Software Defined Interviews

Software Defined Interviews

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Software Defined Interviews episodes

  • Episode 44: A trillion IoT devices by 2035

    IoT will be big by 2035, a trillion devices driving a $1tn of spend/year, according to this paper. How does one come to that figure, and what exactly is IoT. Even better, how would you put together the business case to justify doing an IoT project? Well, you’ll get an average of 5x returns, the paper says, so that’s a compelling start. Also, you should buy some ARM chips. Put together by one of ARM’s investor relations people, this paper is squarely targeted a money people interested in IoT and ARM.

    See also the raw notes on the paper, references, and more details on the paper. Also, of course, available as a PDF attached here.

    This paper in question (attached here, as well) was suggested by Alek.

    As always, thanks for being a patron of Software Defined Talk, it's super-encouraging and meaningful. If you liked this episode, perhaps send the attached PDF (as all great white papers are transmitted) and encourage your friends to check out both Software Defined Talk and to become a patron get our exegesis episodes.

    Please tell us what you think and suggest any white papers, talks, press releases, or other tech world ephemera that'd be fun to over-analyze!

    52 min
  • Episode 43: Not a [Very Good] DevOps Talk - Software Defined Talk Members Only White Paper Exegesis #2

    This week, Brandon and Coté talk analyze Coté's 2016 stump-speech, Not a DevOps Talk. We talk about the process of putting together a talk like this, how it flows, and the desired effect and rhetoric behind it all.

    See the extensive show notes and much more detail in the attached PDF or online. There's also a bonus write-up about two of Coté's Register columns.

    As always, thanks for being a patron of Software Defined Talk, it's super-encouraging and meaningful. If you liked this episode, perhaps send the attached PDF (as all great white papers are transmitted) and encourage your friends to check out both Software Defined Talk and to become a patron get our exegesis episodes.

    Please tell us what you think and suggest any white papers, talks, press releases, or other tech world ephemera that'd be fun to over-analyze!

    57 min
  • Episode 37: Cloud-native enterprise architecture, with Matt Curry & Andrew Clay Shafer

    Let’s finally get to the punchline on this “cloud-native enterprise architect” quest. Here, Matt Curry, Andrew Clay Shafer, and I discuss the things that would motivate such a role and try to chart out what functions the cloud-native EA would serve. This still doesn’t answer the question perfectly, but it does point towards good why’s and even some how’s. We do alright at trying to pull it all together.

    Rough Outline
    • Business “outcomes.”
    • “So what is it you’d say you do here?”
    • Marketing and sales for tech decision making - getting budget, etc.
    • The EA Strawperson - biz/IT alignment, governance, proscribing stacks
    • Risk-modeling and procurement costs get better
    • EA as the ROI whisperer.
    • SRE book discussions, Pivotal Conversations #58 (Andrew and Coté).
    • The technology, and what’s new? AWS RDS as an (almost) end-to-end example.
    • So, EA’s jobs to this point: business stuff… versus defining the platform and tech choices (e.g., “use this pagination library or die!”).
    • But: product people do the business stuff… you prescribe one platform/PaaS… and then most teams now choose their own stuff above the platform.
    • And doesn’t microservices do the rest…?
    • Cloud-native EA’s probably spend a lot more attention to process, like SRE-thinking… reducing duplication of services… someone has to have a global, big picture view of everything.
    • Being a change agent: boot-strapping to this DevOps/cloud-native/blah blah
    • The ultimate goal: the business wants to evolve quickly, try new things to try to grow and defend itself quicker; the IT must work, or, at least, be resilient; I don’t want to pay a lot for this muffler; making it easy to do the right thing.
    • # Background
    • Past discussions on cloud-native EA: Pivotal Conversations #72 and Coté Show #36.
    • Some rough notes on research.
    • Books: Enterprise Architecture as Strategy and Continuous Architecture.
    • 53 min
    • Episode 42: PwC says you suck at THE DIGITAL - Software Defined Talk Members Only White Paper Exegesis #1

      Our first white paper review, starting with "what is digital, and what are/should enterprises do about it. See the detailed notes on it, either in the attached PDF, or in Dropbox Paper.

      You should be able to find your members only RSS feed and add it to your podcast listener.

      First, thanks to our initial, super-fan handful of members who'll be getting this.

      Second, tell us if you like this show, format, and, if so, some studies/papers you'd like us to go over.

      Third, if you can help us promote this, and grow membership (or at least envy that you get access to!), that'd be awesome. Feel free to email the PDF around, a link the notes, or even the MP3 if you want to be a bit of a privateer.

      1 hr 2 min
    • Episode 36: North-bound Enterprise Architecture with Matt Walburn - that business/IT alignment dance

      What’s the “business” side of enterprise architecture? And how does EA’ing start mapping to DevOps, cloud-native, and all the new stuff? In part one of this discussion, I talk with Matt Walburn about how EA’s fit into The Business.

      Rough Outline
      • Rorschaching “Enterprise Architect” (EA)
      • The bad parts of EA - governance
      • “Neo-classical DevOps”
      • Matt Walburn - AWS, Pivotal, Target.
      • DIY Whitepaper
      • Understanding how the business works, the customers (internal and external), what IT is in place.
      • What’s the “operating model” for figuring out what IT does: deciding on the plan, finance, HR, translating things to developers.
      • Taking out COTS and desktop management - however, commoditizing by going SaaS and IaaS is likely important.
      • Figuring out how the business works. Experiences their customers work with that are supported by IT, e.g., eCommerce, mobile device, call-center.
      • Figuring out the stick figures and the lines to boxes - user-centric design and thinking.
        • Agile, value-streams.
        • Outcomes/What is “strategy”?
        • Outcomes - result (monetary, usually) you want. How you’ll achieve it (e.g., sell through mobile apps)… working backwards to the things required (in eCommerce, I need to show a catalog of products, get them to pay for it, ship it, handle returns, etc.)
          • The value of TOGAF and ITIL side-note.
          • How to ferret them out - sit in people with a room and walk back the business, a bunch of questions. “Boardio.”
          • How to “model”/document them - taxonomy.
          • How do these workflows/outcomes align to what the business is doing.
          • Finding duplication that’s wasteful - if we want faster cycle-times, we want to democratize data access (more transparent, well-known data sources, etc.)… not burdened with re-creating. Not so much (or only) an “IT service” that’s duplicated, but sort of logical pools of data. Cost-removal is fine, but also removing conflicts and dealing with conflicts, and removing time-to-understand how all these different things work.
          • Define future vision, aka, “what do we [in IT] do now?”
            • First step, how decoupled is the business from IT
            • Special Guest: Matt Walburn.

              49 min
            • Episode 35: You know me, never afraid to be a naive old white guy, or, learning from centuries of fighting over dumb shit

              In this Drunk and Retired cameo episode: What's up with Irish and Italian names, and why is the Irish brand so much bigger than the Scottish brand? Also, it seems like there's a lot to learn from 2,000 years of Europeans fighting. Charles and Coté quickly meander through all of this.

              Links:

              • Ongoing topics list
              — Rolling list of ideas for things to talk about here.
            • Gulf Shores, Alabama
            • — A fine place for a beach vacation.
            • The Horse of Pride
            • — It’s like Hillbilly Elegy, but for 20th century France.
            • frontmacs.el
            • — "A package-based, web-centric, customizable, awesome-by-default, acceptance-tested Emacs distribution curated by your friends at Frontside."
            • swiper.el
            • — "Ivy - a generic completion frontend for Emacs, Swiper - isearch with an overview, and more. Oh, man!"
              23 min
            • Episode 34: Pipelines, you're gonna need 'em

              Without a build pipeline, you might as well pack it up and go home. Matt Curry and I talk about his team’s experience with putting a pipeline in place and dip a bit into how Concourse and other options, like Jenkins. Matt also goes over some of the common meatware barriers to getting CI/CD in place.

              Find us here: @mattjcurry and @cote.

              58 min

            About Software Defined Interviews

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            Deep discussions about technology, enterprise IT, and the like