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Welcome to another episode of Cloud and Culture. I'm Danielle Burrow from VMware.

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And I'm Derek Harris from VMware. If you're new, this podcast focuses on the process of

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application and IT modernization through the lens of Tanzu Labs, previously called Pivotal Labs.

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Tanzu Labs experts have helped hundreds of companies and organizations, big and small,

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build better software and adopt modern development practices.

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Our guest for this episode is Jeff Anderson, an architecture manager at State Farm.

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Jeff explains how he helped modernize the insurance leader's application platforms and how he now

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helps other teams get up to speed with new technologies and cloud-native practices like

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DevOps, SRE, and chaos engineering. He also discusses how the company decides which applications to run

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on which platforms, both on cloud and on-prem. So stick around to hear Jeff's insights and

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hopefully learn some lessons to accelerate your modernization efforts. So Jeff, thank you so much

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for joining. Would you mind just giving a quick introduction and tell us a little bit about

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your role at State Farm?

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Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for having me. This is exciting. Yeah, I'm Jeff Anderson. I've been at

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State Farm for over 20 years. I've had various roles throughout the years. You know, from the first

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thing I did, you know, managing applications on, you know, green screen, HP 3000, COBOL system for our claim

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system to installing and administering our first Java web app hosting infrastructure. And now my role is

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as an architecture manager helping roughly our 1800 or so developers understand cloud native and applying

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those principles and getting to the latest on and off-prem cloud infrastructure.

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Great. And could you, you know, maybe we can get started just by telling us a little bit about

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some of the, like, big picture transformation initiatives that are happening at State Farm and

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kind of what are some of the different teams or groups that are supporting that?

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Yeah. So for just to set a little bit of context, you know, I'll tell you a bit about like what we

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have, technologies we've got, and then where we're going and the teams that are kind of helping get

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there. But, you know, obviously State Farm is not a startup, right? We're a hundred year old company.

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And like a lot of big companies, we have a wide spectrum of technologies. And I'll give you an idea

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of that, the landscape of that tech, right? So we have data centers with, with on-prem tech, you know,

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it's chock full of everything from mainframes to commodity x86, networks, network appliances,

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and a lot more. We have mainframes with tons of data on them. We have, you know, on, on the

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commodity, we have VMs with our own, like custom created legacy PaaS system. And, but we also have

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Tanzu application service and, and Kubernetes clusters available to, for our developers. And then also we

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have access to like public cloud providers as well. And, you know, the, the latter ones are the more

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strategic platforms for our developers. So it really, in order to modernize and get there,

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you know, the, the challenges that, you know, a huge challenge that we face is going to be like,

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how do we untangle these huge databases and monolithic apps that are, you know, years old and,

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and get those into like product-based microservices, right? Questions like, where do we host them? Are we

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going to host them on-prem or in public cloud? You know, picture a couple hundred development teams

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at State Farm immersed in the platforms of, uh, which the apps they manage reside and gaining a lot

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of expertise in each one of those platforms and really feeling like maybe they haven't had the chance

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to branch out and learn about some of the newer tech and the more strategic environments that,

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that we're asking them to go to. So with those teams, like my, my team assist those teams by working

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with them. And we learn by doing through what we call our cloud native dojo. So in that, the dojo

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kind of setting, we, we invite teams into a big collab space. We coach them how to get to one of these

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cloud platforms with continuous delivery and in DevOps principles, but we can't do it alone. So we have

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partnerships with other teams like, you know, learning and development is, you know, a team that at State

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Farm that allows access to different learning platforms and media. We have a public cloud adoption

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team that has, it gets access to the public cloud to our teams and provides some curves and, and things

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like that for, for people to deploy to public cloud. We have an SRE team, site reliability engineering team

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that will help, you know, developers understand when they create, you know, infrastructure in a self-service

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way, if they're on or off prem, you know, how to build in resiliency and availability. And then one of the

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key teams that we work with is, is a team called migration services. So this team is a team focused on

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gathering up like all the applications that are targeted for modernization that might be sitting on a, one of the

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legacy platforms. And they kind of wrangle the cats to make sure that the work of modernizing and getting

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to the more strategic target platform, seeing that that work gets done. And again, we have the most

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tight partnership with that team because they help us like identify the teams that we can help the most and

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then prioritize those. And there's other specialized teams as well, but like, those are the key ones.

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Yeah. All right. So this is actually, this is a topic we've been talking about quite a bit on the podcast

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lately, which is like migrating workloads to new platforms. And I'm curious what the, like when, when you, or when

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you're, when one of your teams is looking at a new platform or whether it's, you know, like you said, the

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PaaS platform or Kubernetes or the public cloud or, or what have you, or, or TAS or something like that.

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Well, I mean, I've got a couple of questions. Like one is who's trying to, who's driving that decision.

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Is that the developers themselves or is it the, is it kind of, you know, based on the applications

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needs, I guess the business needs. And then also just like, how do you, how are you making those

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decisions? I mean, how do you, how do you decide or how do you prioritize one platform over another?

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Yeah. Well, you know, we've got many applications, right? Like we have one of our more legacy platforms

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has about, oh, a thousand services and apps that run on it. Right. So we have, we have quite a lot

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and, you know, work workload placement is, it's a big deal. You know, it's, it's using all of the,

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the, you know, information about not only how the application runs now, but how we'd like it

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to run to make those decisions about, you know, where to, to host where the ideal place to host

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those applications are like, but you know, I, I'm really proud of our state farm leadership

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team promoting growth initiatives and getting our dev teams access to so many materials for learning

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and time to do that. So I'll say, you know, we have a lot of applications, but that I would say

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the applications themselves and how they'll be kind of properly carved up into product-based

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services dictates where they'll be hosted. And I, you know, I, it's because like, I feel like we have

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really strong development teams that are capable of learning and that we have a lot of teams like

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mind, like my team that will assist in, in coaching them. So I'll say the applications themselves,

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you know, we'll put apps where they belong and upskill where we need to.

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And when it comes time to that, you know, upskill process, what are some of the considerations that

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you're looking at when you're coaching developers or helping dev teams onboard to a new platform or

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adopt a new technology? Because, you know, I think that really does make sense putting the

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needs of the application first, but there are, I imagine a lot of people and process considerations

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that go along with those applications when you're moving them.

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Oh yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the most critical things really, you know, when you come

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up with a, maybe a new target platform or you want to move applications off of a legacy

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system, it, the most important thing is just to know the background of the developers who you're

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asking to, to make these moves. You know, again, we're a big enterprise with some choices on hosting

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platforms. We have a few, a few platforms versus it being completely wild west. Right. And that has

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afforded us the ability to know the experience and skillset of our developers. So when we sunset

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technologies, you know, we know what our developers are used to because, you know, they're, they've been

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consumers of a specific platform for a while. And then you ask, you have to ask yourself like,

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so how similar is the new platform or technology to what they've experienced before? And really at that

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point, you have the ability to kind of understand and tailor the coaching and the onboarding to those

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development teams. You know, it's, it's analogous to the old saying, you know, know your customer and

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you're going to be successful, you know, know your development teams and the platforms that they're

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moving from too. Right. And you set a, you set a date goal, you know, support from the highest levels

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of leadership, provide the funding, track the progress and hold people accountable. And, and it will happen.

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Could you go a little bit more into detail about this cloud native dojo program you have and, and kind of

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what this coaching looks like and what kind of methods or activities that you find most effective?

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Oh yeah. So it really, it depends on the objective, you know, what hosting environment are the,

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the teams targeting that we're, we're helping coach? Are they targeting just a platform as a service

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or are they targeting like public cloud managed services? And so like, you can think about like

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with a PaaS, you have like a tightly constrained number of technologies. You can get, you can get by with

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having a well-organized Git repo with lots of examples for them to copy an app and kind of

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experiment with. We've also created, you know, online labs that walk developers through deploying an

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example and getting it to work. But with, with public cloud, there's, there's just many technologies,

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right? Which is great. You know, you got machine learning, AI, all the things, but it's less feasible

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for a team like mine to create examples and labs about all those things. So rather we teach disciplines over

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specific technologies. We instill like continuous delivery and DevOps mindsets so that people are

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able to quickly deploy, learn, learn by doing and, and fail fast. So really with public teaching

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disciplines is key, you know, and I would give example of what I, what I mean by discipline, like

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automating everything through continuous delivery pipelines, using declarative infrastructure as code

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tech, automated testing and security scanning. We use chaos engineering to learn resiliency,

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the chaos engineering tools. And then, you know, using a system that really streamlines production

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changes where developers can deploy to production and in minutes instead of days or weeks.

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You know, there's a book I, I really like that DevOps handbook, you know, and there's a quote from

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there that I, I repeat quite a bit from the DevOps handbook. It's the, the faster that we can experiment, iterate,

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iterate and integrate feedback into our product or service, the faster that we can learn and out

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experiment the competition. So again, we've got rich data from, you know, a hundred years of doing

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business. So, but so does our competition, you know, being agile as possible and getting our developers,

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the ability to very quickly experiment and learn gets, gets more critical every day that new techs

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made available, not just us, but to our competition too. And we need to out experiment them. Right.

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I want to back up, like rewind a bit, Jeff, and ask, because you're talking about like teaching

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developers, but how to, how to get acclimated to new platforms. But when you were talking about your

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history that spans back a long time, I'm curious, I'm curious what the learning experience was

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for you as you went from like a cobalt back in the day to, because I just, every time I hear cobalt,

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I think about the unemployment systems when the pandemic started and they were trying to find

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these cobalt developers from, from decades ago, who were the only ones who could fix these systems.

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Like, like what was your experience trying, getting up to speed with this stuff? Because

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the learning curve is not, I mean, it can be a sharp learning curve.

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Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I, I, I could probably brush off my cobalt skills and help out the government,

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but I, you know, so it's, that's an interesting question for me, you know, it's been quite an

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interesting path. And I think the one, the path that I've been on has been kind of fortuitous in the

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sense that, you know, my first experience after the cobalt stuff at the green screen stuff in, in

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managing, you know, our, our first paths or not necessarily paths, but our, our first web hosting

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platform, you know, that was one where, you know, I, I think it really helped prepare me for the

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environment that we're in today in the industry. So, uh, example of that is, you know, I had to

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maintain install is webs for application server on, uh, Linux, you know, x86 commodity. And it was

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kind of a shared hosting environment. So I had to, you know, make sure that it performed,

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you know, had to make sure that it was resilient and really all the things that developers have to

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do now when they target, you know, a cloud system, you know, as everything's shifting to the left,

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people have to be responsible for all that stuff. Well, I was responsible for all that stuff for

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everybody for a while as an administrator of the, you know, our, our web hosting platform.

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And, you know, I had probably 10 years, 10, 12 years experience doing that. And so I got very well

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versed in, you know, why it's important to do your due diligence with the performance testing and make

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sure that you try to do run a little chaos, you know, before chaos engineering was a thing, you know,

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where I'd kill processes and drop nodes from a system and just make sure that everything still worked,

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you know? So, so I was in the business of doing that for a while, you know, where our application

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development teams used that system, you know, we had tools, it evolved into a custom like PaaS

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cloud system where, you know, people could self-service, you know, deploy their applications,

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but they, you know, we did a lot of stuff for them, right? They didn't have to understand, you know,

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what would happen if I dropped a node because that, you know, I, I kind of did that on their behalf.

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But nowadays, you know, again, with the shift to the left, you know, the industry is trying to get

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out of the way of developers and let them do everything, you know, create your infrastructure,

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you know, do resiliency right or wrong, maybe at your own peril. So now I'm in a spot where I'm

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coaching development teams to kind of understand, you know, what my thought process was when I built

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those web hosting platforms in the past. And I think having that context really helps,

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helps me to, you know, coach teams properly. And I feel kind of lucky to have the, had the journey

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that I've, I've had at State Farm, because right now I really enjoy my job and, and I have a great team.

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And I think that we're able to really effectively help development teams.

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Do you find that there's any, do you find any friction between, you know, teams needing to move

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further to the left? Like, are there folks who, who really don't want to do that? And, and they just

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want to stick to something that has a little bit, you know, more of a PaaS experience? Or do you find

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that most teams are kind of excited and interested in learning those skills?

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Well, you know, we, we've got a lot of developers. I, I would say there's, there's pockets of developers

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who were really charged up by the prospect of, of shifting to the left and doing more and understanding

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more because, you know, it has been their passion. And, you know, when they go to work, they do it at

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work, but then they go home and they do more at home for personal projects and stuff like that.

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And those, those folks definitely get charged up about knowing more and doing more and having access to

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all this stuff. We do have other developers that I would say aren't maybe as charged up, but they,

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they're good at their jobs and they understand the importance of, you know, shifting to the left and

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learning everything. It's just, you will get some feedback. That's like, wow, this is, this is kind

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of a lot more to know than what I was anticipating. And, and I think that's why, you know, teams like mine

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exist and, and we do a good job in trying to, you know, kind of spoon feed a little at a time for,

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for teams so that they don't get completely inundated by everything that they have to do.

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And, and I, I do think that, you know, we do a great job at State Farm with, you know, not only

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learning materials and providing a lot of access to, to different online tools and things for people to

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learn, but we also have a lot of great teams that are, you know, specialized that'll help

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teams, you know, with whatever, you know, they need help with, you know, from us doing cloud native

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dojo to other teams that, that coach how to do continuous delivery and pipelines and be agile

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to, you know, we, like I said, we have SRE teams, we've got performance teams, and these are all,

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you know, teams that can help with like consulting with, with questions or issues that, that anybody's

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having. So, you know, it, it's, it is a lot, the landscape of IT today is it, there's a lot for

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developers to, to learn now, especially as, you know, these cloud tools give them access to, to really

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do everything, but we, we have good support in place for them. Do you find that that leads to,

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I mean, cause you, you mentioned SRE a couple of times and, and one of the big things we talk

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about SRE is reducing toil on, on the people involved in the system. You talk about, you know,

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people often talk to what developers want to be challenged. They want to have access to,

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to new tools and stuff. I'm curious, do you find that these, these transformations have,

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have made for happier, happier operations teams and happier developers? Cause I mean,

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I think that sometimes it gets overlooked. It's like the tech is one part, but you also need the people

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engaged and willing and retained in order to actually do it. So.

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So. Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, one thing that I'll say is absolutely,

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has been absolutely huge for us. You know, we moved a fair amount of applications to what's

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Tanzu application service now. And when we did it, you know, we had a goal to move. It was,

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I think 800 applications that we got moved in about a year and a half. And when, you know,

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when you do those kinds of migrations, you're kind of like, okay, how much can we ask for development

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teams to, to change and to maybe adopt what kind of things do you mandate? You want to be careful

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because all the extra stuff that you add, you can maybe jeopardize your date goals. But one of those

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things was mandating automated software change deployments. So what basically application teams

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have, you know, pipelines that they can run where, you know, they can deploy a change. Like I said,

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they can deploy a change in minutes instead of, instead of what it used to be like, you know,

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weeks or days or weeks. And I think, you know, I think that has been one of the biggest things that

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has increased developers happiness, because, you know, I think the more process and the more time

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that you kind of add between a developer, you know, testing and proving that their, their code is,

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is working to get it to production. I think if you can provide system and support them and getting that

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done super fast, that's just, that's a huge thing. And, you know, it, I would say that that's critical

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also in learning, you know, as you know, we really encourage learn, learning by doing. So, you know,

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whether it's like a system like Tanzu or Kubernetes or public cloud, you know, having, you know, those,

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those, that automation and the pipeline and the speed to get their applications to, to test and then

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eventually to production, to be able to rapidly, you know, prove how application features and

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technologies work or don't work, you know, failing fast. I think, you know, that has been one of the

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biggest things to really help increase happiness with our developers.

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Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Having those really fast feedback loops. It's really rewarding.

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Makes your job easier.

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We have someone wrote a blog post on that for us a while ago,

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about mentioning like the dopamine hit, right? And like the more you've accomplished, every,

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every little accomplishment feeds you, right? Rather than that slog of like, start over and back,

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back at it for another three months of grinding on this thing. Like I think, yeah, there's a...

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Yeah, absolutely.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, that's great. You touched on this a little bit earlier, just talking about how there's,

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you know, when you're training folks to work on public cloud, there's just so much technology to learn that

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you really focus a bit more on certain skills and disciplines. And I wonder, you know, kind of

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looking overall at all your tech stacks and all the different platforms that you're coaching

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developers on. Do you think it's those disciplines that is a little bit more challenging for folks to

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adopt or is it, is it the tech related stuff that's more challenging these days?

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You know, I, I would say, you know, process related stuff, you know, as far as, you know,

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developers getting access to things, stuff like that. I mean, that can always be a danger,

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you know, of slowing people down and slowing teams down. And it's always been a challenge for,

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you know, large risk averse companies like us, you know, but again, I'm, I'm proud of the progress

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that we've made recently, you know, with, like I said, with moving around like the 800 apps to the

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TAS platform that I, I mentioned, we, you know, we mandated use of the, the automated pipelines and

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the automated chain systems. So, you know, we, we got a lot of progress made there from,

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from the process perspective, you know, with, with the adopting technology, you know, the,

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the industry, again, has just had this intense focus on giving developers self-service and,

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you know, they just need to understand all these things, right. You know, infrastructure,

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they need to understand resiliency, you know, again, you know, like the past systems of the past,

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the kinds that I administered, they take, they took care of a lot of that stuff for them before.

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But, you know, shifting to the left again, that's, I think that's going to be like the biggest

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challenge for developers really in the, in the tech realm is just getting a good grasp over all

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that stuff. And I, again, I feel fortuitous in the sense that I've had that experience, you know,

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and, and I've, you know, maintained the web hosting system for a lot of people. And I've, I've built up

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all these disciplines, you know, that, that have become important in doing due diligence,

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to make sure that things work. And I, in part of my experience, I, and I'm, you know,

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I feel like if I can do something, anybody can do it. So it, with that experience of the web hosting

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platform, you know, I built up a lot of the skills and the disciplines over a number of years, you know,

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I was in that spot for like 10 years. So I, I do sometimes, you know, when I'm kind of coaching a

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developer, I feel like, Oh yeah, I did this. You can do this too. And it should be pretty easy,

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but I kind of take for granted the amount of time I spent in learning all that stuff. So

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it does take time. And, you know, I think once developers, especially in the industry now, it's,

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it's, it's like, it's really going this direction where everybody is going to really need to shift to

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the left. I think once developers get that, that, that mindset and they practice it for,

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for, for a while, they'll start to understand the disciplines more and really, you know,

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they'll, I think it'll turn out to be where the disciplines are the things that are more important

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than any specific piece of technology or managed service. Right. Cause we can always, you know,

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learn pretty quickly about maybe a new language or, or how a managed service works, but really having the,

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the disciplines instilled in you to know the best way to, to, you know, research and experiment and

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make something work properly. I think that's, that's going to be the big thing for people going forward.

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I want to ask too, just, you know, referencing some of those different environments, like,

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like, like Kubernetes versus a past platform versus a public cloud. Like, I'm curious,

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I'm curious specifically on the public cloud angle, like how you differentiate or distinguish between,

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you know, running on the public cloud versus running on Kubernetes, for example. I mean, do you,

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do you run, would you run Kubernetes on the public cloud or is it kind of a, or is it when you talk,

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when you say public cloud, do you mean basically public cloud managed services? I'm just curious,

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I'm always curious what that distinction is with companies. Cause I, cause sometimes you hear it

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and it's like, I don't know that they're mutually exclusive, but maybe even the circumstances they

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are. Oh yeah. You know, I, there's so many options really with the public and, and when I say public,

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I, I, I mean, you know, in regards to really anything that you can do in public cloud. And

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that includes, you know, installing, you know, Kubernetes cluster and running things on that, or

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even installing a paths on infrastructure that's in public, you know, I mean, that's an option too,

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right? So there's a lot of different ways you can slice it. We've got Kubernetes clusters on-prem,

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you know, we've got paths on-prem and I, you know, I think some of those choices,

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you know, you look at the skill sets of the development teams, you look at the complexity

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and the makeup of the application to see if what, what system would be better suited for. And then,

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you know, if there's a desire to get to say public cloud, there's other things that you have to really

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consider with, you know, we have a lot of high transaction systems and services, you know,

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on different platforms that have to be integrated with one another. You know, if we have, you know,

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all these services on-prem in our data center, is it going to be okay to have, you know, one of those

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services move to say a public cloud and then maybe, you know, what does the latency look like? If it's a

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high transaction system, you know, is it going to be acceptable to take on a little bit more latency,

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you know, or, you know, and then, you know, questions like how do you carve up the data and shift that to

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public, you know, or is there a bunch of data on-prem? So yeah, we've got more choices now than

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ever. And it's going to be fun as we, you know, modernize, as we, you know, kind of decide how

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we choose what platform any given service should land on. Right. I wanted to ask too, just following

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up on an earlier conversation about developers shifting left, which is what you, if you get a

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sense, like, well, if you have a sense of what the ideal abstraction is, as, as developers are shifting

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left, it's kind of like on the one hand, they're taking on more and they're expected to understand

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more. On the other hand, you want to make it as easy as possible to do the right thing. So I'm just

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curious what that, what that ideal abstraction layer might look like.

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Yeah. You know, it, you, ideally, you know, development team would just kind of run with

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all that stuff and be good at all the stuff, but realistically it's, that's probably not going to

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happen. Right. So that's, that's where we have these, these develop, these peripheral teams that

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really kind of help with, with any given topic really. And yeah, I do think that's a challenge.

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And in regards to, you know, how difficult it's, it's going to be to, you know, shift to the left,

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but you also look at our, our product teams and how big they are. You know, I think we've done a

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pretty good job at the, having the ideal kind of product team, you know, two pizza team for a lot of

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our development teams and what you kind of really hope for with a lot of those teams is a good,

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diverse set of people. Right. So you might have somebody who's, who's really knowledgeable,

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more knowledgeable about the infrastructure and one that has a little bit more background and say,

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you know, you know, testing and then some really strong developers and they kind of,

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they collaborate and kind of help each other out and hopefully kind of cross train, you know,

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each other in those disciplines. So I think, you know, to get to the, the right spot, maybe most

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efficiently is to have that like diverse team. I think you kind of answered my next question, which was,

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you know, looking ahead next five years, like what disciplines would you really recommend developers

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hone in on for their career development? But it sounds like, you know, that diversity is really key

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and it takes, you know, a whole bunch of skills. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I I'd say, you know,

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knowing at least a decent amount of all the disciplines and then, you know, getting help when you need to

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dive a little bit deeper is probably the most feasible approach.

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And then, and then finally, Jeff, maybe we can just end, you know, on another, on another,

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let's call it a prognostication question, but like, when you look, I mean, because this can

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be State Farm, this can just be industry-wide, but I mean, where do you see, like, I mean,

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I'm curious what, what technologies and maybe even what platforms you see having the biggest

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or process that having the biggest impact going forward or where, you know, you think,

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okay, like we're, if we're investing heavily in one place over the next five years or 10 years,

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it's, it's going to be here. I'm curious what that, what that might be.

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Well, you know, I'd say, you know, as big as like the public cloud providers are

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now, I think they're only going to get bigger, you know, as you know, there's a lot of like,

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you know, tech companies, obviously that I'm already doing a business out in public, big companies,

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you know, many companies. But, you know, I think as some of these, these really bigger,

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larger enterprises, you know, having, you know, outages in private data centers, you know,

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that kind of stuff's going to happen, you know, over time. And as some of these bigger companies

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have those experiences, you know, they're going to look to some of the, the huge cloud providers,

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right? You know, so even, you know, very large enterprises, they might have only like one to one,

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two or three physical data centers where, you know, public providers have dozens of, of data centers,

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right? It's an easy math problem, you know? So I think as big as those cloud providers are there,

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they're probably only going to get bigger over time. And, you know, I think once, you know, big companies

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with a lot of data, you start to get out to public, you know, there's going to be a, another push to

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really understand and get the value from the data with tools like, you know, artificial intelligence

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and machine learning. So that's, that's kind of where I think that the trend is going to go in IT.

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It's, it's probably kind of an easy guess or statement to make, but I think, you know,

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as big as it is now, it's just going to get bigger.

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Well, Jeff, it's been so great to have you. Thank you for sharing all of these interesting insights

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you have and talking to us about what you're doing at State Farm. You're doing a lot of

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really forward looking things there. And it's, it's been great to learn about.

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Oh, thanks so much for having me on as it was fun.

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Thank you.