Posts

During the summer I had the chance to visit the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. And specifically, to try out two technologies I had never experienced myself before. First we had a tour through the original Porsche workshop, and built some components of the 356. Of course, that was using VR glasses. I could not find the maker of the set, glasses and controllers, but they looked a lot like HTC’s Vive. Anyway, the VR experience is really immersive and you have to be careful not to try to run around with the headset on. The motion control needs some adaptation period, but after the first tries, you usually get very comfortable grabbing a hammer and forming the body parts of the 356, or holding the spray gun to paint your very own Porsche in your favorite color. Overall, a good experience, the only limitation I see would be how to interact with the real world, or rather how to avoid bumping into the objects around you. And of course, it is a fully immersive VR, so you cannot see your body inside, apart from your arms, as you handle the motion controllers. I can see some uses where you could have enough empty space around you to walk around and see a future building before the furniture and all the fittings are in. I was definitely more impressed by the Hololens, mostly because the mixed reality opens up a lot more usages. In that case the point was to be able to see inside an hybrid Panamera, and understand all the components and moving parts involved with the hybrid technology. I had seen a lot a demos using Hololens before, but I was really curious about the level of interaction, and the finesse of the controls using specific gestures. I have to admit the design is slick and the experience, although a bit disturbing, is both impressive and immersive. I say disturbing, as the fact that some of the real world in your vision is overlaid by a virtual object can feel a little strange at first. You quickly get used to it, but it might be an adoption issue when deploying this technology into a daily worker toolset. Nevertheless, I was able to quickly navigate around the car, see the insides and get some information and advice. The controls are pretty obvious and do not get in the way. And you are able to avoid anyone (or any wall) getting in your way while you tour the car. There are so many businesses and industries where this tech could be used : • Any maintenance team for very specific hardware and high complexity tooling in the industry : airplane engines, industry automatons, remote stations where you could send any technicians that would be guided by a remote expert etc. • Training for the same hardware, for your own maintenance team • Anything involving 3D design : architecture, fitting and refitting of stores and offices, in store merchandising to ensure the right placement of all the items and furniture • You could create guided tours, using augmented reality, to provide detailed information for the visitors Argh, so many ideas!!!

Wow, it has already been almost a month since I started! My new playground covers IoT and AI, and I am supposed to have a broad understanding of both. Regarding IoT, my recent background helped me grow a solid groundwork for that. I am fairly comfortable with the concepts, and with the involved technologies. Moreover, I have a colleague whose sole purpose is to understand and build IoT solutions, so my bases are well covered. When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, the coast is less clear. First, it is not a domain where I have any background, neither in the theory (math, bio science…) nor practical (any implementation of AI). Second, AI is the 2018 version of the Cloud in 2014 : everyone wants to do it, but not one has a clear definition of what we are talking about. Last but not least, the very term AI covers almost anything, from a chatbot to augmented reality to self-driving cars. My process has been a bit convoluted so far. First thing I have tried was to register for e-learning (MOOC or otherwise) sessions on the topic. I have tried several, from OpenEDX to Microsoft AI school, to Google and Tensorflow. The content ranged from very high level, which was mostly too high for me, to algebra (which was a bit too deep for me). Then I tried to read about the market. So I read a lot of whitepapers, from Microsoft, from DataIKU, from Forrester etc. This was rather useful, as it gave me basic understanding of where the situation was. I recommend Dataiku Machine Learning Demystified : https://pages.dataiku.com/machine-learning-basics-illustrated-guidebook But still, I felt I was stuck in the theory and could not find the practical applications. After some discussions with my usual suspect, Microsoft, I did have a look at their business uses cases and testimonies. I have to admit, some of them were pretty interesting… however there is absolutely no information about the architecture or implementation of the solution, which left me wanting. I finally found two Microsoft websites who did a good job of describing architectural templates, along with potential uses cases. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/architecture/?solution=big-data https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture This is where I started digging, and it made my mind spin with all the possibilities. You will have to wait a bit for the outcomes, and follow what SCC will be doing on this market in the coming weeks ;) Last note, one of the smartest guy I have met at Microsoft, Frederic Wickert has started an AI business, and is writing, in French, to help debunk AI for us. I definitely recommend reading his posts!

Nope, my new position is not dead yet, thank you very much. What I mean by this title is usually a meeting in any IT service, after a major incident has been resolved, where all the team members who have worked on the incident gather and discuss what went wrong, and how to improve tools and processes to do better next time. I specify blameless, as it is a very good practice to avoid finger pointing, generally and particularly in these meetings. If you want people to be honest and share their best insights, you have to keep in mind that these post-mortems have to cultivate an atmosphere of trust. The aim is really to find out how the events have unfolded, which information had been gathered, what went wrong, what steps were smart, which ones did not work properly etc. For more information about that, I recommend some DevOps sessions and talks, like this one from @Jasonhand from VictorOps : It’s Not Your Fault - Blameless Post-mortems ...

After a long summer break, getting back to writing is a bit difficult, so here is a first post for a new era. I’ll be switching jobs early September, so there might a slight variation in the subjects I’ll write about. As highlighted in Gartner 2018 Cycle of Hype study, IoT is now a mature tech and we will see more and more large scale projects being deployed in the wild. I would like to expand a bit about what it entails to start an IoT initiative, whether it be to design a new product to sell, or to gain some insight and improve your own processes. The steps are familiar to anyone who has ever come close to a project in his/her life: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. ...

Almost a sponsored post today, or better : a shared announcement. You probably know that I am following Kubernetes rather closely, especially managed Kubernetes services (AKS, EKS or Openshift for example). One domain where these offerings have been lacking is network and security. It is still a very sensitive subject for our customers, for containers related project, and still for public cloud projects. Security and networking teams have trouble adapting to the public cloud paradigms and architectures. There some fear of loss of control, some base fear of the unknown, and some real worry about how to handle networking and security. Kubernetes (and the other orchestrators) adds another abstraction layer on top of the existing public cloud platforms, which does nothing to alleviate fear, to say nothing about complexity and transparency. There are some very good solutions out there to manage network overlays into Kubernetes. My favourite is Calico, but you may like any of those. I’ll stick with Calico for a simple reason, which you will see below. Microsoft and AWS are both working hard to provide a network overlay into their managed Kubernetes offering. They each chose their own path, but we will get to approximately the same point in a short time. Thanks to Jean Poizat, we have the two announcements. ...

Depending on how you consider things, it is the third time that it happens to me. Being able to design, under certain limits, your own job, is an amazing opportunity. I will not go into too many details as some of it is work in progress, but the process was amazingly energizing and I wanted to share a bit of that energy. For my current job, I met my future boss on the recommendation of a former colleague. We discussed many things, from ITIL to Managed Services, and also public cloud and the need to get dev and ops team closer. We went through those kind of talks several times, at least four if memory serves. We went from a job which look like an Ops engineer/ITIL practitioner, to something closer to an Azure tech lead. In my previous position I also had the opportunity to be offered a promotion, and been able to discuss some of the content and responsibilities of the future role. I was also able to step down when time came for me to admit that it was not an ideal position, for me or for the company. Which was really appreciated, at least on my part. And once again a few weeks ago, I was called out of the blue by a colleague’s boss. He started to discuss his own future and what he was trying to design. He wanted to build something new, and was searching for a partner to build that together. And in that scheme, he discussed a position very similar to my dream job, and offered it to me. I almost fell off my chair. At that point I was ready to accept, without having any more details about the exact role and responsibilities, or even the salary. That’s where my future boss started to ask me what I would include or exclude from that job description, and how I could make it my own. My mind just froze. It took some time for me to recover and start thinking again. After some lame jokes, we discussed the position, and what we would like to build together. It took us several meetings and calls to see through the fog, as we are really going to build something new together, and we cannot rely much on what exists around us. The last funny thing to happen was that my next interview was with the CEO of the company, who was convinced by the both of us in less than 35 minutes. I could not believe my luck in getting there. Anyway, that’s it for the bragging post. I really needed to write that down to make it real (even if I signed and will start by the end of the summer :) )

Yes, another post with an obscure reference for a title. After some time discussing tech subjects, I was of a mind of going back to something that has often been misread in the past by IT teams and IT management. And by that I mean : business. Yes, again. Do not misunderstand me, I am still a technologist, and I love learning about technology, finding out the limits and possibilities of any enw tech that is coming out. I am not a sales person, nor a marketing person. However I have been exposed to many well crafted presentations and talks over the years, and what often came out of even the most interesting ones was that : “our tech is fantastic, buy it!” All right, I love that tech. Be it virtualisation, SAN, VSAN, public cloud, containers, CI/CD, DevOps… choose whatever you like. But technology is not an end to itself in our day to day world. Whatever matters is what you will do with it for your company or customers. I will take an example. An easy shot at someone I admire. Mark Russinovich, CTO of Azure, and longtime Windows expert (I would use a stronger term if I knew one :) ). A few months ago, during a conference, he had a demo running where he could spin up thousands of container instances in a few seconds, with a simple command. First reaction : “Wow!” Second reaction : “Wooooooowwww!” Third reaction : “How can we do the same?” Fourth reaction (probably the sanest one) : “Wait, what’s the point?” And there we go. What was the point. For me, Mark’s point was to show how good Azure tech is. Which is his job, and this demo made that very clear. But Mark did go further, as he usually does, during his speech and encouraged everyone to think about the usages. Unfortunately, most of the people I have discussed with seem to miss the point. They see the Wow effect, and want to share it. But few of us decide to sit down and think about what the use case could be. And that is the difficult, and probably multi-million dollar question : how to turn amazing technology into a business benefit. Never forget that, apart from some very lucky people, we are part of a company that is trying to make money, and our role is to participate to that goal. We should always think about our customers, internal or external, and how we can help them. If doing that involves playing with some cool toys and be able to brag about it, go for it! But that is not the other way around. PS : to give one answer to how we could use Azure Container instances for the real world, especially the kubelet version of ACI, try and think about batch computing, where you would periodically need to spin up dozens or hundreds of container instances for a very short time. Does that ring any bell for you? PPS : I could not find the exact session from Mark I am describing here, but there is an almost identical session from Corey Sander and Rick Claus there : Azure Container Instances: Get containers up and running in seconds

This is a difficult topic. I have to admit I am still not completely comfortable with all the concepts and functions. However, the thinking is amazingly interesting, and I will take some time to ingest everything. First things first, I will use this post to summarize what I have learned so far. How did I end up reading that kind of work, you ask? Weeeellll, that’s easy :) Brendan Burns, in one of Ignite ‘17 sessions, used the comparison “autonomous vs autonomic” to discuss Kubernetes. This got me thinking on the actual comparison, and aided with our trusted friend, Google, I found a NASA paper about that (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265111077 _Autonomous_and_Autonomic_Systems_with_Applications_to_NASA_Intelligent_Spacecraft_Operations_and_Exploration_Systems) I started to read it, but it was a bit obscure for me, and scientific English, applied to space research, was a bit too hard for an introduction to that topic of autonomic systems. Some more research, helped by me beloved wife, led to a research thesis, in French, by Rémi Sharrock (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tichadok/). The thesis is available right there : https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00578735/document. This one relates to the same topic, but applied to distributed software and infrastructure, which ends up being way more familiar to me :) The point where I am right now is just over getting the definitions and concepts right. I will try to describe what I understand here about automated, autonomous and autonomic systems. There is some progression from the first to the second, and from the second to the third concept. Let’s start with automated. An automated system is just like an automaton in the old world : something that will execute a series of commands, on the order of a human (or another system). For example, you have a thermostat at home that send the temperature from inside and outside your home to the heater controller. ...

There we are, I have finally given my talk about Kubernetes and Azure. It was both more and less than I expected. It was more easy, once I got there, into the position of a speaker than I expected. My fellow speakers were very kind and supportive, which helped with the pre-stage flutters :) It was also easier because the room was of a reasonable size, and I was not on stage in front of 500 people. And it was less deep dive than I expected, which also allowed me to relax a bit. I could get a feeling about the audience before going there, which let me into the dark regarding their needs and expectations. Let’s set the stage. The event took place at Microsoft’s Building 20, which is a Reactor (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/). So the building is definitely designed to host events comfortably. That helped a lot, as we even had someone from the A/V team to help us and ensure all the screens and microphones would be working correctly. And yes, the free coffee might also have been a huge help :) The room was large, without any raised platform for the speaker, but with multiple repeat screens all around. I was the third speaker, so I definitely had some time to review my slides and demo setup a few times. I did setup the demo environment the night before, to avoid any deployment issue at the last minute (which did happen 2 days before while I was practicing). Once again, having a scripted demo ensured that I would not forget any step, or mess up some command line options. I did have a few issues during the talk. First the mike did stop working at some point, failed battery. I kept on speaking without it, as the room was small enough to let me speak louder for a short time and still be heard. The support guy came shortly to replace the battery, so no big issue there. My remote clicker did work perfectly, but not the pointer part. That’s a shame, because it made it more difficult to point out at a precise section of a slide or demo. Afterwards I found out why, and I should be able to avoid that particular issue in the future. I did not get as much interaction as I hoped I would. I thing that it was mostly due to my anxiety, which prevented me to behave like my normal self and be engaging. What I would change for the future. First, for a set event like this one, I would practice in front of a camera, or a mirror, to actually see and listen to my speech. That would probably ensure that I would keep the correct pace and articulation. And also make sure that the flow of slides is comprehensible. Second, I would work more to know the expectations of the public. It turns out that my talk was way too technical and fast it should have been. While discussing with the attendees afterwards, I realized that I did not get many of the points through, probably because I went too fast over those. This brings me back to the interactions point above : would I have been more comfortable and interactive, I could have grasped that during the session and corrected it. Third, I should probably think about learning a bit more about controlling my voice and projecting it. I realized that during the week leading to the event, as I had to speak in a loud environment, and present/discuss the same kind of subjects. Labs A word on the hands-on labs we had in the afternoon. I just was glad to have stayed for that part. First because I had never been on the proctor side before, and it’s really fascinating to see a problem through the eye of someone with a different mindset and culture. I really learned a lot, and realized a lot during these 2 hours. Second, because it showed me the areas where my presentation had been lacking, and how much I had not been clear enough to be understood by everyone. I think these discussions with the attendees were the deeper feedback and improvement tips that I could get. For the record, the container labs we used are there : https://github.com/Azure/blackbelt-aks-hackfest/ That’s it for now. This first talk has unlocked something and made me realize that I should talk at every occasion I can, and that I love it, at least when it’s done ;)

I’m writing this a bit ahead of time, as I plan to write a follow-up to compare what is planned against what will have happened. As the title suggests, I will be hosting my very first public session on the 21st of April. I am taking part in Global Azure Bootcamp https://global.azurebootcamp.net, a worldwide community event where experts from around the world gather locally to share their experience and knowledge on Azure. I would probably have preferred to be involved in an event in France, however I am in Seattle that week, so my event of choice will be directly @Microsoft in Redmond. This will an occasion for multiple first times for me : first time on my own as a public speaker, first participation in Global Azure Bootcamp, first time presenting fully in English, and first time presenting in Redmond of course :) So, big step far out of my comfort zone. The aim of this post, as stated above, is to record what I did to prepare for the event, and afterwards, write down what have gone right and wrong, and how I can progress and do better. I have chosen the topic of containers & Kubernetes on Azure for two reasons : first I am rather comfortable with the subject, and second a colleague, Jean Poizat, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-poizat-0a97bb/, did already build a slidedeck and demo which I could expand from. Obvious first then : I have a chosen familiar grounds and existing material, to limit the amount of work needed. This however presented a challenger : start from slides which I did not write, and get familiar with those, before rearranging & completing those to my purpose and comfort. A word on how I got out of my comfort zone : a nice kick in the back end! I saw on some social networks few friends and colleagues getting ready for GAB in France, which prompted me to start collaborating, at least to give a hand. Once I realized I would be in Seattle at that time, I contacted the local event owner Manesh Raveendran, https://www.linkedin.com/in/maneshraveendran/, to offer my help, in broad terms. It took me a while to be able to suggest the session I will be presenting, and I almost chickened out a few times. But once Manesh wrote me in, that was it, I had to make this work! The next step was to get very familiar with the presentation and with the associated demos. I started presenting to myself, but out loud and standing. This allowed me to work my speech, content and speed, and fine tune the slides. I also quickly incorporated the demos, to work out how to time things, and how to work around a failing demo. I started 10 days before the set date, with the slides & demo mostly ready. I allowed a minimum of a deck run every two days, that I would then adjust depending on my comfort and accuracy. During these dry run, I would keep a piece of paper next to me, to write down whatever thoughts/questions or clarifications were needed. These would affect either the speech or the slides, and even the demo. In between these runs, I would review the slides as much as I could every day. I did not spend as much time reviewing the demo, as Jean had provided me with a solid script that would mostly run by itself, on my cue. The few manuals demos were quite simple, and worked every time. I was also lucky enough to meet with several architects during that time, who were kind enough to give me their feedback on my slides, and even to let me rehearse in front of them, and give me their impressions and advice. That was a big help, and a great comfort as showtime loomed closer :) I am now a few hours from the actual session, I will submit this post and start writing the follow-up right after the session. Stay tuned! PS : the program for the Redmond event is there : https://www.azurecommunityevents.com/#/event?181C8806AFB7-4142-B0D3-B1858E9E8956