Jim Douglas + Fernando Freire, Armory | KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2022

This is Textron TV. Hey everyone back here in Detroit for kubecon continuing our second day of coverage from the show floor. I'm really happy to have back a company that we we've covered.

io. A they really were the company that took Spinnaker commercial if you will right speed for those of you who don't know Spinnaker. Who's a amazing CD.

See I see program came out of net Netflix, right and Google it was donated to the CDF Foundation probably but three four years ago now. And but Spinnaker is the company that really kind of. If you want to do Spinnaker in a commercial setting they they were you know, not just the rural open source.

They they were the experts kind of pioneered that I'm really happy to have him back on the show. I don't think we've had anyone from Armory guys on Tech strung TV. In a while, it's been too long.

We're happy you are and I'm really happy you're back. Maybe you took us coming back in person. Right?

Let me introduce you to write two friends friends here from Armory to my immediate ride. He's Jim Douglas Jim. Welcome.

Thank you and to Jim's right is and we're gonna do our best. We practice this off camera Fernando free day free day now, I don't do that rolling or I don't matter how much time but that New York. But anyway Fernando welcome.

You should start off with what do you guys do in Armory? Absolutely. I'm president and CEO or Armory then you're about a year.

Now. You're excited to be with the company Fernando. I'm an engineering manager here.

primarily developing Spinnaker and innovating the Spinnaker platform fantastic, welcome guys So, you know, I hope I didn't embarrassed you talking about what kind of the history here in Spinnaker and stuff. But you know Spinnaker remains today an amazing amazing tool especially, you know, it used to be well, you're not Netflix who is yeah, but it's an amazing tool. Is it just an Enterprise tools out is it you know, how far how low does it go now?

It's not. I mean a couple things to think about just think about this show it's called kubecon, right? Innovators 10 years ago that started Cloud native.

There was no tooling. So Google had to invent things like kubernetes that have a containers Netflix has got an outrageous deployment profile right 400 apps a day. There's nothing out there that could do that.

So they had to build the platform that could handle that Spinnaker the key to it is the power to do the multi problems. I call it multi-environment and multi-target multi-cloud. How do you do that at scale?

And I think what was really attractive early is a lot of the early teams. The platform teams wanted to be able to build curated deployment solutions for their developers gives you that flexibility to do that. I think what we're seeing and one of the big highlights here is like every software industry.

I cut my teeth and the kind of Eda or Electronics on automation world you see abstraction over time where you take away complexity and we're seeing that today right a lot of companies here talking about what's next on top of kubernetes and same things gonna happen and continuous deployment as Kind of the next gen that weren't the kind of innovators early adopters come along. They're just looking for automation, you know, so for us, It's Spinnaker is a key part of our story. But our core competency.

Our focus is really on continuous deployment at scale and one of the difficult things for the folks that are new to Cloud native is that got this thing called Legacy portfolio, right, you know as with a major bank on Monday and half of their applications are still running bare metal VMS, some of them they've refactored they've containerized and new apps. They're trying to get into best practices around Cloud natives. Like how do you do that?

That's the problem. We're trying to solve and it said Spinnaker's one tool for that. We've got some new SAS tools as well.

Really that take the best practices that some of the best teams on the planet have you Spinnaker to actually build deployment strategies around and fully automated that for the folks that I want to spell deployment. They want to use Canary they want to use blue green they want to use Progressive rollouts, but they don't want to understand them. So we're trying to address that gamut but the end in mind is how do you reliably deploy software at scale?

They said scale is a world's not just kubernetes kubernetes is important but it's a lot of different container technology. This is non-container Technologies. And how do you do that multi-environments and hybrid cloud is where everybody's going.

So absolutely that's what we're trying to nail, you know. I mean look, it's it would be great. If we all only worked in greenfields absolutely start with a blank piece of paper every time you say my dream my dream config my dream process my Jeep world's not that way.

I wish right but it don't the world's not that way. The other thing that's interesting though. com right container Journal.

com 2013-2014. it was Already, no one ever said your CI. Yeah was always like cicd.

See ICD, you couldn't say CI without saying CD CD and you definitely couldn't say CD. Yeah with our prefacing it. With CI.

Yeah, right. They just went together peanut butter and jelly and see ICD. But an interesting happened no interesting things happen over the eight years a lot of the tools.

That were you know, the powerhouses the the standards eight years ago like a Jenkins for instance. Yeah. com damn it.

You know our audience knows Jenkins a little old in the tooth. If you're using Cloud native Technologies with kubernetes. I mean those Jenkins X, I think I would actually change the name or whatever but it's not really the Jenkins itself.

It was not really a cloud native design, you know? Yeah for good reason he came way before you're ready to jump. I'm ready to go.

That's all. Yeah. So Jenkins has been really the mature platform here for a long time.

And now you've got newer generations of tools things like get him actions things like get up. See I all these different tools that are encapsulating a lot of those hard one lessons with Jenkins. They're good to Gentry.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah exactly what we're doing with the platforms that Our continues deployment as a service product. We've really taken those Decades of experience with continuous delivery and we're encapsulating them in the product so that you as an organization or you as a devops engineer don't have to think about this stuff anymore.

It really focus on the things that you're client teams are trying to build right trying to deploy is really at the end of the day. They don't want to think about whether you're using a hammer or screwdriver, right? They want to think about we're gonna get it done.

They right. I mean, that's that's I agree with you. When you're starting that cloud native Journey, you know, you're not ready just to change out all your tooling.

So Engineers can do anything take Jenkins you write scripts. You can do a basic deployment at kubernetes the first word done that before in past companies. That was our kind of training wheels if you would but at some point you got a scale when you get back to the problems I talked about and so well one of the things we're looking at is how do you fit hand and glove in the environment people ran like Fernando talk about GitHub actions great tool once again back to abstraction really extracting way a lot of complexity for developers, let them live in thatirement, but give them a world-class deployment experience.

That's really what we're trying to do. Tell you something Alan's secret to life. I didn't find this out.

Yeah, it's not that profane but profoundly you are from New York after yeah. Yeah, you're right, but no, seriously. I I didn't discover the size about 45 I bet.

It is about using the right tool for the job because using the wrong tool for the job. You may brute force it. Yeah, eventually get that square peg rounded but you're gonna Bang Your Head on a lot of walls till he get you use the right tool things go easier.

And and so to me in today's environments Cloud native, You know, I'm not lift and shift but you know updating existing infrastructure having a tool designed for the mission. It's critical. Yeah, it's it's a must critical right?

We otherwise you just gonna make yourself a lot of work. And at the end of the day it may or may not really work where you wanted to yeah. And by the way, there's a lot of great technology available on a lot of it's here.

Like I said a lot of the book. Oh, yeah is about deployment Cloud native deployment, which is great. It is it's all about that.

You know, the other thing is so we went through this whole kind of I call it, you know, the shift left syndrums security testing. Yeah moving CD in to get. Yep, right so you could get Ops and all of this stuff.

But we we need a little focus on shift right too. How do I take the Lessons Learned whether it's Canary or future Flags they be testing? Let's get that and put you know, make this kind of circular Circle or virtue kind of thing where I'm taking that and reader right today's tools.

We need need to incorporate that kind of thing. Right? I agree.

The thing that I would say, I don't know if disagreement is television have to think about that though. It should as you said move left into that development Zone where those capabilities are just there for them. Those are the best practices that they're platform teams their devop teams provide them as this beautiful experience.

Yep, but they definitely have to move farther up in that flow. Right? We don't want is we don't have want them to have to learn that right that's back to abstraction.

Well, so I would say that that's a major thing to we deal with Is the going to an existing team and say hey, let's change your CD tool. Yeah, right. That sounds great.

Yeah. Well wait, let me clear the decks here for the next two months. I'll talk to you in January exactly.

How do you deal with that when you you know, you go into organizations that aren't? Using Spinnaker aren't using a modern. Yeah the platform and how do you convince them to?

Hey, man, we should yeah, let me tear it up and I'll have a good examples. First of all, we don't we don't try to convince them. It's like I said, they've got those Investments for a reason and they're they're bolted in as you said every one of our customers just about I'm exaggerating little uses Jenkins.

There's something interest DLC trying to get them to rip that out full Sarah. So it's how do you Leverage What infrastructure you already have that once again fit that into a world class deployment scenario. So I'll use Spinnaker as an example Spinnaker can do a lot more than just deployment.

It can do some delivery aspects. It could do some orchestration, but if you've got capabilities to do that, they're working for you now. You can weave that into that environment and just take advantage of the deployment capability same thing with our SAS solution over time as you evolve right?

We're going to help you on a journey to get next gen and those capabilities but the discussions never about what you're going to take out. It's gonna be how you can extend that. So maybe take that thread and pull it and to add on to that.

I mean really what we try and do when we talk with our customers is is encourage them to crawl walk and run right? You're not gonna go from Day Zero start deploying a hundred times a day, right? That's never gonna happen for an organization.

That's just starting down that Journey. So really what we try and do is partner with these customers and make sure that they understand this is the journey that you're gonna go on and this is how our products help you get to that point. Right?

So day one is maybe just gonna be taking that script that you are already running on your Jenkins machine or Heaven forbade your local laptop, right and moving that into either continues to deployment as a service or continue, right and either way, right? That's the first step and then just build on top of that and get more successfully more. Made it until you get to the point where you can do those deployments.

Once you're at that point, you can then take that and start thinking about well, what does it mean for my service to be highly available? What kind of strategies do I need to implement? And those are all things that we help you and guide you through both through the product and the coaching that we provide very cool.

You know, we're doing a we do it every year virtual event called devops experience. It's coming up November 16th this year and we try to kind of highlight. Well, what's kind of the New Frontiers?

What's what's the new things? So this year we call it devops everywhere distributed devops. Yeah devops at the edge and Beyond devops of things iot stuff.

I got to imagine you guys running into this. Because that that's where that's where it the action lives today. Yep, right.

It's not your side that Cloud Core anymore. It's it's everywhere where software software is eating the world already and wherever software goes devops goes with it. And see I C D is an intimate part of that, right?

What do you guys what are you seeing on that end? Like the nontraditional I'd say two-fold one is you've seen compute Cycles right centralized decentralized. Clouds here to stay because it's not going anywhere but to your point computes got to move where the data originates in a lot of cases and a lot of that you think about the iot trend right?

A lot of the devices that you have the edge of networks, very low latency devices that have to operate in real time. You can't wait for information to come down from the cloud. So you're gonna have to be able to prosecute workloads at the edge.

So from a deployment standpoint for folks that are building Cloud native, you know, they're the world has been everything to the cloud now. It's got to be about how do you deploy to multiple points in that topology? I think one of the things you're seeing and this is kind of my past life.

I used to be CEO at Win River. So okay you question that is those people trying to abstract a lot of that embedded software higher level and start to virtualize. It's they can use cloud-native practices and you can update it.

It's part of the whole thing exactly. So to your points. Yeah.

I see he's gonna have to evolve where your targets are going to be different. So we talk K8 your Raise down there, right? It's going to be a different service.

So we're gonna have to look at things like that over time and I see that as a big Trend too. It's on so it's Armory doing around that. I don't need to put you down the spot.

But hey, man, you're the engineer. Yeah. Well, we're really excited about what we're building or what we're gonna be building over the next year really where we're gonna be focusing is on bringing a lot, you know in you sign in 2019 everything that you saw at the at the conference was how do I run kubernetes now everything that you're seeing here a couple years later is what do I run?

On top of kubernetes? That's the same thing that we're doing. We want to make continuous deployment melt into the background and let engineers get back to what they're doing and what they do best.

So we're really excited to to make a lot of the tools easier and make them more approachable for engineers that are focused on that data science application or they're focus on that iot application right anything where they're a domain expert we want to give them the tools to get back to their work and be productive. I think he's in there. I'm a broken record but it's that multi service or multi-target.

So your point you're gonna have different services at different layers and cute biology. They shouldn't have to worry about that use the same strategies you talked about the system should have the knowledge to be able to do that to planet for them. That's gonna be really key.

Absolutely guys. We're probably over time. It's okay.

You want to get more information on Armory. io. Correct.

AR and o r y IO right fantastic, it's easier than his last name. There's none of those ours people in from New York have problems. It's the brother.

Hey, but anyway, hey Fernando Jim. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming on Tech stroke TV.

io here on Tech struck TV. We're live in Detroit. We'll be back in just a minute with our next guest.

Thanks.