The Power of SLOs – Brian Singer, Nobl9

This is texturing TV. Hey everyone, welcome back here to text drunk TV. My next guest is Brian Singer from noble9.

And we've had Brian on before of course. We usually have my friend kit. Merker kits a little under the weather.

So Brian stepped up and we appreciate it. Hey, Brian, welcome. How are you?

I'm happy to be here. Yeah, you're stuck with me today, but I'll do the best. I can't feel those big shoes.

Yes. I may think of it is an upgrade. But you know, we'll let kids have his day.

Anyway, hey Brian, you know, I think most of our audiences familiar with Noble mind, right? Yeah SRE slos really kind of bringing slos to the Forefront but for you know for those who maybe aren't I feel like we're obligated to tell them a little bit about Noble night. You don't mind.

Yeah, sure Noble nine. We started the company about three years ago to try to improve. The outcomes when it comes to reliability so we kind of have a saying we talk about in turn intern internally that that reliability is something that has to be engineered.

It has it's something that has to be focused on and time has to be spent on it. Otherwise, it's just kind of a wishful thinking right and we see the impact of that with very visible issues when when companies run into reliability challenges. And so we started Noble nine to try to address that and one of the ways that we do that is by helping companies Implement and use service level objectives to try to find the right level of reliability for a given service and manage to that and and I know we've talked about service level objectives quite a bit but just a quick refresher a service level objective is just basically saying this is the latency or this is the throughput or this is the availability that trying to achieve for a given service or user Journey or API endpoint or you know anything that that I managing.

And so so, you know, we kind of start we built a platform we have, you know dozens of customers using this today to to really run their their operations through the lens of you know, what the goals are when it comes to reliability. Absolutely, very cool. That's a good base for people.

So Brian, you know, I I have been on the road. I was out in Asia it took me forever to get back here and I'm busy with some other stuff. But while I was gone, you know Noble nine made an announcement about some new funding and I mean look everybody.

Well, we used to be everybody made announcements every day about finding of course. We don't see quite as many for quite as much money as we did. Let's say, you know a year or two ago, but you're you're announcement was interesting in that it was really a strategic funding round with some kind of household names not the usual VC crowd.

Yeah, are you if you don't mind share with the audience a bit. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean I think with it's no secret that the current environment is difficult one to raise money and VC investing is was way down in 2022.

And so we have some some incredible backers today that that continued to support us in this round like CRV and Battery Ventures and Resolute Partners, but we were also able to find some new partners to bring in that we're really excited about what we're doing in the space of service level objectives. And that included service now and Cisco who came in as strategic backers for us strategic just just means you know, it's not a it's not a VC and you know, it's a it's a sort of corporate me see and so we're really excited to have those Partners on board for the journey and they've been incredibly helpful already and you know, we were excited to see you know, what what new things we can do with that money. Absolutely.

Well, look, I I you know, I spent 20 plus years in the BC start back startup game. I mean it's strategic in that. It's more than just money.

These companies can bring access to markets oftentimes. You'll see it as part of a team offering or a partnered offering or even an oem or type of offering and of course, you know companies like a service now, which is you know, it's a monster right of a company as well as Cisco, right? These are big big companies with big big channels and markets.

That exposing, you know, the service the noble nine service. Yes, I love. stuff to those channels can open you know many any doors that yeah.

Yeah, that's certainly one of our goals, you know, I think and and you know, when companies like that make an investment obviously they want to see that you know, they look at it as an investment, right and sometimes they're strategic elements to it. But obviously they want to help that investment be successful. So yeah, you know, we're excited to have their support very cool.

So congratulations on that and I I think we gave it the requisite four or five minutes. It deserves here on our 15 minute. Yeah, not too much time.

It is right it is. Yeah, but congratulations. No raising money, especially in this climate isn't isn't easy and getting strategic money is is Strategic but let's folk.

Let's pivot a little bit. You guys also made an announcement recently on Some new capabilities and new additions to the noble 9 Sweden. Yeah, call it that yes.

Yes tell us so this was actually today. We announced a new capability called the service level analyzer and this is really exciting for me because I think it unlocks the potential of slos for a much broader audience of people since we started the company. One of the one of the first things people ask is well these slos sound great in theory.

But how do I get started? You know, I have a API and I know the latency of that API or you know, I have a Time series that gives me the latency of that API, but like what's the right threshold to set for that SLO? What's the right target to set for that SLO?

Um and until now the answer for pretty much everyone as well, you know sort of create an SLO, you know, just put in some, you know, whatever and see how it runs for a month or two months and then look at it. And so you can see that, you know, it's kind of hard because you don't really have that that guide post of where to start. Well the service level analyzer lets you take any time series from one of our supported data sources and very quickly.

Do what if analysis so you can say oh if I set a threshold here for this API and this was my target how much air budget would I've burned over this historical period And so you very quickly start to understand what those different thresholds mean and whether you're actually meeting, you know, maybe what what your definition of reliable is. And so that's that's really exciting because you go from you know, it taking maybe a month or two months to start coming up with meaningful slos to being able to come up with meaningful targets and meaningful goals in a matter of minutes and turn those into then slo's which guide your operation. So this is you know, I think pretty foundational and I think it's solves the problem that a lot of companies have that are excited about us and the potential but maybe they've had trouble rolling them out in the past because it's just hard to get people past that initial like, okay what?

I do now and so that capability is is now available in the product. Anyone that wants to try it can sign up for our free tier. We don't charge for the analyzer in the free tier.

So you can just you know, sort of start modeling out different scenarios and seeing you know, how much air budget you would use. Actually, I love it. So the announcement was well the day we recorded this but it's you know, probably a couple days from there before people are seeing this.

Um, it's available right now though as well. People can go get their hands on it and start using it. That's right.

com sign up for the the free edition of noble 9. It includes I think 20-25 slos for free. But but using the analyzer doesn't doesn't really consume that at all so you can just you know start trying and one of the really cool things that this unlocks is you know, let's say you had an incident in the past right that was captured in the data.

Well now you can actually pull the the data from that time when you had the incident into the analyzer and then you can say okay give me something that would have consumed all of my error budget during this incident right? Because we know that this was customer impacting and now we can model out these different scenarios and do that what if analysis and turn that into a really meaningful SLO in just a matter of minutes and I think that's part of it that's you know, sort of part of the capability that's exciting big the most exciting for me. Excellent.

Very cool. Hey, we've got a few minutes left. Let's quickly talk about.

Is it that's all coming up? That's right. It's coming up in May.

com website, you can sign up now. I think the cfp closed there were an astounding number of really strong submissions for talks at slow comp this year the most we've ever had and I know talking to to Alex italgo who was who's working on sort of managing that prop that process that there's some really exciting talks just in some areas that are pushing the boundaries of slos but then there's also the foundational stuff of how do I get started? You know, how do I sell this internally?

You know, how are different companies using slos today getting value from solos? So I'm really excited to see as it starts to come together. We've had I think pretty strong.

Registered number registrations already, but don't wait don't wait to sign up, you know, keep keep registering and yeah, we'll see. I'm sure you'll talk to Kit probably around that time as well. We'll talk to one of you guys way before then, but you can get more information on it slop Yep.

All right. Hey, Brian. I think we covered what we had to cover him and I want to wish you guys success.

Congratulations on the money race. Congratulations on the on the new functionality and keep up the great work, but it's a pleasure having you guys on here. Great.

Yeah, it's great to see you Alan. Thanks for having us on today and look forward to the next time we chat. All right kit.

We hope he feels better as well and we'll be all right. We'll do all right. I've looked.

com a texturung TV. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back.