The Future is Containerized
Published on 2 Apr 2018 · Filed in Personal · 595 words (estimated 3 minutes to read)Last week I announced my departure from VMware, and my intention to step away from VMware’s products and platforms to focus on a new technology area moving forward. Today marks the “official” start of a journey that’s been building for a couple years, a journey that will take me into a future that’s containerized. That journey starts in Seattle, Washington.
Why Seattle, Washington? Because that’s where Heptio is based, and because today I am joining Heptio as a senior member of the field engineering team to help drive the adoption of Kubernetes across the industry. Only a couple of folks guessed that I was headed to Heptio. If you were one of those folks, you guessed correctly!
Two questions are probably rolling around in your head right now:
- Why Kubernetes?
- Why Heptio?
Good questions!
It’s clear to me that containers will have a significant impact on how we as IT professionals will develop, deploy, upgrade, and manage applications. It’s also clear to me that when it comes to orchestrating containers, Kubernetes is the clear leader. So, if I accept that containers are going to be a significant part of IT moving forward, then it logically follows that Kubernetes is the technology area where I should focus. There’s the answer to your first question.
As to the second question: if I’m going to focus on Kubernetes, then I want (need?) to work on a team that is passionate about Kubernetes, and that team should have deep expertise in Kubernetes. Because Kubernetes is an open source project, it should be a team that embraces open source, is deeply involved in Kubernetes development, and is committed to the future of Kubernetes. Which team meets all those criteria? In my opinion, Heptio. Founded by two ex-Google employees who helped launch Kubernetes while they were at Google (Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda), the company is actively involved in open source, actively involved in Kubernetes development, actively committed to the future of Kubernetes, and is building a world-class team. I’m honored and thrilled to be part of this team! I’m excited to be able to dive deep into “all things Kubernetes,” and equally excited to get to help design and deploy solutions to customer problems using Kubernetes.
With my destination and new technology focus revealed, my list of 2018 projects/goals probably makes a lot more sense. You can probably also guess that the content here on the site will shift (even more) toward Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, public cloud providers, DevOps, and even some programming/development (I’m looking forward to leveraging some of the development expertise of my peers to “level up” my own programming skills, particularly in Go [Golang]). If you’re active on Slack, then you’ll probably start seeing me around the Kubernetes Slack team more frequently. Of course, you’re always welcome to hit me up on Twitter.
I mentioned last week that I’d miss the VMware community, but I am encouraged by the opportunity to build relationships in the Kubernetes community. There are many great folks within the Kubernetes community (more than a few of them work at Heptio!), and I’m really looking forward to making new friends, building new relationships, and giving back to the community in whatever form I am able.
Lots of hard work lies ahead of me—reshaping oneself and one’s skill set is never an easy thing to do—but I’m genuinely looking forward to this adventure. I’m going to learn a lot, I’m going to grow a lot, and I’m going to do my best to help others along their paths as well. Let’s do this!