Getting to GIFEE with SDN: Demo

A few short years ago, espousing for open source and cloud computing was even more difficult than touting the importance of clean energy and the realities of climate change. The doubters and naysayers, vocal as they are, are full of reasons why things are (fine) as they are. Reasons, however, don’t get you results. We needed transformative action in IT, and today, as we’re right between the Google NEXT event and the OpenStack Summit in Austin, open source and cloud are the norm for the majority.

After pausing for a moment of vindication – we told you so – we get back to work to improve further and look forward, and a good place to look is indeed at Google: a technology trailblazer by sheer necessity. We heard a lot about the GCP at NEXT, especially their open source project Kubernetes, powering GKE. What’s most exciting about such container-based computing with Docker is that we’ve finally hit the sweet spot in the stack with the right abstractions for developers and infrastructure & ops pros. With this innovation now accessible to all in the Kubernetes project, Google’s infrastructure for everyone else (#GIFEE) and NoOps is within reach. Best of all, the change this time around is less transformative and more incremental…

One thing you’ll like about a serverless architecture stack like Kubernetes, is that you can run it on bare-metal if you want the best performance possible, but you can easily run it on top of IaaS providing VMs in public or private cloud, and that benefits us with a great deal of flexibility in so many ways. Then of course if you just want to deploy workloads, and not worry about the stack, an aaS offering like GKE or ECS is a great way to get to NoOps faster. We have a level playing field across public and private and a variety of underpinnings.

For those that are not only using a public micro-service stack aaS offering like GKE, but supplementing or fully building one internally with Kubernetes or a PaaS on top of it like OpenShift, you’ll need some support. Just like you didn’t build an OpenStack IaaS by yourself (I hope), there’s no reason to go it alone for your serverless architecture micro-services stack. There’s many parts under the hood, and one of them you need baked into your stack from the get go is software-defined secure networking. It was a pleasure to get back in touch with my developer roots and put together a demo of how you can solve your networking and security microsegmentation challenges using OpenContrail.

I’ve taken the test setup for OpenContrail with OpenShift, and forked and modified it to create a pure demo cluster of OpenContrail + OpenShift (thus including Kubernetes) showing off the OpenContrail features with Kubernetes and OpenShift. If you learn by doing like me, then maybe best of all, this demo cluster is also open source and Ansible-automated to easily stand up or tear down on AWS with just a few commands to go from nada to a running OpenShift and OpenContrail consoles with a running sample app. Enjoy getting your hands dirty, or sit back and watch demo video.

Those that want to replicate the demo. Here's the link I mentioned in the video: https://github.com/jameskellynet/container-networking-ansible

Automation is Killing the Knowledge Economy

Still standing at the top of 2016 for only a few more hours, January that is, I’m compelled to follow-up on my outlook on the rise of IoT and setting of the Information Age, with a forecast on the nearer-term workings of automation to slay the knowledge economy as we know it.

The push towards technological automation has allowed us do to more with less. Working in technology, I sell this vision to our customers everyday: better scale, more agility, go faster, spend less OpEx, etc. To be sure, automation has been a boon to business and consumers for a long-time, but it has also been a treacherous progress.

We have long-since been educated on the automation-caused job loss and redundancy to laborers in the manufacturing sector. Closer to home, you may have recently started seeing self-serve queues at your grocery stores. Okay you don’t work in a grocery store. It’s too bad for those poor clerks, but at least you’re safe. You have a university degree, expertise and experience. You work smart, not hard. You’ll be fine. Right?

Wrong! Today’s knowledge worker is dead. Many industries are already disrupted, and if yours isn’t already, it will be.

“Today’s knowledge worker is dead.”

I’m not talking about automation here in the form of robotics and the physical. Sure we’ve all heard about that dystopian future where robots do everything. Look already at the self-driving cars, or drones now that can deliver your mail, parcels and even coffee. That and more, is all coming too. But what I believe most people don’t imagine, is the redundancy that will soon be created in so-called desk and office jobs.

A good desk job in a nice glass tower and the honor of a white collar (maybe not in Silicon Valley) has been the reward of the knowledge worker for a long time. Today, automation is affecting these people too. However, a lot of these people are also shielded from the blade of automation. Why?

Let me briefly examine people that work in technology, as I do, as an example. A person goes to school to study computer systems, science and engineering, and out comes the quintessential knowledge worker in this space, the “geek” whatever the actual job title. Of those that go on to work closely with technology, in my mind, there are two kinds of these people: technologists and technicians. Sure, knowledge is critical to both of these types, but to the technician it is paramount. The technician is an administrator, operator, and integrator; thus, the technician’s job depends on their expertise and ability. The technologist, however, is a creator, an engineer of the technology that the technician will use.

Understanding the key difference between the technician and the technologist reveals something very important: knowledge alone is increasingly not enough. How can you immunize yourself against automation’s assail?

“How can you immunize yourself against automation’s assail?”

When automation has reduced the value of knowledge, expertise and ability, the prime determinant of success will be creativity. The technologist is a creator. Naturally, as for all creators, even artists, creativity must be used in service of skill and in the context of expertise. Yes, you still need to go to school to amass all of that knowledge and gain expertise and experience, but now you also need more.

This is why Google recruiters look for what they call “smart-creatives.” That’s why a lot of technical and non-technical desk jobs, the ones where you’re required to be creative, cannot be automated.

Now, is the time to practice being creative. Now is the time to align our education system for this creative future because automation is slowly killing the knowledge economy. Automation is wonderful and wicked, but I know such challenges it will cause, can be overcome with a creative solution.

Dusk in the Information Age and What’s on the Horizon After IoT?

Just a fortnight into 2016 and it’s safe to say that the perennial prophecy blogs and media have firmly asserted the Internet of Things (IoT) as this year’s hot topic. As a technology professional focused on cloud computing, IoT is the natural continuum, but in spite of eating up a lot of IoT literature, webinars, and the steady stream of newly unveiled innovations, I can’t help but feel the messaging for IoT outcomes is disconnected from a human quality and something I can personally look forward to.

“IoT!!! So what?”

When one looks around at the messaging on IoT, it’s very noticeable that there aren’t many people asking, “So what? How is IoT good for us after all?” I think this happens all too often, not because the more distant future is harder to imagine, but rather because of the “new-shiny (IoT) object” syndrome (i.e. geeking out on gadgets), and because most the messaging comes from those that have a present-day agenda to capitalize on the path to IoT. Those people naturally paint the picture from IoT back to their own current solutions, and just highlight the value they add right now. What about the bigger, long-term picture?

The technologist in me is very interested in all of those enablers: next-generation cloud, big data, machine learning, cognitive computing, better security, better sensors, actuators and advanced robotics in drones, cybernetics and bionics, and last but certainly not least, networking it all together… I think at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, radio (wireless networking) killed the video star.

The businessman, artist, and dreamer in me, however, cares less about the never-ending list of technology and its individual outcomes, and asks, “So what?” When all electronic systems are connected up to a brain that can collect data and process data in “smarter” ways (“smart” is the new tech-marketing prefix of the IoT era), we will see new forms of optimization, customization, automation, dynamic system feedback, new services, new products and new businesses. All of this is rooted in one thing: the power of new information. In this way, I think IoT leads us to fulfill the final stage of the Information Age.

“IoT leads us to fulfill the final stage of the Information Age”

That theory of course commands respect for the value of big data processing, that will power the brain of such smart systems that turns data into information. Also with respect to the realization of the Information Age, if we accept that name for our present time, that made me think, "What's next?"

Information on every aspect of everything that can be digitized, presents both exciting challenges and opportunities to humans that point to more compelling transformation than the tech itself.

On one hand the sheer magnitude of information that will be available poses an obvious challenge to the human mind, having limited ability to hold and process it. This should give artificial intelligence (AI) research a powerful incentive because an intelligence that could hold and use the information could achieve useful insights far beyond our own capacity. This points towards an AI revolution and new technological age.

On the other hand, the new uses of information, especially toward optimization and automation, will transform the scope of human capital as we know it. From a business standpoint, the opportunity to transform services sectors and services job functions is massive, since human capital is the primary contributing enabler and expense.

More personally exciting however, is thinking about what aspects of human capital, or our human skill set and human value will remain. Imagine refining our journey to self-actualization in a world where the signs of information show us what we humans are truly good at, what we humans are bad at, and where our incompetencies are our own worst enemy. Today, I believe it is a lack of solid and well-presented information that causes doubt, fear and differences in between communities. Anyone can share their “information” at will, and much of the Internet generation doesn’t differentiate between fact, research, and mere conjecture.

In the IoT era, proven information will be established in real and vast data. Though data with externalities and limitations (such as ecological boundaries and planetary time scales) will continue to provide imperfect information, I think we will have enough information to yield the dawn of a new age where we will evolve our global knowledge base to be applied toward a wholly improved respect for our Earth and interconnection all its people as we behold the education upon new information in the dawn of the Awareness Age.

Do you need information to live with awareness? Of course not. The native american indians lived with awareness and respect about the interconnectedness of all things. That was long before any technology at all. What is changing now, however, is that our decisions will not be based on beliefs, but on information. Some beliefs we hold and things we have and do, will be shown to be as ridiculous as knowing that the Earth is flat. Information is a powerful influencer when it is proven in data. With so much data to potentially generate and measure, what excites me now about the path to IoT and beyond, is witnessing information producing awareness from the questions that the world will ask.