Last week we kicked off our webinar series on Variable Speed DevOps. The discussion was lively and informative. For myself as moderator the webcast was as comfortable as an old pair of slippers. Two of the three panelists, Carme DeArdo of Nationwide and Sanjeev Sharma of IBM are both friends and people I have had the pleasure of appearing with before. Additionally, Lee Reid, fit right into the discussion, not missing a beat. You can listen to the recording or view the slides here.
We discussed Variable Speed IT from many different aspects and how Nationwide has successfully merged onto the DevOps highway. More than any of the other analogies we spoke about or I have heard, I really like the DevOps highway as a good way to explain Variable Speed IT and Variable Speed DevOps. The notion of multiple lanes with traffic moving at different rates in each lane is a good way to think about Variable Speed IT.
Of course if only things were that easy. In the variable speed DevOps world the traffic in each lane is directly connected to the traffic in the other lanes. This is where the expertise of Carmen and the rest of the panel comes into play. In an organization such as Nationwide (see the first two slides of the deck to get an idea of Nationwide’s scope) coordinating Systems of Records with Systems of Engagements, multiple dev and ops teams and doing it all successfully is orchestration worthy of a maestro.
Lee and Sanjeev in their positions at IBM have had the chance to work with several organizations like Nationwide so can take lessons learned across an even wider spectrum of experiences.
All of this added up to a great webinar that I was lucky to be part of in some small way.
Our deep dive into Variable Speed DevOps continues on May 19th with the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation explaining how they were able to break down IT silos and in both their mainframe environments (yes even mainframes) and others. You can find out more about this one and register here: https://devops.com/blogs/variable-speed-ibm2/?S_Tact=C34701GW.
Variable Speed DevOps, 2-Speed IT, Bi-Modal IT – we are seeing lots of different terms to describe a common fact pattern. We think this series of webinars will explore many of the facets of this subject.
In them meantime we are off to a fantastic start with our first in this series. I really encourage you to go have a listen. Many thanks to Carmen DeArdo, Sanjeev Sharma and Lee Reid for kicking us off with a great webinar.