KubeCon Review – Techstrong Research Review EP 6

here Hi everybody. This is Mike Rothman. I am general manager of tech strong research to strategy officer of tech strong group and we are here for another text wrong research review.

Yes, I still have my bionic knee. So besides all of the you know, kind of fancy background. I'm not propped up in bed.

I'm actually sitting at the the kitchen table now so you can't see that. So we are making progress on the on the rehab side that is right news. I am I am will be better and they can rebuild it.

I'm not quite sure cost a million dollars. It's not out or six million, right? It's not that crazy.

Yeah, just right Mitchell. Welcome. How are you?

Good Mitch Ashley the CTO with the tech strong group and principal with working with my contact strong research. So good to be yes like yet again you got so we you know, we've got a lot strong. It's always, you know, kind of juggling a whole bunch of different things between our you know, Med Business and the events that we do and the research that we have going on.

We've always got you know kind of a lot of stuff but but now especially there's a lot of balls in the air and it's not just the ongoing research projects that were constantly doing and obviously if anybody's interested in that, you know kind of reach out and let us know we're happy to chat with you about what what we can do and our research capabilities, but we're gearing up for predict and that's our annual conference where we really talk about where we think things are going in the next year. That'll be January 12th. We'll put that in your town.

You can actually register now, we're putting our Trends in place and all of that is is starting to come together. But before we get there Mitch, I know that there was another breed try to another day another dollar or another breed. But yeah kind of highlights a lot of things that we've been talking about and I think is a good segue to what we're gonna spend most of our time on which is good.

Yeah it is. I mean, we're you know her software supply chain is you know up near the top of the I wish we keep talking about it because it's real and talking about another breach seems like Gohan, you know, oh stuff, but actually it was Dropbox, you know, just a couple of days ago when this errors will be about a week ago and this is developers got fished and they got credentials to get into GitHub and they stored under stole a hundred and thirty repositories, you know keys and and tokens, excuse me, and you know, it's took some data and you know, we'll learn more over how much of customer data but you know, now we're talking about people's files on the you know that the use for everyday stuff not just I found a document with your credentials in it. Not that that isn't bad enough, but it points again that the developers are part of the supply chain, you know, it's like it's like hijacking the truck by compromising the truck driver.

Well in this case, you know this hijacking the software by hijacking the car the software creator and it just and yet another and by the way fishing isn't just for those uneducated on technical users that don't know better anybody and everybody can be fished and it and it does happen and their target. Basically it was a CircleCI email. That's what it looked exactly like it and said we need you to do this to update your keys.

Yes, they did up their keys to the hackers. So it you know, it's real and it's effective and it's fooling developers, too. It's it's fully and you know again so we can point on developers and and that you know brings up another topic that I'll hit in a second right but it's still and and we keep you know kind of harping on the importance of training our folks, of course, right the Father the the importance of protecting, you know their devices of course, right but it's the constant diligence.

And now that we live in a fast type world, right? You've got to have some intelligence and some monitoring in terms of a lot of those ass oriented platforms and products that we have our critical intellectual property, right? So that's one thing is that it's not just the developers right?

That could be somebody in finance. That could be somebody anybody who has access to sensitive stuff, especially if it's in a Seth environment if they get there they get those credentials. They're in this ass back end right could be Office 365.

Okay, this is Office 365 on that front. So making sure that we've got again adequate protection for those folks is critical. Done this, you know kind of this is a little bit of a compound attack right in that it wasn't just going after the developer the developer gave access to you know, kind of the back end which opened up, you know, kind of the repositories and a lot of their core intellectual property from a supply chain standpoint.

That's that's there. So is it really a supply chain attack me, right? They're not necessarily going after the components that Dropbox would have used in their environment.

So it is a little bit more run of the mill but it does highlight the fact that you know, both our employees continue to be vulnerable because they are human and as we move towards more of these fast-based platforms the diligence that's required around monitoring the activity within those platforms is absolutely critical, but I know we do want on a Segway, you know leveraging the supply chain aspect of that. Well you saw two car obviously with You know kind of the bionic knee I'm not able I was not able to go to Detroit which is not quite disappointment. And you know, exactly yeah waiting for this skin graft to you know to take before I can you know, kind of launch it at 60 miles an hour quite yet, but you know, so very disappointed to miss Detroit.

So I've had to take my, you know, kind of insights in terms of what the stories about from from you and Allen a lot of the videos. We have 40 some odd interviews that are gonna hit Tech strong TV over the next week, I believe so a lot of activity from a lot of really great conversations about where things are going. So awesome damage to give us a little sense.

You can start with supply chain. You can start pretty much anywhere, you know you want in terms of what we saw there. Let's touch on supply chain since it's kind of where we begin with and then we'll broaden out a bit but there's a lot, of course a lot of interest in activity around J frogs LED this project called Persia that they basically got started I learned about it.

I think they announced it back at Valencia and kukan Europe north Europe and and it's it's the idea of you know, where's your software coming from Well when things that blockchain does is validate where transactions come from things that go on The Ledger Etc. And so they're actually playing blockchain technology and a group together with with a number of companies to create a network a blockchain network and a process and there were some more announcements around Percy and taking it to the next level by the way. It's about why our essay if you want to look it up so a lot of attention around that and then also a lot of attention around the open open source security Foundation, you know, another Foundation within the Lenox Foundation group and starting a they have a new end user working group and users are end users of opens or software so developers and people like that and how do we consume?

Opens her software. So on one end, how do you create secure open and open source software and create processes around it. It's exciting area and I've had several conversations with folks there.

So it's a interesting area for us too, but software and the security of software and how it's created is definitely a big thing probably overshadowed a lot by you know, OpenTelemetry and you know, the operational aspects of making, you know, kind of cloud native infrastructure Cloud native design kubernetes and you know, so if you want to add anything to to the supply chain part of it, but that was the one no, but now let's kind of yeah, I think the operationalization aspect of things is is, you know, kind of interesting to me as well and not that the supply chain is not interesting. It's absolutely critical especially is again as we've been saying for quite a long time, right? We are assembling we are You know really kind of aggregating a lot of different components that we're using to form modern applications, right?

So we don't build I don't make sure you think you know, we even build 60, you know forty percent some percent, you know, that's increasingly becoming a minority is stuff that we're actually coding from an application standard interesting. It's really assembling integrating. Yeah, and and so so obviously, you know kind of diligence and and protection and monitoring of those components will increase only be critical but again as as we look towards, you know, 2023 as we you know, kind of continue to expect the adoption curve to accelerate around Cloud native technology, one of our themes right for predict 23 is is the long Mark right?

And and that's this idea that you know, and you kind of brought up the lamps that when we're trying about this and one of our other meetings, right, you know took a decade for the landstack to become Published as kind of the web platform, right? So Cloud made of infrastructure is not going to get there overnight, right? So now in 23 we start to embark on that long Mark towards, you know, really a cloud native Centric infrastructure for how we're hosting and and delivering and deploying applications moving forward and I think operationalize I operationalizing that and building a lot of the Enterprise Readiness around some of these technologies that again at large Enterprise aren't doing it.

They certainly are right but for it to become more accessible to everybody right you have to have us, you know, a level of Enterprise capability in order to drive that and I think that's kind of where we expect a lot of activity in 20 30 around that, you know, kind of enterprisingness of the the projects and really a lot of the technology. Well, you know with with every innovation We have the Innovation and then comes later the oh how we're gonna run this and how we do here right as it becomes real that's that's the Opera's operationalization of that right? It's interesting.

Well, I think that there's a lot of stats around how much new development is cloud native majority of it is when we talk about going to the people building AppSec in the cloud and I think one of the things that's different about Cloud native and then maybe if you compare to the lamp stack for example is you know, that's that's a components of software. You know, what the database you might sequel whatever you're using in this case. It's it's a software architecture too.

It's microservices, right? And yeah, you're putting them containers. Now you're using things to to manage those containers, but your redesigning how you're building AppSec.

So it's almost like the the monolith to service oriented our architecture to microservices Long March that we're on in parallel with the underlying kind of Technology. That it's running on so it's pretty but it's it's real. I mean, if you go to one of these coupon conferences, it's pretty overwhelming.

It's like, oh my God, it's here and people are doing it and it's not just typed up by the analysts and the vendors and marketing departments and everybody. Yeah that's happening too, which is interesting right because we're starting and and that's something that again let's call it experienced as opposed to being old guys, right? I think it's why you know in in this space we've seen that right in that when you really disrupted Innovation start to hit it's when we don't it's when we stop talking about it, right?

It's when it's not a shiny. That's really when things start to happen, right? That's when you start to hit the inflection point when it's less shiny and and you know, again one of the things that we talked about the long large being kind of our you know for cloud native infrastructure.

The theme for devops is Long live devops, right because we're starting to hear people. com, you know about that. But to me, that's an indication that devops has won right?

Because when you stop talking about it, it's become integrated into the processes. I can't tell you how many different projects and and assessments and program design efforts. Just me me and Rich right we're involved in, you know, kind of prior to me joining text wrong.

We're folks where it's happening in their environment and they're really trying to figure out how I get my arms around right? How do I secure these are not small companies, right? And it's not an easy transition, you know, we're talking a very large very State very conservative organization.

They've got Architects that are working on all these things and it's gonna take them years to get there. But the fact is they've started that journey and once companies like that start the journey it don't stop right. There's no way to kind of take it offline at that point and waterfall.

Okay, we're gonna go back to that. Right? I mean they're building all these, you know linkages.

They're starting to leverage the foundation. I've got their policy documents and their tool chains that they're starting to develop and and that's really when we stopped talking about because it's not so shiny anymore because big conservative Slow moving, you know kind of risk of verse companies are starting to do this stuff. Well, then it's not so exciting.

Right, you know, it's not the, you know, Leading Edge and so we want to talk about other things. I want to talk about awesome. We'll get there, you know, maybe not today but you know something else and and certainly a predict we're gonna spend a decent amount of time and you know, kind of new potential disruptive technology.

In fact, we're introducing a in January will be introducing what we're calling the tech strong Tech to track right? So these are a set of each of our four different areas. These are sets of technology to keep our eye they're not here today.

Right but they're emerging and something that we should be paying attention to Lawson, you know being part of that but really that's kind of to try to break this, you know, we need an alternative the cloud native infrastructure, right, you know, there's other Alternatives and devops, you know, platform engineering or SRE or some of these other, you know, kind of replacement, you know to devops and Again to me those are all just indications that the game's over right devops is one and now it's just a matter of you know, kind of starting to integrate those processes into you know, kind of how it is that that we do things. I mean you kind of felt that momentum and absolutely so I think one things and we're actually having a devops and panel. I think the title of it is something like like, can you can you really do Cloud native without devops?

I think it's pretty much required right? Today's word. I think we're recording today.

Yeah that's being recorded. Okay to do that. I don't know what we were talking about.

That's what it's that. So now you know and well, you know, the whole devops thing is dead. That's just clickbait.

I did why I did a quick bait way back when on oh, yeah Microsoft's new phone technology is gonna repay Place Apple. I was actually just pissed off at Apple about something so I wrote an article on network world and that's okay you bought on Android but Yeah, no and I got fireballed for it, you know, but I had the biggest hits I've ever had on an article at least at that time. You know that that's just clickbait.

That's like yeah, give me a break. You're not real. Okay.

Yeah, Something's Gonna replace it sure. It's gonna evolve but like all their technology or all our and we still do Agile. We still do waterfall things never go away.

They just evolve into being parts of other things, you know secret Mitch. Yeah Company still run the Big Iron, right? They were still mainframes operationally happening storing data and it's actually critical pretty critical data.

You know, I just from the 80s. So yes, that's scary. And you know, sorry if you're in Canada, you know, how you get your bill from Bell may actually be code that I wrote back in the early 90s.

Oh that's that is terrified. So we get back to kubecon because I think I had an interesting conversation. We did a SRE show panel there at our booth at our text run Booth.

We were doing interviews and we were reflecting back to about three years ago when everybody really was live, not Valencia, but whatever the last show was that everybody did together as a coupon show and at that time they were talking about SRE kind of hoping that it might catch on. I mean Google the book had been written and yeah, it's real that a few places but is it really gonna be a thing and we were there were talking about how OpenTelemetry was, you know, it's merge merging myth open tracing and with the with this really catch on the vendors and reflecting to where we are and how much it happened in the short span of you know, two and a half three years, you know fast forward. It's like a lot of our hopes and dreams of actually come true in some of those areas and you could say the same thing pooping headies and Cloud native, you know, we have entered the it is it's not mainstream.

And replacing everything. It's in mainstream of what new AppSec and everything's being built around but even if it started to become the platform of choice when folks are building out these staff out stack. You know think about that way.

So that was definitely a theme Mike. I think I think something else is just the power behind. The cloud native Foundation.

I'm a momentum. I'm more so than power but momentum behind God native foundation and the Linux Foundation, you know, they have really put together something very powerful of way of helping and supporting projects and keeping them going. It isn't the yeah.

There's the Casual closet developer that wrote the monitoring tool that turns into something and they keep it alive themselves until they can't stand it anymore. And then you know, is it gonna live or die now? It's no you turn it in you you really put some power behind it put some muscle behind it in structure and people and process and all of that kind of thing and it's it's an impressive thing to watch because it's real and it really does make it.

It is an and what it does is it helps accelerate the adoption, right? It starts to accelerate the Embrace of these Technologies because it's just easier to do right. It's not the old days.

It's not, you know kind of the vendor lock and it's not you know, and again part of what we're talking about that we expect to happen in 2023. Is that a lot of those supporting capabilities? Whether it's education whether it's management, whether it's operationalization, whether it's security performance monitoring, you know, a lot of these things is dark to gel around the base technology which again makes it more palatable for getting larger more risk-averse conservative organizations to really start embracing this kind of environment.

But again, we won't be done in 23, right we won't be done in 24, we won't be done 25, right? That's why we're calling it, you know the Long March from that standpoint. But again, I mean, I think that And unless you're playing, you know ostrich, right, you know kind of in terms of how you build and deploy technology is largely going to be devops, you know, devops everywhere and devops to the edge in a lot of the things that we're talking about at devop experience and a couple weeks.

You know kind of manifest that and we've got, you know kind of this long more towards the you know. Adoption of real Cloud native infrastructure as that, you know kind of cloud application stack and and what we're going to be doing both at Tech storm group as well as within text wrong research is really kind of documenting and getting out ahead of you know, kind of these Trends and and that's kind of with listen. We're not one of the big you know research shops.

We're not you know out there trying to cover every single thing. So when you see our Trends, it's really going to be focused on this intersection of the areas that we focus on right starting with digital transformation. Is that as the Catalyst to start looking and driving these Technologies Cloud native infrastructure as the underlying foundation and enabling Technologies devops is how you do things and security as you know, kind of that layer to protect all of that intellectual property and key corporate asset, you know information assets that show up on these platforms and and that's kind of the agenda for what it is that that we're looking.

Forward to both the predict in January and every week right when Mitch and I on and what you know another little secret if we were serum on Friday mornings, right? So, you know, we have our little internal research meeting early on Friday morning. So we're a little rusty and we went out and watch the football game on Thursday nights.

It could be a little rusty and that kind of thing, but well, yeah, so it's about a time, you know, you guys see this it's another week and and again, we're just we're excited because there's just a lot of really cool stuff happening in a lot of different areas and and text wrong is at the front end of really covering and carving out what this means to you know, Enterprise is large and small alike and for you for you and I personally it's it's a place where we you know, yes, we're working together now and but we've shared some some key things that I think we're we hold important and that is Really being practical about how does how to use the stuff? And what does it mean to you? Not, you know pontificating about you know, the next greatest thing of whatever hype waiver Mercy quadrant or wacky wave or whatever the heck you want to call but I do that stuff.

We're not rating not doing this ratings, but we are really being very practical about we think this is gonna be real this is real today and what some of the challenges are opportunities or whatever those are. So the predict 23 2023 will be the launch when you talked about, you know Tech to watch is really some of our own research that's not funded by other people we're doing it ourselves and you know it something you've been doing for a long time here a little bit newer to me, but you know and like some of the other guys have like cool vendors or we're not doing it's really about technology. So Dragon, yes, we'll talk about the companies that are you know, kind of leading the way in those areas, but it's really about kind of the sector and how that's going to impact the environment.

And again, we're gonna update that on a quarterly basis. So it's gonna be something that we've got in front of you at all times in order to you know, ensure that you understand kind of what you have to be paying attention to right and that's our job is to be out there. Right?

We're not we're not, you know early majority, you know kind of late majority, okay? By that time, you know what the backward looking indicators the other big research shops. They're all over that stuff.

We want to be out on you know, kind of the front end of you know, kind of adoption Trends and really new technology environments and and that's just very exciting to me again being an old guy and haven't seen this, you know stuff once or twice. Well, by the way, I stop counting birthdays. I know it's it's leveling up.

I'm now at level 52 wizard. Well, yeah, that's right not getting any help, you know, appreciate the time again, you know love our internal research mean you get the whack poetic a little bit while everybody listens in this will show up, of course on Tech strong TV and the, you know next couple of days and yeah next week, we'll have someone else talk about because there's always something and we'll see you soon. By the way, you're going to reinvent.

I know I'm going and you're going I will be okay, you'll get to see the bionic knee. So really will be mad. I bring that.

We're taking appointments setting up meetings and doing and doing interviews also with Alan and and Folks at at we have a room a suite where we're doing that stuff. So reach out to us just info a text wrong researcher info at techstrong group. Are we chat to us directly?

If you are a house. We're happy to hear from you. Yeah, Mitchell and Mike Rothman so you can get us a text strong research Tech over the reinvent.

So we'll see everybody there. We should appreciated Mitch appreciate everybody, you know being in here and listening to to what we're waxing poetically about and until next week. This is the text wrong research review.

We will see you later on. See you soon. Bye.