The Harmony Era of the Enterprise

Reeling from the best KubeCon North America yet? From my perspective, it was pretty good and what a difference a year makes! Alongside the growing adoption of Kubernetes, the conversations with consumers are aligning against their enterprise needs. No longer am I being asked, "why is Dell here?"

From the dawn of time, there has been continuous evolution and adaptation of humankind, and from the tiniest of specks to the largest of species millions of years of change landed us at this moment with the mind-blowing realization that artificial intelligence (AI) is here. Yet, this blog isn’t about AI, it is about cats, dogs, and some type of dinosaur/chameleon reptile. No, you read that right and it isn’t a fever dream that resulted in some marketing cuteness overload. A year ago, some wise person came up with the idea that DevOps could be represented by a yin-yang motif represented as a balance of cats and dogs.

The adage that cats and dogs cannot live in perfect harmony has been debunked. It is important to reflect that Dell Technologies has engineered into its product offers the resources that help DevOps organizations thrive through cloud-native and infrastructure-as-code capabilities. Support for DevOps is a natural evolution for Dell Technologies; however, it didn’t come naturally to developers. As a conference denizen, I’ve received my share of confused looks as to “why Dell” in open-source or Kubernetes-oriented spaces and it makes sense. Developers historically have not been part of the infrastructure conversation, so it is no surprise that Dell has been looked upon as just a laptop company by these people.

So, back to the dawn of time. Dinosaurs themselves roamed for over 180 million years and over three very distinct “eras” of adaptation. Millions of years and a critical part of our evolutionary history are impressive. Compare that to the “age of technology” which has been around for a few centuries, with three distinct phases as well. However, it is moving exponentially faster. So, if we look at it from that perspective, technologies will continue to evolve, adapt, and innovate for years to come in the digital transformation age and beyond. Supporting technologies that match humankind is a big part of the Dell Technologies culture and notwithstanding includes providing the products and to whom the products benefit. Another angle to look at is how our customers consume data is just beginning to hit its strides; from IT Ops on-premises to in-cloud across the edge and back around again. Combine this with the ever-present need for agile development, and modern data applications to scale fast and be accessed anytime and from anywhere, forces the advancement of self-service catalogs and as-a-service offers.

So whence DevOps matures, Platform Engineering comes as the next or extended version of itself in the “humanness” of bringing technology and efficiency together. The role of Platform Engineering in DevOps is to kind of corral or “embrace” and establish the foundation to provide delivery of applications through self-service and automation as a platform. The ultimate creation of frictionless consumption of resources rather than just data is critical to seamless operations and developers alike. ?So, with that Dell looks to the next curve where multicloud, as-a-service, and software meet as a great re-emergence of what oncperceived was, is now. Reptiles like the adaptive and intelligent chameleon alongside domesticated cats and dogs have aligned themselves to the whims of their human environment, whilst DevOps and Platform Engineering will align to the race for seamless mobility and scale from cloud to ground and back again.