Big Changes are Happening to Liqo: Welcome to ArubaKube!
Liqo is transitioning from a “let’s do for fun” phase, to a more mature project: let’s welcome ArubaKube as part of our community!
We are proud to announce a big turning-point for Liqo, our open-source project. But, before anticipating our future, let us spend two minutes to briefly celebrate where do we come from, and to thank some of the most influential people in our journey.
Liqo started in autumn 2019, with first initial rumbling, very forward-looking ideas, and a lot of enthusiasm. We started from a blank sheet, with the ambition of creating an “Endless Kubernetes ocean”. We created a first proof-of-concept, we learned a lot.
We made the first code release in October 2020, which was more an initial idea than a real, usable code. But this allowed us to start talking to people, mainly from potentially interested companies, proposing the vision, and discovering that our idea was too forward looking. Nobody was still prepared for a project that foresee Kubernetes everywhere, even in embedded devices.
We got valuable feedback from many friends (among the others, let me make a special thank to Loris Degioanni!) and we realized that we should focus on (multi-)cloud issues, while more forward-looking ideas can wait. Luckily, the basic technology we developed was ok, so we had simply to enrich our source code, refine, add new features (based on the community feedback).
Next turning point was a blog post on the CNCF blog in spring 2021, driven by Gianluca Arbezzano (thanks!), which presented Liqo to the huge cloud-native community. From that point on, our estimators (and the number of stars on GitHub) started to grow steadily, as well as the feedback we received. This suggested that we should start thinking about creating a company to support Liqo, and to pay (better) all the developers. So far, developers were (poorly) paid, mostly with research-based funds, but this was not something that is going to last for long.
Dante Malagrinò, another close friend of us, was another key person we met in our journey. He helped the team to understand if there is a market for Liqo, how big, and how risky. His findings were, in some sense expected, in other sense disappointing. As you can imagine, there were opportunities, but it requires the team to start working hard also on non-technical matters, which was something the team was not fully prepared for. The last part of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 was a difficult period for Liqo. Technically, things were processing well (for instance, we run Liqo for the first time in a production environment, and the FLUIDOS research project, which is heavily based on Liqo, was funded under the Horizon Europe programme), but the difficulties in finding the way to (economic) sustainability were worrying part of the team. Two friends were helping us a lot in this period, with suggestions, many insights and a lot of time to listen our stupid questions about “business”: Massimo Bruni (a serial entrepreneur) and Enrico Ghia (operating manager at the business incubator of our university).
The new turning point was in the second half of 2022, when the team decided to join its forces with Aruba, the largest Italian cloud provider, and start a new journey together. The idea was to match the technical excellence of the Liqo team with the business expertise of Aruba. Obviously, things were not so linear, nor smooth: this process completed only on July 2023, when our University approved our request to create a spin-off company: and here it is, welcome to ArubaKube!
For Liqo, this looks a graduation day: it is like moving from a (well-done) toy, to a more mature, production-oriented project (or product). Which is what is required to move from pilots to production environments. But, as many time happens, moving to maturity is not always what we stand for. However, we had no choice, as the only options were among either evolving, or (slowly) dying. And, given that we choose the former, here we are!
What’s next? First, and above all, Liqo is and will stay open source. For a project that creates seamless multi-cloud infrastructures, hence reducing the cloud vendor lock-in, it makes no sense otherwise. Second, we have to strengthen and organize our community. A true, open project is not just open source, it is also open governance, it includes well-defined rules (e.g., to contribute to the source code), roles and responsibilities. This is definitely one of the major challenges for our next coming months. Third, we need to have a closer collaboration with our partners (companies and research institutions), prioritizing features that are really giving us a boost in our offerings. Such, as an example, more modularity, more integration with third-party products, more attention to long-term resiliency issues (e.g., smoother upgrades, without service disruption).
What is ArubaKube, then? ArubaKube is now the company where most of the original team of Liqo works for. ArubaKube is currently the most important contributor to Liqo, with the team still developing and maintaining the project. In addition, ArubaKube offers consultancy services and support on Liqo, which is something that was missing before, and it is definitely needed when you need to offer guarantees.
What is changing now? Nothing, except that Liqo stands on better, larger shoulders. And that we welcome new companies to join our journey, as partners, collaborators, customers, and more. And, last but not least, that now developers are (properly) paid, and free support comes from the free time of our (enthusiastic) team, which is less than what was available in the past.
Before concluding this long (and, somehow, also personal) post, we would like to thank to the many contributors of this wonderful project. We cannot thank everybody personally, so we would apologize for who does not find his name here.
We would like to start from the most important person here, Alex Palesandro, who initiated the project, defined the technical pillars, and taught us how to create good software (and not just proof-of-concepts such as what we are used for in university). He brought to our group fresh ideas, deep knowledge (Kubernetes and GitOps above all), new working methodologies (who actually uses agile programming in University?), and true passion for the cloud world. And, last but not least, he was the main driver behind the CrownLabs project, which was like a gift of God for our students during the COVID-19 lockdown, when we had to quicky move all our activities online. And, finally, he was a wonderful coach: several students started their professional path in cloud computing thanks to him (wonder how many ever said thanks to Alex for this!)
Thanks also to some of the key persons in the initial team, such as Mattia Lavacca and Aldo Lacuku, whose contributions are still mostly unchanged in current Liqo. And Marco Iorio, whose dedication and attention to the details brought Liqo to new, higher levels, not to mention his Liqo paper published on the Transactions on Cloud Computing. Taking inspiration from what our friend Loris Degioanni said in a 2022 interview, “a lot of questions raise when a fellow traveller decides to leave and moves to a new professional path. Is he right? Am I wrong to continue this journey? Am I lying when I try to convince who is still here that we can continue, and we will solve the current problems? The personal side of the relationships with colleagues (which usually became also friends) is always the more difficult part to handle, and that creates (at least to me) a lot of troubles”.
Thanks to all the students from Politecnico di Torino who contributed to this project, e.g., during their graduation thesis. Thanks to Leonardo Camiciotti (TOPIX), Antonio Manzalini (TIM), and Domenico Siracusa (FBK) that, in different ways, helped us a lot.
And, finally, thanks to the current technical team at ArubaKube, Alessandro Olivero, Francesco Cheinasso and Francesco Torta (actually, you have a higher chance to be hired if your name is “Francesco”), and, finally, thanks to the great large team at Aruba, Marco Mangiulli, Fabrizio Garrone, Luca Castello, Luca Spagnoli, Salvatore Luzzo, and all the rest of the crew.
Liqo, proudly started in Torino, Italy; built (with passion) by the community; supported (with love) by ArubaKube. We are beginning a new journey, let do it together.
