Quali originally started by developing software that enabled infrastructure to be delivered on demand. However, more recently the company has built technology focused on the application stack and the ability for DevOps practices to be executed with infrastructure without getting in the way of execution.

In this episode of TFiR Let’s Talk, Swapnil Bhartiya sits down with David Williams, Senior Vice President of Marketing Strategy at Quali, to introduce us to the company and tell us how Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is helping companies today. He goes into detail about the transition from managing infrastructure on-prem to when cloud was introduced and the new challenges it has brought. He also dives into the cultural aspect of organizations and how its technology is helping bridge the gap in skills shortages while helping to foster better collaboration between teams.

Key highlights from this video interview are:

• Williams introduces us to Quali and how it is helping organizations with their IaC challenges.
• Quali focuses on environments which comprise the combinations of the software stack, the required data, and any services, and infrastructure that can be provisioned on demand. Williams explains how Quali creates the environments enabling customers to build the infrastructure quickly. He discusses the benefits of the IaC such as simplifying testing an application and having a common source of environment.
• Quali established itself with on-prem helping companies cut the infrastructure up, balance it and optimize it. However, the prominence of cloud and edge now presents a number of challenges for environments with the application stack. Williams discusses how they build environments to help companies navigate on-prem and cloud and how they balance these environments.
• When everything was on-prem, you could have a centralized source and IT infrastructure but it would take time to get infrastructure provisioned. Williams explains how the introduction of cloud infrastructure meant developers could provision things very quickly. He discusses how the on-demand structure led to IaC to be introduced and the changes it brought to how infrastructure was provisioned, such as infrastructure becoming part of the coding.
• Williams goes into depth about how DevOps reaching maturity has led to businesses seeing it as a major weapon to deliver their business and be accountable. He discusses how this has changed the way IaC is used and how it is helping organizations with governance control, less risk, and more accountability in what they are using.
• Williams feels that there are still many silos within organizations and if an application is still legacy with a lot of architectural pieces in it even with the CI/CD process, it does not go all the way into production for much of the code, and similarly, IaC does not always make the transition from building and testing to production. Williams discusses the challenges organizations have with IaC and how it enables the silos within the organizations to leverage IaC.
• Williams discusses the challenges of collaboration once provisioning the infrastructure goes further down the pipeline and how it should be possible to subsume all the infrastructure information, and then enable it through the pipeline by making it simpler for people to understand so that everyone can use it in the way they need to.
• The cloud provider typically tells organizations how much they have been using but cannot tell you who has been using it or for what application or project. Williams explains how abstraction of IaC can help organizations better understand their costing and the benefits it brings.
• One of the key challenges organizations face are with skills set shortages, particularly in light of infrastructure growing more complex. Williams discusses how the technical debt organizations have got in to exacerbate this further and how expertise has created silos in the organization. He discusses the two key ways technology is being used to tackle this: to enable different skill sets to work collaboratively in support of a common objective and enable people to do things that they do not have the skills to do.

Connect with David Williams (LinkedIn)
Learn more about Quali (Twitter)

The summary of the show is written by Emily Nicholls.