The Hidden Cost of Technology

Jean-Marie Ferdègue, Keep It Running co-founder

New tech is great• New technology is great

• Tools solve new problems; Kafka, Docker

• And change the way we work; continuous deployments, remote working, cross functional teams

• To deliver more value; rapid iteration, global businesses

BUT

MicroServices• Tech Independence…

• Fragmentation of tech. Runtimes are abstracted by containers but middleware such as RabbitMQ, Kafka, Spark are not

• For every new tech that appears, there’s an outdated tech that teams wouldn’t use anymore, but still exist in production

• Polyglot persistence. Postgres, Cassandra, Neo4J.

The search of the Unicorn

Ops

• Polyglot • 24/7 • Happy to maintain &

improve rather than greenfield innovation

• cost effective • stable in his career

Pace of change

• Business expects more from technology than before

• … but has understood the need to invest

• As a consequence technical efforts are growing

• … creating a potential cost on the culture

New roles of technology• CIO is now business leader,

not tech-only

• Responsibilities; drive innovation and keep lights one

• Business prioritises innovation and sees lights-on as a given

• Both objectives compete on the same resources…

• … making the ability to keep the lights on a competitive advantage

Open Source

• Subject to the same feature-first and crowd pleasing biases than other products

• … potentially at the expense of scalability, monitoring, backup

What does the future hold?

• As more companies embrace micro services principles…

• … the way they run their ops will separate them from competitors

• … or maybe not run Ops themselves

The 4 hidden costs of new technology

• People

• Culture

• Innovate AND Keep It Running

• OpenSource support model