Giving Thanks – Techstrong Research Review EP 8

here Hi everybody, Mike Rothman here general manager technical research for another edition of texturung research review, but you know what? This one is gonna be a special. Episode why because we are on the precipice of the Thanksgiving holiday, which kicks off really, you know kind of the holiday season and a lot of places around the world and Mitch and I just wanted to get together and talk a little bit not about Trends or about news or about you know, we have plenty of time to do that.

You know, we do this show weekly. We want to give thanks, right. We wanted to really talk about the what we're happy about.

Right what we think is important and and impactful to you know, kind of our jobs and really to our lives. So that's what we're gonna do today Mitch. How are you?

Who are you and how are you doing? Well my good to be here with you of course majestically principal with sex on research and also see you next time group and Yeah, it's a great time to reflect and you were always talking about. What's the next best thing or what's this or what's this Challenger how we're gonna tackle that and just as I was thinking about what what I might bring up today.

It's kind of a dumb simple thing. But I really do appreciate I'm thankful that we are able to get in person today whether it's going to have coffee meeting with some people but it's traveling to a conference and yeah actually doing some business at a conference kind of forgot about that's yeah. That's actually yeah as we say as as we sit on Zoom, okay.

Well we can thanks for the fact that everybody else. We have been in the same office now and again, so yeah couldn't happen. Yeah, and and I've been traveling around a little bit.

I've been doing you know horses Here There and um, it really has been great. Right? I mean you forget about the importance of human contact, right you forget about you know, the relationships that you built over many years in the business.

So I will concur with that. I think that it is really just again great that we're able to get back together and you know kind of do more thing after a couple of years of not that right a couple of years of not that so definitely thankful for that. My first foray is gonna be the fact that I'm here now, right?

I'm here. I'm recording this thing. I'm joined, you know text on group and Tech strong research and I am really thankful for that.

It's been a lot of fun. Part learned a lot, right? You know I did not have a lot of background and I mean I did that SEC Ops, right but a lot of the nuances of devops and and you know kind of starting to dig into Cloud native infrastructure and just you know, the critical importance of all of those, you know areas of focus for companies and and really having digital transformation as you know, kind of the mechanism to you know, start to become the Catalyst for really a wave of innovation a wave of investment that's been fantastic.

So I'm yeah, I'm grateful for the markets that we're in I'm grateful to be you know, the company that is really just kind of at the fulcrum of a lot of these technology advancements and Innovation that we seen over the last, you know, seven eight years, right that strongly around 70 years at this point. And really I mean, it's a different environment. We kind of joke about, you know, kind of the Velocity in terms of how quickly things are changing but it's no joke, right Mitch.

I mean, you know kind of what we see, you know, and when we think about where we were two three years ago to where we are now and to try to Envision, you know, where we'll be in, you know, two to three years from from now. It's really, you know, it's getting harder to really prognosticate that because The technology Cycles are happening. So rapidly now, it is amazing and I'm very thankful that you're here too.

By the way Mike. It's great to be working with you and have your Tech strong both in your both of your roles. Both your strategies badging officer and also working research together.

Yeah. It's interesting because that you say that when I was a coupon North American Detroit, we did a panel for the SRE show. And the comments from folks around the panel.

was you know last time we were together it was at a kubecon and we were talking about wouldn't it be great if and the kind of listed a bunch of things, this is Groupon in San Diego and Look at three years ago or whatever it was and so today and and here we are in Detroit everywhere. And the last things that happened they were like shocked, you know, it really did happen in a matter of two and a half or three years. That's pretty amazing when you think about open source and adoption and hey, we we'd really hope that the vendor Community Embraces this thing and it happened right?

It's it is just kind of shocking but I like the interconnectedness of our world, right? You can talk about Cloud if you want but you're not gonna talk about it without talking about security and devops and find infrastructure and Legacy applications and how we interconnect with that and soft work. You know, it's all interconnected.

It just makes it really fascinating I think. Yeah, I I agree. You know again one of my big disappointments was not being able to get to you know, coupon North American obviously a little bit of an injury.

I'm thankful for my surgeon was able to get me in very quickly and and fix me up and and you know, I'm rehabbing now and up and around. I don't know if you saw we were on a meeting today and I was you know pretty soon around without my crutch. So yeah, we're making progress on that front, but it is I mean, it really is an interconnected environment and We can't take that for granted right because for so long that's right, you know, the two of us were not spring chickens, right?

So so, you know, we were there when he was I couldn't be broken right that you had these folks that did the networking. Yeah these folks that did this assignment and those folks that built the applications than the other folks that you did the database and never the queen should meet if anything they were throwing bombs at each other because you know, this one wasn't getting that done or that was in the way now there now, that's right to stop them from that's right and we're stopping. No, that's right.

That's right. So now again we are in this kind of interconnected environment where we're dependent on each other, right? If you don't have the connectivity your stuff doesn't work because everything is out in the cloud, right?

If you don't have the configuration, you know motions and hygiene. That's there. You can't guarantee that.

You know, your environment is going to be available and it's gonna scale to the degree that you need to so it's you know, there's just a lot of really cool dependencies that you know, we started and I know that sounds like a little bit of an all right cool than Tennessee. Um, but the fact is or interdependency may be a better way to phrase that right that you know, again, it's not you can't work in a vacuum and expect, you know, kind of a lot of this stuff to work over time. And again, I think that forces us to both break down a lot of those organizational and cultural barriers that I have playing, you know, many it shops and business shops.

Um, you know decades on that front but it also allows us to really unleash the Innovation that resides within a lot of these different groups that you know, you can get to a point of one plus one, you know equally, you know, three or four or five depending on you know, the level of you know, kind of magnification and leverage you can get, you know from these environments. So again, you know most you know, a lot of cases folks get uncomfortable with interdependencies, but the reality is in this kind of environment. It's not just you know, what benefits and necessity won't work without it, right?

In your in it's it's happening such a pace that no one person or group can slow it down or stop it, you know to if you think sorry historical Norms it is, you know, we're just kind of all kind of getting on the same train together here, hopefully and frankly our ability to compete a lot of it is our on our ability to collaborate more together and solve good problem. Okay. Well, that's right.

And that's kind of my next, you know, kind of think. You know, I'm thankful that finally application security is getting you know, kind of its day out in the sun yet. Right, but it's become a lot more important, right it is as you look at, you know, kind of the adoption of devops in the move towards Deb's secops and I was doing a conference presentation today and I was you know, go around the room.

It was a yeah, maybe 20 people there is not going around. Hey, what do you do, you know a company from and one guy said yeah. I run I run down devsecops, you know for you know, fairly large, you know kind of cable provider and I was like, oh that's interesting.

You know, what do you do? And it's like well, we're still figuring that out. You know, they I mean it was a new thing.

It's like, yeah for like two months and we're trying to you know, figure out what exactly that means. So I thought that was both entertaining and indicative right of where we are, but the fact is you Application security was always that thing that it was just like why are we not better at this? Right?

Why don't we make more significant investments in this and it was too hard and the developers didn't give a crap about it. Right? I mean, it really came down to those things.

And now that we can integrate a number of these motions into you know, kind of the pipeline. So it just happens, right, you know, we can integrated into the idea that you know, kind of when somebody makes a stupid foolish mistake, you know, we can catch it before it gets committed and then having to get you know having to get it, you know, kind of pushed out and pushed back, you know, we can do things like code signing or artifacts finding, you know, the one we're integrating and and assembling an application, right? We know that it's trusted components that we're using which address, you know, some of our bill of materials and some of the supply chain attacks that we've seen that have been so damaging over the last year and all of these things are Application security related right?

So I think that finally I finally we're in a position where folks are understanding that when we say devse Tech Ops, right? We've got devsec right? That's how we're going to actually secure the development side of things and we've got SEC Ops, that's how we're going to securely operate, you know the environment and it's really nice because you know for years and years and years all of the focus was on the second Ops kind of things.

There's still a lot of focused on psychops kind of thing, but in order to improve efficiency in order to you know, really make devops kind of work as as optimally as it needs to we really do have to think about security and I think that is something that I'm thankful for in 2022. And when things I think also thankful for it is you just reminded me of this. One things I really like about devops is it's not a methodology.

You know, I went through my whole career. Fighting about what was the right methodology the right stlc the right, whatever it kind of the religious wars of if you will if I can use that term, you know about this methodology and that it was just, you know, all baloney kind of it's fighting about ideas and which one was the right one with there wasn't a right one. And now we in terms of devops we talk about not the methodology we talked about the process of how we create software and automating it and securing it and it's it's more tangible.

It's more real it's about it's about what we do. In the process of how we created not just theoretically how do we project manage it right oversimplification about methodologies, but let's face it. You know, I don't think so.

Right because because you know agile was, you know, kind of a major departure for how we did a lot of things but that reckon that was still at the methodology level, right? This is how you do it. This is how and and devops really comes along with not just you know, kind of an obviously agile is optional but it really is going to see how you can do give up without you know, kind of some you know, kind of agile type of approach, you know, so so but devops, you know comes along with, you know, kind of a set of tools that you can use and sometimes you're integrating your own tools you're using an open source, and I think that's great a lot of the cloud native stuff.

Sometimes you're using somebody else's Pipeline and and all the associated tooling that goes along with that and security capabilities and artifact, you know, kind of repositories and Their deployment environments. So, you know, you really have kind of that whole Continuum of support if you are a do-it-yourself or you're a builder you're somebody that you know kind of is a tool person and you play around with it. Yeah, you can download a whole mess of components and and you can devops right?

You know, you can Devon if you're you know, somebody that needs a little bit more structure and package stuff you can you know get on to get lab or you know, kind of Leverage some of the advanced capabilities within you know, GitHub and and leverage, you know, somebody else is infrastructure. So you don't have to get into that, you know kind of operational motion and all stops in between right so, you know, and this will be one of the themes of predict. All right, but but it's I mean again devops not dead, right, you know, just because we're not talking about it every day.

That means it's happening. Right and it's happening in all different shapes and sizes form factors deployment models. It's happening.

I wear the edge and you know and actually speaking of that we're recording on Tuesday. You'll see this on Thursday and on Wednesday is devops experience, right? So, so by the time you see this it will have been yesterday right that we've talked about devops experiences devops everywhere right down to the edge into the cloud and all these other places where you know, we're seeing devops happen and that's because it isn't just a methodology right?

It's really an environment that that you get and it's it's a philosophy but it's also a set of tangible tools and models and capabilities that allow you to do devops regardless of where you are on the sophistication curve and and that's cool. Right that's coming and I'm a new being a lot of this stuff and you know, yeah, I read the Phoenix project but you know now that I'm talking and working, you know with folks that do this every day. It's just cool right.

I mean a lot of what we've done from a technology, you know kind of evolution standpoint is just Cool, and I'll you know be like new star starting. You know, that kind of thing. But I mean, I think it really does but that's what make it is fun.

It makes it but it's not just somebody but it makes kind of some advanced technology emotions more accessible and that's what we've always wanted it out of, you know, kind of the environment remember sugar you remind me one other thing. This is my snarky thankful. I'm glad that we won't everybody won't have to watch the videos of you and I and Alan and everybody in our Toy Story outfits now the devops But I was yelling.

Nobody knew that I was there and I was the anonymous guy and I think that's that's good that we were talking about some some themes for some of our conferences for next year. And I fear I'm going to be a little bit more visible, you know kind of the next time so that goes we did the secret as we knew your voice right away. So you gave it away.

Well, yes, that is that, you know, it's funny. So so reason I'm thankful, you know, the fact that I can't get around and even though be an injured, you know, I'm able to travel around and do you know but stuff I was able to surprise my son, you know at a pretty important event for for him in his life and you know, he was blindfolded that I was fraternity initiation. And you know when I started talking he knew right away, it was me right that this thing your voice and they really was it was great, you know both on both side.

So, you know, yeah, I'm thankful for being able to travel we're not just, you know, kind of the whole, you know kind of environment but also You know my personal environment so, you know just a lot of stuff to be thankful for and I guess I'll throw one more and then we can you know, kind of wrap up. You know, I'm thankful for a lot of you know, kind of the Innovation that the hyperscalers have brought to the table, right and and yeah, you know the world of cloud does not begin in with AWS and Azure and gcp and maybe Alibaba right? They were dozens of alternative clouds.

You can use depending what you need. There's all sorts of different sass environments, but what these folks have done is they've removed kind of the Barrier to entry of anybody building out sophisticated technology environments you want to do kubernetes you get down to you know, Asher kubernetes service and you're there right or or eks might be elastic kubernetes service from from AWS, you know, these things are just there and and they're accessible and they're not expensive. Obviously.

If you're doing something Enterprise scale, the the dollars can certainly add up but it's much more accessible. So we've seen just a tremendous amount of innovation unlocked because you don't have I mean when I started my first company we had to spend $10,000 on our station and we had to spend $20,000 on an sap license and we had to spend um 15,000 on a consultant to actually install sap onto this car station that we us the party and all told. I mean we were in about 100 even start development code.

Right without no. I mean nowadays. You've got a monthly not of you know, 50 bucks.

Right and some of the stuff is gonna be on free tier and you can start doing things right and and I think you know just the programmability of infrastructure now, right we would call it infrastructure is code or you know, kind of stuff that runs in hyperscalers or accessible via apis. However, you want to interact with it. It's there it's cheap and it's plentiful relative to where we've been and that has really accelerated The Innovation that we've seen in our world, right that's accelerated digital transformation.

It's really provided a platform that allowed Cloud native infrastructure to take root. Right? It's it's really the substrate that you know devops runs on top of and all that stuff needs to be secure.

So not really, you know, 14 years ago when Clark you're doing really started happening. That's the stage for We are today with all the you know, interesting stuff that we had Tech strong, you know research cover in the texture group, you know kind of his carved out as our own little area of the world. So I think that's just being a little credible hiddling onto your under your fire there and I think one of the unsung heroes of the cloud and The Innovation that happened when I started using agus as the first one early on about 2008 or so and the first I had is anybody the credit card in Nebraska you have access to all this stuff.

It was like, okay change everything right, you know to go through anybody to get this stuff. You just go by right? That's right.

And that really talk about yeah, everything being accessible through web interface and a credit card that to me is game-changer. It really has been It was especially when we started seeing customer data up there because some developer had their credit card, you know kind of doing that and then of course, you know kind of the pendulum swung back and corporate, you know, kind of Finance kind of got a handle on that Yes, actually some of the big organization but you're exactly right, you know, you're exactly right and and you know, just think about what the impact that that software is a service has had on removing a lot of that operational responsibility from these it teams and letting them focus on things that are more value or creative to their business. So there's just a lot of stuff that this Cloud Revolution is started to you know, really enable, you know in in kind of the technology environment.

So as you can tell right we we have a lot to be thankful for now good things be better of course things can always be better right macro economic issues and a lot of people are struggling out there and inflation around the world is high but you again if you get a little bit older you get a lot more Expected and and you know, whatever would never been like this and you know what it's pretty damn good relative to, you know, kind of a number of different times in life. I mean, I remember sitting in you know, kind of gas lines and I remember sitting gas lines when I was four or five years old, you know kind of in the in the early 70s, right, you know, and and we know for the morning just in line and and inflation was not it, you know seven, you know, eight percent. It was a 12 15 percent, you know back then so, you know again and I know the kids today they all you know, get all fostered, you know, but the reality is, you know, kind of the the environment all other things being equal.

Yeah standard of living. I mean all that stuff is greatly improved relative to you know, where we are. So I think you know, we can all take a little bit of time off next week.

I don't think well maybe around some reruns and stuff on text wrong TV, but you know, we'll be out most of the week and hopefully everybody else has a safe and a happy holiday and you know, that's that's right. That's what I have maybe see. Yes, oh, we have to pimp our stuff, right so so yes, we will be at reinvent.

So if you will be there, let us know we were happy to meet we're happy to do and shoot texture on TV interviews. I'll predict 23 January 12th. And you know, we we're starting to think about, you know, we've kind of got our structure for our panels.

So if you're interested in possibly being on one of our panels reach out, let us know they're gonna be our structure. So no, you're not gonna get up and pontificate and do you know kind of your thing, but if you have an opinion and you know, you think you can contribute to some of the panels, you know reach out and we'll see if we can find a spot for you on that front. And and it's what are you doing you big holiday plans you grandkids together and do all right.

Yeah grandkids kids getting together not everybody but you know, we've got a critical mass enough to get some turkey. Yeah cook it up and for holiday, so yeah all the other good things. So apple pie.

All the other things that I like it all that's the problem. Yes, but again, it's not not it not a data diet for sure. No, I'm going down.

You know. My my laws are from Dallas. So we're going to get down there quick trip, you know getting out on on Thursday and back on Saturday.

So just be a quick trip down there to but you know spend time with family, right? That's really the important thing is to you go down see some see some family and you know, enjoy each other's company to degree you can and then get out right before before you stop to enjoy each other's company which tends to happen with family as well. Very true.

Yeah before you get back to the old man. So with that this is our Thanksgiving episode. We have given lots of thanks on behalf of myself and and Mitch and all of us at Tech strong group again.

Hope everybody has a safe and a happy holiday and we will see you at reinvent the week after Thanksgiving and I would suspect we're going to shoot a number of videos, you know, both the research review as well as a lot of interviews and maybe some other thought pieces that will again because we'll have a captive audience. Our video guys will be there nothing else to do. So, I think we'll just start shooting all messy video.

Sounds good that enjoy we will see you on the flip side take everybody Happy Thanksgiving.