The Cloudcast

As we wade into global economic uncertainty, let's look at what we can learn from previous (2001, 2008) economic downturns and how they impacted the tech industry. SHOW: 619CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:strongDM - Secure infrastructure access for the modern stack. Manage access to any server, database, or Kubernetes instance in minutes. Fully auditable, replayable, secure, and drag-and-drop easy. Try it free for 14 days - www.strongdm.com/signupDatadog Kubernetes Solution: Maximum Visibility into Container EnvironmentsStart monitoring the health and performance of your container environment with a free 14 day Datadog trial. Listeners of The Cloudcast will also receive a free Datadog T-shirt.Revelo: Sidestep the competitive US talent market by hiring remote engineers in Latin America. Source, hire, and pay Latin American engineers in US time zones with one service. Revelo manages all the paperwork including benefits, payroll, and compliance. Hire a full-time engineer with a 14-day trial. Revelo.com/cloudcastSHOW NOTES:WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM PAST ECONOMIC DOWNTURNS AND HOW THEY IMPACT THE TECH INDUSTRYLESSONS FROM PREVIOUS ECONOMIC DOWNTURNSGet your finances in orderMake sure you're aligned to near-term business needsInvest in yourself (health, family, learning, etc.)Align with communities and mentorsFEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

Danny Fields (CTO/EVP @Avalara) talks about operating large SaaS environments, customizations for customer demands, and transitioning from traditional software. SHOW: 618CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:New Relic (homepage)Services down? New Relic offers full stack visibility with 16 different monitoring products in a single platform.Spot by NetAppMore Cloud, Less Cost (Spot by NetApp)CloudZero - Cloud Cost Intelligence for Engineering TeamsSHOW NOTES:Avalara - Tax Compliance Software for your industryDanny Fields - EVP and CTO EngineeringTopic 1 - Welcome to the show. You’ve got a very broad background in engineering and leadership roles. Can you share with us a little bit of your evolution, and where you focus your time at Avalara?Topic 2 - Give us a little bit of background on Avalara (SaaS for Tax Compliance), and a little bit of details on what it means to run a SaaS platform for such a complex product offering? Topic 3 - You’ve been involved in a number of different SaaS platforms over the years. What are some of the biggest changes and challenges you face in running modern SaaS platforms today?Topic 4 - Taxes are a very complex ecosystem, especially with all the variants around the world. How does a product team think about balancing the desire to deliver a consistent experience (SaaS operations) and customer demands for uniqueness?Topic 5 - How do you think about balancing optimizations around Operations and taking advantage of all the new innovations happening in open-source, or from the cloud-providers, or just internal capabilities from your team? Topic 6 - Any tips for anyone looking to get into SaaS operations, or transitions from traditional data center software delivery? FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

Pranay Kamat (Prod Mgmt @datadoghq) talks about the challenges is protecting sensitive data, internal vs. external attacks, evolution of DLP, the role of Governance in DevSecOps. SHOW: 617CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:Revelo: Sidestep the competitive US talent market by hiring remote engineers in Latin America. Source, hire, and pay Latin American engineers in US time zones with one service. Revelo manages all the paperwork including benefits, payroll, and compliance. Hire a full-time engineer with a 14-day trial. Revelo.com/cloudcastMonitor CI Pipelines and Tests with Datadog CI VisibilityDatadog CI Visibility supports shift-left testing Identify and resolve front-end issues on your web applications before your customers notice. Start a free trial today.strongDM - Secure infrastructure access for the modern stack. Manage access to any server, database, or Kubernetes instance in minutes. Fully auditable, replayable, secure, and drag-and-drop easy. Try it free for 14 days - www.strongdm.com/signupSHOW NOTES:Datadog Sensitive Data ScannerBest practices for reducing sensitive data blindspots and riskBuilding a Modern Compliance Strategy [video]Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Let’s talk about your background and the areas where you focus at Datadog. Topic 2 - We continuing to see headlines about critical data being stolen, which is a trend that doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Give us a picture of where we are with the problems that are still causing this, and what new things companies can do to prevent it.Topic 3 - Where are some of the differences between traditional Data Loss Prevent (DLP) strategies and strategies that proactively look at logs to identify data access and breaches? Topic 4 - We often think about attacks coming from the outside, but oftentimes attacks happen from inside the house (directly or indirectly). How important is it to be able to control access to logs and what is visible within logs to prevent internal attacks and vulnerabilities?  Topic 5 - What are some of the more dynamic, modern ways to identify sensitive traffic and tag it properly so systems can act on it? Topic 6 - It’s often said that security is everyone’s issue. In modern teams (DevOps, DevSecOps, etc.), where are you seeing as the owner of this Governance and Sensitive data?

Raman Sharma (@rasharm_, VP Product & Programs Marketing @DigitalOcean) talks about the evolution of Digital Ocean, the right tools for developers, and managing simplicity and scale.SHOW: 616CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:CloudZero - Cloud Cost Intelligence for Engineering TeamsSpot by NetAppMore Cloud, Less Cost (Spot by NetApp)Datadog Synthetic Monitoring: Frontend and Backend Modern MonitoringEnsure frontend issues don’t impair user experience by detecting user-facing issues with API and browser tests with a free 14 day Datadog trial. Listeners of The Cloudcast will also receive a free Datadog T-shirt.SHOW NOTES:apply(conf) - May 18th & 19th, free virtual event!Digital Ocean - The Developer CloudTopic 1 - Welcome to the show. Your career has followed a parallel path to the evolution of the cloud. Let’s talk a little bit about your background, and especially your involvement with developers. Topic 2 - It’s been a while since we last had DigitalOcean on the show. Before we dive into the technology stack, let’s talk about how DigitalOcean thinks about developer needs. Topic 3 - Compute, Storage, Networking, Databases, Kubernetes, PaaS, Marketplace. Walk us through where DigitalOcean helps developers make it simple to use these primitives. Topic 4 - What do developers ask you for next? Is it more capabilities, or different pricing, or something else to make their lives easier? Topic 5 - What do your customer’s teams look like? Do they align to the primitives (e.g. cloud infrastructure teams), or is it more “you build it you run it”, or something else?Topic 6 - Where are some of the areas where DigitalOcean is focused or sees new opportunities in 2022 and beyond?FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

In this new series, we’ll look at ways to explain complex technical topics. This week we’re looking at Service Mesh. SHOW: 615CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:New Relic (homepage)Services down? New Relic offers full stack visibility with 16 different monitoring products in a single platform.Revelo: Sidestep the competitive US talent market by hiring remote engineers in Latin America. Source, hire, and pay Latin American engineers in US time zones with one service. Revelo manages all the paperwork including benefits, payroll, and compliance. Hire a full-time engineer with a 14-day trial. Revelo.com/cloudcaststrongDM - Secure infrastructure access for the modern stack. Manage access to any server, database, or Kubernetes instance in minutes. Fully auditable, replayable, secure, and drag-and-drop easy. Try it free for 14 days - www.strongdm.com/signupSHOW NOTES:Istio Service Mesh[Diagram] Compare a Service Mesh to a Growing Family HOW DOES A SERVICE MESH WORK? WHEN SHOULD YOU CONSIDER ONE?A service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer for facilitating service-to-service communications between services or microservices, using a proxy.   LET’S EXPLAIN HOW SERVICE MESH WORKS.We explain service mesh using a family household analogy, and how it changes over time. We relate this back to how an application evolves from a monolith to microservices. FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

John Jahnke (CEO of @Tackleio) talks about the rise of Cloud Marketplaces, the evolution of B2B purchasing for cloud products, and the relationship between software vendors and cloud providers. SHOW: 614CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:Spot by NetAppMore Cloud, Less Cost (Spot by NetApp)CloudZero - Cloud Cost Intelligence for Engineering TeamsNew Relic (homepage)Services down? New Relic offers full stack visibility with 16 different monitoring products in a single platform.SHOW NOTES:Tackle - Accelerate Revenue through Cloud Marketplaces2021 State of Cloud Marketplaces ReportTackle secures $100M Round C fundingTopic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about your background. And please give us a quick overview of Tackle.Topic 2 - Everybody knows about the 100s of services that get announced by the major hyperscalers each year, but not as many people are aware that there’s more to the cloud than native services. Where do cloud marketplaces fit into the cloud ecosystem, and how have they evolved over the years?  Topic 3 - If we wanted to explain the value of a cloud marketplace to someone, what value does it provide to the various parties involved - the cloud, the marketplace owner, the software company using a marketplace, the customers using a marketplace?Topic 4 - Can you walk us through the process of how a software company engages with a marketplace? Are they working to get their software into 3rd-party marketplaces, or building their own marketplaces, or something else?Topic 5 - How do the Tackle marketplaces different from the AWS, Azure or GCP marketplaces? Topic 6 - What are the best ways for companies to create a plan to leverage cloud marketplaces to better reach customers and specific markets? FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

No Brian (Gracely) for a Sunday Perspective this week. We have Brian Singer (@brian_singer, CPO @nobl9inc) talking about Service Level Objectives (SLO), what they are, why they matter, and how to use SLOs to focus on innovation vs. technical debt.SHOW: 613CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:SLOConf - Free virtual event May 9th-12th - Register Today!Revelo: Sidestep the competitive US talent market by hiring remote engineers in Latin America. Source, hire, and pay Latin American engineers in US time zones with one service. Revelo manages all the paperwork including benefits, payroll, and compliance. Hire a full-time engineer with a 14-day trial. Revelo.com/cloudcastDatadog Synthetic Monitoring: Frontend and Backend Modern MonitoringEnsure frontend issues don’t impair user experience by detecting user-facing issues with API and browser tests with a free 14 day Datadog trial. Listeners of The Cloudcast will also receive a free Datadog T-shirt. strongDM - Secure infrastructure access for the modern stack. Manage access to any server, database, or Kubernetes instance in minutes. Fully auditable, replayable, secure, and drag-and-drop easy. Try it free for 14 days - www.strongdm.com/signupSHOW NOTES:Nobl9 - websiteThe Cloudcast #502 - Reliability as a ServiceTopic 1 - Brian, welcome to the show! We had Alex on the podcast last year and look forward to continuing the SLO conversation. Give everyone a brief introduction.Topic 2 - If someone isn’t familiar with SLO’s (Service Level Objectives), how do you define them? Why do they matter? What problem do they solve? How are they different from SLA’s?Topic 3 - Is this a transition from max reliability to instead look at errors as a “budget”? How can you manage a certain window of unreliability and keep customers happy? Topic 4 - How do you create SLOs? Who creates them? Is this an SRE connecting up to existing systems or new tooling and plumbing? Does it fit into an existing GitOps workflow for instance - SLOs-as-Code? Is there automation triggers that happen when conditions are met?Topic 5 - How does an SRE know which metrics matter? I would imagine not all downtime is equal? How does this correlate with business KPIs? Do you fine tune over time?Topic 6 - The big question is always the focus on technical debt vs. innovation. Does this help and if so how?FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

Borja Burgos (@borja_burgos, Director of Product @datadoghq) talks about monitoring and measuring CI/CD environments, “shift left” for security and test coverage, and understanding test coverage patterns.SHOW: 612CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:LoadForge - Modern, developer-first load testing and stress tests for websites, APIs and servers.LoadForge uses your cloud to rapidly scale large numbers of simulated users to load test your website, store, API, or application for cheap - just cents per test! Teleport is the easiest, most secure way to access all your infrastructure Get started with TeleportSpot by NetAppMore Cloud, Less Cost (Spot by NetApp)SHOW NOTES:Datadog acquires Undefined Labs (2020)Borja on The Cloudcast (Eps.231) to discuss Tutum CloudDatadog CI Visibility supports shift-left testingIdentify and resolve front-end issues on your web applications before your customers notice. Start a free trial today.Master is the new Prod, Devs are the new OpsTopic 1 - Welcome to the show. You’ve got quite an impressive track-record as an entrepreneur and founder. Tell us a little bit about your background, and some of the things you’re now focused on at Datadog.Topic 2 - You wrote that “Master is the new Prod, and Devs are the new Ops”. Can you help us unpack the concepts that you were trying to convey?Topic 3 -.How widespread is the understanding that it’s important to monitor CI/CD environments, vs. the more traditional focus of monitoring production environments?Topic 4 - What are some of the areas where CI visibility or synthetic CI/CD testing helps improve application quality and overall availability in production?  Topic 5 -  All of these efforts to test earlier, integrate earlier and have visibility earlier sound like the “shift left” movement. Are those things difficult to do, since many companies have siloed teams?  Topic 6 - What are some of the ways that your team has been able to take the technology from Undefined Labs and bring it into the broader scope of capabilities that are available through Datadog? FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

Could you explain Twitter to a 5yr old? Some things are just difficult to explain, and this week we look at the challenges of trying to explain complex technical concepts to everyday people. SHOW: 611CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:CloudZero - Cloud Cost Intelligence for Engineering TeamsstrongDM - Secure infrastructure access for the modern stack. Manage access to any server, database, or Kubernetes instance in minutes. Fully auditable, replayable, secure, and drag-and-drop easy. Try it free for 14 days - www.strongdm.com/signupMonitor CI Pipelines and Tests with Datadog CI VisibilityStart monitoring the health and performance of your CI environment with a free 14 day Datadog trial. Listeners of The Cloudcast will also receive a free Datadog T-shirt.SHOW NOTES:Back to the Future of Twitter (Ben Thompson, Stratechery) I GET HOW IT WORKS, BUT WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY DO?Many of us use Twitter on a daily basis, but if you had to explain it to someone, could you explain what it is and what value it provides? Many of us are tasked with a similar challenge in trying to explain our day-to-day work.  EXPLAINING COMPLEX THINGS IS HARD. MAYBE THAT’S A SIGN THAT IT’S TOO TECHNICAL OR SHOULD BE BROKEN APARTWhat problem does something solve? Who has that problem? Does the problem need to be solved by a product or a platform?Does the product align to one or many people’s jobs?Does the platform align to one of many people’s jobs?If it’s a platform, do the people with the problem want all of it?Does the platform approach limit your ability to monetize it (e.g. too restrictive)?Could you platform be valuable if it was broken up? FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

Ian McClarty (President @PhoenixNAP) talks about the evolution of the CoLocation and DataCenter-as-a-Service market, cloud repatriation, how software has changed the economics and working closely with hyperscalers.SHOW: 610CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:Teleport is the easiest, most secure way to access all your infrastructure Get started with TeleportSpot by NetAppMore Cloud, Less Cost (Spot by NetApp)LoadForge - Modern, developer-first load testing and stress tests for websites, APIs and servers.LoadForge uses your cloud to rapidly scale large numbers of simulated users to load test your website, store, API, or application for cheap - just cents per test! SHOW NOTES:PhoenixNAP - Data Center, Dedicated Servers, Cloud and CoLocation Services Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. You’ve run PhoenixNAP for more than a decade. Give us some sense of the evolution of the CoLocation | Managed Services market over that time.Topic 2 - Lots of people focus on the cloud hyperscalers, but there are a ton of business needs that they can’t satisfy - whether it’s location, or dedicated resources, or offloading skills, etc. What are the biggest challenges that your customers are facing these days?Topic 3 - The breadth of capabilities that you offer has really evolved - from locations, to capabilities, to flexibility you can offer customers. How much has the industry shift to software-defined-services enabled that to accelerate? Topic 4 - What is a typical relationship that your customers have between you and the hyperscalers? It seems like there are a lot of potential synergies that benefit everybody.  Topic 5 - What differentiates the CoLocation | Managed Cloud providers these days? And where do you see that evolving? Topic 6 - What are some of the most common ways that your customers take advantage of the value you provide them - whether it’s technology, or people skills, or capacity planning or locations? FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet