Cloud Gossip

Serverless with Marcia Villalba

hello@cloudgossip.net (Marcia Villalba) — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 12:07:52 +0000

Guest Bio:

Marcia Villalba is Senior Developer Advocate for AWS Serverless, and a public speaker.

She’s also a very active content creator, she posts weekly on her “FooBar” youtube channel content related to serverless and the cloud. She also has a separate channel in Spanish called “Marcia y La Nube” and is also the host of the Podcast “Charlas Técnicas de AWS”.

For the past 20 years, she has been designing and developing software. Marcia worked in all the different stages of building software that scales and performs. She has deep knowledge of building applications in the cloud, with serverless and using DevOps processes.

Her passion is designing systems that can take full advantage of the cloud and embrace the DevOps culture. She writes regularly in the AWS News Blog about new upcoming AWS launches.

Timestamps:

0:56 Speakers introduction
4:00 Customer engagement
6:44 Community feedback
8:25 Events flexibility post pandemic
18:10 Serverless services in AWS
23:20 Things to learn in the Serverless space
25:34 The most exciting tech things
29:12 Favourite Sci-fi tech
30:34 Diversity and inclusion
32:45 Lifting others up
35:45 Community
36:53 Episode Wrap-up

Links mentioned in the episode:

Pink programming: https://www.pinkprogramming.se/en/
AWS restart: https://aws.amazon.com/training/restart/
AWS CDK community https://cdk.dev/
Free codecamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/

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Cloud as Code with Matt Stratton

hello@cloudgossip.net (Matt Stratton) — Mon, 6 Jun 2022 18:18:27 +0000

Guest Bio:

Matt Stratton is a Staff Developer Advocate at Pulumi, founder and co-host of the popular Arrested DevOps podcast, and the global chair of the DevOpsDays set of conferences.

Matt has over 20 years of experience in IT operations and is a sought-after speaker internationally, presenting at Agile, DevOps, and cloud engineering focused events worldwide.

He’s passionate about helping organizations use awesome tools to focus on what makes them special and drive relevant cultural change. He truly believe that DevOps can revolutionize IT, or at least make it more fun to go to work.

Matt lives in Chicago and has three awesome kids, whom he loves just a little bit more than he loves Diet Coke. Matt is the keeper of the Thought Leaderboard for the DevOps Party Games online game show and you can find him on Twitter at @mattstratton.

Quote

“Things that are meant for machines have them be for machines. Json is not supposed to be read by humans or much less written by humans.”

-Matt Stratton -

Timestamps:

0:18 Speaker Introduction
1:35 Returning to in person conferences
4:59 Friendships during the pandemic
6:31 What does Matt’s average day looks like?
11:40 Conferences: virtual only vs in person
20:28 Pulumi approach to IaC
24:48 What should developers learn next?
27:33 Future of Tech
29:52 Favourite Sci-fi Tech and changes
31:54 Diversity and inclusion
37:26 How to lift others up
39:09 Community
42:16 Episode Wrap up

Learn more about the DevOps Days community at https://devopsdays.org/.

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Cloud identities and the transformation of cloud advocacy, with Christos Matskas

hello@cloudgossip.net (Christos Matskas) — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 08:06:18 +0000

Guest Bio

Christos Matskas is a Senior Program Manager working as a Developer Advocate for the Microsoft Identity Division. His role involves helping developers write more secure and robust software, leveraging the power of Identity and Cloud.

Before joining Microsoft, he was a successful entrepreneur collaborating with companies such as MarkIT, Lockheed Martin, and Barclays. He routinely works with the Azure Active Directory, MS Graph, and Managed Identities and he’s got 15 yrs of experience writing Software on the .NET stack.

Christos contributes regularly to numerous OSS projects and works closely with the developer community to make the space bigger and better. He’s also a dad, husband, speaker, and passionate streamer.

Timestamps

0:45 Speakers Introduction
1:37 Christos typical day
3:12 The transformation of Cloud Advocacy
7:08 Which accounts to follow on TikTok/Discord
8:51 External and Internal communication
13:21 Managed Identities
19:47 Microsoft.Identity.Web Library
23:47 Securing Cloud Identity in the future
29:57 Managed Identity in Cosmos DB
32:29 Future of Tech
37:30 Diversity and inclusion
40:49 Community
42:05 Episode Wrap-up

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Working on Kubernetes with Lucas Käldström

hello@cloudgossip.net (Lucas Käldström) — Wed, 5 May 2021 09:47:05 +0000

Guest Bio:

Lucas Kaldström is a Kubernetes upstream contributor, KubeCon keynote speaker and a CNCF ambassador.In 2015 he got inspired by Google to work on containers and started contributing to the open-source Kubernetes community.

He currently works with Weaveworks as a contractor, sharing his tech solutions and expertise. He received several offers to move to the Bay Area but he is aiming at studying more and keep growing in his native country of Finland.

Lucas is very passionate about diversity and inclusion, ethics, and sustainability and he’s currently learning more about how to implement those to the best degree possible.

He will share his in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes, as well as plenty of anecdotes about its past, present, and future.

Timestamps:

0:44Speakers introduction
1:34 Lucas' background story
3:10 Lucas' role
5:45 Who are the Kubernetes contributors?
9:56 What do the Kubernetes contributors do?
12:54 Special interest group
19:39 Working groups
22:43 The decision-making process
27:28 Lucas' past work
29:55 How Kubernetes works
33:06 Joining the Kubernetes community
35:19 Kubernetes core values
39:19 Future of Tech
56:37 Top 3 upcoming CNC projects
1:03:00 Sci-fi Tech
1:05:00 Diversity and Inclusion
1:13:00 Community shout-outs
1:15:00 Episode Wrap up

Connect with Lucas:

Links mentioned in the episode:

Lucas' and Nikhita's community Keynote: Getting Started in the Kubernetes Community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bho4miiByP0
Goto 2019 - Why Open Source Firmware is Important - Jessie Frazelle: https://youtu.be/mUTx61t443A
Open Compute Project: www.opencompute.org Oxide: https://oxide.computer/
Rust Programming Language: https://www.rust-lang.org/
Complete rewrite of the storage system: https://github.com/weaveworks/libgitops/pull/46
Flux - The GitOps Family of projects: https://fluxcd.io/
Nykarleby innovation center in Finland: https://www.nykarlebyinnovationcenter.fi/

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SaaS marketing flywheel with Henni Roini

hello@cloudgossip.net (Annie Talvasto & Karl Ots) — Wed, 7 Apr 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Guest bio

Henni Roini is a marketing manager at Hubspot, in Dublin.

She’s passionate about providing excellent customer experiences by implementing cohesive strategies inside and outside the organization.

She’s a Full-stack marketing professional skilled in managing and growing new businesses and projects from startup to success, specializing in SaaS marketing.

Her expertise includes online marketing, sales, and marketing alignment, co-marketing, business development, conversion optimization, lead generation, and project management.

Henni is originally from Finland, where she had the chance to interact with startup communities such as Slush, Startuplifers, and more.

Quote

“I feel that marketing should really work with the full flywheel.

So what this means is that you should be working with sales and service on making sure that your organization is aligned internally, so that you can actually present that unified customer experience externally.” Henni Roini

Timestamps:

0:50 Speakers introduction
1:49 What does SaaS Marketing mean?
3:13 Henni's role
4:17 What is Hubspot?
5:45 Marketing at Hubspot
10:40 Hubspot Academy
13:54 What’s enjoyable about SaaS Marketing?
16:07 Key skills to work in SaaS as a marketer
17:51 The marketing space in the organization
20:07 What is enablement content?
26:15 Henni's favorite new tech
29:00 Henni's favorite Sci-fi tech
30:20 Diversity and inclusion
31:55 How to lift others up
33:42 Community shout-outs
35:02 Episode Wrap-up

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Links mentioned in the Episode:

“How to buy cloud” Episode**:** https://cloudgossip.net/episodes/how-to-buy-cloud
HubSpot academy course: inbound marketing https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/inbound
Gong software: https://www.gong.io/
CX Spotlight event: https://cxspotlight.com/
A startup community in Finland https://www.slush.org/

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Evolution of DevOps with Martyn Coupland

hello@cloudgossip.net (Martyn Coupland) — Mon, 8 Mar 2021 04:00:00 +0000

Martyn Coupland is a Principal Solution Architect at Ensono, Azure MVP, and DevOps Ambassador at DevOps Institute, as well as an author, speaker, and blogger.

Martyn is a regular speaker at conferences and user groups, published author, and has previously worked for a Microsoft Azure managed service provider leading engineering teams.

He works with clients on their Microsoft Azure deployments, works on creative solutions to unleash the power of cloud for clients, and speaks to them about the adoption of DevOps.

He’s been in technology all of his working life, ever since leaving college, he has worked in various industries and worked in a number of roles from a Service Desk Analyst, Programmer, Systems Engineer, Consultant, Architect, and Senior Manager.

Martyn's his career, like many others, started on the service desk in IT, performing first-line support.

Quote

“Whoever you are, whatever your background is, whether you’re male, female, whatever your religion is, it doesn’t matter...whatever you identify yourself as you’ll build yourself a successful and strong career by being yourself. Because being yourself is what makes you “you” at the end of the day .” - Martyn Coupland

Timestamps

0:44 Guest introduction
2:19 DevOps Institute
4:02 Martyn's clients
5:43 Mainframes
6:59 Martyn's definition of DevOps
11:21 The evolution of the DevOps
16:45 The impact of DevOps in the industry
22:41 The impact of DevOps on Software Developers
27:12 The impact of DevOps on Technology
31:20 Cloud-Native Philosophy
39:56 Future of tech
44:53 Martin's favorite Sci-Fi Tech
46:54 Diversity and Inclusion
51:39 How to improve equality
53:42 Community
56:36 Episode wrap-up

Connect with Martyn on Twitter: @mrcoups

Links mentioned in the Episode:

DevOps Squared Podcast:
- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/devops-squared/id1509472914
Jessica Deen’s video Developing With CONFIDENCE:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQcwp4cMHGE
Agile Manifesto:
- https://agilemanifesto.org/
CloudFamily:
- https://cloudfamily.info

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Microsoft Graph in the past, present and future with Fabian Williams

hello@cloudgossip.net (Fabian Williams) — Fri, 5 Feb 2021 19:25:45 +0000

We are going to learn about who benefits from using Microsoft Graph, what changes and advantages the platform brings to the table, and how it evolved over time.

Fabian is going to talk about why he believes more developers should add Graph to their skill-set, why he likes Python, and how modern-day software development is shaping the industry. We are going to hear his thoughts about the future of tech, FTL travel, diversity, and inclusion, and remote work.

Guest Bio:

Fabian Williams is a Senior Program Manager on the Microsoft Graph Team at Microsoft.

He is a 7x MVP awardee beginning with his work with the SharePoint product line that dates to the 2003 release.

Fabian holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Information System “Magna-Cum-Laude” from Strayer University, Washington D.C. and his Masters in Computer Information Technology studies at the Johns Hopkins University Carey School for Business in Columbia, Maryland.

He likes to engage with the SharePoint PnP community and share his expertise with others, with a strong focus on diversity and inclusion.

You may find him on Twitter at the @fabianwilliams handle and his blog is http://www.fabiangwilliams.com.

Quote

“For people who are in my position: turn around and look back to see all of the people that are trying to get up the ladder as well, and extend a helping hand.”Fabian Williams

Timestamps:

1:24 Guest Introduction
2:18 The Program Manager role
5:00 Fabian’s daily work routine
9:10 Introduction to Microsoft Graph
11:13 Who are Graph’s users?
15:45 The benefits of Graph
17:45 Modern-day developers
21:06 Should devs learn Graph in the future?
22:05 Work from home hacks with Graph
25:21 Fabian's favorite current technologies right now
28:22 Fabian's favorite future tech
29:47 Diversity and Inclusion
34:20 Community shout outs

Connect with Fabian on

Links mentioned in the Episode:

SharePoint PnP community: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/community/community
Baltimore SharePoint user group: https://www.meetup.com/baltimoresharepoint
Free LinkedIn Learning course on unconscious bias - no LinkedIn account or signup needed: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/unconscious-bias/welcome

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Adventures in open source with Tom Kerkhove

hello@cloudgossip.net (Annie Talvasto & Karl Ots) — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 11:00:00 +0000

We’re going to learn about KEDA and CNCF Sandbox projects, what they are and how they work, and learn about some of Tom’s insights in the industry.

He’s going to talk about how GitHub is helping the world of Open Source projects and how he uses the platform to engage with the users.

We’re going to hear his opinions about the future of tech as well as discussing how we can use what we already have in a better way.

Enjoy the episode and don’t miss the links and resources that Tom shared with us, you can find them at the bottom of the page.

Guest Bio:

Tom Kerkhove is the creator of Promitor.io , he works for Codit as an Azure Architect and he’s also a maintainer of KEDA and Arcus as well as a GitHub Star and a CNCF Ambassador.

On top of this, he’s also a member of the AZUG crew and he has been a Microsoft Azure MVP & Azure Advisor since 2014.

He’s very passionate about Open Source Projects and Tech in general and he’s very committed to constantly improving them going forward.

You can find Tom on GitHub where he’s very active and you can read the articles that he posts on his blog on blog.tomkerkhove.be where he shares his expertise with the community.

Quote

“Let’s not worry about the next big thing, but let’s make sure we use the current technology at its best .” Tom Kerkhove

Timestamps:

(0:00) Episode Summary
(1:42) Tom Introduces himself
(3:07) Tom's Role and his clients
(5:05)What is Keda?
(9:46) How is to work on Open-Source projects
(12:55) How to contribute to Open-Source projects
(17:49) Learning about CNCF Sandbox projects
(20:24) How Tom manages his time
(25:07) The engagement with users explained
(28:30) Github improvements for support
(32:10) Tom talks about the changes in Tech
(38:08) Tom’s favorite Sci-Fi Tech
(39:58) Talk about diversity and inclusion
(41:32) Advice to empower others
(43:20) Community shout out
(44:58) Episode wrap up and goodbyes

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Promitor and KEDA projects in Github:

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Growing strong communities with Isidora Katanic

hello@cloudgossip.net (Isidora Katanic) — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 12:19:58 +0000

Isidora Katanic is going talk to us about how to grow a strong community, how successful events are organized, her tips and tricks to give great online presentations, and the importance of diversity and inclusion.

She’s also going to share her opinion on how Covid-19 affected the conference world, and how these 2020 changes encouraged more people to join tech and use it in everyday life.

Isidora is going to talk about some of her future goals and share with us her favorite Community Projects as well as explaining to us what the “Head in the Cloud, Heart in the Community” video series is all about.

Guest Bio:

Isidora Katanic is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and Co-Host of the video series "Head in the cloud, Heart in the community".

She’s also the Co-Founder of the event management company districtUP - organizing IT community conferences Experts Live Europe and Experts Live Switzerland focused on Microsoft cloud, data center, security, and modern workplace technologies.

Isidora engages with the Microsoft community and travels around the world to organize, speak, and attend conferences to learn, connect, and share with others.

In 2020 Isidora has been awarded the #AzureHeroes badge in the category of Inclusive Leadership. She has also been selected as the 1st Cloud Community Champion, a community-driven initiative.

Quote

“When you think about it, community stands for a common-unity. So I think the importance is to find people who actually have something in common, the power and success are to get those people to work together. To form a unity together.”Isidora Katanic

Timestamps:

(0:00) Episode Summary
(1:43) Guest Intro
(2:51) The meaning of Community
(3:42) How to build a successful tech community
(5:12) The power of storytelling
(7:13) How to grow a Twitter community
(10:50) How to keep people interested in your event
(13:32) What Isidora finds appealing in an event
(16:38) The conference world post-Covid-19
(19:53) Tips on doing online presentations
(23:40) Top 3 tech things Isidora is passionate about
(26:49) Isidora's favorite fantasy tech
(28:58) Diversity and Inclusion
(31:54) How to empower others
(33:07) Isidora's future community projects
(34:09) Shout out to the community
(35:49) Episode wrap up and goodbyes

Links:

Connect with Isidora on:

https://www.twitter.com/isidorakatanic
https://www.linkedin.com/in/isidora-katanic-0b479534/
https://www.isidorakatanic.com/video-series
Isidora's video series, Head in the cloud, Heart in the community: https://www.isidorakatanic.com/video-series

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Tech calender: https://festivetechcalendar.com/

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Data, Data & Data with Adi Polak

hello@cloudgossip.net (Adi Polak) — Wed, 9 Dec 2020 20:37:48 +0000

Adi Polak is going to share her expertise and thoughts on Machine Learning, Big Data, and the future trends in the industry. She’s also gonna talk about how these complex things work, the challenges they present, and some of the buzzwords typical of her industry.

Adi’s gonna share with us which tasks she performs on a daily basis, which personality traits are beneficial for her work, and the differences between the different job roles in her field.

We’re also are gonna learn more about Adi’s involvement in the community, her approach to teaching and learning, and how this can make a difference in people’s lives.

Guest Bio:

Adi Polak is a senior software engineer and a developer advocate at Microsoft working on Azure, where she focuses on distributed systems, big data analysis, machine learning at scale, and functional programming. She does extensive work in the Big Data and Functional programming communities.

Adi has an extensive background in software development. She holds an M.sc in Software and Information Systems Engineering from Ben Gurion University, during her studies she worked with IBM and Deutsch Telekom Research labs on various projects where she gained expertise in ML.

Adi was nominated to be 1 of 25 influential women in Software Development by Apiumhub.

Quote

"It takes some dedicated work, but It takes strategic work sometimes as well. So it's not alwaysabout working hard, it's also about being strategic on the things that you decide to pursue." Adi Polak

Timestamps:

(0:44) Speakers and podcast introduction
(3:05) Microsoft activity in the Open Source field
(4:25) How Adi deals with Open Source work
(8:05) Differences between big data and machine learning
(12:33) The newest things in the industry
(15:43) Versioning challenges
(17:15) Different Job Roles and what makes them unique
(21:35) How Adi approaches learning
(26:05) How Adi teaches others
(29:08) How Covid-19 has changed things
(33:11) Personality traits that Adi finds beneficial in her role
(36:19) 3 things in tech that Adi's is excited about now
(37:42) Adi's favorite fantasy technology
(39:57) Adi's involvement in diversity projects
(43:33) How to help and encourage others
(46:46) Adi's shout-out to a special community

Links:

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/adi-polak-68548365/

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Software & scaleups with Mike Martin

hello@cloudgossip.net (Mike Martin) — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 07:54:36 +0000

Mike Martin is going to talk to us about his role in the company, how ISVs and the Microsoft OCP operate, his thoughts on the future of tech, and the importance of diversity and inclusion in IT and outside of it.

He’s also going to share some key advice to future startups and scale-ups and he’ll explain his approach to software creation and what he believes are the key factors companies should focus on.

Mike’s going to talk about how he communicates with his team and how to provide constructive criticism in a way that encourages others.

We’re also going to learn more about Mike’s favorite communities, the importance of Ecology, and some of his personal experiences working with ISVs.

Guest Bio:

Mike Martin works for Microsoft Western Europe as Cloud Solution Architect for ISV's with a focus on the Microsoft Cloud Platform.

He’s been active in the IT industry for more than 20 years and has performed almost all types of job profiles, going from coaching and leading a team to architecting and systems design and training.

Today he’s primarily into the Microsoft Cloud Platform and Application Lifecycle Management. He’s not a stranger to both dev and IT Pro topics. On April 1st 2013 he also became a Microsoft Azure MVP, an award he managed to get 5 years in a row.

Quote

"Think about how your business model should evolve and what you need to do next inside of your business model. Thinking of features it's not hard. Thinking of the next move in becoming a large enterprise......that's the hardest part." Mike Martin

Timestamps:

(1:31) Guest Introduction
(2:02) Mike's job role and tasks
(3:43) What is OCP and what are ISVs
(6:34) Things that Mike doesn’t do in his role
(7:45) The current trends in the industry
(11:54) How Mike's partners changed their use of tech
(14:58) A story about one of Mike’s ISVs
(20:24) Advice to future scale-ups and start-ups
(26:24) What to focus on when creating software
(34:22) Constructive criticism within the team
(40:51) Predictions on the future of tech
(49:35) Mike's thoughts on inclusiveness and diversity
(55:59) Some of Mike's favorite communities

Links:

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How to buy cloud intelligently

hello@cloudgossip.net (Teemu Tapanila, Annie Talvasto, Karl Ots) — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 15:47:00 +0000

Today on the show: we give you the vocabulary and tools to buy cloud in an intelligent way.

Prologue

So, you have decided to buy cloud! Good decision. Cloud provides a lot of benefits such as flexibility, evergreen versions and cost effectiveness. If you look around - surf the internet or visit an expo - you'll find that there are so many options for a cloud provider. Each and every one of them claims to be the best in some metric, and they are the one you should choose. However, how can you evaluate them? You might be wondering, which provider should I trust? What should I ask them? What should I keep in mind when purchasing cloud.

In this episode, we give you the vocabulary and ammunition to buy cloud in an intelligent way. To get to the bottom of purchasing cloud, we will first have to discuss and figure out what the cloud actually is. Usually the cloud is categorized into 3 different sections. They are Software as a service also known as SaaS, Platform as a service known as PaaS and Infrastructure as a service, IaaS.

See the pattern? It’s no longer about old-school servers, now it’s all about services. The choice is between level of control and responsibilities: This means that in Infrastructure as a service we get most control but have more responsibilities than in the Platform as a service or Software as a service models. A handy way of thinking about this is that with Software as a Service you buy ready made solution, like a stuffed bear or a Star Wars figure. With platform as a service you build the figure from building blocks -- like you would build up a Lego set from given blocks. And with Infrastructure as a Service you literally build the blocks yourself, for example by 3d printing them and then building the toy from the blocks that you built yourself.

Understanding the differences in cloud areas is particularly important to avoid cloud washing! That happens when a company is selling traditional datacenter capacity as cloud, meaning that you don’t get the benefits of the cloud. So you gotta be careful! Most companies who are "in the cloud" use Software as a Service: for example Google Gmail for email service in the cloud, Dropbox for storing your files in the cloud or Microsoft Office 365 for emails and file storage. You can learn more about cloud service models in the episode - What is the cloud. For this episode, we are ready to get to the juicy stuff.

Cloudwashing, contract length and migration readiness

We are going to highlight some of the biggest obstacles companies might face. They are cloudwashing, contract length and migration readiness. We will begin by looking into the first notorious obstacle, cloudwashing, through an example.

In this case a company was facing the end of their email software lifecycle: they needed to upgrade their email software. Last time they upgraded, it took them 6 months and multiple failures to get the new system running. And on top of that, their best email administrator had since retired. They wanted to move into an “evergreen” system - meaning that the email service is always upgraded to the latest version. They chose to go to a traditional service provider who promised them all the power of the cloud without the downsides. However, it turned out that the email service provided was actually the same version that the company was trying to move away from. And the service provider had a larger customer using the same email service. The larger customer had their own business reasons to upgrade in a slower pace. So the company got stuck with the old version until the other customer allows the service provider to upgrade the email service. Our unfortunate company is a victim of cloud washing: they had paid for a cloud service, but got traditional it solutions.

Let's look into the second obstacle, contract length. A company might have an existing contract that lasts for multiple years. During that time, even if they stopped using the service, they would still pay the same amount. This means that even if they would have migrated their software to the cloud, they wouldn’t achieve the cost effectiveness of the cloud. They would essentially pay for two contracts at the same time.

And about the third obstacle: migration readiness. Migration means the movement of software from one server to another. This is a huge change, so it requires careful planning in order to keep daily business running. The company needs to ensure their IT professionals have the right skill set to perform the migration. Once the migration is completed, the end-users need to be trained in order to be productive in the new environment.

Best Practices

So now that we know what pitfalls to avoid, we can move on towards the good tips you can use. Let's list some best practices! These are the things you should ask from potential vendors and companies you are considering. We have 4 questions for you to ask, and take away as a checklist for your cloud negotiations!

Number one. How do I get my data out if I leave to another provider? These questions are important to ask, because in the worst case the migration could only be done with the help of the provider or with their permission. That would basically mean that whenever you would like to leave their cloud service, you would need to go to them and ask them to help move your data out of their system. This would be similar to getting a free entry to a night club but having to pay to get out. It will be in the best interest of the old cloud provider to make the migration as slow or as expensive as possible, essentially keeping your data as a hostage. Most likely they would always blame the new provider for any obstacles occured. The specific questions to ask would be: How long does it take to export my data? At what cost? Who can perform the work?

Then the second question to ask would be this: Do you match your prices with competitors? This is a very important topic. Some hyperscale cloud providers - Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have publicly promised to match each other's pricing in comparable services. For example, if one of these three cloud providers reduces pricing in virtual machines, the others will match those new prices. This applies to most cost-sensitive services like storage or virtual machines. Having these price drops and active price competition is really beneficial for cloud users. Users may get several price drops per year, meaning that the operating costs would get lower over time! This is really different from the traditional IT world, where you would negotiate a fixed cost upfront, preferably even for several years in order to keep the prices from rising. So concrete questions to ask would be: Do you match your prices with competitors? Which competitors? How fast do you match those prices? How fast does it show up on my bill / or is it only for new customers. Devil is in the details here!

And another, the third, question is related to something called pay as you go billing. In true cloud model, you pay retroactively based on what you actually use. For example, if you only use a certain virtual machine for 17 minutes, you would only get billed for 17 minutes. This is similar to how your mobile carrier charges you. If you call for 17 minutes, you get billed for 17 minutes. In traditional hosting, you would pay upfront based on estimated usage, even though you wouldn't actually use that amount. That would be similar to you paying your mobile carrier for a fixed package of let's say 100 minutes per month. You would still pay for those 100 minutes, whether you called 1 or 100 minutes. So you would end up paying more than what you use. So the precise question to ask would be: Do you provide pay-as-you go billing? As with price matches, devil lies in the details.

The fourth, and the last on our quick best practices tip list is: How fast can you provide me double the resources that I currently use? This question is related to scale, speed and technical capabilities of the cloud provider. In a hyperscale cloud world, there is virtually limitless capacity available. You can go from 0 to 100 virtual machines in just a blink of an eye. In the cloud creation of new services should be self-service and automated. You shouldn't have to call somebody or go to a meeting with a sales representative to get more resources. Resource providing lead time is good example where cloudwashing might take place. A traditional hosting provider can sometimes provide a self-service tool for requesting the resources. But it wouldn't be automatic creation, but rather a technician getting an email or a ticket in their task system and then fulfilling it. In the on premise world, in some cases, only the most used services would be available for self-service creation. Resource creation should be self-service or automated and should only take minutes instead of hours or days.

So, we compiled this list to help you with your discussion with cloud service providers. The list will help you navigate obstacles related to cloud purchasing.

Always keep your specific needs in mind and tweak or tailor the list according to them. Once you keep all of these in mind, you will hopefully have a solution that matches your needs

What is the cloud?

hello@cloudgossip.net (Teemu Tapanila, Annie Talvasto, Karl Ots) — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 20:10:00 +0000

Today on the show: Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service. What are these cloud service models and how do they compare? Nice of you to join us!

Prologue##

The famous cloud advocate David Chappell has defined three most important events of post-dotcom boom IT world. The first event was the IPO of Salesforce Dot Com in 2004. It proved that the Software-as-a-Service is a serious business model.

The second event was the launch of Amazon Web Services in 2006, which was the first public cloud platform.

And the third event was the release of the original Apple iPhone in 2007. It started the mobile-first era with the phones eventually becoming tiny computers in our pockets.

The common enabler behind all these 3 important events was the cloud. So, the cloud in all its forms has been instrumental in major developments in the IT world.

So, it's important to understand what exactly the cloud is and what are its different variations.

##SaaS, PaaS or IaaS
We will start the episode by defining the terms and needed concepts an then we will move onto how they have shaped the world. Software-as-a-Service or SaaS is a business model where software companies sell their products for a monthly subscription instead of a one-time purchase. Examples of Software-as-a-Service cloud services are Salesforce Dot Com, Google Gmail, Dropbox and Microsoft Office 365.

But why is it called Software as a Service? It means that we don't install the software ourselves. We don't have to worry about the servers, we don't have to worry about updating the software. We just use the service. We can add our own files and account details, and even change the background color to our liking. The amount of customization that we can do or administration that we have to do is limited. Software-as-a-Service cloud model is about getting ready-made software that we can start using right away. If we want to change how the software behaves, we are limited to what the cloud service provider allows us to customize.

So how does Platform-as-a-Service model differ from Software-as-a-Service? In Platform-as-a-Service cloud model the cloud service provider gives us a set of so-called "building blocks" and we can build virtually any software with those building blocks. For example, a Platform-as-a-Service cloud provider can let us host websites on their platform. We just have to write the code that puts the building blocks together. This is the key difference: in the Platform-as-a-Service model we have to build the software ourselves, whereas in the Software-as-a-Service model we just use the existing application as it is.

In Infrastructure-as-a-Service model we have even more control. This means that the cloud provider is taking care of the datacenter: physical venue, servers, network capacity, electricity, heating, ventilation and cooling. The Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud provider takes care of the physical hosting for us. We just get remote access to the virtual machines, and storage. We can do essentially anything with the servers: we can install any operating system or any software in them. We can build our own software on top of them.

As a developer, I like Platform-as-a-Service, because that makes me most productive and I don’t have to worry about the virtual machines as in Infrastructure-as-a-Service. I only have to take care of the coding.

Challenges

So why did people start moving to Software-as-a-Service in growing numbers since 2004 & Salesforce? One of the reasons arises from comparing the on-premises and cloud worlds -- the speed of change. Previously, if a company wanted to use email, they had to install the email systems to their own data center. Even if they outsourced the data center to a hosting provider, the steps would still be numerous: plugging in a new server, installing the operating system and finally installing and configuring the email software.

This clearly will take up quite a bit of time. And that's not all! Getting the software in place is not enough. With any software that we are responsible of, there comes the need to update. We would need security updates at least once a month. If there is a new version of the email software, an upgrade or "migration" would have to be made, for example every 5 years. All of these tasks take a lot of time and expertise.

On the cloud world, the cloud provider is doing the difficult work of installing and validating updates and keeping the services running. With that, the IT organization can have more time on their hands. So, they can actually start thinking on how to use these tools better. Regardless of who is responsible of the software maintenance, it's actually all about change management. When you perform any number of updates in an existing software, you essentially change things.

And as long as there are changes, there are always some people who don't like the changes: perhaps their favorite button moved to a different part of the screen, or they cannot perform their jobs in a same way they used to. To combat these change management challenges, both the users and administrators require a lot of training to know what is coming.

Benefits

In the beginning of this episode we talked about how the world has changed due to these technologies. So, what are the concrete effects to the business world? For example, the way we work, how companies are born, and how does a typical workday look for the average Joe? The cloud and particularly Software-as-a-Service has enabled companies to offer the same tools for remote workers as they would in their office.

A good example would be video conferencing. Previously, video conferencing required expensive hardware to be installed to a dedicated conferencing room. Due to the cost, video conferencing was available only for the select few, usually the top management. Nowadays, even the simplest and cheapest smartphones and computers are capable of video calls with a range of services i.e. Software-as-a-Service solutions, such as Skype.

Another big change from the popularity of cloud services is lowering the starting costs for new business. This means that starting a company requires less capital and the cost of entering to new markets has dramatically decreased. Entering and leaving new markets has become both easier and faster. Previously, just setting up email to a new branch office required building a new datacenter, buying and installing servers, and configuring the software. This took a lot of time and capital and was only possible for large and established companies that could afford the investment.

Nowadays, new companies can be started by just swiping a credit card and paying a monthly fee for a SaaS email service. Particularly the cost of starting has lowered for technology companies. There is no longer a need to build costly data centers and install web servers to host web apps. Companies can just easily swipe their credit cards, and fire up virtual servers anywhere they want in the world and set up shop. These changes have made the current tech and startup boom possible. We live a world where a 20-year-old college student can start a company from their dorm room, and scale it up to be a global giant in 5 years.

This has all been enabled by advances in cloud technology.

Hyperscale Datacenters

hello@cloudgossip.net (Teemu Tapanila, Annie Talvasto, Karl Ots) — Fri, 2 Feb 2018 08:30:00 +0000

Today on the show - hyperscale datacenters. After this episode, you'll know what they are, what makes them special and why are they important for the cloud.

#Epsiode transcript:#

##Prologue##
As use of computers grew rapidly in the 1990s, so did the need for servers and datacenters. Back in the day, network connections were slow and expensive. Therefore, the datacenters had to be built close to the companies and users using them. Usually that meant building the datacenters into the office building’s basement.
There was this Nordic company and their business model heavily relied on using a lot of servers. So naturally, they also had to have quite a massive basement. This essentially meant the basement was business-critical for them. If the computers were to be harmed, the company would lose their reputation, business, everything. The office was in an area with low natural disaster risks. For example, there had been no recorded earthquakes in modern history.
However, the basement of this company's office was flooded few years ago. This wasn’t just an inconvenience for the office workers. The flooding was a serious threat for the future of the company, as the server room was completely flooded. As everyone knows computers and water don't mix well together. The situation seemed dire: the company could lose all their data, and their business could go under. At this darkest of the hours, the friendly neighborhood sysadmin jumped in and saved the day by swimming to the servers and rescuing them.
In the end it affected their business, but they avoided a catastrophe. So how could this situation have been avoided? That's what we're discussing in today's episode: --Hyperscale Datacenters.

##Introduction##
Hi, and welcome to Cloud Gossip. I'm Annie and I am a cloud marketing expert and a startup coach. Hey, my name is Teemu. I'm Cloud developer, Devops trainer and an international speaker. And I'm Karl and I'm a cloud & security consultant for enterprise customers, and I also moonlight as an international speaker. Today on the show - hyperscale datacenters. After this episode, you'll know what they are, what makes them special and why are they important for the cloud. This podcast is part of a 4-part series, which you can find either on Apple Podcast, Android podcast apps or on our website CloudGossip.net.

##History of datacenters##
Hi, this is Karl again. So, what is cloud? Cloud - as we know it - is a network of modern, hyper-scale datacenters. These hyper-scale datacenters of today are different from the datacenters we've had previously. Let's look at the history of datacenters leading up to the cloud. Before modern hyper-scale datacenters, we used a single server at a time.
The first datacenters - actually had only single server -- that was filling the whole room. Once we got further, the server size came down and we started to have data centers: multiple servers connected to each other.
The idea was that pretty much every company with computing needs would build their own datacenter. A datacenter is a specifically-made space to host multiple servers and take care of all their needs, such as electricity, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and network.

As all the companies were building their own datacenters, they had to maintain the physical security. This meant installing locks, keycard readers or any other security measures that the customers required. The physical location had to be carefully picked and deals with energy providers had to be made.
When companies were running their own datacenters, it was a big deal that they were responsible of building, installing, updating and "end of lifing all the servers in their use. End-of-lifing means that when the physical server is so old that it's no longer feasible to replace the broken parts and rather cheaper to buy a new server, the old server is disposed in a secure way.
The hard drives are wiped clean in a secure way, so that there's no way that somebody could recover our data from them. After that they are physically destroyed.
When the servers would eventually have hardware failures, the servers would be out of use. This is called an outage. Preparing for outages involves taking care of the spare parts for the servers. The datacenter owner had to purchase enough spare parts for their own use, or make sure they had access to the needed parts when needed.
These tasks of running a datacenter required a lot of personnel. Once up and running, a typical datacenter could have one administrator per two dozen servers. A typical midsize company could easily have 1000 servers in their datacenter. This meant having over 40 people on payroll just to keep the lights on and servers running.

##Problems with traditional datacenters##
Hi, it’s Annie again. Running their own datacenter caused a lot of headache to the companies. A major problem was outages. When an outage occurs, the services would not be available for use.
There are two kinds of outages: planned and unplanned. Planned outages could be for example migrating the whole datacenters to another physical location, or performing regular updates to the servers.
Let's talk about unplanned outages, as they are the ones that cause grey hair and sleepless nights. An unplanned outage means that something unexpected has happened. That something can be a connectivity outage: the servers and applications are still running but the end users cannot connect to those applications. This usually means network failures, such as a broken network cable or fried network equipment.
Unexpected outages can also be caused by hardware failures. To minimize outage times, the datacenter owners always bought the best hardware they could afford in the hope that money can buy happiness.
They bought the hardware that promised the longest life time. A single piece of network equipment could cost the same as a Lamborghini.
Another type of cause for an unexpected outage are heating-related issues. If not properly cooled down, a server can malfunction or even melt. A legendary solution to this problem was introduced by Google. In their early days -- fresh out of the garage -- they used cardboard boxes to isolate their servers instead of investing in expensive air conditioning.
Those were the issues around outages. Now let's move on and talk about issues related to physical security. Physical security issues range from someone stealing datacenter equipment for monetary gain -- to corporate espionage. An example of corporate espionage would be someone stealing the hard drives with trade secrets in them. So it's not just about who has access to the servers, but also making sure that the servers and data actually stay within the data center.
This means that there was a need for electronic keycards, man traps and access control logs. This requires even more manual work. Another thing was that the lead times were long.
Which means that whenever you needed a server, you started by ordering the hardware, making sure that it fits your budget, electricity, cooling, and network capacity. Set needed firewall rules, and made sure that there was physical space in the datacenter.
After this you installed operating system and needed applications to the server. As these were all steps that would require comprehensive knowledge of the system and the specific skills related to this area.
These tasks couldn't be performed by the same people, but instead each of these tasks were performed by a dedicated team of people, which created bottlenecks as people were waiting for another team to complete their work before starting their own.
For example, server operating system cannot be installed and configured before there is network access in place. All of this led to a situation that it could take us weeks or even months to get everything in place.

##Hyperscale datacenters##
This is Teemu again. The solution to these problems is hyperscale datacenters, also known as the cloud. Hyperscale datacenters are massive in size, mostly automated and mostly operate without any human interaction. By massive we mean really MASSIVE. For example, a typical datacenter building in a hyperscale context is large enough to cover two jumbo jets - the largest aircraft in the world.
A datacenter building may host up to one million servers. And a datacenter usually has half a dozen buildings. In the hyperscale world, a lot of the human actions are replaced by automation. A single administrator can now maintain 5 000 to 50 000 servers, compared to 50 servers in a traditional datacenter.
As the speed of upgrades -- that is, replacing the servers -- is much faster in the cloud, instead of buying the Lamborghini-priced hardware that has a life expectancy of 6 years, hyperscale cloud providers would buy the cheapest possible hardware with a life expectancy of 2 years and replace those servers faster to get better energy efficiency and performance.

So, all the hard work of preparing against outages are no longer in the physical world, but rather in the automation and software. Because there is no human work involved, servers in hyperscale cloud can be deployed in minutes instead of weeks or months -- in contrast to traditional datacenters.
The differences to traditional datacenters don’t end there. For a traditional data center owner, connectivity problems could be solved by calling the local network carrier. For a hyperscale cloud provider, connectivity problems are related to speed of light (as data takes longer time to reach me from Australia than from Canada).
Solving those issues could include hiring our own submarine captains to install new network connectivity to the bottom of the oceans to get better intercontinental connectivity.

The massive scale and automation have revolutionized the world of datacenters as we know it.

Containers?!

hello@cloudgossip.net (Teemu Tapanila, Annie Talvasto, Karl Ots) — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 16:31:00 +0000

Today on the show: why containers? Where do they come from, and which problems do they solve?

Epsiode transcript:

Prologue

Hi, Karl here. Let me tell you a story from a couple of years back.
Imagine a team of quite stressed out developers. This team at Nokia Research Center had been preparing for a Demoday, to showcase their new applications to an excited audience. Luckily the team had already finished building their application -- or so they thought.
During the evening before the Demoday, they started to prepare the application to be showcased in the demo. This meant moving the application into a server that was located on the second floor of the office. Yet, the size of the application was huge, so the file transfer took all night.
In the morning, half an hour before the demo, the project manager asked for a small change to the application: could the developers change the color of one of the buttons from blue to green. This wasn't a hard task: The developer was able to make the change in a minute, and he could show the result on his computer to the project manager.
But how could they make the change apply to the server? They had no other solution than to grab a USB stick and start running…
These types of problems could be solved with a technology called -- containers :)

Introduction

Hi, and welcome to Cloud Gossip. I'm Annie and I am a cloud marketing expert and a startup coach. Hey, my name is Teemu. I'm Cloud developer, Devops trainer and an international speaker. And I'm Karl and I'm a cloud & security consultant for enterprise customers, and I also moonlight as an international speaker.
Today on the show: why containers? -- Where do they come from, and which problems do they solve? And by the way, no worries if you didn't understand all of the terms used in the beginning, that is why this podcast exists. Glad to have you with us! This podcast is part of a 4 part series, which you can find either on Apple Podcast, Android podcast apps or on our website CloudGossip.net.

Terminology

Okay, so in the intro we highlighted the problems of software development. Now -- we will do a rundown of terminology, and the history leading to containers. Things in real life are more complicated and things will have more layers to it. But here we have tried to simplify and find the best definitions and examples to get you started and grasp the basics.

Let's talk about application development process, which is essentially the process of how applications are built and made available to the users. The process starts with developers building applications on their own computers. And finally, when applications are finished, they are moved to the servers.

We call this deploying to production, which is a fancy name for essentially releasing an application. The biggest difference between development and production phase is that, on the latter the application is continuously running on the server to serve a lot of people -- not just the developer.

So, what are servers? They are expensive computers that are specially made to serve thousands of users at the same time and are never meant to be powered off. Where computers are made for personal use and normally turned off after use.

As an example, a regular computer might store your holiday pictures, your favorite games or you might browse Facebook with it.

Servers are the infrastructure that all internet services run on top of, like a house is built on a foundation. Servers typically house software that thousands of users can use at the same time. For example, Facebook itself, or any of Google's sites are housed on servers.

Hey, did you know?! Previously, we had servers so big, that they filled entire rooms. They would also cost a lot of money, in the realm of hundreds of thousands of euros.

Servers have evolved over the years to be smaller and nowadays you can fit them under your desk. This is very much the same process as what happened with mobile phones; evolving from old and clunky phones, into the small smartphones we currently use.

Let's switch gears and talk about operating systems. On both regular computers and servers, we have an operating system, otherwise known as the OS. The OS is a collection of software that communicates between computers and applications. Operating system makes these all work together.

For example, developer's computer might have a MacOS operating system, and the server might have Windows Server operating system. If an application has been built on top of one operating system and is then placed on a server with a different operating system, things can get a bit messy.

Why does this happen, you might ask? Well, if the application has been built and is used in another system it might not function properly in the new environment – the same way if an athlete trains in a high-altitude environment, they may not be able to exercise the same way in a low altitude environment.

Problems

All in all, developing software for servers involves dealing with many problems. Servers are expensive, cannot have more than one operating system and having multiple applications on the server can make them all fail -- since they might not play well together.

This is why virtual machine technology was introduced. Virtual machines enable putting multiple operating systems in a single computer, through a progress called -- isolation. Isolation means that the server or computer can be divided into multiple "boxes" so to say.

Then every box can have their own environment -- also known as an operating system. This let's us have more than one application in the same server in a secure and portable way -- isolating the applications from messing with each other.

Still remember the demo day we talked about in the beginning? All the demo day teams had developed their own applications with their own operating systems. The reason the teams were able to use only one server was that each of them had a virtual machine with their own environment on that server.

Then every application had its own isolated "box" -- virtual machine -- and it didn't affect the other applications.

However, from the developer's point of view, there are still problems with virtual machines, that would have made the demo day tedious.
For example, virtual machines are handled as one big file. Moving that file from the developers' computer to a server is tediously slow. Data transfer through internet is not quick enough for files that large, so it might take several hours to transfer the virtual machine to a server via the internet.

If the server is physically close by, it is often faster to transfer the files to a USB thumb drive and physically run or walk to the server. And as everyone can imagine even though running is an effective workout, it's not the most productive use of time :)

Solution

As virtual machines were not the best possible solution for some of the issues, a new technology surfaced. And that is Containers. -- The foundations of container technology were invented already in the 80's, but was widely popularized in 2013 by a company called Docker.

Containers follow the same idea as virtual machines, but take the level of isolation one level deeper. Virtual machine "boxes" include the whole operating system. On the other hand, container "boxes" include only the application and the parts of the operating system that the application needs.

Containers are smaller than virtual machines, because they don't include the unnecessary parts. Containers are typically a hundred times smaller than virtual machines. This makes them more portable and efficient.

Therefore, in the demo day that we have talked about during this episode, the applications had their own isolated boxes, also known as virtual machines, to run happily in. Applications had no way of negatively affecting each other.

Containers could have made a big difference. With containers, the Demo day teams won't have to worry about slow transfer times or having their running shoes ready.

So, all in all, Containers enable developer productivity and help us build software faster. With the progress of technology, software development no longer needs to be such a hassle. And developers can focus what they do best, which is developing!

Hey, thanks for listening. Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment on our website CloudGossip.Net. And please leave us a review and subscribe to us at iTunes!