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Well, hello everybody. It's another Pivotal Conversations. I have a guest with myself this

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time. Why don't you introduce yourself? Hi, I'm John Faminella. I'm a platform architect with

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Pivotal. I'm based out of the New York City office and I like milkshakes, meta jokes, and

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long walks on the beach. Long walks on the beach. Very nice. You know, I'm going to a beach next

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week. Oh, you're not invited. Oh yeah. I'll just see if I can figure out some long walks there.

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You know, you're reminding me of another thing. I'm trying to like, you know, be all relaxed and

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laid back and wear t-shirts more as I'm doing now. Yes. And now I understand why people are

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always wearing like hoodies. Yes. Because if you, if you just wear a t-shirt, it's a

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little cold. Well, once I realized that it was acceptable, at least it was acceptable for

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James Watters to wear a hoodie while talking to Fortune 500 CEOs, I was like, oh, okay, it's

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probably okay for me to do that too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I live down in Austin

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and it's hot there. Yes. So I just can't get into like hoodie culture. Although it gets hot

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in New York, right? Right. I solved that by never going outside. Oh yeah. That's how I solve

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most problems associated. Well, I think that's a, that's a totally okay way to solve every

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problem just by becoming a hermit. So you, you, uh, you gave a talk here. I did. Why don't,

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why don't we start with, uh, with going over what that was? So what, what was the, it's like

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about, uh, how, how platforms have contracts and how you can't have a platform without contracts

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and things like that. Sure. So, um, I realized in the course of my job, uh, which is talking

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to customers about Pivotal in general, um, and also specifically, uh, some of Pivotal's

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products, one of which of course is Pivotal Cloud Foundry, um, that the, that oftentimes they

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were discussing the way that they built their own platforms, um, in terms of very strict cost

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benefit analysis that I felt weren't really a accurate description or a accurate summary of

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exactly what the total cost of ownership of that platform was. Yeah. Well, as, as, as they say,

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you said a mouthful there. Yeah. That's, that's a, uh, that's a huge thing in our collective

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craws, like whether it's our customers or ourselves to sort out. Right. And I think it's, I, I, you know,

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obviously the audience at SpringOne is not just other Pivotal people. So I wanted to kind of talk

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about what are some of the ways that one can evaluate a platform or platforms against each other

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and, you know, what, what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. And I felt like one of the

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things that does make sense is to think about the contract, the implicit contract that you're agreeing

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to when you are building a platform or agreeing to, uh, right include one in the organization.

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And so the, I felt that the biggest, most important thing to look at is the people that will be impacted

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by the choice of a platform because, you know, we can talk about technology all day long and the benefits

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it's going to bring, but at the end of the day, a human being is using it. So if you're not,

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if you're not, um, considering the people, the developers, the operators, the business owners,

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et cetera, that are involved in that, you're really missing a pretty critical piece that won't ever

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be captured in any kind of, um, P and L or, uh, it's like, it's like a, a user analysis of the users

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of the platform. Exactly. Right. That's a very good way of putting it. I mean, they're, they're kind of

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stakeholders in overcharge world word, but they're, they're the ones that you're doing this for. So

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it's probably a good idea to pay attention to what it, what's useful for them and what's helpful.

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And you'd be, you would be surprised or maybe you wouldn't be surprised at how often that seems to

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get ignored, um, by folks who are about who making these big technology choices. And for them, it's

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like, let's look at this rubric of like features that we need and not about like, how is this going

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to impact the way that we do work? Will it change anything? Or is it just going to be, we changed what

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we're deploying to, but not anything about how we do that or why we're doing it. So there's not enough

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opportunity for introspection in, uh, when, when you use tools that don't encourage that to begin

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with. Right. Right. Okay. So I mean to, I, I, I don't know, I'm starting to predict that there's

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like this interesting idea of like, use the, the, the word contract, which sounds all like serious,

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right. To, to this essentially as, as a, it's almost like a kind of a, a fake out approach

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of like just making sure you have good usability. Right. And, and, and, and the way you, I'm, I'm

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guessing you reduce it down is like, like you're saying, like if, if you have users of this platform,

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it's kind of like infrastructure or not kind of, I mean, it is infrastructure and you more think

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of like what you depend on the infrastructure for and what it's supposed to provide for you instead

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of like, you know, uh, what would, what would be more of like a usability thing, right? Like,

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Oh, it's delightful. Sure. When I like cropped this image or whatever. I don't think that's a sentence

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I've ever said in my life, but maybe that's because I haven't used the right tool for image

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copying. Exactly. Um, I have to say that's not a void in my life that I need like filled at the

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moment, but, uh, but if it were, maybe I'd be looking around for tools. No. Yeah. The, the contract

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idea, I think that's definitely part of it, what you just described. Um, I drew the analogy of course,

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like a legal contract and the, there are many elements to a correct and, uh, successful legal

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contract, but there are three big pieces. One's called consideration, which means that the two of

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us, the two parties or two or more parties in the contract have to agree that they're both getting

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something when they sign the contract. So there has to be an exchange of value of some kind. A contract

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without consideration where one party gets all the benefit and the other party gets none, uh, is not

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actually a valid contract. I think the technical term is a ripoff. I think the technical term is a

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terms of service. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so that's the first piece. The second piece is, uh, the contract

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has to, um, there, there has to be sort of a meeting of the minds there. Uh, both people have to agree

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that what's in the contract is what they actually wanted. So if somebody, for example, uh, if you don't

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knowingly enter into part of the contract, then you'd really have a complete understanding of it. And so

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the legal contract would not be enforceable. You can use your terms of service joke again.

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Yes, exactly. Right. Thank you for reminding me that I think I will use it again. Um, but yeah,

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I mean courts have repeatedly held in many different cases that certain kinds of terms of service are

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not enforceable for that exact reason. Uh, but those are really the, there are many other elements of

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the contract. Those are sort of the two that I focus most on in the talk. Um, the consideration element

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is, uh, is, uh, is the most relevant because it's, uh, it's about evaluating what are you giving up

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to run some platform or kind of control. Are you ceding to the platform? Uh, and in many cases that,

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that control may be stuff you don't want to do anyway. Uh, nobody wants to run their, you know,

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network drivers or do orchestration and scheduling themselves necessarily, that kind of thing.

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Um, and you know, we at Pivotal talk all the time about how we want folks, we think folks should

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stay above the value line because that's, that's what drives revenue. That's what drives business.

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You want the way that you deploy applications and the way that you, um, run applications and services

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to kind of mirror that philosophy of what benefits your business the most is not to focus on things

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like network drivers or, uh, orchestration and scheduling. So, um, so the contract approach is,

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is meant to have you think a little bit more about, well, if you think about sort of platforms

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that don't ask you to change very much about what you do, where, you know, that seems like good at

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first, at first glance, because you're not changing very much. And so you get to do everything that

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you're currently doing. But of course that raises two questions. So first, if nothing really changes

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about the way that you're doing anything, then, you know, are you going to get any benefit as a result?

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Like, if your whole problem is that the way you're doing things now is painful or agonizing in some

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way and nothing is changing about that, then I'd really gain anything. But the second point I try to

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make is if the, uh, if you are running applications on some platform and that platform doesn't need you to

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change anything about your applications or it doesn't ask a lot of you, then in effect, it can't make very

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strong guarantees about the kind of things that are running on it because it, because anything could

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be running on it. And when you are asked to make assumptions about the universe of possibilities

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and arbitrary code could be executing in an arbitrary language, an arbitrary environment with no

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constraints at all, then you're not really running a platform. You're really just running a different

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flavor of infrastructure at that point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like, I like the, the metaphor of this is that

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you need, uh, uh, a give and take in, in order to like, uh, an equanimous exchange. Right. And so,

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and so you kind of like personify the platform as like, you know, it needs to get something,

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right? Like, like, like, like what, what's the benefit to the platform, which you've done for me

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lately. Yeah. Which again is like metaphoric, but, but as, as it kind of points out, and, and I imagine

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there's another sort of thing of, uh, you could sort of use a technology without changing yourself,

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but then typically what happens is it's more constraining than you want and it's more brutal.

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And in the sense of you can always use the network like a network and it doesn't necessarily tell you

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how you have to change things, but it'll just like shut you down if it doesn't like you. Yeah. There's no,

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there's no contract right about what acceptable behavior is. Right. So, I mean, imagine that you,

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you've, you've got some, uh, imagine there's some hypothetical platform that will, uh, run anything

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you want on it. Um, well, what can that platform do for you? Uh, the answer is probably not very much

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because if you can run anything on it, uh, with un, unmodified, no, you know, no effort on your part,

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then, uh, as I said before, that platform is basically infrastructure. What I mean by that is

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its job is no longer to do something special for your applications or provide some kind of

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enhanced guarantee on the top of your applications. Its job is now just to run anything. Yeah. And

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that's like a hard drive. That's not a platform. Yeah. So yeah. Right. Okay. That makes sense. So,

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so then, so then like, what are some examples of the, uh, consideration of platform gets? Sure. So,

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uh, you know, at least with cloud foundry and other sort of similar, uh, platforms that operated that level

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of abstraction of running applications and services, you hear the phrase 12 factor app thrown around a lot. So

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the 12 factors are meant to, um, sort of optimize your application for being cloud native. And it's just

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the first step, of course, there's many, uh, steps along that journey, but that's sort of one easy

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barometer to, uh, to sort of gauge how effective your applications will be in a cloud native environment.

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And that's, that's an example of the kind of consideration you would give the platform. You'll

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agree to have applications that don't write to an ephemeral disk or, uh, get their variables from a

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environment, uh, or if we ever get their configuration from environment variables, um, and so on. So

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they agree to behave in a certain way and by exhibiting that behavior, the platform can make guarantees.

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So for example, in a 12 factor application, if it's stateless, you know that it's okay to, uh,

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swap out the ephemeral disk that's underlying the container because it's safe to do that because

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nobody depends on the ephemeral disk. Um, so since that's okay, then you can do things like have a

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massive disk failure and your applications won't even know if anything has happened at all.

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Yeah. And I guess, I tell me, this is another one. I, I hadn't thought of this one, but like, uh,

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previously until you're kind of getting going down this, this route, but like there's another one of

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the 12 factors is like, uh, I'm, I'm rephrasing it, but your configuration should be injected.

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Sure. Right. Like you don't, you don't, you don't ship with your own configuration. And then,

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and then that, so if you follow that, that part of the contract, what that means the platform

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can do is it's much easier, your configuration to use a service or some third party thing or a backing

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service. So then the platform can move that around and can not, to some extent reconfigure it, but,

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but you, you give up fully controlling how you connect to and even how you configure a service.

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But that means that the platform can manage it a lot more and optimize it. And I think of something

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that's worth pointing out too, is we're describing, we're using the words giving up, but in many cases,

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people don't want to do these things and probably shouldn't be managing them anyway. Um, so for

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example, the case you just brought up of like the, the server that can move, um, well, what if it

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wasn't the server that moved, what if the password changed? What if you wanted to change your password

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every five minutes? No, that's a great example. Like that would be cool because like now you're,

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now you can only be vulnerable to like someone stealing your password for five minutes at a time.

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And then you rotated the credentials and your application can't tell what difference

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because it's getting its configuration from a source outside of itself. I guess maybe a,

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a comical, comical version of giving up is like, you know, if you use a, uh, to do list manager,

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you're giving up the opportunity to have to keep track of all this stuff in your head.

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You're giving up a certain amount of control because you know, you, this other thing is

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remembering for you. And I think that's an important point too, is like, um, you know,

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we say all the time, at least in the software development community, that it's probably smart

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not to roll your own crypto. So people have gotten the message about that. Like banks don't write

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their own encryption algorithm. Well, good banks don't write their own encryption algorithms in

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general. They rely on, you know, trusted sort of ideas about how that works from the security community.

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You know, and yet people seem to think it's totally fine to, uh, you know, basically invent their own

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platforms from scratch when this requires a huge amount of work, a huge amount of effort. And there

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are great community solutions out there already. And, um, you know, reinventing the wheel on this

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kind of thing just seems like, uh, way below the value line for, for most folks.

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Yeah. There was a few little, I mean, like we're here at, you know, SpringOne platform,

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as I like to say, the most awesome name conference ever. And, uh, you know, there's,

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I need to go look through my notes and stuff and rewatch some of the videos, but there are a few

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good anecdotes of people who are using, uh, well, PCF, I guess, Pivotal Cloud Foundry. And

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it illustrates like need to be silly again. Like we talk a lot about day two problems, right? Like

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once you put an application into production, you have to monitor it, you've got a operation stuff,

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but it's almost like with a platform and you've got like day 425 problems. We're like, you know,

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now we need to update the platform. Right. Like we're, we've built this whole other product,

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which I mean, obviously we're, we're both at a vendor, so that neatly fits into our financial and

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everything interests. But it is, I mean, these are the anecdotes that, that there's like three or

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four I've noticed of people who would say like, oh yeah, we built our own thing. And that, that's not

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cool. Right. And then we realize like now, like with encryption, like you don't really want to have

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to manage encryption when there are much better sources out there to do it for you.

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Right. Of course, the danger is that you don't realize that until day 100, 425,

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something like huge amounts of investment into it. Do you come across that a lot? Like,

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like up in your, you're up in the Northeast there?

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Uh, less, you know, sort of more of an, I'd like, but less than I feared.

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And, um, the, uh, I think, I think there's a particular tendency in certain industries to

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believe that they are special snowflakes and are, the probability is higher that people in

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certain industries will probably write their own platform. Um, and that's sometimes expected,

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right? It's kind of like really big companies are often operating at a scale that on some,

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uh, some, uh, orthogonal metric is unique or is actually bigger than most other companies

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of their size. And so that can motivate the, like the decision to write your own platform.

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But the key there isn't about, um, you know, it, it isn't about like number of transactions per

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second or whatever that you need to do. It should motivate the decision for a platform. It's again,

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really about the, it's a combination of the people, the processes and the technology that you're looking

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at and not simply, uh, not simply a, uh, sort of like performance metrics. Yeah, exactly. The, um,

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and I think the way to, the way to get around that question is going back to contracts of like,

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what are you giving up and what are you getting? Yeah. And if you're, if you're trying to accommodate

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a huge volume of transactions or some other large unique metric for your company, you should look at,

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well, is maybe the platform solves that. Maybe the thing I'm going to write will solve that one

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problem. What am I going to do about the other day, hundred and 425 problems that are also part of

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running the same platform. So. And then, and then I imagine also, once you spell out a contract,

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I mean, and to cut myself off as a, I recorded one of my other podcasts, the Lords of computer

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computing episode with, with Matt Curry from Allstate. And I'm always asking him about like,

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you know, what metrics would you use? And like, what, what, and at one point he was just like,

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why, why are you always asking about metrics? Right. And, and so with that kind of like,

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like context for it, you know, maybe at some point this is ridiculous, but I imagine if you spell out

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all this contract stuff, you can start to associate like dollar figures to it. Oh yeah, absolutely.

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And so you can kind of walk yourself through that, that bootstrapping for sure. Like,

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I feel like there's a technological bootstrapping thing to going cloud native. I'm making air quotes,

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but there's also a, for lack of a better word, business bootstrapping of just getting the business

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to, to realize that like, Oh, this is not an ERP system installed. Like this is not a VMware install,

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and this is not an app server install. This is like a different thing that we need to wrap our

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thinking and decision processes around. Yeah. And I think that's,

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that's sort of another benefit of the like contracts approach is that a different mode of thinking may

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help you see that this is fundamentally a different beast than like an ERP system. I mean, we, we've

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definitely, humans tend to want to analogize to things they already know. So it's very natural to

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want to look at PCF or another similar product and say, well, what is this like that I've already seen?

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Yeah. And in many cases, it's totally different than what you've already seen. So it's hard to sort

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of make that analogy. So that's why I think thinking about it in terms of a platform where you run

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applications and services is most meaningful because there aren't many things that do that and,

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or do it well, I should say. And, and that will probably be most directly comparable to what you're

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trying to build internally. If you're trying to make the decision between PCF and doing it yourself.

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Yeah. I was talking with one of our, our, our salespeople down, down in the south earlier today,

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and he was saying in his, in his kind of like industry, he was finding a lot of traction with the idea of,

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of like pitching cloud native and pivotal cloud foundry is sort of like this kind of new thing

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you're indicating is like, it's not only to analogize, it's not only an app server.

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Sure. Right. Right.

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But it's like, it's like, I think, I think the phrase is like one and done, like it's all this

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other middleware stuff on top. And I think, I think that's part, I always jokingly say middleware,

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because it's like, because you know, it's an old word, right? So it's hilarious. But I, I think that was

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one of the sort of epiphanies he had is like, at least for the people he talks with, if you tell

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them that it also includes middleware, then they're kind of like, Oh, right. So it's like,

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not only is it like infrastructure as a service, but it's also all this stuff on top. So you can just

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start to do applications. And I think, I mean, I, other than being crassly commercial like that,

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that kind of illustrates the point of like, how dare you, they haven't, yeah, they haven't,

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there haven't been that many stacks that sort of like have all this stuff in it. Like, and

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the only one that I could really think of was basically like as a Java developer, what I think

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of as .net, right? Like if you, if you're, if you're a Microsoft developer, I'm going crazy with

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the air quotes here. Like you have, you sort of historically, and nowadays as well, like you sort

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of have that, you're just like, I just get the MSDN DVDs and I'm done, right? Like I have everything,

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essentially. So, and I don't, outside of that world, aside from interesting little exotic stuff

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here and there, you don't really have, there hasn't really been a lot of that full stack.

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The batteries included.

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Yeah, exactly. And in fact, I think, I mean, at least way back when I, maybe even to the present,

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when, when I was a programmer, it was almost like you didn't want that, right? Like you wanted as much

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modularity as a developer, you wanted, or even architect, as much modularity as possible.

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And it was even delightful to go through and have the week long meetings deciding which frameworks

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to use on, on down the, the chain. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, nowadays,

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especially with Microsoft being such a great partner for us, there's, you know, I think the

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days of like downloading the MSDN DVD are sort of behind us at this point, but the, you know,

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now you can grab a tiny slice of a .net framework if you want. Right. Yeah.

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They have it all broken up. It's been decomposed. Yeah, exactly. It's super modular as compared to,

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hey, I've got this enormous, you know, C++ runtime DLL, but like contains the entire C standard library. Yeah.

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And, you know, it's not the, it's not the, the, the, you're not boiling the ocean just to get one

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library inside your application. Yeah. I think there's definitely been a trend towards modularity. And I think,

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and I think also, especially with the rise of open source as a accepted, accepted tool chain for big

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businesses to use. Yeah. I think that's really helped things like Pivotal Cloud Foundry because

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we're at least in part a competition of various open source tools with our sort of proprietary Pivotal

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digital magic sprinkles in there for the support and the excitement of, um, of, uh, of, of how we're,

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of how we're like actually putting that platform together. So I think that's, uh, that represents

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something that I think is unique about PCF, um, as compared to say an arbitrary enterprise stack that

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you might be finding out. Yeah. Well, you remind me of something I've, I've been wondering and since,

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since you mentioned it also, I think kind of being in the, the, the like Northeast area, right? Like,

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so I, I, yesterday we had like our, our CIO round table, you know, which, which is, that was fun to,

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to present at and, and like hang out and listen to that. And, and in that, in that, that day,

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and then also other days I've noticed, um, there's been a lot of discussion or let me say more than

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the zero discussion I assumed about how it's basically like, so open source is cool. You should use it.

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And, and for me it's kind of like, I didn't even know that was a question still, but, but I mean,

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because you raised it up, like, what do you, what do you encounter out there as far as like,

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is there like skepticism or worry? Well, I mean like now, no, but like five years ago,

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I think it would be, I mean, five years ago we have said that Microsoft was like pushing an open

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source code editor and like all of this stuff. So like things have changed really fast. But, but like on,

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on, on, on the, the, the enterprise side, like, like, do they fret about using open source or?

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No. I mean, I think that again, five years ago that this would have been a totally different.

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Yeah. So not, not that long ago. It's easy to forget that was like 2011.

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Right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, actually I teach a class at a university in Charlottesville,

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Virginia, at UVA. And, uh, when you, when you start the class, they give you a roster of everyone

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who's in the class and their birth dates are, are on there too. And it's so sobering to look at that

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and see that they're all born like after 1995. Yeah. And that just makes me feel like super old.

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Like the, the video game systems they were playing were like Xbox and like it was on, you know, NES.

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Yeah. They never got to watch Seinfeld.

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Never got to watch Seinfeld. Maybe that rant, whatever.

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How can you live like that? Exactly.

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Well, so, so how, so how was your talk received? Did you, did you get questions or like what?

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Nobody booed. So that's always my threshold for a great talk.

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That would be awesome if, if like we were in some kind of industry where when you give

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a presentation where that was a possibility.

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Well, maybe I just haven't given it to the right audience where like people could boo at me.

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I mean, yes. Um, yeah, no, it was great. I think it was really well received. I think,

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uh, I was up against Josh Long and Casey West at the same time slot.

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So I think I was definitely competing with them on, uh, on attendance and, you know,

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lost miserably. But, uh, the, the people that did come were, uh, pretty excited about it.

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I got really great feedback afterwards. One person said that they were going to like,

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when they got back on Monday, they were going to like immediately start looking at the platform

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that they were considering and deciding if it was sort of holding up under this contracts approach.

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So I've, I was like the best possible thing someone could have said to me is that they got

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something out of the talk and they're going to put it into practice.

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That's awesome right afterwards. So.

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Huh? So other than the presentation, which I'll have to find the link to it when it gets posted,

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uh, you know, cause it's recorded. Um, but like, is, is there some other, like,

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I mean, do you have like a document or a blog post or something that goes over it?

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I don't know. I honestly, I honestly, this has been the synthesis of just like random ideas

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like while I'm in the shower of like, Hey, you know, I, I feel like I'm saying the same things

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a bunch of times to people in general. And it makes sense for me to kind of, um, start putting

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these thoughts down into a deck and that's usually my first like thing is like, how do I, how do I

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explain this to other people? And you know, my first stop, uh, at least for me is usually like,

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let me give a talk about it somewhere. So yeah, no, that's good. I mean, that's, that's a,

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that's an approach I use all the time, sort of presentation as whiteboard.

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Yeah, to kind of sort out your ideas and force yourself to do it.

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I'm certainly grateful to the conference organizers and, uh, you know, Humphrey for

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giving me a platform to blather on about this for a little bit.

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A platform for platforms.

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Yeah, exactly.

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What do you have anything else you, you want to go over on that, that topic or did we miss anything?

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No, I just, I, so I guess I'll just say that there, uh, you know,

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system stuff that I'm working on that I think is fun that other people might want to check out.

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I mentioned to you before we started the podcast and I'm looking at Kotlin,

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which is a really cool JVM based language that's trying to bring more of a functional style to,

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uh, keep like the flavor of Java, but have a more functional approach and,

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you know, introduce, um, some typing ideas from languages like Haskell and,

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um, and a little bit of OCaml sprinkles and things like that.

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So you're getting, you're getting a sort of functional experience without,

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without really needing to, uh, become fully functional programming zealot type stuff.

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Uh, and the other cool thing that I've been looking at lately is, um,

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a containerization technology called unikernels, which are sort of represent a next step in,

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uh, contain, or I should say a step in a certain direction for containers, not necessarily a next

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step, but, uh, expansion of the idea of what containers can be.

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Sure.

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And unikernels are super neat for very, very, very specific and very, very niche use cases at the

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moment. But, you know, no one thought that Docker or other containerization technologies would get

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as big as they were in 2012. So the fact that, uh, the fact that unikernels are starting to become a

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thing is I think very interesting to me and, um, and definitely worth checking out. They're really hard

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to use right now, but they're, they're getting better. And, uh, I suspect that maybe a couple of

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years from now, we'll be talking a lot more about unikernels than, than we were before.

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what little, we, we should, we should record another whole episode

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about that at some point, but like that, what little I know about unikernels, it seems like if you

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have the right kind of, I'm sure by this time we'll have a different word for it, but orchestration

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or choreography or management overlay thing of a jiggy on top of it, that it would actually be

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really interesting just for like, like really, really, uh, componentized and also oddly secure

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and trusted trusted is a better word than secure. Sort of just like processes, a little one-off process.

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I guess it wouldn't even have to be one-off, but just processes that you want to execute.

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Right. And you'd have these like little, little atoms of in out. And I mean, it's kind of,

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I guess it seems like a good way to implement like all this serverless mumbo jumbo. Yeah,

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definitely. Yeah. But you need, you need a, a management straight above that. Otherwise it's

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just, you know, you're a hundred percent right. A bunch of people yelling at you. Yeah. You know,

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a thousand like tiny voices is just a cacophony. That's not actually orchestration. Exactly.

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Or you got, you got my wacky analogy. Yeah. All right. Well, perfect. Well, where, where are you, uh,

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online and in Twitter and everything? So you can find me at JXXF on Twitter. And of course you can

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always find me on Pivotal, uh, or just, you know, yell at me somewhere on the internet and I'm sure

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I'll find myself. Perfect. Well, great. Well, as always, this has been Pivotal Conversations. You

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can find us, uh, like our, our raw SoundCloud page at soundcloud.com/pivotalconversations,

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because URL should be long to type. And, uh, you can also just go to, uh, blog.pivotal.io or I

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think it's, what is it? Pivotal.io/podcast. Man, I really need to memorize that. And you can see the,

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uh, lengthy show notes that get posted and everything. Uh, and with that, we'll see everyone next time.