🔥 Stuff for FinOps, DevOps & CloudOps - FinKube #0

Introducing the FinKube newsletter for folks who want to be in the know

If you are looking for exclusive free invitations to RE:Invent online, FinOps and DevOps tools, skip right over to [Exclusive resources] section.

About this newsletter

Let’s get started with the basics :)

I am Somik Behera, a cloud infrastructure veteran, and I have spent the last 20 years in the depths of what we call “core infrastructure”. Having built the core compute infrastructure of our generation during the early days of VMware, subsequently helped bring-in the Software-Defined-Networking (SDN) movement into mainstream at early days of a company called Nicira, and then moved to the world of cloud native applications at Mesosphere, where I helped commercialize the Apache Mesos project, which was the first and most widely used containerized cluster manager in the industry at giants Twitter to Netflix to Apple to Uber.

With that backdrop, I recently realized that as an industry, we have great technologists but what we lack is a set of tools and toolkits to help these outstanding DevOps, CloudOps and FinOps leads become business leaders.

To that end,

1. I first launched the “FinKube Toolkit for making business cases” at Kubecon NA 2022
2. Second, I am launching this newsletter as a companion to keep all of you in the know, share more tools and toolkits and if we do our jobs right, get you promoted!
3. All content will be written and vetted by yours truly :) which means it won’t be very frequent or “spammy”. But, if you ever feel overwhelmed, the newsletter will always have an unsubscribe link.
   

So, without further adieu, let's get started. I’ll briefly cover 2023 Outlook & insights for folks that work in DevOps, CloudOps and FinOps and in the next section, I’ll provide links and *exclusive invitations* to some up  and coming projects that will help you thrive in the new “normal of 2023”.

Broader market

1. Inflation moderating but recession is looming

The talk of the town has gone quickly from high inflation to looming recession. What really matters for Infrastructure teams on the frontline is the net-impact of recession/inflation. This net-impact is somewhat similar on companies in both recession or high inflation scenarios, and therefore by extensions on Infra/DevOps teams. Companies are valued as summation of each company’s future cash flows. During inflationary times, the future cash flows are “inflated” (decreased) away and therefore the current valuation of the company suffers. Similarly, during recessionary times, the future cash flows can effectively “collapse” (decrease) and therefore the valuation suffers (which is summation of all future cash flows).

So, the net impact is that most companies start focussing on business differently as world moves away from “growth at any cost” to “efficiency at all costs”. What this means is that experimental projects, projects that take a long time to realize value and speculative projects become prime targets to get canned as management teams have to reckon with “lower valuation” with “efficiency” or “cost-cutting” measures.

2. FTX Collapse and Crypto contagion

Now, at an entire economy level, the best example of “canning speculative projects” can be seen in the Crypto ecosystems, where the economy's excess capital was allocated. Following the FTX fall out, now BlockFi filed for bankruptcy, not to mention the Miami nightclubs that are going empty ;)

3. Cloud computing recession and opportunities

What we saw above in section (1) and (2) above is that our economy is in recession and some folks like David Linthicum of Infoworld explicitly call out that we have entered a “Cloud computing” recession.

But, remember,

The opportunities in 2023 will be aplenty for folks in our industry who grab the “bull by the horn” and lead the way in an evolving business climate. You can do that by focussing on

(1) Efficiency & productivity projects over vanity projects,

(2) Cash saving over news making projects,

(3) Becoming conversant in ROI of the projects you lead and leverage tools like FinKube to make business cases based on actual data where possible.

4. Jevon’s paradox - One thing that a lot of people ask me when I blow my horn on “all things efficiency” is - Will making a system or team more efficient result in mine or my team’s demise?

To assuage those concerns, I wanted to share Jevon’s paradox from economics that effectively states that - “Optimization of any system increases its demand”, which can be counterintuitive.

On a more practical note, team members and leads who can drive efficiency projects will be highly sought after as my experience says these folks are always in short supply.

FinKube project roadmap

The initial roll out of FinKube project has tackled “Infra and Ops Efficiency” value driver with a particular focus on “Move to Kubernetes” use cases. We are aiming to expand to other use cases and value drivers like “Dev Productivity” very soon. If you have opinions or requests, please find us on FinKube Slack

• The FinKube toolkit - For folks who weren’t at Kubecon, CNCF has now posted the video describing the FinKube toolkit.

ROI is the new MBA, and FinKube helps you show the ROI in making business cases over, all ROI Calculators and resources are available here:

• *Free access* to AWS:RE:invent 2022 (requires business email) - Check here

• *Free early access* CloudNatix Community edition invitation

Effectively demonstrating ROI requires you to have comprehensive cost and ops visibility. CloudNatix Community Edition is a great free platform that can connect to your Cloud or Kubernetes clusters and quickly provide cost visibility and efficiency recommendations using Autopilot tech that was pioneered at Google to save you 50% of your cloud costs. I hope you find it useful in this new recessionary world!

• Business track recording from Kubecon NA 2022 - Kubecon Track Chair for “Business” track” has created a great list of resources over here
• YAIG on Discord group invitation - Yet Another Infrastructure Group (YAIG) has “who’s who” of the infrastructure world and has quickly become my favorite place to hangout to discuss all things infrastructure, hope you can join!
• Fiberplane - Another new project that borrows the concept of “notebooks” from data science to turbocharge DevOps team’s productivity.
• KloudFuse - If your observability costs have held you back, KloudFuse seems like a very promising project to help you reduce the dough you have to hand out to your observability vendors.
  

Finally, you all might know that stable diffusion and generative AI are all the rage nowadays. So, if you want to take a crack at creating your own AI powered artists, check out these resources for fun:

1. The youtube channel Aitrepreneur: https://lnkd.in/ee32by9P
2. The notebook from Joe Penna: https://lnkd.in/eRbyywjD
3. Guido Appenzeller's post: https://lnkd.in/eQjenTDa
   

Here’s what the the MidJourney StableDiffusion engine thinks of FinKube project:

🙏🏼 for reading and being part of the FinKube community,  please share with your friends and colleagues!