How Best to Spread the Word About Cloud Foundry?

by Roger StrukhoffNovember 25, 2015
During the latest CAB call, some options were discussed of how to further promote the success of Cloud Foundry.

The November CF CAB call was moved one week to November 18 due to Veteran’s Day occurring on the normally scheduled date of November 11. Several key presenters from Pivotal were nonetheless unable to attend, including (BOSH), (Buildpacks/Stacks), (Services Core) and (Cloud Foundry System Certification and Accreditation—for regulated industries).

But progress overall continues apace. A lot of good information was reported regarding the latest release of Lattice, Loggregator, the CLI, and Diego. Other discussion focused on the UAA, MEGA, Garden, Guardian, Abacus, and Flintstone.

CF Live published a report on all the technical notes and discussions at the meeting earlier this week.

There was also a glowing report by Chip Childers from the CFF about the CF Summit in Berlin, which had more than 500 people sign up and more than 95% turnout—outstanding, as most conferences expect 60 to 80% of those who sign up to show up. One note was made to try to include a budget to record sessions next year, as there are no videos of this year’s event.

There was some discussion about the upcoming CF Summit in Shanghai. Pre-registration looks good, and all members of the community are urged to support the event. There was also a note made that a BOSH-specific day should be included for next year’s CF Summit in Santa Clara in May.

 

Call to action

During the final minutes of the call, a cry went out about how to tell the world of the glory that is Cloud Foundry. How best to tell the world of the incredible innovation and progress being made, over time, in the big picture of this era of Cloud Computing and all that it entails?

Within this context, there was some discussion of the new CF logo. The emphasis with the new logo is the Foundry rather than the Cloud, because as one person put it, “cloud is almost synonymous with computing today.” So, we forge ahead.

Personally, I’m a little graphically challenged. To me, as long as a logo can’t be misinterpreted as something risible or naughty, it’s fine—the critical thing is to burn, burn, burn it into people’s retinas. Once people identify your logo with your company or project within 652 milliseconds or so, you’re good.

So, how to spread the good news? Here at CF Live, we already feature more than 20 of the top CF use cases, a comprehensive Architect’s Guide to Cloud Foundry, a new series of Livecasts presented by our CEO Renat Khasanshyn, and many posts of opinion and commentary from members of our editorial team in the US, Europe, and Asia.

 

Stepping it up

We’re stepping up that coverage in the coming weeks and months, adding interviews and in-depth looks at the largest members (and some of the smaller ones as well) of the Cloud Foundry Foundation.

Cloud doesn’t yet equate to Computing, in our view. But the point is taken: it now consumes about 20% of enterprise IT budgets in the US and a few other large countries. In doing so, it consumes close to 100% of all innovative initiatives, whether deployed via AWS (or GCE or Azure), on-premises, or in some form of unique hybrid.

 

We’re all friends here, right?

One prominent CF developer recently told me that a very large project in the healthcare industry would be literally undoable without AWS, as its continuously developing suite of services address unique issues along the pathway to this project, which combines machines, real-time as well as archival data, analytics, big compliance issues, and a requirement for a very widely distributed infrastructure.

Thus, work by the CF community to continue to reach out to AWS is something that needs to be encouraged. The enemy is sclerotic thinking, not the folks in Seattle.

Cloud is now playing a significant role in all regions of the world, and Cloud Foundry is part of this march. Witness the recent Cloud Foundry Summit in Berlin, at which 95% of more than 500 registered attendees showed up (compared to 60% to 80% for most conferences), and the upcoming Cloud Foundry Summit in Shanghai, which promises to address issues of openness and community in a vast market with a Great Firewall.

Mr. Xi, tear down that wall!