devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: events

  • LogicMonitor Embraces AIOps

    LogicMonitor Embraces AIOps

    LogicMonitor today announced the general availability of LM Intelligence, an extension of its monitoring platform that leverages machine learning algorithms to identify potential issues that are indicative of a major impending outage.

    Sarah Terry, manager of product management for LogicMonitor, said rather than acquiring a separate AIOps platform, it makes more sense to employ machine learning algorithms within the context of a tool that DevOps teams already are using to monitor their IT environment. Monitoring platforms collect the massive amount of data required to train those algorithms, but a separate AIOps platform has to find a way to collect that data, noted Terry.

    The LM Intelligence module created by LogicMonitor provides a root cause analysis (RCA) capability that automatically discovers infrastructure topology in both cloud and on-premises IT environments. Once an issue is discovered, LM Intelligence will aggregate all the alerts being generated into a single notification that pertains to the root cause of any potential issue. That capability will substantially reduce the amount of alert fatigue that today results in IT teams often disregarding what could be a critical alert that would have averted a system failure, said Terry.

    DevOps teams can also employ LM Intelligence to define expected performance ranges for IT resources based on historical trends. Any anomaly outside those ranges will generate a notification.

    As IT environments become more complex, thanks in part to the rise of multi-cloud computing and microservices-based applications based on containers, it won’t be feasible for the average IT team to identify all the relevant events that might be impacting that IT environment without help. There are simply too many parameters that need to be tracked. Tools such as LM Intelligence don’t replace the need for IT operations expertise as much as they augment the capabilities and expertise of the teams trying to manage complex IT environments, where there are large numbers of dependencies between systems. In effect, Terry said, tools such as LM Intelligence will enable DevOps teams to identify the signal in all the noise being generated within an IT environment.

    As IT management tools continue to evolve, DevOps teams should expect to see reliance on machine learning algorithms to become more pervasive. Rather than being a standalone platform, AIOps is quickly morphing into a feature that will become a capability embedded across a wide range of tools.

    Of course, each DevOps team will need to decide to what degree they want to trust any form of AI. However, the longer algorithms collect and analyze data, the more accurate they tend to become. That doesn’t mean DevOps teams should automate processes based on the recommendations of an AI engine; there are likely to be parameters that an AI engine may not have accounted for that could have an adverse impact. However, having the equivalent of a digital assistant that provides timely advice may soon prove indispensable.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Predict 2020: What Will the New Year Bring?

    Predict 2020: What Will the New Year Bring?

    With the holiday season upon us, our thoughts naturally turn to the next year and what it has in store for us. Will we come into more money? Will we find true happiness? Will there be better integration between DevOps and security? Will there be more Kubernetes instances? The first two may be a little hazy, but it’s a good bet the second two will be discussed during Predict 2020 Virtual Summit, Jan. 23, 2020, where an all-star lineup of industry luminaries will offer up their visions for the future.

    Crystal ball? Check. Swami hat? Check. Insight relevant to the industry? Check. Very smart people who know what they’re talking about? Double check.

    Similar to last year’s event, Predict 2020 will feature a virtual environment with a conference lobby, presentation theater, expo hall and more. More than a series of YouTube live presentations, it is truly a conference experience from the comfort of your desk.

    Speakers

    Our keynote speakers for this daylong event include analysts, practitioners, venture capitalists and thought leaders from the realms of DevOps, cloud native, cybersecurity, digital transformation and IT. Each will share their best predictions for the year 2020 and beyond.

    Among those slated to speak are:

    There will also be an exhibit hall where you can interact with other attendees and sponsors, watch videos and download more information.

    It should be a great day of learning and networking right from the comfort of your own chair.

    Registration and Sponsor Info

    You can register now at https://predict2020.io. Attendance is free.

    If you are curious about what the experts, pundits and luminaries think will be the big trends and stories of the coming year, mark your calendar and attend Predict 2020.

    Save Your Virtual Spot

    — Alan Shimel

  • And the Builders Shall Inherit the Earth: The Democratization of IT

    And the Builders Shall Inherit the Earth: The Democratization of IT

    The democratization of IT is happening, and vendors need to recognize that if they want to survive

    Just back home from KubeCon/CloudNativeCon in San Diego, which can only be called a force of nature. I was joined there by more than 12,000 other folks to discuss, listen and learn about all things cloud-native and open. Once again, I was blown away by the passion of and buzz generated by this community. What is driving it? I think I figured it out: The developers and builders shall inherit the earth. It is the democratization of IT.

    What I mean is that a fundamental shift has taken place in the IT world. Developers, architects and builders are in such high demand and are now the alpha predators of the food chain. They are the ones demanding and deciding what tools they use, how they build and what infrastructure they use.

    Smart vendors are recognizing this and penetrating large organizations by giving these builders the tools they absolutely will love working with. In many cases, these tools are free and open to use in non-enterprise versions. The vendors also have DevRel teams and marketing that cater to these builders and developers, rather than traditional marketing and sales.

    The fundamental shift is that for the nearly 30 years I have been in IT, the mantra has been to talk to the “decision-makers”—the CTO, CIO, and VPs who approved and paid for purchases in IT. Entire marketing strategies and sales were built on this. Lead generation campaigns focused on reaching executives, while salespeople vied for position by taking these people to dinner or golf and shmoozing them. Content was created that spoke to the executive class. Very few folks tried to focus on the practitioner; after all, they didn’t make the decisions; they didn’t hold the purse strings.

    That way of doing business has all changed. Yes, there are some dinosaurs out there who don’t hear the meteor speeding down just yet. But by and large, companies that are thriving in this new era of open solutions, open core and free software are doing so by following a new way: They cater to the developer/builder class. They listen to what this group wants and provide it to them. After that, they make sure tools evolve to meet the needs and wants of the builders. They have figured out that when they deliver delight, these people will tell their organizations that these are the tools they want to use.

    I heard Shlomi Ben Haim, co-founder and CEO of JFrog, call this the “democratization of IT.” This, along with DevOps and the cloud, are the megatrends driving transformation. But I also spoke to dozens of other vendors at the show. Maybe they didn’t call it that, but they instinctually recognize it.

    The world wants software-based everything. The people who are building the infrastructure, writing the code, testing, deploying and securing this software are demanding that it be open, free and cloud-native. They want to use it for a while before they will invest in the paid, enterprise versions and functionality. But once they do, their organizations buy in.

    The buying cycle starts off with the use of free software—maybe an employee whips out a credit card for a small monthly fee to purchase the SaaS version. But it ends with an enterprise purchase.

    The democratization of IT is going to work its way through our entire ecosystem. Content is going to be catered not to the executive suite, but to the practitioner. Lead generation programs aren’t going to focus on CXOs, but on people who will actually use the product. Sales strategy and tactics will reflect this as, too. More dev relations, less golf.

    Another driving force of this market is the new generation of people who are building and deploying. They don’t have an allegiance to the whales of yesteryear. They are fresh and willing to try new things if it gives them the functionality they want. Don’t give me that millennial, “OK, Boomer” crap, either.

    These folks work hard, and they are passionate about what they are building. They want open. They are used to having free tools and they are the new boss.  Maybe not the same as the old boss, but they are not fickle and want to choose the tools they work with. They will not be dictated to by a generation of folks who built during a different time with a different way of doing things. Successful vendor organizations need to realize that and work with these people.

    Of course, executives still set budgets and have to sign off on larger or more expensive purchases. They will need to be satisfied. But increasingly, it is not going to be the vendor who does that. They will rely on their builders and their developers to choose their tools and products. If you are a vendor and are not operating this way, look up to the sky because you just may see a large fireball coming your way.

    I, for one, think this is a good thing. It is time for the democratization of IT. Let the builders inherit the earth.

    — Alan Shimel

  • DevOps Chat: ChefConf Update with Chef’s Nell Shamrell-Harrington

    DevOps Chat: ChefConf Update with Chef’s Nell Shamrell-Harrington

    2019 is shaping up as a “coming home” year for Chef. After recently reaffirming its commitment to an open source strategy, the company is gearing up for the best ChefConf yet. ChefConf, scheduled for May 20-23, is coming home to Seattle and many of the Chef favorites including Adam Jacobs, John Willis and more will be speaking.

    I had a chance to catch up with Nell Shamrell-Harrington, principal software development engineer and community engineering lead at Chef, who gave us a great preview of the whole event as well as her own presentation, and shared what her most anticipated sessions and activities are.

    You can still register for ChefConf, as well as get more information at: chefconf.chef.io/

    As usual, the streaming audio is immediately below, followed by the transcript of our conversation. Enjoy!

    Transcript

    Alan Shimel: Hello, everyone, this Alan Shimel, devopsy.kinsta.cloud, and you’re listening to another DevOps Chat.

    Today’s DevOps Chat is all about the upcoming Chef Conference, and I’m happy to be joined by Nell Shamrell-Harrington, Principal Engineer at Chef. Nell, welcome to DevOps Chat.

    Nell Shamrell-Harrington: Hello, Alan! Greetings from Seattle. It’s fantastic to be here.

    Shimel: Yes, it is. How’s the weather in Seattle?

    Shamrell-Harrington: Surprisingly sunny today, and it wasn’t raining when I came in, so pretty darn good for Seattle in April.

    Shimel: Absolutely. Well, look—in April, April showers. But, you know, the whole weather in Seattle thing is a bit of a fallacy. You know, they get—

    Shamrell-Harrington: What I tell people, when they ask me does it rain a lot, I said, “Yes, but it’s not, like, soaking rain. There’s a constant mist in the air that gets in to your bones and makes you cold.” So, you learn to deal with that, but yep, greetings from beautiful for today, at least, Seattle.

    Shimel: Good for—[Laughter] good for you. Alright, so now, the big news is, we are, what, about a month, maybe a month and a week, a month and 10 days out of ChefConf, right?

    Shamrell-Harrington: We are indeed. I need to write my keynote. [Laughter]

    Shimel: I would say, let’s get started, yeah—might be a good idea. And this year, after ChefConf having kinda wandered around for a few years to Chicago and Austin and I think Santa Clara I was at one and a bunch of other places, you guys are coming home to Seattle, right?

    Shamrell-Harrington: We are indeed, and we are very excited about this. We look forward to welcoming the entire Chef community to our home of Seattle.

    Shimel: Absolutely. And when we say coming home now, you know, I think it’s figuratively and literally and kinda philosophically.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Absolutely.

    Shimel: As ChefConf really represents a sort of coming home for Chef in a lot of ways, do you agree?

    Shamrell-Harrington: I agree. We made the recent announcement—which I know you covered on a previous episode—about 100 percent of our product code now being open source. And one of the reasons we did that was, Chef was created through the open source community. Chef—I mean, the open source community built every piece of the foundation that Chef stands on, so we are returning to those roots with open sourcing 100 percent of our product code and a lot of the discussion about that will be at ChefConf in our geographical home as well.

    Shimel: Yep. And, you know, I mean, the open source, reaffirmation of the open source commitment, I think, is one part of it. I think another part of it, though, Nell is—you know, look, I’ve run devopsy.kinsta.cloud now for five, six years, right? And when I first got into DevOps, you know, Chef was one of the blocks of granite, if you will, upon which the DevOps foundation or the DevOps world was kinda built.

    And over the years, you know, there’s been a lot of shiny toys that have come, as such happens in the tech space, right?

    Shamrell-Harrington: Of course.

    Shimel: And you sort of say, “Yeah, you know, that was—you know, Chef almost was old and what is it doing to stay current? Is it still relevant? And there’s Kubernetes” and all of these things. But to me, this ChefConf represents a bold, provocative, confident Chef coming, in their home court, kinda like the Hawks, right, coming out of the—

    Shamrell-Harrington: Very much so, or their home stadium, but yes.

    Shimel: – with the 12th man, and saying, “Hey, man, we’re still here, we’re still kicking, but we’re still innovating, we’re still true to our roots, and we’re still helping people with DevOps.” Fair?

    Shamrell-Harrington: Absolutely. I believe that is completely fair. We are walking this DevOps journey together, both the Chef community and Chef the company as well. And this is bringing us back into sync.

    Shimel: Cool. So, let’s dive in a little bit. You mentioned the open source commitment, and we have covered that before. Give us some—you know, and you’re gonna keynote, right?

    Shamrell-Harrington: I am, indeed. I’ll be keynoting, I’ll be first up on day two. So, make sure to be there on time.

    Shimel: Can we get a little preview without getting in trouble?

    Shamrell-Harrington: Absolutely, we can. So, I will be discussing developing software through a community. When I was starting to brainstorm this talk, I was worried that—you know, I’m a Principal Engineer. I’m very used to giving technical talks. I was worried people would respond with, “Why are you giving a cultural talk?” And I realized, open source community, it’s not cultural or technical, it’s both. And that’s really where the magic of working in open source Chef has come.

    We work on fantastic technologies, we work with fantastic technologies including Kubernetes, Terraform, and so many more, but we do it with amazing humans.

    Shimel: Yeah, absolutely. Now, Nell, you’re not allowed to mentioned your keynote, but give me what you’re looking forward to, the top three things at ChefConf this year that you might be looking forward to. And if you wanna do five, feel free.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Absolutely! Well, for ChefConf itself, I’m really looking forward to the Community Summit on Monday, May 20th. That’s when we get together, we hold a bunch of open spaces, we talk about what Chef is doing and where we as both a company and a community wanna go.

    So, there’ll be a lot of talking at the summit on Monday, and then on Thursday, we have our hack day. It’s not a competitive hackathon, it’s more people getting together in groups and building something together. So, after we talk on Monday, we’ll start building what we’ve discussed on Thursday, and I hope to see everyone there.

    Shimel: Great. So, that’s one.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Right.

    Shimel: What are some of the others?

    Shamrell-Harrington: As far as the sessions go, we have sessions from people from retail, government, banks, major cloud providers, and so much more. A few that I am particularly looking forward to are “A Habitat for Democracy.” That’s going to be by Chris Alfano of Code of America. They use Habitat to help them—they use Habitat for civic hacking, essentially. So, looking forward to hearing more from him.

    Another one is, “FIPS Doesn’t Have to Be a Four Letter Word” from Keith Walters of TapHere! FIPS is Federal Information Processing Standards. It is as boring as it sounds, but it is extraordinarily important for our government customers, especially those who work in particularly sensitive areas of the government.

    And then the third one, I mentioned how Chef, it doesn’t compete with things like Hashicorp, Terraform, or Kubernetes, it works with them. And one talk I’m particularly looking forward to is, “Terraform and Chef.” That’ll be by Seth Lippman and Andy Herm of Oracle.

    Shimel: Very cool! You know, I will say, FIPS may not be boring, but it is expensive. [Laughter]

    Shamrell-Harrington: Very.

    Shimel: In my previous life, we had to have our information assurance, as the U.S. Army calls cyber security, our information assurance solutions FIPS certified for the encryptions and stuff. And that was an ordeal, to say the least, so, I’m interested to—I’d love to listen in on that one.

    You know, you mentioned Terraform. There’s a lot of stuff coming out of the Linux Foundation recently now—

    Shamrell-Harrington: Absolutely.

    Shimel: – between Cloud Native and now this new CD Foundation that’s spun up out of Linux Foundation. It really is, you know, this whole move to Cloud Native is, in many ways, in my mind, anyway, Chef and some of the foundational work you guys did kinda laid the groundwork for the move to a Cloud Native world.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Very much. You know, the groundwork, the reason Chef was founded, the reason Cloud Native was founded is, we had this still radical idea that working with technology did not have to be as painful as it normally is.

    I remember I reached out to Gene Kim on Twitter after I read The Phoenix Project and I told him, “You know, it actually made me physically cry,” the first half at least, because it was so familiar. All that pain of dealing with both technical debt and cultural debt.

    And what we’ve said at Chef, what Linux Foundation is saying, what other Cloud Native foundations are saying is—there is a better way. It does not have to be this painful. And we’re working to make a world where it’s not as painful as it has been to run technology.

    Shimel: Amen. You know, I remember sitting with Gene Kim reading a manuscript of Phoenix Project, and you know, those characters in there are composites of real people.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Oh, yes.

    Shimel: And when you—you know, when you think back to who the real people are, I mean, it is dead on. I mean, truth is truth is truth.

    So, I’m assuming there are gonna be people in our audience who are absolutely attending ChefConf, but there are also people who have attended them in the past, but then there’s also gonna be a lot of people who have never attended a ChefConf listening in. And, you know, for those who haven’t—shame on you.

    Shamrell-Harrington: [Laughter]

    Shimel: [Laughter] But beyond that, you know, you’re missing a great time, because it’s not all sessions, ChefConf.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Very much.

    Shimel: ChefConf is very much a community, a bit of a love fest, if you will, around Chef, right? And there’s always some great social activities. Can you give us a preview, maybe?

    Shamrell-Harrington: Sure. Two of the ones I’m looking forward to, I believe it’s on Tuesday, we’ll be holding game night. We started doing those at ChefConf a few years ago, and I’ve always appreciated it. I have hearing loss, so, when I’m in a big, crowded, very loud party, I can’t have conversations with people, because I’m only getting every third or fourth word, depending on what frequency their voice is.

    But with game night, it’s quieter. People are more focused, there’s something to do. I’ve met coworkers—or people who became my coworkers a year later through game night. It’s a wonderful way to connect on a deeply personal level with other attendees and other employees of Chef.

    Shimel: And it’s fun.

    Shamrell-Harrington: It’s absolutely fun. I think we’re gonna have, something we’ve traditionally had a Chef game night has been a gamed called Artemis, which is—I’m gonna get in trouble for saying this, but it’s kind of like a Star Trek LARP without actually being Star Trek. [Laughter] But there’ll be board games as well, card games, Adam Jacob always runs a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. It’s gonna be a wonderful world of geeky fun.

    And then, on Wednesday, if kinda the traditional party is more what you enjoy, we’ll be holding the community celebration. And because we want to highlight the wonderful things Seattle has to offer, it will be catered by Tom Douglas. For all you foodies out there, you know that’s a very, very big name, both in Seattle cuisine and nationally and internationally.

    And we have two classic Seattle bands playing. The first is Mudhoney, and the second is Deep Sea Diver. They will be playing the celebration, and we are very much looking forward to hearing them and sharing that with our community.

    Shimel: So, providing a little translation in the background, right? If Tom Douglas is there, there’s a good chance there might be some killer salmon.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Absolutely.

    Shimel: He makes—I was actually privileged, he did—I forgot what event or gathering I was at. But they brought Tom in, and he showed us how to fillet a salmon.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Oh! What a wonderful experience!

    Shimel: Yeah, that was pretty cool. And then, of course, we went to one of his restaurants for dinner, and it wasn’t terrible. But beyond that, the Chef party—and that’s usually like the last night or the night before the last day kind of thing.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Yeah, it’s the night before the hack day.

    Shimel: Yep, and that’s always a great party, because by then, you know, the sessions are in, people have networked around a bit, have talked about a lot of the technology, and it’s a good time to have a good time, right?

    Shamrell-Harrington: It is, absolutely. Whenever I’m speaking at a conference, I always enjoy the conference after my talk much more than the conference before my talk.

    Shimel: Right. Well, because before, you’re all tensed, keyed up on doing that. You know, Nell, you mentioned Adam Jacob, and I’m sure some of the folks sitting out there are saying, “Well, I heard Adam’s not the CTO any more. What’s he doing there?”

    Again, I think it talks to the power of Chef. I think it talks about Chef reaffirming its roots and all of that. It’s that—yes, Adam is not the CTO any more. He’s out doing his Foundation thing. But he is going to be there, he is presenting, if I’m—

    Shamrell-Harrington: He is. He’s presenting on day two as well.

    Shimel: What other kinda—John Willis is speaking as well. John, I think, was, I wanna say, employee eight or nine at Chef back in the day.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Mm-hmm.

    Shimel: And he’s also speaking, as well as he will be there on behalf of Digital Anarchist, which is a video platform John and I partner on—

    Shamrell-Harrington: Oh, great!

    Shimel: – and we’ll be doing interviews. Yes, we’ll be doing interviews all through ChefConf, so look for the little video set, if you wanna say hello to John or check out some of the videos we’re shooting.

    What about training, though? Isn’t there training or something going on earlier?

    Shamrell-Harrington: It is, indeed. Monday, which is the day of the Community Summit, along with the Community Summit, we’re running several training sessions. So, if you wanna learn more about Chef, you wanna learn more about Chef and Kubernetes—all sorts of topics. If you wanna get hands on before the sessions begin so you get familiar with the technologies that people are going to be presenting, that’s a great way to do it.

    Shimel: Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, Nell, interesting—look, you’re a perfect person to speak to the ChefConf crowd, right? Because it is a fairly engineering focused crowd, right?

    Shamrell-Harrington: It is. It’s historically been primarily practitioners, though that is starting to change. We’re getting what we call decision makers as well, but it is primarily an engineering crowd.

    Shimel: You know, someone could be a practitioner and a decision maker.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Absolutely! [Laughter] Absolutely. And they make the best decision makers.

    Shimel: I guess they call that diversity, but anyway [Laughter]—in a funny kind of way. Anyway, but there’s really something for everything at Chef there. What I’m trying to get at is, I don’t want people listening to this who are saying, “Well, I’m not geeky enough for that” or, “I’m not an engineer” or, “I’m not a developer,” right? If you’re at all interested in how software is getting done, how today’s winning teams are doing it—I mean, there’s something there for you at Chef.

    If I can ask you—and we didn’t talk about this beforehand, so I don’t mean to put you on the spot—give me what you think is one session that, frankly, you don’t have to be an engineer for, and you’ll still get a lot out of it.

    Shamrell-Harrington: The one I would recommend is, “Bridging the Great Divide: Using Chef as a Spark for DevOps.” That is going to be given by Brittany Woods of CARFAX, and I believe will illustrate not just their technical transformation but their cultural transformation, because the two of them go hand in hand.

    Shimel: Absolutely. I gotta tell you, to this day still, one of my favorite ChefConf presentations was the guy from, was it Alaska Air, or Air Alaska? I always mix those—

    Shamrell-Harrington: It’s Alaska Airlines, yeah. The keynote a few years ago?

    Shimel: Yes.

    Shamrell-Harrington: I remember that, the CTO of Alaska Airlines. That was one of the best ones I’ve ever seen.

    Shimel: It was. That was a really good one. Anything else we wanna highlight?

    Shamrell-Harrington: I would say, if you deal with technology at all, whether that’s as a developer or as an engineer or something else entirely, ChefConf is the place for you. We are obviously going to be highlighting Chef solutions for how to do technology better, but that’s not the only thing we’ll be doing. If you wanna meet a lot of other people who are having the same struggles as you, solving those struggles in new and different ways, please come to ChefConf.

    Shimel: Excellent, excellent. You know what we haven’t done, though, Nell? We never told anyone where to go to get the information.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Ah! Head on over to—let me check it real quick—ChefConf.chef.io. Or, if you Google ChefConf, you should get the correct ChefConf. If you see that it’s a conference for food chefs, that’s probably not the right one, [Laughter] but check out ChefConf. It’s in Seattle at the end of May, and we would love to see you there.

    Shimel: Absolutely. And there’s still—there’s still tickets, I mean, you—

    Shamrell-Harrington: There are absolutely still tickets.

    Shimel: Cool. Hey, Nell Shamrell-Harrington, thanks for being our guest on this episode of DevOps Chat. Continued success with Chef, and looking forward to a rock and rolling ChefConf.

    Shamrell-Harrington: Thank you so much, Alan. Great to be here, and looking forward to seeing everyone at ChefConf.

    Shimel: Fantastic. We’ll talk to you soon. This is Alan Shimel for devopsy.kinsta.cloud with this update on the upcoming ChefConf conference. You can get more information at, I guess it’s ChefConf.chef.io, or just Google ChefConf.

    Until then, or until next time, you’ve just listened to another DevOps Chat.

    — Alan Shimel

  • SauceCon Speaker Profile: Jenny Bramble

    SauceCon Speaker Profile: Jenny Bramble

    This is the fourth in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    Jenny Bramble started out her career in test engineering as a waitress. Of course, she didn’t realize it at the time, but the skills she gained from waiting tables have served her well throughout her professional life. Learning how to communicate needs between several wildly different groups turned out to be an especially valuable skill in test engineering.

    Even now, after making the jump from support to DevOps to manual and then automated testing, Jenny believes that the human element is foundational.

    At Willowtree, Jenny works as the test lead on a project team of five to eight developers and three to six test engineers. She leads their testing efforts and works with clients to create products that delight their end users. The concept of delighting users truly guides Jenny’s day-to-day work. “Creating products that make you happy to use them feeds the part of my personality that loves people and wants to make an impact on their lives. It’s a reason I got into testing in the first place,” she said.

    At SauceCon 2019, Jenny will present, “Creating Automation Engineers from Scratch.” She will share her personal experience in adopting and embracing automated testing. “Automation is an incredible tool, but creating automation engineers from manual testers is hard,” she said. “Even if testers are willing, they have a lot of hurdles to get over to feel like the same kind of subject matter experts in automation as they are in manual testing.”

    When she isn’t working on delighting clients through automation, Jenny has many hobbies that keep her busy. She quilts, crochets, knits, weaves, cooks and even recently took up axe-throwing! Her two cats, Dax and Dante, keep her company through it all.

    You can hear from Jenny and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • SauceCon Speaker Profile: Titus Fortner

    SauceCon Speaker Profile: Titus Fortner

    This is the third in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    The old adage says, “Third time’s a charm.” When it comes to SauceCon speaker Titus Fortner, the cliche proves true: Testing is his third career. Titus first went to the Naval Academy, studied nuclear engineering and became a submarine officer—traveling the world doing everything from launching ballistic missiles to helping automate and streamline communication among the senior staff of the commanding general in Iraq. When he left the Navy, Titus went back to school for a year to learn computer science, then got a job as a junior developer at a startup. Focusing on test automation was an accident, but the influence testing had on the overall system and process was immediately appealing to him.

    Titus then became a core contributor to the Selenium project and the project lead for Watir, an open source testing library built on top of Selenium, as well as numerous other testing related Ruby gems. He also implemented automated testing solutions at five different companies before joining Sauce Labs as a Senior Solutions Architect. Today, he works closely with customers to help improve their testing practices.

    At SauceCon 2019, Titus will present, “Page Objects: You’re Doing It Wrong.” Although Page Objects enable newer users to write sophisticated tests against an application, Titus has found that the Page Object Pattern is often misused. “There are lots of different ideas on what makes a good implementation, and I’ve actually tried most of them at one point or another and have personal experience that informs my recommendations of certain approaches over others,” he said. “Smart people disagree with me on some of these, and my goal at SauceCon is to present both sides while explaining my reasons for the preferences I have.”

    When he isn’t convincing customers how to better use Page Objects, Titus reads, writes open source code and takes day trips with his blind dog who loves car rides.

    You can hear from Titus and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Melissa Benua

    SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Melissa Benua

    This is the second in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    SauceCon speaker Melissa Benua loves horses and riding dressage. Derived from a French word that means “training,” dressage is all about creating strength, discipline and precision. It’s fitting, because she is also passionate about training and mentoring junior-level engineers and increasing developer efficiency—which she’ll be talking about in her presentation.

    At SauceCon 2019, Melissa will present “Continuous Deployment for ‘Mature’ Codebases.” I asked her why this topic was important to her. “When starting a new project, it’s easy to take advantage of modern agile development practices, because you’re starting from scratch,” she said. “However, the reality is that isn’t the case for most projects. Our challenge then is how we can take code that may be many years old and transform it into a lean, mean, continuously-deploying machine.”

    In her presentation, Melissa plans to deliver just that: a road map for getting to a release cycle that deploys on-demand from a one that may take weeks or months. She will leverage her personal experience in significantly re-architecting the deployment structure and offer practical advice to anyone managing a more mature codebase.

    Melissa has worked in nearly every software development role there is—dev, test, DevOps and program management—at companies big and small and somewhere in-between. She has created and run high-availability, high-quality services for PlayFab, Bing, Cortana and Xbox One, and now at mParticle as a senior technical lead.

    When she’s not poring over code or training newer engineers, Melissa enjoys spending time with her two small children—and of course, riding her horse. She travels extensively and presents at industry conferences worldwide.

    You can hear from Melissa and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Dave Haeffner

    SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Dave Haeffner

    This is the first in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

    SauceCon 2019 speaker Dave Haeffner says he dabbles in Selenium—but it might be more accurate to say he eats, sleeps and breathes it. In fact, Dave is the writer of the Elemental Selenium tip newsletter, which is read by thousands of testing professionals, as well as the creator and maintainer of the-internet (an open source web app that’s perfect for writing automated tests against), author of “The Selenium Guidebook,” and an active member of the Selenium project.

    Despite his background, believe it or not Dave stumbled into automated software testing circa 2009 with Selenium IDE. He was a network engineer who didn’t have a background in programming or software testing. He and his new teammates eventually evolved their automation practice into a test harness written in Ruby (in fact, they were Sauce Labs’ first Ruby customer!). Today Dave considers himself fortunate enough to be paid to work full-time on open source software—Selenium IDE in particular.

    The Sauce Labs team is fortunate to have Dave present again at SauceCon 2019. At this year’s event, Dave is on a mission to break the stereotype that record and playback is a bad thing. He used to believe it, too, but wants to help squash the stigma. In this talk, Dave will show examples of how Selenium IDE can reliably augment and level-up your testing practice regardless of your team’s test automation maturity or your level of technical experience. “If people take away just one thing from my talk, it’s that record and playback with Selenium IDE is worth a shot,” he said of his planned presentation.

    Want to give it a try? Download the latest version.

    Outside of work, Dave spends time with his wife and daughter, exploring the new city they call home, Tel Aviv. He also enjoys learning and practicing Hebrew.

    You can hear from Dave and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

    — Rebecca Cramer

  • DOES18 Las Vegas: Video Interviews, Day 1

    DOES18 Las Vegas: Video Interviews, Day 1

    Despite what you may have heard to the contrary, not everything that happens in Vegas should stay there. Take the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018 (DOES18), for example: The three-day event attracted the best and brightest in the DevOps world—and me—to discuss all things DevOps. Some of those great conversations were captured in a series of video interviews, which are now available on DevOps TV.

    During the two days of interviews in our glass-walled video booth, a variety of folks stopped by to chat about topics ranging from audits and compliance to NextGen Ops and the future of DevOps. Below is a recap of the Day 1 video interviews from DOES18 (Day 2’s recap will post next week):

    The Future of DevOps

    Wesley Pullen of Electric Cloud, Torsten Volk of EMA and Chris Nowak of FlowStates stopped by to discuss the latest DevOps trends, where DevOps is headed, and understand key emerging practices and technologies that are driving success.

    Venture Capital and DevOps

    Sid Sijbrandij of GitLab, CJ Napolitano of Electric Cloud and Ubaid Dhiyan of Union Square Advisors chatted about the current state of VC investment into DevOps, how this could evolve in the future and the impact this investment ecosystem has on the global economy.

    ITSM/DevOps Crossover

    IT Skeptic Rob England and his partner Dr. Cherry Vu discussed what holds ITIL back from more successful transformation of IT work, and how we can help it succeed, as DevOps and ITSM finally converge on each other in the common ground of service operations.

    ‘Dear Auditor’ — Compliance and DevOps

    Sam Guckenheimer of Microsoft, James Wickett of Signal Sciences and Topo Pal of Capital One talked about the current state of DevOps and audit/compliance. They are part of a team that wrote a love letter to auditors from DevOps, in which a promise was made to make life better. They also compiled a list of audit concerns and documented them in a DevOps Risk Control Matrix with lot of details around the controls, practices and evidences that are collected to support the control.

    NextGen Ops

    Damon Edwards of Rundeck, Cornelia Davis of Pivotal Software and Tom Limoncelli of Stack Overflow chatted about the next generation of IT Ops and what emerging patterns and practices teams should consider for the future of IT.

    Workplace Burnout

    John Willis (Botchagalupe) is passionate about so many topics around DevOps, cloud and technology. One of the areas he is really passionate about, though, is the topic of burnout and fatigue in the IT field. He and Dr. Christina Maslach discussed the concept of burnout and examined the causes and effects of this problem, and the most promising strategies for dealing effectively with it.

    Project to Product

    Dr. Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop, reviewed the transition from project-based work to product-based workflows—the most optimized and scalable DevOps environment will be a highly prized gem for any business only if the product management team is prioritizing the right capabilities into the DevOps process.

    Tech for Tech Leaders

    Anders Wallgren of Electric Cloud and Erica Morrison of CSG discussed the technology landscape and what things tech leaders need to not only understand from a tech and architecture perspective, but also what they need to know to help build technology and tech platforms for the future of software delivery.

    Banking on DevOps

    Mark Howell of Lloyds Banking Group, Shaun Norris of Standard Chartered Bank and John Rzeszotarski of KeyBank reviewed a few of the top DevOps journeys in banking and what other financial institutions should consider along their DevOps journeys.

    Well, there ya have it: An entire day’s worth of videos compiled for your viewing pleasure. Be sure to check back next week for a recap of our Day 2 video interviews from DOES18 Las Vegas.

    — Charlene O’Hanlon

  • DevOps World | Jenkins World 2018 San Francisco: Video Interviews, Day 1

    DevOps World | Jenkins World 2018 San Francisco: Video Interviews, Day 1

    DevOps World | Jenkins World 2018 San Francisco has come and gone, but not without leaving a multitude of new connections and fascinating conversations in its wake. Case in point: the myriad video interviews now available on DevOps TV.

    During my two days at the conference, the broadcast booth in the exhibit hall was humming with folks from all over stopping in for a quick chat with Jayne Groll, CEO of DevOps Institute, or me. Topics ranged from the growing influence of artificial intelligence to the importance of testing and DevSecOps. Below is a recap of the Day 1 video interviews (Day 2’s recap will post next week):

    Twistlock Talks Container Security

    Keith Mokris of Twistlock kicked off the day’s conversations with a discussion about security in the DevOps and container space, including the challenges organizations have in creating and deploying cloud-native apps.

    Plutora Discusses Integration Challenges Among Companies

    Bob Davis of Plutora stopped by to talk about the struggles his company sees organizations having in integrating their legacy systems with newer technologies such as cloud, as well as scaling their DevOps initiatives enterprisewide.

    QA Symphony Recaps Tricentis Merger

    DJ Frank, sales engineer at QA Symphony, discusses his company’s recent merger with Tricentis and the role of automation in digital transformation, no matter how far along organizations are in their journey.

    AppliTools Talks Digital Transformation

    James Lamberti of AppliTools chatted with DevOps Institute’s Jayne Groll about the role his company plays in digital transformation, specifically how it solves the problem of broken UIs and their impact on the customer experience.

    KPMG Highlights Need for Right Toolchain in Transformation

    Mark Shank and Mike Wolf of KPMG discussed with Groll business transformation beyond tooling in determining the right approach to modern delivery and DevOps.

    American Express’ DevOps Journey

    Durga Dabberu of American Express and Groll discuss his company’s journey to DevOps and how Amex has transformed as a result.

    XebiaLabs Talks DevOps Beyond ‘Dev’

    Patrick Bishop of XebiaLabs chatted with Groll about trends in the DevOps space and cultural challenge many organizations face in adopting DevOps methodologies.

    WhiteSource Talks Security’s Role in Transformation

    Dan Gross of WhiteSource and Groll discussed his company’s role in helping organizations transform using open source technologies within the boundaries of security.

    Tricentis and the Evolution of Testing

    Wayne Ariola of Tricentis and Groll chatted about the transformation of testing as a competency across the DevOps spectrum.

    Red Hat Talks Cloud-Native, Kubernetes

    Red Hat’s Ari Livigni discussed with Groll the shift toward cloud-native Jenkins and using Kubernetes as their platform of choice and how Red Hat is adapting to this new paradigm.

    Infostretch and the Continuous Economy

    Infostretch CEO and co-founder Rutesh Shah discusses the “continuous economy” and his company’s role as a provider of continuous testing.

    DevOps from the Service Provider Perspective

    Harris Kirk of Walters Kluwer, a service provider focusing on the legal, tax, finance and healthcare industries, outlined how his company is using DevOps to help its clients work more effectively.

    So many conversations, so little time! Check back next week for a recap of the Day 2 video interviews.

    — Charlene O’Hanlon