Tag Archives: Cloud

Can Platform Engineering Hide Complexity?

Is platform engineering effective at hiding complexity from developers? Today we tear apart what platform engineering is doing, how it came about and what it’s trying to be.

We discuss what companies are trying to accomplish with platform engineering – how can successful efforts improve outcomes for development teams and operations teams by improving collaboration in contracts? Why and how is that important, and what do those efforts entail?

Transcript: otter.ai/u/bVd1_IwEqFD-uEYxsy…?utm_source=copy_url
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/woman-posin…erwater-15674505/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the Cloud 2030 podcast episode on platform engineering, Rob Hirschfeld, CEO of RackN, explores the profound impact of platform engineering on operational efficiency and developer complexity. He emphasizes the discipline’s role in making operations accessible, efficient, and repeatable, leading to significant benefits for companies and DevOps teams. While discussing how platform engineering can hide complexity, Hirschfeld highlights the ongoing essential work involved, debunking the notion of shortcuts and emphasizing the value it adds to organizations. He invites listeners to join discussions at the 2030.cloud, where important technology topics are analyzed in depth.

Digital Twins + AI = WOW

How can the intersection of generative AI machine learning and artificial intelligence be applied to environments using digital twins? Today we discuss digital twins and artificial intelligence.

How can we improve the simulations, the systems, the interactions that we build? How can we correctly model complex components of everything from cars to pumps in ways that allow us to then build on top and build more intelligent systems.

We come up with some grounded examples.

Mentioned: projectarrow.ca/
Transcript: otter.ai/u/A79s08jpJ4-UPyT313…?utm_source=copy_url
Image:www.pexels.com/photo/two-bernese…on-floor-9040438/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the Cloud 2030 podcast episode on digital twins and AI, Rob Hirschfeld discusses the potential of using digital twins in handling real-world disasters, citing the recent train derailment in Ohio as an example. The concept involves quickly creating a digital twin of a disaster space to enable robots to learn, adapt, and efficiently mitigate the situation. Hirschfeld emphasizes the unprecedented opportunities for improving environmental interactions, responding to crises, and highlights the sophistication of ideas discussed in the episode. He encourages listeners to explore the full conversation on digital twins and AI at the2030.cloud.

Business Value of Platform Engineering

https://soundcloud.com/user-410091210/business-value-of-platform-engineering

Platform engineering is quite buzzy and has a lot of hype at the moment.

Today we dug behind the hype to acknowledge how the term is being used and misused. We cover why this is a topic of interest, how it’s driving customer thinking around operations and development teams, how it’s working to establish standard operating procedure around infrastructure and operations to support a business, and how those needs drive the evolution of our technology, infrastructure and design thinking.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/GksMnMIZV0cyM6iwWj…?utm_source=copy_url
Image:www.pexels.com/photo/person-in-b…of-cards-6255293/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the Cloud 2030 podcast episode on platform engineering, Rob Hirschfeld highlights the evolution of IT from bespoke and custom practices towards standardized operations. He emphasizes the need for easier-to-use systems that conform to standard practices, enabling businesses to optimize and scale infrastructure more efficiently. Hirschfeld discusses the challenges of unique and non-standardized operations within organizations, leading to scalability issues and touches on the broader trend driving platform engineering. He encourages listeners to explore the full conversation on the Cloud 2030 channel and engage in further discussions at 2030.cloud.

Hachyderm.io Leaves Basement

https://soundcloud.com/user-410091210/hachydermio-leaves-basement

Hazel walks us through the Hackyderm.io leaving the basement migration. We also talk much more generally about Mastodon fediverse and scaling distributed systems.

This podcast is like a super class in what it takes to scale infrastructure and systems, especially live and under duress. Every minute of this conversation is worth listening to twice.

Check out these resources as well:
* hachyderm.io/@hazelweakly
* opalstack.social/@d3cline/109638734488964593
* community.hachyderm.io/blog/2022/12/…the-basement/

Transcript: otter.ai/u/FBIjekCBWcd8tlj1v-…?utm_source=copy_url
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/elephant-cu…ya-savanna-66898/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the Cloud 2030 podcast episode discussing Hacky Derm’s scaling challenges, Rob Hirschfeld commends Hazel weekly for exploring the intricacies of exponential growth and federated platform integration. He highlights the significance of core architectural design decisions, such as Twitter’s use of immutable IDs for tweets and the necessity for sharing media files in federated systems. Hirschfeld emphasizes the impact of early design choices on an application’s lifecycle, resilience, and scalability, encouraging listeners to delve into the insightful January 31st episode and join the Cloud 2030 community for ongoing discussions at the2030.cloud.

Metadata For A Data Control Plane

https://soundcloud.com/user-410091210/metadata-for-a-data-control-plane

Metadata is information that travels with the raw data that provides context, provenance, security, authorship, controls, and indexing.

The number of ways that you can expand the use of data is controlled by adding metadata. It creates a change in how we look at and manage data. Instead of creating control systems that contain the data, it’s actually packaged the control infrastructure, or the data control plane, as part of the data so that all of the systems can participate in it.

We also talk about data mesh a lot in that context.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/bho2SHu0N1YfECix6X8qNvKTlB4
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/pensive-eth…up-phone-3760607/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the Cloud 2030 Podcast episode from January 19th, Rob Hirschfeld discusses the challenges and opportunities associated with metadata, particularly in the context of managing and sharing data effectively. The conversation explores the concept of packaging raw data in a way that makes it available on request without being included, accompanied by metadata detailing its provenance, access permissions, context, and even expiration dates. Hirschfeld emphasizes the importance of building a data control plane to navigate the complexities of data consumption and production, envisioning a future where metadata plays a crucial role in weaving together diverse data sources. Listeners are encouraged to explore the full 40-minute discussion for comprehensive insights, and to join ongoing conversations at the2030.cloud.

ROI from Putting Data In Context

https://soundcloud.com/user-410091210/roi-from-putting-data-in-context

If you love data and data context formats for exchanging data, you will love this conversation.

Today’s episode is a deep conversation about the potential ability to define ways in which we produce, store and share data, providing context using markup languages, and then being able to extend that. It’s a fascinating conversation about how much we could improve our use of data if we were able to provide more context about who wanted to see it and what relevance it had.

We also have some interesting conversations about data migration and how we share information.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/S9_tibMGhkoajG0bP8LaciJ32Ys
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/a-grayscale…is-hand-10839215/

Exploring Backstage.io Integration

Today we talk about backstage.io, and we have that conversation centered around a demo done by one of the RackN and interns, Zander Franks. Check out the demo video here: youtu.be/cAQQOmKz4OI

Zander has been exploring with the backstage to Digital Rebar integration, and the conversation that results explains backstage in some fundamental ways and also what it takes to build good developer portals.

You will find in this episode both the broader information about how to do integrations where you have a developer portal as a front end and the key insights about how backstage works.

To get the most out of the backstage pieces, you will definitely want to see the video on Youtube. Take time to enjoy this whole podcast, both in video and audio format.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/xWx-q_ZvK4oX1sDJS09F1BsaZZI
Image:www.pexels.com/photo/wood-fashio…n-people-5650782/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the Cloud 2030 Podcast episode from January 10th, Rob Hirschfeld discusses the backstage integration, emphasizing the importance of understanding the dynamics involved in building an integration between a developer self-service portal and the systems responsible for a robust deployment experience. Hirschfeld underscores the critical point that while developer interfaces are crucial in platform engineering, they should not be expected to replace production tools like orchestrators, observability platforms, and infrastructure automation components. The episode features a demonstration and code exploration, providing valuable insights into the complexities and considerations of such integrations. For those interested in similar discussions, the Cloud 2030 community welcomes participation at the2030.cloud.

Chat GPT In IT

We discussed the implications of chat GPT for it and the industry.

In today’s episode, we spend a lot of time figuring out how data provenance governance, bias, and ownership will impact chat GPT in IT and technology and cloud contexts. This discussion really looks into how chat GPT can be used in disruptive ways, but also in protective ways as what we describe as guardrails for how these systems are going to get built.

We come to some very interesting conclusions.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/aETNeRoDnspFnmPT3KcjBuHQTzE
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/surprised-y…le-phone-3771127/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the Cloud 2030 podcast’s January fifth episode, CEO Rob Hirschfeld explores the complexities of data provenance in ChatGPT, questioning ownership and control of the generated content. He emphasizes the need to understand the sources of data, pondering whether the output belongs to users, the algorithm, or no one, highlighting the challenges of systems that belong to nobody. Hirschfeld also connects this issue with Software Bill of Materials, emphasizing the importance of knowing the components of systems for accuracy and confidence. He encourages listeners to delve into the full episode for valuable insights and invites them to engage further in discussions at 2030.Cloud.

Balancing Architecture and Ease of Use

What is the architectural balance between learning curve, architecture, building things that can scale while acknowledging overhead, and the attitude of just get it done? Don’t make my tools complex and let me be very productive quickly. If it doesn’t scale, then we see this as an ongoing challenge.

Two engineers from RackN led today’s discussion in which we really talked about the balance that we try to achieve at RackN as we design our product, with the understanding that, ultimately, scale really does matter.

If users have trouble understanding how the product works, at first, that learning curve can push people away, so that they never actually get into the product. That’s where finding the right balance is absolutely essential to success.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/DAfKcHVBAiOY5EuReW1krDYsqso
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/anonymous-w…h-outfit-7148032/

2030 Forecast for 2023

We do a 2022 retrospective slash 2023 prediction episode – a sort of end of the year classic for us, except our predictions and look ahead are different from most people’s.

We’re looking at some broader trends around software, build materials, impact of GPT (which will be a future episode), edge Technology, cloud adoption, security, faults and failures.

Not your garden variety look back look ahead type of show.

Transcript: otter.ai/u/IzKlo7CAljPkSzmyV5qLy5kLPj0
Image: www.pexels.com/photo/binocular-b…discovery-221538/

Rob’s Hot Take:

In the Cloud 2030 Podcast’s December 15th retrospective on 2022, Rob Hirschfeld discusses the significant momentum and necessity behind the adoption of Software Bill of Materials (SBoMs) for describing deployed software in a structured, programmatic manner. While emphasizing the immediate security and resilience benefits, Hirschfeld also highlights the broader economic advantages of SBoMs, drawing parallels with their use in manufacturing to provide controls and structure for normal activities. The conversation delves into various insights about the industry’s direction in 2023, making it a valuable episode beyond the focus on SBoMs. Those interested in these discussions are encouraged to check out the full episode on the2030.cloud and participate in the ongoing conversations.