I’ve been thinking about this time last year and how different this December is — for so many reasons. Looking back on my predictions for 2020, one thing is glaringly obvious: I did not in my wildest dreams imagine that a pandemic would engulf the entire world and change every facet of our lives.

It just goes to show that none of us has a crystal ball and the future is truly unknowable. Nevertheless, I’ll do my best to look at the key technology trends that have emerged in 2020 and make educated guesses about what’s to come. …

In 2014 (a million years ago in cloud native terms), I decided I wanted to work on technology that was changing the way applications were developed and managed. Pivotal had recently spun out of VMware and was developing something called Cloud Foundry, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). I was intrigued by the impact such a platform could deliver to enterprises trying to digitize their businesses to compete in the internet-first economy. Shortly after I joined Pivotal, Cloud Foundry was donated to a new open source software foundation, called Cloud Foundry Foundation. …

Today, Cloud Foundry Foundation announced that my friend and long-time colleague Chip Childers will be stepping into the Executive Director role, as I move on from the Foundation into a new role at a company where I’m incredibly excited to work.

The changing of the guard is always bittersweet, especially when you love the work as much as I do. So much of leading an open source foundation is about building relationships with the community who powers the project, and I know how much I’ll miss the brilliant, driven, visionary people who comprise the Cloud Foundry community. …

Pie in the Sky

Where were you in January 2015? Perhaps you were anticipating the April launch of the first Apple Watch, the July launch of Windows 10 or the September release of the Tesla Model X Signature Series. Uptown Funk was on every radio station, slowly ousting Shake It Off; people were starting to wake up to the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up; and Barack Obama was in the White House.

It was during this cultural moment that the Cloud Foundry Foundation officially launched, amidst a landscape murky with opposing definitions of cloud. I was at Pivotal, working with…

This past Sunday, The New York Times published an article that equates using open source code with strip-mining. While I am sympathetic to the notion that Amazon has its paws in every conceivable industry and has radically transformed both retail and cloud computing for better or worse, I want to set the record straight about how an open source ecosystem truly operates.

In his article, Daisuke Wakabayashi asserts that “Amazon [Web Services] is choking off the growth of would-be competitors and forcing them to reorient how they do business.” I won’t argue that many of the companies mentioned in the…

Can you believe it’s almost the end of the year? And not just the end of a year, but the end of the decade. The year 2020 is a few short weeks away. Cue the “hindsight 2020” jokes.

As we wrap up 2019, I’ve been reflecting on how the year went, as well as what I expect to see in 2020.

As I look back on all of my conversations this past year with executives and leaders spanning technology providers, hyperscale cloud providers, enterprises, and open source software — I see change happening across all industries at a level that…

When I sat down at the end of last year to catch my breath and take stock of the cloud ecosystem, I made a few predictions for 2019, many are happening more quickly than I expected. Now that we’re halfway through the year — collectively reflecting on the professional wins, losses, and progress made — I want to revisit my view of the trends defining the cloud native ecosystem in 2019. In particular: market consolidation.

The cloud native market is starting to consolidate. We’re starting to see more incumbent players acquiring cloud native technology companies — pulling these startups in…

An open letter to CIOs navigating a changing world

Imagine being told the job you’ve been doing for decades, and your place within the organization, is changing. Asking your employees to completely rethink who they are and how they fit into their place of work removes a fundamental layer of security — a scary thought for almost anyone.

As an industry, we aren’t giving enough thought to the psychological and lifestyle ramifications of change. It asks a lot of organizations and the people who are proud to work there. …