOps and APIs.
The idea of the Think Tank was not to look at technology for technology sake but from the view point of how it could meet customer and business needs.
Given the above, we started with question, “What do customers expect in an application today?” In the short clip below, Luke Kanies, CEO of Puppet Labs, Barry Libenson, CIO of Safeway and Jay Ferro, CIO of the American Cancer Society give their thoughts.
Videos still to come
IT is facing competition for the first time ever
The persistently, ubiquitously connected to the network era
The week before last Dell Services held a think tank out in Silicon Valley at the venture firm, NEA. We had 10 panelists representing both old school and new school organizations: Intel, Safeway, American Cancer Society, Puppet Labs, NGINX, Stormpath, Stanford Business School, 451 Research and TechCrunch (see complete list of participants below). I had the honor of moderating the panel.
The group discussed the challenges of the new app-centric world as well as how to leverage both the “Four horsemen of IT du jour”: Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data, and the “three enablers”: Open Source, DevOps and APIs.
You can see more pictures from the event as well as watch the entire think tank, which ran a bit under three and half hours, here. Additionally, over the next few days I will be posting blogs around four short video snippets from the event.
Video 1: What do customers expect
Video 2: IT is facing competition for the first time ever
Video 3: The persistently, ubiquitously connected to the network era
Video 4: The web of C level relationships
Some Take-aways
I was really impressed how well the participants gelled as a group, with just the right amount of tension :). Below are a few of the interesting tidbits I took away (I was surprised how much of the conversation came back to culture) You can also check out SDNCentral’s summary of the event .
Q: What are the customer expectations of services today?
They are personalized and immediate (friction is a killer)
They are agile and rapidly improve
Available from any device, anywhere and are always on
Q: What big bets are you making?
“Open Source all the way” — Barry Libenson, CIO, Safeway
Mobile first, platform agnostic – Jay Ferro – CIO American Cancer Society
Hire learners, not vertical experts, we want entrepreneurial problem solvers – Ranga Jayaraman – CIO, Stanford Business School
Everything must be services – Das Kamhout – IT Principal Engineer, Intel
Set up a learning culture, that is tolerant of failure – Luke Kanies, Puppet CEO
Clean APIs and modularity – Alex Salazar – CEO, Stormpath
Q: If your son or daughter wanted to be a CIO, what advice would you give them?
At the end of last year we launched the third generation of the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, aka Sputnik 3, which features the 4th generation Intel processors. This Ubuntu-based laptop is the third in a line of developer focused systems which began life as the internal skunk works effort, “Project Sputnik.” Thanks to strong community input and support the project became a product a little over a year ago.
Over this past month there have been three great reviews that have come out that I wanted to share.
This first review, from J’s blog, is quite detailed and comprehensive. It has great photos and got nice traction on Hacker News. Here is the opening paragraph
The XPS 13 Developer Edition, aka “Project Sputnik”, is a laptop with a FullHD 13-inch screen, backlit keyboard, SSD, 4th gen intel CPU and comes pre-installed with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
What makes this machine so interesting is not so much that Ubuntu comes pre-installed on it (it would be easy for anybody to install it him/herself, after all), but rather that Dell put some extra-work in making sure everything works right out of the box and supports running Ubuntu on it. WiFi, keyboard backlight, screen brightness control, sleepmode, etc. are guaranteed to work. [read more]
Carin Meier not only reviewed the XPS 13 developer edition but walks folks who may be interested in leaving their Macs behind how she set up her programs that she uses on a daily basis. This blog too has great pics. Carin’s blog starts,
I felt like I was in a controlling relationship headed downhill. After two custom laptops returned for defective hardware, I wanted to leave. But leaving didn’t seem so easy after living in the walled garden of Apple all those years.
This blog post is about how to leave your Mac and return to OSS.
There are quite a few nice alternatives to the Mac Air out there. I decided to go with the new Sputnik 3. Some of my reasons:
Powerful – New Haswell processor
13.3 inch touch display with 1920 x 1080 resolution
The third review, by David Pollack, is actually a twofer in that he posted a follow on entry, Still Liking the XPS 13 Developer Edition, two weeks after the first. David’s posts are succinct and well laid out and I love his concluding paragraph 🙂
Just buy one
If you’re doing development like Clojure and Java, then the XPS 13 Developer Edition is a better choice than the MacBook Pro. It’s less expensive and just as impressive hardware-wise. And I like Linux a lot more than OS X. [Read more]
Mark Stouse of BMC has asked various people in the industry to answer seven short questions for his series Marking Predictions for 14. The questions are around Cloud Computing, Big Data and Consumerization.
To give you a taste of what I was thinking about, here is my response to the second question and why I think Consumerization is a big deal:
Cloud Computing, Big Data or Consumerization: which trend do you feel is having the most impact on IT today and why?
Consumerization, because it sets the bar for how technology should look and be designed. Workers want technology in the workplace that is as easy to use and intuitive as the consumer applications and tech products they use at home. Consumerization has set a high bar for IT but one that I believe will ultimately benefit all involved through greater adoption, satisfaction and productivity.
You can see my complete responses on Mark’s blog and learn, among other things, why I think Tony Stark is like big data.
Posted by Barton George 
a FullHD 13-inch screen, backlit keyboard, SSD, 4th gen intel CPU and comes pre-installed with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
two custom laptops returned for defective hardware, I wanted to leave. But leaving didn’t seem so easy after living in the walled garden of Apple all those years.
Barton's Blog 