What's Next for the Cloud Foundry Foundation in 2017 with Executive Director Abby Kearns

Key Takeaways

[Music] avek i'm here with ave occurrence who's now executive director of the cloud foundry foundation hey Abby hi Alex thank you oh man it's so exciting i'm so excited for you you you've come on from pivotal and you really have like helped the cloud foundry foundation establish itself over these past two years with Sam in charge and now Sam is moving on sands we're going to Google which is quite something and you are now left with the reins you're taking the reins you're you're going to now be able to really you know take Cloud Foundry into this next era and I just want to know what is that next era I'm it's a continuation of course but what is it that is now 2017 what is 2018 what is what is kind of a story that is going to unfold here well I think you'll see a continuation on all of the amazing foundational aspects that have been laid the last two years so we will be continuing on the the story in the narrative around cloud foundry out is the industry leading cloud application platform and will continue to talk about its multi cloud capabilities and the portability of application workloads but you'll also see us bringing on and additional thread which is really focusing on the developers a bit more than we have been in the past so that's going to be a new push for us in 2017 is building up the developer community to building up the developer messaging and talking about how developers are really going to be leading the charge is global 2000 organizations are shifting to become much more digitally native so a digitally native unfortunate 2,000 companies and software development and there's a micro services surge happening there's all these there's open source ecosystems that are in play there's lots there's there's lots of factors and there's also very lots of different other kinds of co systems that are emerging right we have crew benetti's we have mace oats and so I'm wondering how cloud foundry will evolve as a platform you know at you know for developers what will this story be for the you know it is the you know is your service platform going to be the you know that the big story here the service broker you know is that the big story for cloud foundry foundation is that how is that how the platform will scale out or is it something else I think services are going to be huge you know as we talked about the cloud foundry service broker API is a phenomenal way to connect services to the platform and services are crucial to the success of any platform having the ability to connect to and leverage services as you build out applications because at the end of the day you can't create applications without the availability of services being database messaging application performance management a whole litany of services that are relevant and necessary in order to run and manage your applications at scale and so as we think about the the need for services we look to accelerated in building out the ecosystem around cloud foundry and we have pinned that on the cloud foundry service broker API and it turns out that it's such a elegant solution to connecting services to a platform that we're turning that into an industry-leading specification so an industry-wide specification that will be leveraged by other communities and other platforms to allow a broad array of services to write against a single API and have their service accessible across many platforms and so looking at at them the services from the ecosystem from that perspective but then you know looking at building out the capabilities in the support ability for developers and ensuring that they're able to quickly and easily deploy applications to production and leverage a broad array of services easily through that platform cloud foundry in the today's goal is to make writing and deploying and managing applications at scale as simple as possible that's the ultimate vision and so what that translates into for the global 2000 is the ability to leverage that technology to enable their business transformation it when these organizations are looking to become software companies as so many of them are now using they're calling themselves software companies and they're like I'm going to be a software company and what does that mean that means obviously writing their own software and iterating on that software but it also means changing the fundamentals of your business leveraging CI CD capabilities becoming more agile driving a deeper connection with your customers in a way that you hadn't before it just fundamentally your entire business model but the way you interact and engage with their end users so how how you know it you know as the new executive director of the cloud foundry foundation how will you treat the service broker itself how will it be defined will be defined under the cloud budget foundation or will be defined in a different manner it will be under the cloud foundry foundation and it'll be offered up to allow other communities to participate but will remain under the cloud foundry foundation umbrella okay so how will you then treat contributions and commits them to that world will the ones who commit to that have to go through the certification or will there be other requirements that make it for contributing to the community around the service broker know what's so exciting is we were able to put it in its own PMC a project management council and under that framework we're able to allow a broad array of developers to participate and commit to that you don't have to be a member of the cloud foundry foundation or or an employee of an organization that's a member it's we've opened it we've set it aside in a way to allow that accessibility by a broader range of ecosystems because in the day we want more people to participate and iterating and developing and making that an industry specification an industry standard on how you connect services to a platform and so we're wanting to really open that up and make that accessible to many and building on the success that cloud foundry continues to leverage on the availability of services against cloud foundry so so how so tell me how like someone might participate in helping develop the service burger where will the where will the work you've done will it be done github will it be done in a private repository will it be done you know how I looked how people actually contribute yeah we'll be all being get out yeah thanks so anyone can go in and contribute to the project you can go and you can submit pull requests or you can join we have a core group of committers that are are there managing it across a lot of different organizations so how many say yeah a lot of maintain errs for the project yes how many will you have um initially I think we're at eight and who are they they are a mix from variety of companies pivotal it obviously IBM Google fujitsu and a few others that are looking to participate and be that core group that will continue to drive and iterate on the the new features and functionality but will still allow pull request to come in and be managed by that group so who will there be a project manager who is maybe independent of a large company right now now we the project manager is part of the existing so yeah so they'll be the maintainer they'll be the ones who are deciding what what what what gets committed in what does not right now yes that could probably evolved over time but given the success we've had with the service worker API to date and the criticality of it to the cloud foundry ecosystem there is obviously a great deal of visibility on making that even more successful are these how are you going to you know a focus that we're looking at with open source communities is the university right in their inclusion how are you doing that how you how are you going to approach that with like your the service broker you know community well by setting it up and allowing the committers to not have to already be part of the foundation or already be part of the community our hope is to be inclusive and open that up and make that easy and accessible for anyone that either wants to actively participate or participate in one off matter where they're hey you know what this is great but wouldn't this be even better if we had this one capability and submit a PR or something like that but our goal is to make this as inclusive as possible and ensure that everyone is able to participate equally and continuing to iterate on the API standard now I'll say that it is a standard and as as such or maybe a better phrase is it's a specification it's an api specification so as such we won't expect it to change that quickly and that much change will probably incremental because it is a very because it's the nature of specifications they don't change quickly why you guys to finding it as a specification because that's what it is yeah it's there any other way you could approach it that you've considered now I mean it's the goal is to take the API it's very simple the API itself is very simple it creates a finally turning just opening that API yeah and so it's just the goal of establishing that as the the specification allows her to be an agreement on what that API looks like yeah I didn't know if there might be uncommon Singh something more than that but it seems like the specification basically what you're needing to focus on yes so the so that people been building this have been you know the cloud foundry foundation chip childers been definitely involved he's out he's now the you sound kind of ECT oh right he's now named as CTO of the foundation it's nice d CTO and so chips been I know heavily involved in it who's been involved in building the service broke her up to this point the members have been involved in it who besides Jim would be has been involved in developing it at this point well chip hasn't really been involved in developing and managing it yeah ChIP chip serves a CTO which we're very excited to have chip as part of the cloud foundry team the development around the service broker and service broker api to this point has been the cloud foundry development team and most of that the bulk of that work has been done by pivotal so I'd say that specifically Shannon Cohen and others have had a lot of effort and the development to date and they've done a really great job of shepherding it and making it a specification that everyone that appeals to everyone and everyone is really interested in because it's solved in an elegant way a problem which is connecting services to a platform making services easily inaccessible to developers as they develop applications on the platform and that's what's so exciting it's like you know we're talking about getting more developers and we talk a lot about cloud native application architectures and micro services and writing more code and and iterating quickly but at the end of the day without services you aren't able to to do that and be successful because you you need those services in order to provide the functionality for the applications and so for us services are as critical as getting the applications on board and realistically both serve as a two-sided network effect when I think about the viability of services and applications I think about you know the iPhone because we sit here and look at our iphones right here right what made the iphone interesting when it first came out okay I could take I could text I could take photos I could talk on the phone but as the the App Store came out and more applications were available on the phone it became much more crucial and much more critical it's now my phone for me is how I call uber it's how i have my boarding pass its how I check in for my flight it's how i order groceries it's how i order food delivery it is a lot of different things to me the platform doesn't provide that the phone doesn't provide that the applications and the service is available on that platform or what provide the value to me and I think about cloud foundry that's the way to think about it Cloud Foundry is the phone it's it is the iphone right it is just that that simple elegant abstraction but by offering up a proliferation of applications that make it easy for you as an is a business to continue to engage with your customers operationalize your business you know get more efficient take data you already have and offer it up in a mobile app or things like that that's what makes Cloud Foundry exciting ok so with that in mind how will the service broker serve you know other communities like what do you what are you saying to other communities I'm things specifically like a community like you know the Cuban at ease community like for you're a tease ecosystem how do you see your how do you see the service broker in context with Cobra dennys the service broker the amazing thing about the service broker API is it is such an elegant solution for services that by making it a standard making it a specification that's accessible by other platforms allow services allows it to be used on platforms like uber Nettie's allows them the Cooper nati the users that are leveraging cleric uber Nettie's to connect and bind with services as well we think of this as a win for not just the users that potentially are running multiple platforms in an environment and want that portability for their services but also for the ISPs those companies that are developing services developing software that is accessible by services and we you're here early hey we're doing it everywhere it sort of them come on in it's fine go thank you every legal right yeah well I'll be writing a five about 5-10 minute okay great I was Sam Rangie stopping dropping off work rules yep it will transform how you live and lead so that so that's the philosophy behind a service broker really is to be back that that integrated kind of provide integrated capability for services to service discovery kind of on a platform like uber at ease and how they adopt it will see you know or how users will adopt it will see but more not it makes it easier for us like I said software vendors to develop services and make them accessible if you if your and I think particularly of smaller salt is v's smaller software companies right that are that are writing and developing software and they want to make it accessible to someone that's running their application on a platform isn't it an easier an easier job for them to be able to write against the single API and have that service accessible across a variety of platforms I mean for them that makes their life easier they're not having to customize their software for each individual platform and so by making that leap by making not accessibility for services we now allow them to offer services and offer a broader array of services across a variety of platforms and building and accelerating that ecosystem irrespective of the underlying platform so as we talk about what Cloud Foundry is brought to the table to date cloud boundary offers the ability to run your apps consistently with the same experience irrespective of the underlying cloud in the underlying is right so that that was step one is offering that accessibility and that portability to organizations so that it can run on AWS on Google on Azure on OpenStack on VMware on unit kernels they have that availability and as we talk about doing the same for services we that really allows us to change the game what is an ecosystem what is the value of that ecosystem how does that more what that perspective is not only for the services but also for the organizations that are looking to develop new ways of engaging with their own user base so in 2017 how do you see the ecosystem becoming more diverse so so we see more you know for instance young companies that are you know have it they have that opportunity to be you know very innovative because they're just young and they're starting off the new idea there's a lot of there's a lot of growth in the kinetic unity with startups you know that we see how does how do you want to approach kind of that with the cloud foundry foundation the next year how you want to like create this you know this kind of this rich this rich mix of you know young innovators I think that's an exciting challenge I mean the startup community has long held the domain of innovation you know companies that weren't here three months ago or all of a sudden now taking on enterprises the ability to create new technologies and new ways of solving problems in your basement or your garage but that's long been a stalwart of the startup community but I also think is we're starting to see a lot of these larger organizations the fortune 500 the global 2000 wanting to leverage platforms like Cloud Foundry to really transform their business and transform the way that they think about technology I think whilst we're starting to see innovation rise up in those organizations as well and I am super excited for the next couple of years as more and more of these organizations are really transforming the way that they write software what software they write how do they engage how do they leverage the data that they've got and really expose that in new and interesting ways to their user base I think we're only seen the tip of the iceberg for that and I think it's going to be really interesting to watch the innovation that comes from these organizations and we'll still have the innovation that springs up from these startups and how they're going to continue to push the envelope but I'm also looking forward to the response from these larger organizations that are also looking to innovate and leverage a lot of those leaves as well as establishing broader innovation challenges within their own organizations so google recently joined right you know joining is supportive of cloud foundry and now they are you know now they're kind of moving forward with kind of their own strategy we have caught up with them for a while but we probably should what is the relationship with you know with Google going for it Sam's going there now and so he'll be you know overseeing lots of different things relate to cloud foundry and Cooper nannies and everything else curious about the relationship coming forward I think it's going to be an exciting one Google is investing quite a bit in the enterprise space and investing quite a bit in establishing Google cloud platform is the platform of choice for the enterprise's particularly those that are looking to invest heavily in the public cloud and I think you know we all know google has the breadth and the depth in terms of Rd and investments they can make and I think with them wanting to leverage Cloud Foundry you know obviously the announcement they had a few weeks ago about running pivotal cloud foundry on gcp and they deep integrations there and making use of the services within Google and the you know with bringing sam over and continued investment in cloud foundry and joining the foundation and participating in the the open service broker api work I think it's just going to spell exciting times a proliferation of services the ecosystem is now accessible the the adoption of cloud foundry and the deep ties there I think it's just I think the next couple of years are going to be really exciting as this technology continues to unfold and iterate and open up new ways of developing and delivering technology well I be congratulations again on this great you know new opportunity your own career and the opportunity for cloud foundry foundation and the membership out there and all the people who you know are developing and using it this is a very exciting time so thanks for taking some time to talk you know about what's ahead well thank you Alex it's always great to talk to you and looking forward to having many more conversations about what we're working on where we're going how are you saying to great well thank you [Music]