Veteran analyst and consultant Larry Carvalho joins me at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2022 in Valencia to talk about the trends he is seeing in the cloud-native space. He identified three main constituencies of the cloud-native world: users, SaaS providers like Salesforce and Infrastructure providers like AWS, Azure and GCP. He also talked about the role each plays in the massive ecosystem of the cloud-native world.

Key highlights of this video interview are:

• Carvalho discusses the different ways companies are adopting cloud-native technologies and for what purpose. He discusses how cloud technologies are being used to deliver value to their customers and the changes he is seeing.
• Carvalho describes the three major players making up the cloud-native ecosystem and how they are utilizing the technologies to deliver value to their customers.
• Adoption of cloud-native technologies is not just limited to traditional technology players, with a lot of startups utilizing no-code or low-code powered by cloud-native technologies. Although there is an increasing demand for applications, lack of resources can pose problems. Carvalho discusses the impact this is having on application development today.
• Carvalho explains the new areas of innovation in cloud-native technologies he is seeing and how businesses are capturing value from them. He discusses how edge computing is being used by companies and the return on investment they are getting from deploying edge solutions.

Connect with Larry Carvalho (LinkedIn)

The summary of the show is written by Emily Nicholls.

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Here is the automated and unedited transcript of the recording. Please note that the transcript has not been edited or reviewed. 

Swapnil Bhartiya:Hi, this is your host Swapnil Bhartiya. And welcome to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon here in Valencia, Spain. And today we have with us our first guest, Larry Carvalho, principal consultant at RobustCloud. Larry, it’s great to have you on the show.

Larry Carvalho: Thank you, Swapnil, for having me. I’m looking forward to having a good discussion with you.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Perfect. First of all, it’s kind of a role change for you.

Larry Carvalho: Yes.

Swapnil Bhartiya: So tell us, what is RobustCloud all about? What do you focus on?

Larry Carvalho: So I had a company, RobustCloud, that I started after my career at IBM for 14 years. And we started doing a lot of cloud camps, cloud workshops. Eventually, I joined IDC and then I decided that I will get back on my own. And so I restarted my business as RobustCloud and providing companies with advisory services and various other ways in which I can evangelize the value, and mainly the business value of technology, to the masses, if you would, because a lot of folks don’t understand the business value of what technology can do. So, that’s what I’m trying to focus on.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Perfect. And then, especially when we look at these emerging technologies, cloud data technology, we focus a lot on technology aspect. But in the end, no matter how much technology we develop, in the end, we are trying to solve a problem.

Larry Carvalho: Yes.

Swapnil Bhartiya: In the end, businesses are trying to serve their customers who end up people like us. So talk a bit about, you are at the event, this is not the first time you have attended the event. So talk about, what have you seen? How folks are leveraging cloud direct technologies to not only run their existing businesses, but to create new ones.

Larry Carvalho: Absolutely. So, what I’m seeing just now as I came back from the keynote was Mercedes-Benz talking about how they are using cloud native technology. And that is an example of an end user company using cloud native technologies. But we are seeing it in different places as to how companies are using cloud native technologies. You have SaaS companies, software as a service companies, using it as the base infrastructure to deliver technologies and to deliver value to their customer. Then you have IS pass, which kind of comes together now. And they are delivering the value for which end users can now build their capabilities on top of these IS pass companies who are delivering cloud native technologies. And when you think about cloud native technologies, it’s mainly containers of orchestration, serverless, microservices, all these things fitting in one, giving the companies the means to deliver value to their customers. If it is insurance companies, what are the challenges insurance companies are facing? If it’s an automotive company, what are the challenges an automotive company is facing? And that’s where we are seeing a lot of changes going on in this, in this business.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Excellent. Thanks for explaining that. Now, if you look at the ecosystem, ecosystem could mean different thing depending on who you look at. There are users. Of course, there are creators who are creating these technologies. And then there are SaaS providers. And then there are infrastructure builders. So can you also talk about, according to you or when we talk purely from business perspective, who would be the constituency that you look at, how they’re contributing, how they’re benefiting? So let’s talk about, who would you name?

Larry Carvalho: So the ecosystem is broken up into three major players who fall into this space. One of the end users who are the final beneficiaries, the SaaS companies who are giving end users the capabilities. For example, Salesforce as a CRM company giving companies a CRM value. And then the, I call infrastructure pass. So when you think about Amazon, Amazon got the infrastructure to deliver all the value. And on top of that, they have a whole bunch of capabilities from database to integration to DevOps built in within Amazon. So they are a combination of an infrastructure and platform that deliver cloud native capabilities to their customers to build solutions on.

So these, in my opinion, are the three major areas of sets of end users or ecosystem who are using the cloud native technologies to deliver value to their customers. With an end user, their customers are the users, the line of business. If it is the SaaS companies, the SaaS users, the CRM users for Salesforce. And for the infrastructure pass, they’re delivering it to startups. Startups are building brand new solutions on top of Amazon, Google, Microsoft. All of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, also called the hyperscalers, have capabilities to deliver cloud native solutions to their companies. And I’m just talking about the US based outside of the US year of Alibaba and other companies who are also major hyperscalers in other parts of the world.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Excellent. One more thing that is happening when you’re talking, users. Users, you name some, and they are also kind of [inaudible 00:05:26]. They have their own in house capabilities. But when we look at the adoption of these cloud native technologies, there are a lot of start ups, there are a lot of players who are not traditionally tech players. So that’s why we are also seeing a lot of adoption of low code and no code. So what role do you see this is playing, once again, going back to the business value of cloud technologies?

Larry Carvalho: I think low code, no code powered by cloud native technologies is another game changer. What I’m seeing is there is a big demand for applications, and there is a deficiency in resources or a shortage of resources in building those applications for customers. As a result, what you see is as the line of business says, “Hey, can you build me this application?” And if it is a professional developer, somebody who really understands Java and says, “Hey, I can build this solution in Java.” They look and say, “These are all the requests that I’m having from my line of business. Why should I write this in Java or something else? Why can’t I just use a low code, no code solution to build an app within two weeks? Within four weeks? And I don’t have to worry about security. I don’t have to worry about the data model. I don’t have to worry about any of this.” That is a big game changer in application development today, as I see it.

Swapnil Bhartiya: It once again, cloud native technologies, that adoption is growing. Awareness is there. It’s not like a lot of other technology where you have to go and explain. But if I ask you to just kind of summarize that, allude to that in the beginning itself, but how you either try to tell people or how businesses are trying to capture the value that actually they can get from cloud… whenever new technologies come in, people tend to embrace them. But what really matters is what value they actually get.

Larry Carvalho: So I’m seeing a whole new area in edge computing as a major area of innovation, of investment by companies to do that last mile innovation. When I say last mile, can I do grocery deliveries where you have curbside pickup? Where you have automated vehicles going out to that curbside pickup and do it? You could put a person to go there every time, or you could put a robot. But for that, you need edge technologies. For that edge technologies, you need containers, intelligence built at the edge. What happens is the amount of benefits and efficiencies that you can get is significant. The value of, or the return on investment is huge when you do an edge solution. So you got to think about what, can a mining company do? What can a retail company do? And even if it is insurance, how can you capture how the car is driven? And you start charging insurance premiums based on who is using the car, how are they using, how are they driving it? So you reward or incentivize better driving habits.

So you’ve got these benefits from an industry value, but then you have cloud native technologies, which allow you to go and deliver the edge solutions by pushing containers on the edge and having one way to deliver it. I see that being a big area. So, just to wrap up, there are these new areas coming out. I have written a blog post of about 14 companies on my website, robuscloud.com/blogs, that you can see 14 companies and how are they delivering business value in their specific environment? And I plan do more on speaking to end users, to vendors on how are they using these technologies, and what is the business value they’re capturing? I think that is a missing piece of these technologies. It’s great to know this is a good technology. You do it with the… but bottom line, why should me as an insurance CEO, insurance company CEO, or an automotive industry CEO, or in oil and gas, why should we cover it? And I want to be able to deliver that message as I write more blog posts in the future.

Swapnil Bhartiya: And you do more videos like these as well.

Larry Carvalho: Absolutely. I think if we can do that, we can continue this conversation and I’d be happy to be on your platform and talk to folks about the business value of cloud native technologies any time.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Excellent. Larry, thank you so much once again for sitting down here. And I look forward to doing more shows like that in future. Thank you.

Larry Carvalho: Great. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

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