DevOps World: Why Leaders Attend – Michael Neale, CloudBees

This is Textron TV. That's a great pleasure. Being joined by Michael Neal Michael is Chief scientist with Cloud bees.

Welcome, Michael. Hi, Alex, having me good to have you all the way from Australia to Colorado. Sydney could be chatting together right from the entities are almost directly if you look down and see me, not quite but yeah, just take a look what hey, so I'd love to you know, I always have folks introduce yourself.

Tell us a little bit about you a little bit about cloudy's. I love to hear about Chief scientists and what that role is. Yeah, so I'm one of the co-founders of Cloudy is going back a lot of years now channel 12 years.

And we started as a sort of a developer-centric platform as a service and then pivoted more towards cicd pipelines and then as devops took up as its own I'll took off as its own discipline. We sort of pivoted into that direction and being sort of an Enterprise at scale Devil's platform as a chief scientist. I'm kind of scouting out new technologies that we may want to include or maybe even new products that we may want to build in the platform in future.

And that means we can make use of some of the new technologies are out there SAS Services apis things like AI that might make things a little bit nervous to sneak in a product today, but in a few years time might be a lot more mainstream so that's kind of my my day to day excellent. That's good to hear from someone who's who has the focus a little farther down field right to see where we may go what we can put into the product for customers. It's like that's right too.

It is a lot of it's a lot of fun. But you have to be you have to be prepared to sort of throw things away which sometimes you'll get attached to something or or something, you know comes out of the blue and becomes really popular and why is that why didn't I see that coming yet? So it's it can be frustrating but it's also fun as well.

You have to be careful not to fall in love with the latest thing because it's not always that's right. We're ready. Yeah, we're right does it actually work is it actually useful things like that or yeah, especially AIS is notorious for that.

That's it looks really promising when the rubber meets the road. It might be a bit of a letdown for people we hear I think we hear in probably experience a lot of that. Well, it's just about devops worlds coming up on the 27th through the 29th of September.

I'm real Curious and your perspective. I'm sure you talk with a lot of customers you have longevity, of course as a co-founder with Cloud because you've been you know, you've been in devops since there's been devops right pretty much that's right. And you know what sort of people are gonna come to devops world or help after the hearing this little sign up and come.

Yeah and they're gonna be at a place where they're living it right either. They're starting their Journey. They're slogging it out.

They're trying to scale it. They're kind of getting it really working for them. Where's your sense that we're most people are in that Journey.

Yeah, I have been to quite a few developes throughout the years and that sort of group them into two people. There's some people that sort of turn up almost with a shopping list and I've done this as well at conferences, you know, I want to talk to this person. I've got this problem to solve.

Usually they're fairly early on in their Journey or they've started using some ci/cd and they're having trouble scaling with this or with their teams with that or they don't know what the best deployment approach is and they want to learn more or they want to tackle a specific problem. Like they got something very in mind and they'll know what sessions to go to. that's pretty common, especially from the logic companies and then I've often been surprised with people from like really sort of companies.

I wouldn't expect like a medical equipment manufacturer. That came along and they didn't have a specific agenda but they're like we want to learn about adults because it sounds really good. And we want to be able to update the firmware on our medical equipment, you know, maybe it's a blood pressure monitors or something in the way Apple do on apps on your iPhone.

So we went we'll go to conferences. We'll learn about that. And yes, there's a lot of paperwork and a lot of compliance but we think we can solve that with the right tools and the right people so you get these people that are kind of Exploratory.

I met someone from a a space kind of Rocket company though doing something to do with our launching satellites. And they were really interested in how the ideas of devops could apply to. I don't know if I'd call it yawning.

So don't know what it's called. But yeah, they're very exploratory. They were sort of open-minded.

I expect they get a lot of conferences but it was really interesting to sort of see the two ends of the spectrum one is like what is this does apply to my field any other one is You know, I'm part way through my journey or just starting and here's the he's the roadblocks. I've got right in front of me. Who do I talk to?

You know, what do I buy sort of things? And I know the sponsors of a conference love the people, who are you say we want to buy stuff. So there's there's tons of every vendor across the develop Spectrum or we'll be able to sell you some some solution there and Which is which is good as well, you know, you know sort of on your own seems like two there's also maybe a third group is I don't know where to get started.

I just like it's oh, yeah, there's a wide array of things and people say started. See I see. Oh, yeah, I'm here to figure out what that is.

That's what I'm oh, yeah the yes, I've definitely come across that the and often they're told to go or you know, it's that could be at all different levels of an organization. They said we're gonna be kicking off a digital transformation or a develops initiative. He's a conference.

So he's a set of conference as you can go to I've even you know had meetings pretty conference with companies that are They know they need to speed up what they do or cope with changes quicker. So they go how do we devops so that yeah it's and that's tricky for me because it's like you said when you've kind of been an Insider for maybe too long you kind of don't really know where to start. I don't honestly know don't know where I'd start today.

But if if you are starting out this there's so much. To choose from I I could easily find myself getting paralyzed. So I hope they those people turn along and they latch onto something that will just because often it doesn't matter too much what you start as long as you start.

Working down that cicd or continuous something or devops practice path then then you'll naturally get better if you really want to do it. But yeah this definitely that I don't often run into them in the conference, but you know, maybe in the hallway tracking things like that. They'll be people that are you know, I don't know where to start, you know, yeah, that's definitely a good.

One it seems it seems to work pretty well is if you're looking for that place to start or you will kind of working on the next problem is don't try to boil the ocean change the whole organization that way it's kind of taking how your organization operates. What do you do? Well, what's the part that what's the flow already happening?

And can you take some part of devops and say now let's change that and do that this way but it can fit into how we're doing as opposed to you have to forget everything, you know and start thinking about it this way. That's right. Let's not make the jump to microservices on day one, you know for it.

Yes applications or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I would just you know personally I would go.

Well what? what things have done manually today that you could automate away what approvals could you get rid of and things like that and that would probably go a lot of the way there like if you're doing much manually than getting rid of that is a huge step and that would probably be a great starting point not get too caught up on what Netflix is doing or what Google's doing or something else. Just you know, what can I automate that just makes things a bit better?

I did hear. It was after a conference. I saw a write-up.

I think it was on one of the the Jenkins blogs. About a bank that that went from they kind of measured their progress. They they took their existing pipeline codified it into cicd that had about a dozen manual checkpoints where someone would approve it and then over time they whittled that down to two and they kind of measured their Progressive how many times do we have to stop and weight per person to press a button to approve and you know, that's a perfectly good.

That's a very good way to quantify your Progressive if you like, I think a lot of companies that probably moved on from that today, but then I expect a lot haven't Oftentimes after force myself to remember not everybody's been doing this two or three year five years, right? You know, some folks are starting out. Well, yeah, you see those.

Well, it was few years ago now but you'd see those surveys that are like how many companies are doing things like Source control and and I would always guess and having my mouth and it's like he's like what else is going on and I would like to think I'm probably too scared to look but I'd like to think that we've moved on beyond that stage, but If we haven't, you know, maybe we shouldn't judge it's people but I think I think things have moved along the tools are a lot more user-friendly now. So it is a it is a lot more approachable. It's a lot less Cutting Edge to do some at least the basics, but at least automate one build the starting point, I mean just to focus on that but the starting point is a much better place to start today than I was yeah years ago.

Yeah, you know, you're not doing the same level of tool integration and building and like, oh, yeah and all together just to make it work, right? Yeah eight to ten years ago. Yeah.

It was still an open question what SCM you're using it. It's kind of become a bit of a git want to culture, you know outside of the Googles and Facebooks of the world Twitter. Which has made things easier because you know, there's familiar hooks.

There's web hooks, there's events. There's you know branching models those pull requests and all of this familiar lingua, Franca. Has really helped but yeah, you go back 10 years ago.

It could have been subversion would have been Mercurial clear case was still around. And all of those things had very different Integrations and plugins or extensions and capabilities and you might see some practice of someone doing something with material and you couldn't translate that to visual Source safe or something that you are using a little visual team Studio team Studio from Microsoft. But but now things have converged on, you know, almost a standard which it which is get I think that that's made the starting point of automation vastly easier.

Yeah, I totally agree. By the way Jenkins was my starting point about 2013 or 14 right project that and moving to get was because of the first two, right? Yeah and Jenkins actually predates get if you can believe it like in git was like in an optional integration for the longest time, which Still believes my mind that because to me it's been around forever.

But if I go way back to my I started my career I I got a I think I converted a company over to CVS the next company over to subversion and then finally to to get and then GitHub and you know, that's a familiar sort of Journey. And yeah and each time it was a lot of work but now I just yeah, I don't even yeah, that's right that was in there. But it's like now I don't even think about it as she kind of take it for granted.

Which I think. Maybe that's a good thing. You know, it's a good thing.

Yeah, those problems have been solved and you can and they've been solved. Yes. That's right.

We don't have to yeah, you don't have to go to a new company or a new project and then decide. You know, all of these things the the rail the railway has been laid down for you. So I think that's that's really good.

Well, so you step back and you know, you're actually you're looking forward and kind of where things are going as you think about this conference coming up this year. The 2022 edition. What do you think will be sort of the merging theme or Trend or what?

Do you you anticipating to see? And what do you hope to see if you were attending this? Yeah, I'd I guess putting the vendor hat on.

I'd hope to see the you know wide variety of companies that are some a fairway along using using devops and their digital transformation that it's not an open question. Surely by now. We'd be seeing that.

If not, you know, how can we help these people to to get along and the other the other train I'm curious to see is um in the larger Enterprises that are often heavily represented in this This conference. There's always been a hesitancy to use. either public cloud or suffer as a service and that and I'm sensing a shift amongst that where people are realizing that where we might not be the best at running all of this software.

What can we you know, what's undifferentiated heavy lifting that we can move to the public cloud or other vendors. So I'm I'm suspecting. That we'll see a great deal more of that.

Like if you if you look at sort of the hacking news sort of world of devops and everyone's already there. Everyone's using sass. Why would you and you know, if I was starting a company now, of course you do that, you know, you don't run your own email servers you you know, everything's consumed as a service but for the the larger long lived Enterprises, there's there's constraints or perceived constraints and compliance needs that have sort of held them back.

So I'm expecting that to sort of change. That would be I would expect to see that I'd be very curious if people are talking about my sort of hobby horse, which is the sort of code generation and AI tools that are writing code for people automating away the boring stuff. If I hear people talking about that, that would be passing.

I still think that's you know, still a couple of years in the future, but it's already working pretty well. So I expect to see that maybe not this conference but people start to talk about it and the reason is a lot of the Right. Yeah, a lot of the config working in devops, you know, whether it's a terraform file or a pipeline.

You know, it's all very good to edit and and do that stuff. But really this time you spend doing that it's time to spend not building your apps. So if you've got high level AI tools that can kind of look at your code and do that for you.

I think that's great. So that's sort of that's putting on, you know, sort of the the scientist how to you know, is that where people are gonna go or they're not going to do that and they like they like hanging on to their servers and pipelines and stuff. We'll see.

I'm sure your opinion about this, you know often if you haven't been in a big Enterprise, you're really realize how much investment they make in. Doing doing it themselves oftentimes because before you couldn't get something that would scale to that size, you know, you're running your own Farm of you know, exchange servers just to run email and suddenly. Okay.

Well we can go to 365. I was sometimes those are driven by cost right we can do that much more efficiently. My sense is around devops and moving to SAS platforms is we have a better things for you to do then stick together tools and maintain this.

Yes fabric of what we're what we have to have today. But the I'd rather have you working on the next thing the next value outcome not just value to get software at the door, right? Yeah.

That's right. Yeah, I definitely would agree with that. There's the better companies are definitely doing that.

There and they used to see it and software as a cost center. But because of competitive pressures now they go all actually this is now core part of our business and if it's a core part of our business We'll start paying attention to it. And then we look at it.

And we see people spending all these time, you know, maintaining services or scripts for this and that when there's platforms out there to do that for you like wouldn't it make sense to make use of them and then you can spend the time actually doing the differentiating features that set you apart and you know in the past a lot of companies within yes, we need to do this software, but We would rather use commercial off the shelf if it exists that it doesn't so we'll have some go together. I think those days are gone where now people see it as potentially a strategic. advantage in the market either because it makes their company valued more, you know as a stock as perception or just that allows them to compete with these sort of digital native incumbents that are coming in, you know, especially in banking and and things like that and I think after the pan through the pandemic we even saw that happen a bit with the sort of pharmaceutical companies teaming up with these Superfast software-driven kind of I don't call them startups, but they kind of are like Like a Madonna or something like that or bioente, you know, they're very they're very high tech very digital.

So I think even these companies that some of them are 100 years old 120 years old hundred and even those are feeling pressure from digital native. So I think they the clever ones tend to be software as a, you know, an asset of differentiator and they're the ones that are probably pushing harder for this versus staying with the status quo software's move to be part of the strategy not just part of the background yes operations, right? It's kind of that's right.

Yeah, when when we grew up, yeah, it was very much the back office and you know being in it was You know throughout my career. I always thought well, I want to work at a company where it is the business not the business is something else and I have worked. I've worked at Banks.

I worked at insurance companies that worked with military and stuff like that. And as always the business or the field or something like that when you're in a software company, you are the business and increasingly, you know, a lot of these companies are saying it that way as well which which is good and it's good for all of the people attending the develops conference. It's very good for their careers as well.

So if you're at a conference like this, you know things are going actually pretty well for you. Like you should be thankful to be there that you're you ended up in this industry. It's yeah.

Agree, so we talked about sort of folks looking like how do I get started? We talk about folks. They're kind of in the middle of that Journey oftentimes whether you're a small startup and you have kind of a chief engineer or you know, lead engineer or you're in a larger company.

They may have somebody in a role like you who are sort of looking on the horizon. If you're one of those folks in that kind of yeah, I have these responsibilities today, but I I am here to to be looking down the field 20 30 yards, you know, we're meters and you know to folks like you in their respective roles, what should they be looking for it at devops world? What can make sure they be seeking out?

yeah, I'm I guess it was me. Yeah, I'd be I'd be curious to sort of the case study talks there always good. Sometimes they can be hittiness.

But you know, if you don't like a talk, you can always leave out and I also like talking to sounds weird. I like going into the vendors. I like hearing the pictures and that you know, you can you can see what's a pitch and and where the value is and you know going around the booths and and then just getting some ideas planted of what Solutions might already be out there.

So that's that's what I would tend to do is sort of it probably mostly be the conference floor is where I would I would find the value, you know, the whole way track as they call it. So, yes, you can scour in the catalog into like that's kind of interestingly. That's right.

Yeah before let me know just right. Oh, yeah exactly. I mean some plenty of conferences where it's like I have no idea what this is.

I'll go to this talk and it's changed my life. Like it's just it's opened up a whole field that I didn't realize Existed not often. You don't know what you don't know.

So it's you know, make the most of that. But yeah, that's that's really good. Fantastic.

Well, Michael's been a great spending some time with you and thanks for sharing your perspective. You know, the longevity that you bring from your experienced co-founding Cloud bees and and creating products in this in this area that bring you know, that's a unique perspective. Most people are not gonna have and I think it's super valuable.

com sign up. It's available now a 27 through the 29th the full agendas there. You can kind of scope out map out.

Here's why I want to go. Here's my again to do there stuff. I'm going to get out of it.

And yeah, Orlando, Florida not a bad place to be that's and that's pretty good to bring the family, you know do some fun things. Yeah. And yeah, well wherever you go to the conference, yeah.

Yeah location work vacation location. Yeah, exactly. We'll get.

Thanks. Again Michael Michael Neal. She's in co-founder with that, please.

Thanks.