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We're here in Austin, Texas at the Five Runs headquarters, we have two exciting guests

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with us.

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Would you like to introduce yourself, guest?

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Sure.

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I'm Steve Sanderson.

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I'm the VP of Development and Technology here at Five Runs.

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Yeah.

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I'm Bruce Williams.

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I'm a developer here at Five Runs.

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I was here today, you guys were telling me about sort of the exciting new release you

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guys have coming out.

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And I mean, before we get to exactly what's in the new release, do you want to just give

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a quick overview of what Five Runs does?

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Our products are for the Ruby and Rails market monitoring, we also have an installed product

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that builds up an environment, provides an environment for developers, but generally we're focusing

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on how to create success for the application developer and deployment in the whole Ruby and

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Rails world.

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Right.

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So essentially you're sort of everything except actually writing the code for Rails.

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Yes.

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We haven't figured out how to solve that for them.

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That's a problem that's not too hard to solve.

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Yeah.

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I think more than anything we're kind of focused on the end.

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So developing a Rails application isn't really a difficult thing to do.

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It takes some skill and it takes some time, but it's definitely a lot easier to do than

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using some other application frameworks.

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So we're focused on the harder part, which is deploying and maintaining once it's out there.

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Right.

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At the moment, what are the different components you have in your portfolio for doing those

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things?

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Yeah.

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The main component we've got, the flagship one, is Manage.

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As you mentioned, we're coming out with a new version of that.

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Manage provides for production operations, whether you might be a developer that's managing several

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apps in production or you're actually a dedicated operations person.

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We provide the ability to monitor those applications in production, get feedback on what their status

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is, and drill really deeply into what's going on with them from a Rails and Ruby perspective,

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and then see how they fit into a larger ecosystem of other components like MySQL or Apache or what

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have they.

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Right.

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So what do you think about the Rails application?

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I mean, is it, I mean, if I just had a naive straw man, I mean, is it, it's gotta be more

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than just like your database is down or something like that.

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I mean, what, what does it get to that makes it Rails management versus just normal management?

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Well, the, the, the quick answer to that is, is we drill really deeply into, uh, what's

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going on within the Rails framework and your code's interaction with that.

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And we are able to instrument all those key points, allow you to set all sorts of triggers

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to say, um, tell me, send alerts out when certain, uh, thresholds are crossed.

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So that, um, you can use some of the existing triggers that we have out of the box, or you

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can start to customize them and say, well, I really need to know if this part of my application

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is behaving in a certain way.

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I want to be notified of that.

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Right.

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Obviously that the more, the more straightforward piece, which is, well, tell me if a piece

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of my environment is down, like you said, that's, you know, that's pretty standard.

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Um, but what's key for us is to really talk about how we drill down into the Rails world

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and tell you, uh, you know, what you can hook up to, what you can monitor, and then generate

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events and feedback for you so that you can go fix some things.

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Yeah, we do a lot more than just say, it's broke, which is, which is the other approach.

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Yeah, right.

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Um, and we let you know what's broke, at least as far, as far as a, uh, as a computer can tell

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you.

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In what context did it break, so we let you take a look at, you know, what happened

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in MySQL at the same time, what happened in your OS at the same time, um, so you have

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a little bit firmer of an idea and you can, you can follow, you can follow up and try to

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figure it out.

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Right.

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The typical, sort of, um, what would you call it, sort of sibling technologies that people

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end up having in Rails, and we mentioned the database, and one would, one would assume

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that you have Apache or a web server running, but I mean, what are other things that, that

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you guys manage that, that, uh, that might be running alongside these things?

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Uh, Memcache is a good example.

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The funny thing with Rails is, it's not just a cut and dry framework and here's your, here's

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your box and it just runs.

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There's a lot of things that end up running along with it in the ecosystem, so.

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Right.

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Besides your OS and your database, there's a, there's a lot of things that you might run

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alongside.

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Memcache is a, is a really, really simple example.

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And there's a wide range of web servers that you can use with it.

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And we try to take care of all of that for you.

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Right.

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That's an interesting, sort of, difference from, say, like, J2EE, where it's, sort of,

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you're locked down as, as what, uh, the sanctioned things to run.

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And so, I mean, as, and when you guys are thinking of different technologies to support,

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what's sort of the heuristic you go through to say, like, oh, we should support Memcache,

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or we should support this other thing, or something like that?

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To some degree it is subjective.

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Um, it's certainly not a mathematical formula we can just punch numbers into and see what comes

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out of the other side.

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Yeah.

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But, you know, being hooked into the community, I think, is an important part of, of what we

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do.

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And so, we, we see what the community is really interested in, what they're using, and, uh,

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some of the leading companies, what, what they're focused on, and what they're supporting.

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And what we've found, not surprisingly, is that the community is, um, you know, passionate

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about what they're doing.

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They don't have a problem giving us feedback and saying, you know, we're really interested in

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this widget.

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Please help us with this, support this widget.

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So, um.

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I think developers have no problems with opinions.

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Yeah.

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That's right.

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Absolutely.

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And so, you know, obviously we want that so that we can figure out what the next thing...

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And as that community matures more, I mean, what are you finding the...is the task of managing

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and deploying things a lot different, or are there sort of...is it sort of like old wine

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and new bottles, or is it new bottles with old wine?

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The idea being that, um...

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I guess it's more like moonshine sometimes.

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There you go.

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That's right.

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So it's new stuff.

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But, you know, you can always...there's always a very salt-encrusted, or yet to be salt-encrusted

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people might say, this is the same old stuff, just different...

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I think people are trying a lot of new ways.

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I mean, and, you know, I think you're eminently more qualified about this than I am.

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However, you know, my, my sort of perspective is people are trying new ways about, about stuff.

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They're challenging the convention about, well, you always got to do it this way.

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This is the way they did it in, you know, favorite language 5, and 10, and 15, and 20 years ago.

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Yeah, I think there's a real danger in assuming that the best practice from something else

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is going to work just fine here and now, too.

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Sure, sure.

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So that's the whole Cargo Cult concept.

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You were talking about this earlier, and maybe you can shed some more light on it, but there's

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a certain new thing you can do with the dynamic nature of Ruby itself that really would be

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thought of as insanity.

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Right, people's minds occasionally, yeah.

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There's a fine line between insanity and genius.

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Absolutely.

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So you have to drill the line.

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Yeah.

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You have to be a little careful.

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I mean, it's one of those things, a double-edged sword.

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So it does open up a lot of doors, but it does open up a lot of dangers as well.

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Right.

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And I think that's kind of where we do come in.

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We try to at least, the thing is when you're dealing with a dynamic language, sometimes these

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problems don't pop up until you're in production.

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Right.

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So you can do all the testing that you want to in your development environment, but once

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you start adding weird new data from customers and it's up running in some slightly different

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configuration, which is different from everybody else's because there is no standard, you know,

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things pop up that you don't expect.

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Well, I think that actually sort of points out a reason why, you know, going and having

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deep rails monitoring, you know, the sort of integration of the rails and Ruby world and

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the components is really important.

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It's because unlike, you know, non-dynamic languages, unlike frameworks in the past, there's

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a desire, there had been a desire in sort of the larger technical community.

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Let's figure out everything.

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By the time we go to production, it's frozen.

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You stamp it out.

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It's really a distribution issue.

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Right.

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It's a manufacturing issue.

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And, you know, it's like a car.

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We've sent it out and, you know, maybe we need to touch up the paint when we dig it.

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But after that, it's pretty much still a car, you know, with the dynamic nature that we've

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got with Ruby.

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And there's a lot more possibilities and a lot more things that can change, that can be

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connected, you know, with the data and having the right tools to be able to give you insight

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into that.

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You need tools that are a little more tuned in that perspective than the more conventional

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sort of systems management, systems monitoring tools.

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They really need to understand the fact you're dealing with a really much more dynamic.

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And it seems like the main sort of technological difference is you guys actually, well, you

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guys, one who would be doing this, meaning you guys in this case.

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It's a royal we.

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That's right.

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Yes.

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That's the thing that you're managing and monitoring rather than like more traditional

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approaches don't so much instrument.

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They treat the components at some level as a black box.

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Right.

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And we're, you know, we're not thinking of that world as a black box, just the opposite.

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And when we go to think about things like MERB, you know, when we actually instrument inside

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the Rails framework, you know, A, we're using the stuff, you know, we're actually, oh boy,

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I'll use that cliche phrase, we're eating our own dog food, right?

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Sure.

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Because we're using these tools in production.

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We're monitoring our own stuff in production.

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So the instrumentation we get, we're immediately, of course, turning around in our own little

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feedback loop and saying, is that data that we're getting out for, you know, this interaction

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here really interesting and relevant to us?

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Right.

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So it has to pass sort of that giggle test.

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But, you know, we're actually in there trying to figure out what's the right kind of data.

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And there are, you know, pretty regular dialogues about, yeah, we got that number out, but that's

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a goofy number.

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So do we really need to put that number out?

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Or is there some other aspect that we need to surface that's going to help people understand?

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Really have, you know, I think the world, because of the dynamic aspects, really moved

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away from this sort of treating all these as fixed, already baked black boxes.

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You just don't need to worry about it.

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You deploy them and you get someone at the other end of the console who's not necessarily

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caring about what's inside that black box.

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I think the sort of Rails and Ruby world demands at this point that the consumer of some of

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that information does have sort of propensity to think, well, this isn't just a black box.

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I do want to know what's in there because it is going to change, even from an operations

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point of view.

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I see this is going on.

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I need to change some of my operations infrastructure.

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That's interesting.

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I mean, it reminds me of anecdotes I always hear about Amazon, or always.

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Not that I hear them every day, but every now and then I hear about Amazon where there's

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essentially more of a philosophy of if you write the code, you own the code and production.

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Additionally, in management, there's more of a split between the developers and there's

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a giant wall that the code gets thrown over to operations.

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Yeah.

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And I mean, I wonder if that, you know.

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That would be nice.

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Yeah.

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That was good.

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And I'm sure being a SaaS company, it seems like SaaS companies run like that, absolutely,

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just because they seem to run like that.

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But in your customer base, do you find people are having this splitter?

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When I first got here, you know, we've all sort of been around the web 1.0 and there's

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web 2.0 and all of that sort of tag.

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And then we sort of sat back, I think, some of us and said, well, yeah, we understand what

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developer 2.0 looks like, right?

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It's Ruby.

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It's agile.

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It's dynamic languages.

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It's, you know, very short, rapid feedback, iterative cycles.

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We had a product that supposed what we, you know, don't stick by this name, but, you know,

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sort of an Ops 2.0.

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What does Ops 2.0 look like?

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Right.

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Are they the classic ops guys who have drunk the 2.0 Kool-Aid?

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Are they developers who also happen to pick up ops stuff?

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We don't really know.

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And that's part of what we're finding out when the product goes out there.

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But a lot of people that are using our product, I think, have developer sensibilities.

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If not, they are developers themselves.

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Right.

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So they're more prepared to deal with it.

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At least at this point.

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We'll see if it changes in time when we have a lot more corporate interests and we've got

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some more of these traditional structures that pop up.

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Right.

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That have pre-existing roles in hiring.

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Yeah.

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And so that's, as the wave gets larger and it starts to, you know, overtake, you know,

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the last Java developer to, you know, convert, you know, what happens to the Ops guys?

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Right.

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Do they, do they sort of drink the Kool-Aid and see a, and then in turn come back to us

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and go, you know, this isn't interesting.

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I need something else.

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Right.

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So, okay.

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You have the, the 2.0 version of Manage coming out.

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And so what, what's going to be in that version?

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I mean, what, what was the baseline of things that we already discussed sort of the baseline

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that's in there already sort of just monitoring rails things.

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Right.

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It's associated goodness, but, but what's the deal with the 2.0 version?

259
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Well, there's, there's a lot of things that have changed.

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It's a, it's a complete, completely different product in a lot of ways.

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Um, we've, we've taken some things out and we've, that didn't really make sense, um, in this

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space and we've added some things in.

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Um, we, we've taken out some of the, some of the corrupt your components that we, we didn't

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see a lot of use out of, like, uh, monitoring Tomcat, things of that nature.

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We've added more interesting things like Nginx, memcache, um, much better rails instrumentation,

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um, yeah, with a, the capability to extend that much faster, um, to new subsystems.

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That makes sense.

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We've also, I think probably the biggest change would probably be the trigger system that we

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have now.

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Um, previously we just had these kind of basic thresholds of people to be able to set on

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metrics and now they can kind of mix and match and create their own triggers.

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Um, so they can, they can, uh, they can make the events make a lot more sense to what, what

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their needs are.

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Can you say a little bit more about the difference between a threshold and a trigger is?

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Yeah.

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A threshold is just saying if, let's say the fine time, um, for a model goes over a specific

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time period.

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Right.

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Um, then go ahead and notify me.

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But a trigger allows you to say if that happens and it's in this, and it's in this controller

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and the following other circumstances exist, then send me an email.

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A lot of the time, um, before you, you do, you run the risk of, uh, of getting an event

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where it doesn't really make sense.

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Right.

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So now you have a lot more control, um, over, over doing that.

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And we come with a lot of pre-canned triggers as well.

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So people can just turn them on and they get a lot of benefit right out of the box.

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So you can essentially make synthetic events as it were, right?

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Right.

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There's another aspect of the product that, that, um, is not necessarily visible to you

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from the user's perspective, but it's certainly visible from you operationally.

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And that is, is the, the client.

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Um, the original client was, um, based on some technology that made its footprint very

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large and not matching what a lot of our customers want.

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The new client is much smaller, much more compact, um, and is, uh, already successfully deployed

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in a number of different, you know, virtual slices, um, up and down size scale.

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Right.

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Um, so it's basically, uh, a full Ruby implementation of a client.

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Uh, it's got dynamic updatability and, uh, it's a much smaller, much better footprint.

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So that was a huge.

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Yeah.

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Ninety percent smaller.

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I think that old technology you're talking about was a JVM.

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Um.

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The technology will remain nameless.

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Yeah, it will remain nameless, but it's called the JVM.

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Yes.

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We're using Ruby nowadays.

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Right.

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It's kind of, it's kind of funny to see so many developers transition from Java to Ruby

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and for our own client to transition from Java to Ruby as well.

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Yeah.

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So, and, uh, we actually worked with, um, with the guys over at InfoEther to, to make that

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happen.

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Yeah, that was.

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So Chad Powell and Rich Kilmer.

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There's some other great guys there to make that happen, so.

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Yeah.

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We've got a lot of usability improvements.

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Um, I think some of the sort of key features of those are, uh, um, we've sort of collapsed

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and integrated graphs.

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Right.

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We have interactive graphs now.

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Before we just had stock image graphs.

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Now we have flash graphs with interactive cursors and things like that.

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Oh, exciting.

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So a lot, a lot easier to, to cross reference.

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There's some, and there's some, you know, there's some elegant stuff that's in that,

329
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that while it doesn't rise to the level of being, you know, a whole feature.

330
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Um, in those graphs you can see events that have occurred.

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You can see triggers that are set.

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Right.

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And you could click through those graphs and go to the trigger behind that.

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You can go to the event behind that.

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And so it's, uh, it really gives you a lot more information from a single place and the

336
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ability to branch out to where you need to go.

337
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One of the feedback, uh, feedback that I got from folks when, uh, with the old product was

338
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that I had to do a lot of clicking to get to where I needed to be, where I should be able

339
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to just do, you know, a couple clicks.

340
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And obviously, you know, we took that to heart.

341
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Yeah.

342
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There's a lot of user experience feedback that kind of rolled into this release.

343
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Right, right.

344
00:15:45,980 --> 00:15:46,980
Yeah.

345
00:15:46,980 --> 00:15:50,980
That's, that's always, uh, I think every single management product I ever see has, uh,

346
00:15:50,980 --> 00:15:52,980
limitless usability improvements to be had on it.

347
00:15:52,980 --> 00:15:53,980
Yes.

348
00:15:53,980 --> 00:15:55,980
So that's always a nice area to improve on.

349
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Yeah.

350
00:15:56,980 --> 00:15:58,980
And it's a challenging, um, combination.

351
00:15:58,980 --> 00:16:01,980
Uh, we've got, we've had a chance to work with some really good, uh, usability folks.

352
00:16:01,980 --> 00:16:02,980
Right.

353
00:16:02,980 --> 00:16:03,980
And we've got some really great feedback.

354
00:16:03,980 --> 00:16:07,980
And one of the things to see is how many times, in the best cases, how you have to

355
00:16:07,980 --> 00:16:08,980
change context.

356
00:16:08,980 --> 00:16:11,980
You're on the website, you download the app, you log on your server, you come back and

357
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back and forth.

358
00:16:12,980 --> 00:16:13,980
Right.

359
00:16:13,980 --> 00:16:16,980
So how to do that in a way that, um, you don't lose track of where you're at, you don't

360
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get interrupted by the phone and then come back and yeah, I'll get to that later.

361
00:16:19,980 --> 00:16:26,420
So, um, we've really tried to make the flow and the app aware of the flow, uh, with respect

362
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to sort of your, your initial onboarding, launching, getting started as well as adding

363
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new systems.

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So we've tried to simplify that as much as possible.