SpringOne Platform 2016 Speaker: John Feminella; Advisory Engineer, Pivotal. Platforms like Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) can be viewed as contracts between applications and the people who build, operate, and deploy them. At the root of these contracts is a core premise: if your application checks off a few boxes, the platform can provide enormous amounts of power and enable capabilities that wouldn't otherwise be possible. In this talk, I'll argue that every platform makes a contract to this effect (sometimes implicitly, especially in the case of proprietary in-house platforms). We'll examine the ways in which these contracts manifest themselves in different platforms, the kinds of contracts that exist in PCF, and how to assess whether a given platform makes a good tradeoff.

1. Platforms as Contracts
a model for evaluating tough technical choices
by: John Feminella
at: SpringOne Platform
on: August 2, 2016

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JOHN FEMINELLA
http://jxf.me
@jxxf

3. Thinking about platforms
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platform connects suppliers and
consumers
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application platform connects operators to
developers

6. How do you decide to use a platform?
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7. How do you evaluate a platform?
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8. A question
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web server
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web client

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web server
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web client

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ask for some content
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agree to talk the same language
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HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1

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GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2016 12:34:56 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Length: 42
Hello and welcome to SpringOne Platform!
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15. Why did this work?
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protocol correctly implemented
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HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1

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network infrastructure correctly configured
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ultimately about people, not technology
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choosing an application platform is hard

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ΔV: value chain
ΔV: cost-benefit
ΔT: delivery speed
strategic alignment
regret minimization
choose your poison!

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but is it helping people?
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22. A different evaluation strategy
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an agreement between parties
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HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1

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a contract
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HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1

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what makes a contract?

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three specific ingredients

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has consideration
is conscionable
entered into knowingly

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are you getting that from your platform?
file an ops ticket to edit
environment variables
must include a
deployment.xml
stateless applications

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and what do you get in exchange?
maintains health of apps
consistent deployments
regardless of environment
robust to instance and AZ
failures

30. getting more
giving more
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31. getting more
giving more
http://jxf.me · @jxxf
impossible big
small unconscionable

32. getting more
giving more
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platforms
infrastructure augmented
infrastructure

33. getting more
giving more
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Mesos
Kubernetes PaaSTA
Cloud Foundry
Tibco Silver Fabric
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
bare metal
Docker Swarm

34. people > technology
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35. Takeaways
evaluate on what you’re getting vs. what you’re giving
encourages consideration of the people and effort involved
no platform technology is a panacea
it’s never about technology; it’s always about people
http://jxf.me · @jxxf
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36. Thanks!
@jxxf
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37. Thanks!
http://pivotal.io · @jxxf
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