My Next Chapter

Most of you know that I left Red Hat in December but I didn’t talk much about the next stop in my journey. My 2 1/2 years at Red Hat was fun. We did some fun things with OpenShift platform. After having spent 7 years with cloud and after claiming that I will report as spam any Cloud 101 kinda articles, it is time for me to go beyond cloud.

It is 2016 and if cloud is not the canvas on top of which your IT is built, you must be living in a cave. It is time we talk about optimization that should happen beyond cloud and on top of it. Industry has been talking about DevOps, Microservices, Serverless Computing, etc. for the past couple of years. I thought it is time for me to go back to my roots in the startup world and do something that can help organizations go beyond just embracing cloud.

Time to go beyond cloud and work on stuff that deliver value

DevOps is fast becoming critical for even laggards in the enterprise space, to maximize the benefits of their cloud investments. As I preach to enterprise customers about modernization, I see the end goal of any enterprise modernization journey to be maximizing agility. Cloud brought in a certain level of agile optimization at the infrastructure layer but it did not entirely solve the disconnect between Devs and Ops. But, it did provide a canvas on top of which you could seamlessly expand the collaboration between Devs and Ops, leading to faster delivery of software and services. In my research to support my Modern Enterprise Model, I was digging deeply into how DevOps can help enterprises avoid disruption and, in the process, understood the pain points faced by organizations as they embraced DevOps on top of cloud.

Unfortunately, most of the industry discussions about DevOps centers around the infrastructure tools (Ops part) or cultural elements. Most of the Dev centric discussions on DevOps mostly stops with Continuous Integration with limited focus on the Continuous Delivery part. I have seen CI being marketed as the only DevOps tool any organization will ever need. As I dug more and more into DevOps literature and community discussions, I figured that there still exists a distinct disconnect between Dev and Ops when it comes to delivering actual DevOps value and it could be one of the reasons for the confusion that exists in the minds of customers. This took me on a path of research on tools that could bridge this disconnect and make DevOps to be more about delivering actual value for IT organizations than about specific tools or deployment targets.

I always love startups and I kept talking to them regularly even when I was part of Red Hat. During one such conversations, I reconnected with my industry peer who launched his startup at the Deploycon Conference we organized at Rishidot Research in 2013. His startup was focussed on DevOps and Continuous Delivery and they were attacking the same problem I highlighted above.

As I spoke more and more with him on what they are doing, I got more and more excited because they are really focussed on delivering the real DevOps value through large scale automation and valuable insights. Best of all, the platform didn’t force users to use any specific infrastructure or developer tools. I immediately figured out that with some tweaks to their platform, there is a very good opportunity to deliver value to the enterprises.

At the same time, they were also thinking about taking their startup to the next level. The discussions continued. We saw a mutual fit and here I am

joining CloudMunch

as their SVP for Products and Strategy. CloudMunch is a DevOps platform focussed on Continuous Delivery and Continuous Insights. It not only automates Continuous Delivery, it also offers powerful insights across the organization which is unique in this space. My role will be to focus on the platform and ecosystem strategy as we build the next gen platform which will be released later this year and on the business execution.

Why CloudMunch?

When I decided to go back to the startup world, I wanted to join a company where there is an alignment on platform philosophy such as

• Modular architecture and extensibility
• Deep emphasis on APIs both inside the platform and for the external world
• Emphasis on ecosystem (Thanks Simon Wardley)
• Diehard focus on UX. This is especially important if the platform is all about DevOps. If DevOps is about reducing friction, UX should be seamless and should enable collaboration

We had complete alignment on all these factors and they wanted to build an ecosystem around their platform. As I talked to the team, I was convinced that they are extremely motivated and can go the extra mile to achieve the goals. I also wanted to join a startup that is running under the radar. On a personal level, I felt that joining such a nimble startup and helping them execute well will be more interesting and challenging.

Here I am. Starting my next chapter with CloudMunch and confident that we are gonna be the company that is finally going to deliver actual value for organizations embracing DevOps. As we go about building our next gen platform, I will be talking more about the platform in the coming months. Till then, feel free to reach out to me if you want to discuss about our platform and roadmap. One of my focus areas will be in building an ecosystem and if you are interested in working with us, please contact me.