This is a conversation with RackN CEO and Co-Founder Rob Hirschfeld about the business value of Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

Here are some of the questions I asked him:
Q: Rob, you compare Infrastructure as Code with flow manufacturing. What is flow manufacturing and why do you draw a parallel between the two?

Q: Manufacturing does need greater visibility of the process. You do need to know what’s going on where not only for efficiency but also for security and repeatability. How much transparency and visibility is there in modern infrastructure and how does IaC enable and encourage transparency and visibility?

Q: What about security?

Q: Despite the emergence of the DevOps principle many organizations still operate in silos. Their teams work in isolation or have very elaborate protocols to share with each other. Shouldn’t there be more integrated handoffs between teams and structured communication between them? How does infrastructure as code solve this problem of breaking down these silos?

Q: What about automation vs manual processes? How does infrastructure as code enforces automation?

Q: When we talk about businesses we have to talk about money. How does IaC impact cost?