Techstrong Gang – August 2, 2024

Hey, everyone. Thank God it's Friday. Well, the EU is trying to put parental guidance in place for ai.

What Ha. Sales and marketing is probably one of the biggest AI kind of, uh, impacted areas. And we have mass open source J Java migration.

Thank you Larry Ellison. All this and more on Friday on Textron Gang. Hi everyone.

Welcome here to, uh, Textron Gang. It's a Friday show. Fridays are always a lively great show, and this one should be no different.

We are joined, uh, today with a couple of our regular gang members. Uh, let me introduce them to you. I'm gonna, I'm going to, you know, I'm gonna switch things up a little.

I'm gonna start up with Mitchell today, joining us from out in the Boulder, Denver area is our CTO and Futurum, CTA Mitchell Ashley. Hey, Mitchell. Welcome, welcome back.

As always, very good to be here. Excited to chat with everybody. Alrighty.

And then after Mitchell, I'm really happy. I, I've missed her the last couple times she's been on the show is from Fu, she's just knows all things about marketing and a whole bunch of other good stuff. It's our friend Lisa Martin.

Hello, Lisa. Welcome back. Alan.

Great to be back. I'm excited for today's conversation. Absolutely.

Glad to have you. And then joining us, he's the man with the stats on DevOps, uh, Paul Nardi FU Analyst. Paul, welcome.

How are you, my friend? Hey, great to be here, Alan. Great to see everybody on the, on today's call.

It's good to have you back on. Okay. And then joining me in studio as usual, he, uh, he, he's the Iron Horse to the Babe Ruth here.

Um, he's our chief content officer. And Hailey from the Bronx, Pat's right throws left. Mike Bazaar murder is a IO.

Right, exactly. So it's all AI today guys. And we're gonna start off a, uh, the EU AI Act is now officially law, though it doesn't really come into effect for about two years.

And thank God for that. Um, I personally, and you guys can disagree, I applaud the EU for trying to do something rather than doing nothing. But I think it's too early in the game for us to really understand what's the best way to go about it.

And that's probably why it's a good thing that this thing is not sort of effective until 2026. You know, they, they did similar stuff with their cybersecurity rules that didn't, and GDPR, for instance, that they passed into law and, but it didn't really take effect for 18 or two years or more. Um, but in looking at this, I, I look at it and it looks like a parental guidance system.

This could be very harmful. This may be harmful, could potentially be harmful, not very harmful, you know, uh, I feel like I'm watching the, uh, like on games. You got those things now, 18, 13, right?

The well movies as well. Um, I, I don't know, you know, who's, who's making those calls? What exactly does it all mean?

Is it gonna change between now and 2026? 'cause what's harmful today may not be harmful tomorrow or what's not harmful today, we may find out is in fact harmful tomorrow. Um, it just, I don't know.

The whole thing seems like a cloudy mess and nothing against cloud computing, but it seems like a cloudy mess to me. Right? Lisa, you're out in the valley and I'd love to get your opinion on this because there is this kinda tech bro culture out there that is basically saying, you know, that will be, damn with the rules, we're going full steam ahead with ai.

And is anything the EU gonna do, give these folks pause? Or are they just gonna be like, let's just experiment and see what happens? Great question.

I think from a marketing perspective, the, the messaging is gonna have to shift though. As Ellen you were saying, it's nebulous. There are four different risk categories where the majority of applications of ai, at least sales and marketing fall today, is in the no risk category.

Um, every chief marketing officer I talk to, every sales leader, everyone is leaning into Gen A, I'm gonna be talking about that today because there's a lot of efficiencies that they're gaining, whether it's in helping sales folks get access to customer data faster, to be able to, to do something with insights or marketers to create content better, it's really proving quite efficient for, for organizations and marketing and sales. But another thing that, Ellen, you talk about this, this law is pretty nebulous. There's, um, I, I, I loved how in the article that it actually said, this is as clear as Bud.

And I think what's gonna happen is, is it's a very technical conversation. Organizations are need to determine are we deployers of ai? Are we providers?

Where are we both, um, the technical discussion can then, then that needs to happen, obviously with legal as well. And by the time I think the marketing folks get involved, it's really to help convey what does this mean? How are we going to comply?

Um, and what does it mean if we don't comply? So I think it's, as we say, with ai, it's early innings. Alan, you brought this up and I think it's probably a little bit premature, but we're gonna be seeing, um, the messaging come out, I think in the next couple of years to help organizations demonstrate if they're compliant.

We seeded regulatory control to the EU because of our own dysfunctions here in our congressional environments. And, um, will they become essentially the stewards for the world at this point? So you wanna get into politics.

Hey, um, right. You take off the gloves, Wait, there's a grenade right there, Right? Good.

I'll step on that, but, um, I'm not gonna say what, anyway, um, yes, the short answer is yeah, you know, and I, and I wanted to, I was actually thinking of the, an adjacent point to that for anyone out here who's sitting and saying, well, it's just the eu and that only applies to folks over there. Nonsense. If you do business with anyone over there, it applies to you.

So this very quickly does become a worldwide regulation. That being said, nature and and law are poorer vacuums. And there is certainly a vacuum when it comes to regulatory compliance or regulatory legislation within the United States.

We have a Supreme Court who's now said that most of our regulatory agencies don't even have the power to put out regulatory policies unless they were specifically written that way by Congress. So for the foreseeable future, until we could get our act together, get the Supreme Court, right, get Congress functioning, you, you can't expect the US to have any common sense regulations in place. I think we are.

I I think part of the problem here though, is in the absence of clarity, right? So let's say I am a tech company out in the valley. Well, I'm gonna be full steam ahead, but if I'm the CEO of a healthcare company, in the absence of, uh, any clarity, I'm gonna be a little hesitant to make certain investments.

'cause I don't know if I'm gonna be breaking the rules two years from now. I mean, I'm, look, I don't know what tech bro did what to you, but, but you know, tech pros realize they play in a global marketplace too, and they're not gonna do anything that's going to inhibit their ability to raise money. And, and so that means being compliant with regulations.

You know, there are very few tech pros anymore who say, well, I'm just not gonna do business with anyone in Europe. It's, it's impossible. So we, it's a small world out there after all.

And, um, I I, I, you know, I think this is gonna have not a chilling effect because it's out in 2026, and I think people are gonna take a, let's see in 2026 approach to it. But, um, would, people will be cognizant of it the same way. If you remember when GDPR was still, you know, two years out, I kind Of feel like, Helen, we've, we've said, you know, the game is ai, but we haven't painted the lines on the field yet.

So we don't know what those categories mean. And, you know, self rating of something you don't know what it means is not an achievable task. Yeah.

So it's gonna be beared out as people do this. I think in the short term, this will drive disclosure, more disclosure of what, yeah, AI is in applications. I think one of the challenges is you may use it in 20 different places or five different places across your applications, and one might be higher risk than another.

And so how do you manage a disclosure like that? So, you know, I I, I don't, I agree with you. I don't think it's gonna stifle innovation or speed of execution in the valley.

They'll proceed forward and then kind of adjust as the lines start to start to take form. Um, and then, you know, as it's a market they're gonna compete in, of course, but I think you don't really have any other option if you believe AI is critical to your business strategy and moving forward. So Mitch, I'll throw in some, some data points that kind of go with this.

I think what you were talking about, and Melissa, Lisa, and now actually what we've been talking about all up until this point, uh, it, it's interesting, and I'll take it kind of a little bit different perspective. I, I think when I look at it from a data view, uh, you know, uh, nine months ago we ran a study asking about production AI being used in production applications. We found that eight 18% of organizations responded that they're using AI and production applications.

We ran that study, uh, nine months later, and that number jumped to 54%. Uh, so when we look at the adoption of ai, it's happening very, very rapidly, very, very, uh, quickly to, to stay ahead of the competition, to be competitive, uh, to work with a, a addressing customer needs, et cetera. Now, when I look at the compliance and everything that we've been talking about so far, it made me think about, um, some of the rules that, uh, I actually reading through the article, some of the rules that that happened, uh, back when FCC decided to put on like the, to the, the Alan, to your point, the, the, the stamp on the album or the movie or whatever, the game that says, okay, if we put these stamps, these rating systems on something, um, what that did, if we recall, or if we don't recall, what it really did was it gave the opposite effect almost.

And what I mean by that is, instead of putting, Hey, this has a, you know, bad language on it, or this has, uh, you know, whatever it is, the opposite effect happened. It just gave the green light to use bad language if you slip, throw a label on it. So if you just say, if, if I say this is a, you know, bad language, and I put it on the, on the, on the box, as long as that little sticker's on there, I can say whatever I want.

And I think that's the reverse effect from compliance. I think that with ai, we need to learn from that and go, okay, let's make sure that we don't give the green light to say, okay, well we can open up the floodgates as long as we put a little sticker on the box that says this is okay to do that. Paul, are you worried about the transparency?

Because if I'm a developer, it seems to me I might invoke an API and there's a service on the back end of that. And I might not know exactly how that AI engine works, but then I'm gonna get a call from the EU someday going, Hey, this app that you built has an issue. Yeah, Mike, a hundred percent.

I mean, that's where, that's where I'm concerned. That's where my concern resonates from. Like, if you just give the out of saying, Hey, I'm gonna throw a little sticker saying if I, I, I did this because it has this level of compliance or this level of ranking, it, it doesn't excuse the fact, as I've talked about on other episodes and other shows, it doesn't excuse the fact that the accountability lies with the organization that's releasing the code.

And if you're releasing the code, and I don't care if you're in the valley or, uh, you know, across the world developing code or whatever applications, this is a global effort. Innovation is happening globally. Um, and, and the fact of the matter is, is when you release something to the, to the internet, it's not going to stay within those four walls of your country.

It's going to go outside. And the accountability needs to lie with the organization and the developer that's creating that application. And that's really where I, I I think we're gonna give them the out if we give 'em a little sticker that says it's okay.

I think it very much follows parallel to the shared responsibility model in security, right? Where you're using a lot of things, software services in combination with, with yours, and there are whatever risk levels associated with, uh, third party what's on the other side of an API or service today. It shared responsibility doesn't mean no responsibility.

It all falls back on you as your software, whether you're using third party stuff or not. Seems to me the same thing applies here with ai. So there's gonna need to be some disclosure information as a provider of a service to another business or application that might be embedded with an app.

But I think we can learn some lessons from the security world that has at least had to deal with this at least somewhat. So what is your level of confidence in governments to, you know, at least this AI space? 'cause it seems like, you know, I don't, even in the eu, I'm not quite clear who is the AI expert that's helping guide all this stuff?

And, and that was another point. I'm glad you brought it up, Mike, is again, I applaud the EU for recognizing that we need probably to do something. You know, Mitch, we've had this conversation with Brian Fox from Sonar type, right?

Mm-Hmm. About their Dora, uh, the, not, not Dora, uh, stats for DevOps, Dora, the, the EU Dora regulations. They get this notion that they gotta do something and, and oftentimes, yeah, we do gotta do something, but then all of a sudden everybody's an expert, but no one's an expert.

And, and so where did they pull the, you know, where do they come up with the, the schema for these things? Where, who, who, who is the expert advising them? It's usually, you know, and I don't mean it in a bad way, but it, I mean it in a bad way.

Sorry, not sorry. It's usually some bureaucrat somewhere deep in the halls, uh, in, in Brussels, you know, where the EU or whatever is, is, uh, headquarted, right? 'cause I thought it was some lobbyist who worked for some vendor who gave Democrat The thing.

And no, I, yeah, no, I, so I do think the, the EU in general, uh, maybe I'm being naive, is not as lobby, uh, lobbyist beholden as the US government is. Um, I think they have, they have real laws about that there. Um, but by the same token, they, you know, they're bureaucratic by nature.

And, and so I think it's a bunch of bureaucrats who draw this all up. And I don't know, I'd love for them to do more public hearings, get more industry and experts involved in drawing up these rules. I I'm not against having regulation, right?

I'm not one of those people, but I'm intelligent regulation done with, based on the best of the information we have, not some bureaucrats just pulling stuff together. I can see it now. We're all gonna be clicking on popups, on websites and apps that say, this is a medium risk application with ai, just like we click on cookies, you know, 'cause of gdp DR.

So I think we just need a live feed into those EU deliberations that we can all watch as that conversation is going on. No, but that's why I brought up this Brian Fox conversation. Mitchell had, Brian had sort of a live feed into the deliberations and the proposals and all that stuff.

And, and I mean, Mitch, you, you interviewed him with me. You heard what he said. Yeah.

It, it, it's, in other words, it's clear as mud for a reason. 'cause since clear as mud where it's being debated and now, and I just think there's a lot of lack of experience enough and information enough to know how to kind of segment this out and explain to the consumers of software, this B2B or B2C, what the AI potential risks are. You know, again, it's akin to data.

Our data's being used, right? Do we get real good disclosures about how and why some, you know, it's in a ELI somewhere or some data privacy eula that most people don't read, um, except maybe businesses when they're doing, you know, agreements with, with providers. So, seems to me we're heading down a very similar path here with, with ai.

I can't imagine it's gonna, it's gonna really control the market, um, and, and do a faithful job of really reporting what the risk is with ai. So yeah, Mitch, when you point AI czars is the question, right? Oh, yeah.

Because At some point government, somebody in the government has to know what's going up. I'm always against Czars anyway, ever since 1917 with the, you know, you were that old. No, no.

But wasn't that a song with the, with this who killed the Kennedys? But there was something, I was there when they don't use that part, that song. You're thinking of the drug czar too?

Well, no, but Zs, the general seemed not. Well, Zs, I'm talking about czar's from Russia. Oh, right.

But, um, I'll remember the line. It's in sympathy for the Devil by the Stones. And it's, I was, I was there, whatever.

I'll find the line later. But the important thing is this, I don't think czar's work well, right? I I don't, you know, um, we, we don't need a czar handing down edicts.

We, we need, I'm more of a democracy kind of person. We need an informed populace and, and do what's right and common sense. The only good thing I'll say, and Paul, I'm gonna give you the last word 'cause I know you had something to say on it, is this doesn't take effect till 2026.

And based on previous EU regulation rollouts, they are open to modifying as reality be sets in here. So let's hope for the best on that. Paul, go ahead.

Oh, no, I was just going to comment on the fact that, you know, when we look at regulation, the compliance, you mentioned Dora, right? And the DORA of compliance is really focused predominantly for EU and the, and the financial sectors, right? Um, and just like HIPAA requirements are in place, I think that there needs to be, you know, HIPAA for healthcare, et cetera.

But I think there needs to be, um, if you're developing code, if you're developing applications, and if you're working within a certain sector, there should be rules of engagement. And there should be guardrails and bumpers in place. And I think something like Dora or HIPA, or whatever it may be, are, you know, those are the, those are the bumpers, right?

Um, those are the ones that we, we really kind of, uh, should be following. And again, if you don't follow it, um, there needs to be accountability. And, and again, it goes back to the organization that's putting out that application.

If there is something that breaks the code or breaks the, the, the, uh, compliance, um, what's the recourse? What happens if, and you know, when you're talking about something like Dora that's focused specifically around the eu, when it's in the walls of the eu, it's enforceable. When it goes outside of the walls of the eu, then it becomes questionable.

And I think that, uh, something like, uh, AI compliance and as we look at these, these different things that we've put in place over the years, I hope that by 2026, we have some of that's more of a global lens on those guardrails and bumpers. Because, you know, we're, we're a global society when it comes to the internet. It's not bound by a barrier by a wall.

And it's, and then the other side of it is, is how is it enforceable? If you, if you break it, if, and that's the thing, it's like, yes, you can say you can't, you can't change, uh, you can't, you know, do business in this space. But in reality, uh, it's going to happen anyway.

They, they, they, they're enforceable, believe me. They, they can enforce it the same way they do GDPR. They, if, you know, unless you want to just shut yourself down from doing business with old giant part of the world.

But anyway, hey, enough about the eu. We've got so much more AI stuff to talk about. We're gonna take a break here on text Drug Organic.

We're coming back sales and marketing and the age of ai. Lisa, this sounds like you, you're watching Textron game. All right, folks, we're back in.

There's a new report out from Salesforce talking about the use of AI in sales. And that brought up the whole question of, well, what is going on with AI as it relates to sales and marketing? 'cause one of the things that you'll be surprised to know that Salesforce teased out is salespeople don't seem to know a whole lot about the people that they're selling stuff to.

It's shocking. I know. But one of the things that salespeople apparently are doing now with generative AI is spending more time researching the companies that they sell to.

And they are know a little bit more about it. 'cause it's easier to find that data. And they're doing a little of their own marketing leg work these days, which Lisa always begs the question in my mind is, well, as AI evolves, what will be the relationship between sales and marketing?

How will this whole motion go forward if the salespeople can do maybe a little bit of their own custom marketing more? Yeah, I think when I talk to CMOs weekly, one of the great things that I'm hearing consistently as organizations move forward is there's a very tight alignment between sales and marketing. It's always something that's been challenging for a lot of organizations across industries.

They have to be, um, marketers are leaning heavily into generative ai, for example. And we know that sales is as well. The, the data from the Salesforce survey that you talked about, Mike shows that a lot of efficiencies are gained.

They're also, the market for sales AI assistance is pretty crowded. We're seeing some great use cases for account execs, for sales managers, customer success managers. They're able to get more data on their customers that's more specific to who they are, which is an, an aid to relationship building.

They're able to spend less time on grunt work, like responding to RFPs and things like that. So I think what gen AI can, can actually do, and I think we're seeing this in some organizations that I talk to, is it's kind of a bridge, um, between sales and marketing. That marketing is using it to create content, to curate content messages that are really resonant and email copy for SDRs to send out to, to folks to be able to, to get more specific.

Because we know that personalized experiences these days are no longer a luxury. They're what every consumer expects to have. And sales and marketing needs to be able to deliver on that in a really timely manner.

And like I said, there's some great use cases of where we're seeing those efficiencies and customers getting more personalized content. Because when they don't, data suggests that a huge percentage of folks are very frustrated when they're not getting a personalized experience with a brand. And what frustration can often lead to on the sales and marketing side is churn.

So I think we're seeing some good applications there, um, in a responsible way, You know, we spend a lot of time here on this show in a Textron in general and at the Futurum group talking about how AI is gonna generate computer code and it's gonna help with software development. And I, I think we, we frankly miss the mark of just how relevant and how helpful it is today and how much it's being used today in marketing and sales. I mean, there are a lot of salespeople who find it very hard to put three words together in an email.

Yes. Right? And they're sending out beautiful emails there.

I, I see it myself. And, and, and, and Lisa, you hit on it, right? The, the content being generated much more focused on point, better written, you know, I wanna say better thought out, but I don't know that AI doesn't really think.

But, um, you know, it, it, it's, this is a huge aid to I think the sales and marketing teams out there. And I think they're, they're embracing it probably a lot more than, than developers are. Or maybe some other verticals.

Well actually, go ahead. Sorry, Mike mean, interesting, Alan, that you said that one of the things that when Elisa was talking and, and she, she kinda hit the nail on the head about, you know, desensitizing the number of emails and correspondence you get, you know, and you get, if you have an ai, it just kind of amplifies that, right? You're just like, it's easier to send out more and more contacts, right?

But what, what developers have, uh, kind of, uh, uh, figuring out, I found this actually funny and interesting at the same time, is they're introducing, um, common errors in, um, responses, autogenerated responses that will make it look more human. So it's like they, they actually put like a spelling mistake in the word or a, uh, you know, something that's a little bit off, just a little bit off, so it looks more human as a response. So I think that's kind of an interesting approach, right?

'cause it, it is, you know, you read it and you go, well, this was AI generated. And it's like, well, what did AI do it if it was, if it was actually spelling something wrong? You know?

So it's, so I think that's kind of a, uh, uh, an interesting approach to kind of get that more personalized message out there. Lisa, one of the things that has always gone on in every industry is this whole notion of lead gen. Um, yeah.

And it's basically been marketers kinda carpet bombing people and hoping to drive leads back to salespeople. Do you think that the salespeople might take over more of that function if it's easier for them to build the content and targeted it to the people that they know and they'll go find their own customers, per se, as opposed to, um, you know, waiting for the latest batch from marketing? Well, a lot of marketing organizations are responsible for significant contributions to pipeline lean are upwards of 50%, depending on the maturation level of the organization.

I think what sales folks are looking to do is, what they've always done well or should be doing well, is that's the relationship building. I think what marketing is doing with, with generative ai, for example, is really aiding the sales folks to become, uh, much more efficient, spend less tasks, spend less time on grunt work, and be able to develop and cultivate those relationships based on more personal information that marketing is delivering. Um, I see it, like I said earlier, I see it as, as a, a really good bridge.

Um, and I think marketing's responsibility for pipeline contribution isn't gonna change because of ai. I think we're gonna see the efficiencies bleed over into the sales organizations so that account exec, sales managers and customer success managers can be much more engaging on that personalized level. 'cause as I said, it's not a luxury anymore.

Personalized conversations. It's a must. Yeah.

Lemme ask a follow up to that. 'cause one of the things we have also seen is the rise of this chief revenue officer. And when I, at least when I look into that, it seems like the sales and marketing functions are being rolled up into those people as opposed to having separate head of sales and a separate head of marketing.

Is that becoming a larger trend? And will AI accelerate that? That's a good question.

I'm not seeing that. I'm seeing, um, depending on the, the, the maturity level of the organization, CMOs reporting to presidents, uh, or CEOs, um, and in earlier early stage organizations, the most important criteria for our marketing leader is demand creation. Um, I think that what we see is still CRO, the CFO, the CMO, not necessarily being friends, but working together to understand how money's being spent, where investments are being made in emerging technologies to ultimately impact the revenue of the organization.

They, they still play well together. Um, and I, like I said, depending on the organization, you see different structures within companies, uh, where marketing doesn't necessarily have a seat that the table at, at the CEO's table or the board table. But because a roll up under our president, which was got purview over sales, marketing, uh, et cetera, they're coming to the table, uh, better together than I've seen in a long time.

And that's a differentiator for companies who do that. Well, a lot of CMOs that come from sales backgrounds, um, are much more inclined to, to really make sure those bridges are built and structurally sound. Um, in order for ultimately the revenue of the organization to be positively impacted.

It seems to me there's kind of two sides of the AI coin when the one we're primarily talking about, which is creating content and engagement with customers. The other, the other side of it is, how productive are we at, at reaching out to customers in the ways that they, they actually, Eli elicit the behaviors that we'd like, right? Uh, certain customers, you know, respond very well to this kind of material or engaging in on this kind of a frequency.

So you can really intelligently tune, uh, how you're reaching out to the market. So the personalization, uh, that Lisa was talking about extends in addition to what you're saying to them as how you're engaging with them. And that's, to me, where, where you're, you could get a really big significant revenue bump if you're much more guided in the way that you engage with the market.

I agree that, that how, and from an engagement perspective, Mitch, it's critical that you bring that up. There's a lot of data that shows these sales, AI and marketing AI assistance can really, um, facilitate excellent segmentation, which has huge, some of the survey data shows hundreds of percentages of improvement in revenue contribution, for example. Um, we know that as consumers, when we engage with a brand, we want it to be omnichannel.

We want it to be seamless. So they need to know where we're going for certain pieces of information, continue the conversation so that they ultimately can, can progress down funnel to that sale. So the how that you bring up Mitch, is, is as important as the what are we actually generating and what are we saying?

So to me, the ultimate test will be will people still sort of shun receiving a sales call or a marketing email and say, oh, no, not they, they're bothering me again, which is a problem in tech, right? Most of my friends in tech, they hear, oh, the sales guy's calling lose my number. Right?

And you know, it, I'm hoping AI help make makes that better, right? So that salespeople, marketing people know, know more about their customers and about what's the best way to, to affect them to, to get them to deal with you. Exactly.

Anyway, let's take a break here on Textron Gang. We're gonna come back, we're gonna switch things up. com is the number one online destination for DevOps education and community building.

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com, where the world meets DevOps. Alright, folks, we're back and as promised, we're not talking about ai. We're gonna be talking about Oracle and Java licenses and transitions to the open source additions of Java.

And oh, I'd like to get your sense of what's going on here, because earlier this week we talked about how while customers are a little bit torqued at VMware, they're not migrating off of VMware. And yet now it looks like customers are torqued at Oracle and are migrating away from Oracle. So what makes this situation different?

Yeah, thanks, Mike. This is a interesting one because it's, uh, it's definitely an area of, uh, understa organization to understanding where their future kind of goals are going, where they, where they're, uh, refactoring their applications from where they're at today to where they want to go. And, and there's a number of paths, right?

To get to where they want to go. Uh, we see a cloud adoption being 94% of organizations using two or more clouds, 65% using, uh, four or more clouds within their environments. Also, we see that application portability, uh, 20% of respondents indicate that it's, it's critical to their environment to have application portability.

So having the right tech stack underneath and allowing to move and migrate between your core to edge to cloud or your, or your locales or your different, uh, environments is incredibly important. So when we see this, uh, activity, this, this, uh, kind of shift or open source Java migration, this is an another attempt to kind of harmonize that utilization of migration away from heritage environments. Uh, the way I like to talk about it in, in my practice is past, present, and future.

So you have applications, heritage applications that may be siloed, moving to a more current environment, which may be more microservices or, uh, containerization and Kubernetes, and maybe a future state, which might include things like open source, Java, or web assembly or serverless. Like that's where the future's kind of going. But all of this needs to work together.

And 88% of organizations are still running their applications in heritage environments, and they are trying to move off these heritage environments to, uh, you know, to a more, uh, uh, uh, Uh, uh, Different approach. And when we look at this study that, you know, that's coming out for, uh, 86% of, of, uh, uh, organizations are migrating to some portion of their application to open source edition of Java platform. And in some, to, in this particular study, this was done, uh, by Oracle, uh, that that 25% have already migrated.

And, and I think part of it is, is to decouple from that proprietary lock in, um, scenario to move to more of a, uh, holistic view across that multi-cloud or distributed cloud environment. So I, I Paul all that as a given, I think this is a very, very simple equation right here. People are voting with their feet that they do not trust Oracle as their curator of their open source software.

They rather go with pure open source that they'll never have the rug pulled out from under them. They'd rather go with foundations like a Linux Foundation or Eclipse Foundation who are going to truly run an open source, uh, projects for the good of the community and not for the good of some one company's bottom line. And I think that is what is going on right here, right?

It's been like that Oracle, you know, MySQL, Java, they don't have a great track record as Yeah. As the patrons of, of open source software. Yeah, I would agree.

But I mean of, of course, my anecdotal information is one thing, but data from our research shows, uh, something a little bit different, right? And I, and one of the things from our research that I, that I see, and this is trending data over the last three years, we see that three years ago and 20, or I should say 2022 data, we were seeing that 86% of organizations that responded in a 400 plus respondent survey indicated that they want to work. These organizations want to work with vendors that sponsor open source projects, true open source projects, but want a commercial enterprise level of support for those open source initiatives.

And, And there are, there, I mean, and, and again, nature of pos a vacuum, there are companies out there that are saying, Hey, don't trust Oracle. Use open source Java, and we'll give you the support you need. Yeah, a hundred percent.

A hundred percent. And, and, and that's what I was kind of getting to. And then when we looked up from 22 to 23, that number moved from 86% down to to 67%.

But either way, the organizations are still looking for vendors to have that commercial spot. Don't Absolutely. They don't want to go at it alone, right?

They don't want to go at it because they, because of a couple of things. One, they either have skill gap issues on their bench to, to deal with, oh, um, you know, just taking bits off the shelf to use. And two, if they build something themselves, these organizations, then they own everything that goes with it, the support, the function.

And the last thing an SRE or DevOps team wanted have is a 2:00 AM call saying that their systems are down. They wanna be able to go to somebody to say, Hey, we need help. But to your point, Alan, Oracle's not the only one that's doing this.

There's a plethora of companies out there that offer support, right? And it's A great opportunity, I mean, positive different theory here about what sounds going into this. So part of the issue is Oracle change the licensing agreement to basically charge people for the number of end users the software touch, right?

They changed, right? And every now and again, we've seen over the years where the software vendor kind of decides that the existing licensing agreements don't accurately reflect the value of their software as it relates to the business. You're So kind, you're so kind.

Every once in a while a software company decides, how much more can I squeeze outta this lemon? And is there merit to that argument, or is software always gonna be tied to either the number of processors used or the number of developers or some finite metric versus something that reflects what the vendors of the software would say the actual value of their software to that business? Mitch, You always, you always have to have some usage metrics.

How many, it's, you know, whether it's how many virtual servers, softwares installed on, or how many seats that you're selling, whether it's Salesforce or it's Java. Um, you know, this is actually, this is actually the second great migration off of Java. The first great migration off of Java was in 2010 when Oracle acquired Sun and the Trail of Tears.

Yeah, the trail. And, uh, I mean, there was, there was huge upset. I mean, it was already supported by a commercial organization and Sun Microsystems, but there wasn't, um, a much good faith trust in, in Oracle.

And I think over this past, you know, 14 years or so, it, it, it's still been at a, I don't know if we're at a trust level with Oracle now from, from people who develop in Java, which are massive amounts of Java out in production. Some I numbers as high as 48 to 56% of applications use Java. Um, I, I think it's more just sort of living with the devil, you know?

And if the, but the devil's gonna change the game on you, and it's gonna cost us more money. If it's enough, you'll move. And so the, the challenge is the way we used a Java when Sun was managing it was very much as an open source project, right?

Mm-Hmm. That's how they managed the, the, the project. And, uh, of course you had the Java Foundation that, that, that helped vendors work together on it.

Um, but now it's all Oracle, and if people have an alternative, they're gonna switch. If they're confident they can move to it. It's, it's, and the report had some nice numbers about how many people had moved in less than 12 months.

Yeah. Not saying it's easy, but it can happen. You know, it's perception though.

Sun, sun was always viewed as a great benefactor with the open source community, right? I mean, they've basically let Linux come in and eat their, you know, take away their market share for Solaris, which was an amazing os I I love Solaris, but, um, I, Oracle was never perceived. And you're right, Mitchell, when that deal first went down, when Oracle, you know, acquired Sun's assets, people freaked and, and a lot of them moved right then and there, I, I think Oracle looks at Java and says, oh my God, 56% of applications.

So whenever the number is, is written in Java, what an opportunity, how can we, how can we make more money from this? These people are using that software for free nonsense. And, and, and so now they come up with a new licensing scheme.

Look, they're not alone. We've, on this show, we've discussed HashiCorp doing it and Red Hat doing it, and, you know, countless others, a lot of companies are saying, you know, in a world where open source represents 70 to 80% of the source code in an application, and in nor in a world where open source is used by 99% of the global 2000 or global 5,000, whenever it is, where's my slice of the pie, Lisa? I think this is a marketing problem.

And I think what happens is sure, the vendors, you know, to his point, yes, maybe they get a little bit greedy, but then they change the licensing terms and then try to explain the justification. So maybe they should spend the next few years trying to make the justification about the value of the software they provide before they change the licensing terms. Yeah, it's cart before the horse.

I think, um, from a messaging perspective, companies, Alan, your point, everyone's point is, you know, Oracle isn't the only one to do this. They wanna make more money. And what they're, what they're not doing, I think is a good job of messaging the additional value add.

That's a great point, Mike. That has to be there. Uh, that's why it feels like cart before the horse.

But ultimately what organizations are wanting to do is be much more cost effective, cost conscious, because they're needing to spend more in other areas to grow and differentiate their business as, we weren't gonna mention ai, but obviously that's a big investment area and organizations, if they can save money, they're gonna do it. Um, I think that that, that it would be curious to hear what Oracle's value add would be, um, to customers. But the fact that they're not leading with that is, is curious and not a wrong point, Mike, to say, is this a marketing problem?

It's certainly a messaging that's not there. The transparency, uh, doesn't seem to be there, or the accountability from my perspective. Let me just play devil's a advocate for a second though.

Has the open source community gotten so snowflakey that they just knee-jerk reaction to any change in licensing? There are, there is a faction within the open source community that basically feels that open source and software in general is free, Free using beer and free using freedom, right? And so, you know, we've seen it with the operating systems where they launch works and the way they go and they're like, we don't need you guys.

To a certain degree, some of them don't, but larger enterprises clearly need some help from somebody. So, you know, it's not, it's not one community per se, The citadel, I'm the bizarre. We wake up, oh, by the way, we're a bizarre, we're a citadel, so we're gonna start charging for this, right?

That's the, you know, kind of foundation model talking about open source. Yep. Freezing beer freezing.

And, and yeah, I think people just say, oh, you can't do that to me. And then now, you know, Mitchell and I can tell you one day about our own experience in trying to launch us a community licensed, uh, product that we got, we got skinned alive for. Um, with that being said, people are entitled to make a living if, if you are maintaining software that, I mean, there are tremendous costs.

I I learned this. You know, we do the, uh, we do a video series with the CD foundation from Linux Foundation and CD Pipeline. And you know, I, I was talking to them about the cost they incur in maintaining a project like Jenkins, for instance.

Jenkins a big project, it's part of CDF, they're responsible for maintaining it. And you can say, well, the community writes the software. Yeah, they do.

But the, just the infrastructure, the, the, the cloud space that storage, the, everything that goes into maintaining Jenkins, which as big as it is, is a pimple compared to Java, The governance of it, These hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Well, What is the right answer? Because a few years ago, I think there was a handful of vendors were walking around going, well, we should get a percentage of your revenue because your business is so dependent upon software and we'll just take 2% of your revenue every year for the software that you're using.

That got rejected outta hand. But I, I have not heard a good approach to solving this dilemma, Mike. I was, uh, I was on that side of the house and I, years ago and I was on the vendor side, the house where we, I was a, an advocate of getting 2% of the deals that were going out the door because it, it comes down to what's your special sauce, right?

Everything that we're talking about. You're absolutely right. I mean, like what we've been talking about up until this point is what's free is free.

And if you can build it and you can use it and, and it's out there, it's great. It doesn't change the fact that what we talked about early on in this episode still applies. You're still accountable.

So if you build something and you pull something off the shelf and it's not exactly right, or it has a hole in it, or it has a hidden Trojan horse in there that, that causes issues, you're still accountable. So the thing is, is if you don't have some other, uh, kind of belts and suspender support that goes along with it, um, I think it's a, it's a risk that your organization is taking. I also think that vendors deserve the payment if they are putting that level of, uh, helping that risk mitigation, Right?

See that fellow up there on the top from Denver, he's a lot less expensive than 2% of revenues for software. So, Well, My Contract's coming up here, Mike, so you know, you might need your words. Alright.

Hey guys, I think we're gonna have to wrap it up here on this beautiful Friday. Um, Lisa, Paul, Mitch, thanks so much for joining us today on The Gang. Mike is always great having you here.

As always, Textron Gang is followed by a complete schedule today of our, um, tech Textron TV shows. I think we're gonna be doing the US gymnastic team. Oh no, we're not.

Well no, they, they went already. But we do have a lot of tech information for you and, um, stay tuned for that. We will be back Monday.

Heads up, Mitchell and I are heading to Vegas next week for Black Hat and we'll be doing some live check-ins on Black Hat. I think actually one day we're going to do a text drawing gig live. I'm hoping you are.

I'm playing it on It from yes, from Black Hat. Um, should be fun. And uh, that's it.

So until then, have a great weekend everyone. Enjoy the rest of Techstrong tv. This is Alan Shimel.

We're out.