Your infrastructure,

applications,
and clouds.
All together now.

nutanix.com/together
Issue 6
Oct 2019

THE TEAM

PUBLISHER
Julie O’Brien

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Jordan McMahon

MANAGING EDITOR
Lauren Willard

ART DIRECTOR
Michal Iluz

LEAD DESIGNER
Steffen Pedersen

DESIGNERS
Noy Avisror
Sookie Park

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
B2BWriters.com
David Ball
Joanie Wexler
Erin Poulson
Jennifer Redovian

© 2019 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved.

Nutanix is a trademark of Nutanix, Inc.,
registered in the United States and other
countries. All other brand names mentioned
herein are for identification purposes
only and may be the trademarks of their
respective holder(s).

Disclaimer: The views and opinions

expressed in this magazine are those of
the respective authors, and not those of
Nutanix, Inc. or any of its other employees or
affiliates. Nutanix has not endorsed any Interested in subscribing? Send an email to nextmagazine@nutanix.com
of the content contained herein. To contribute to NEXT Magazine, email our editor: nextmagazine@nutanix.com
6 Letter from the Publisher

OPINIONS
8 Edge Computing, Redux

12 The Road Less Traveled

BUSINESS
18 Let Me Be Clear

24 The Secret Ingredients to a Winning Workplace

TECH TRENDS
32 Sound Science

38 10 Tech Milestones: Retrospective 2009-2019

40 DevOps is Reshaping IT & Fueling Dynamic

Learning Organizations

46 10 Things You May Not Know About Kubernetes

LIFESTYLES
52 Game, Set, Match

56 The Science of Finding Out

 LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
Juntos. Ensemble. BMecTe. Insieme. 共に. Welcome to the sixth issue
of NEXT Magazine and our newly-released brand campaign, All
Together Now!

Together has been synonymous with Nutanix since our founding as

a company in 2009. Hyperconverged infrastructure, after all, is about
bringing compute, storage, networking, and virtualization together into
a single software platform. It’s about bringing IT teams together to deliver
the next big innovation for their organizations—whether that’s building
hybrid clouds, a new DevOps practice, or mission-critical business
applications. And with Nutanix, it’s about working all together with our
partners, our ecosystem of IT providers, our technology champions, and
our people, as one community.

Together is reinforced in so many more meaningful ways—and especially

in this issue of NEXT. You’ll read four inspiring stories of innovation in the
world of audio and sound on p. 32, and discover how edge computing is
shaking up the status quo on p. 8.

We’ll delve into how to break down walls and bring DevOps, IT, and
business leaders together, as luminary Gene Kim shows in his new book
The Unicorn Project, featured on p. 40.

And we’ll highlight strategies for working better together with direct
reports and leaders by “delivering clear messages to build each other
up,” as Kim Scott expresses in her principle of “radical candor,” (p. 18)
and as Peter Kreiner exemplifies with his management style and team at
world-renowned restaurant Noma (p. 24).

We hope the stories inside this edition of NEXT Magazine give you new
ideas and inspiration for working, leading, innovating, and thriving—all
together now.

Enjoy!

Julie O’Brien
SVP, Nutanix Corporate Marketing
@julieaobrien

6 NEXT
OPINIONS
EDGE COMPUTING,
REDUX
Enterprise datacenters are transitioning into specialized architectures
including pockets of processing driven by IoT apps that need real-time
data. But this isn’t edge computing’s first rodeo.

By Steve Ginsberg

It’s common in the IT business to see timeworn concepts frequently recycled and applied to
solve modern problems. It’s not a bad thing; in fact, sometimes history can provide the context
we need to understand how the latest IT models work.

Take the much-talked-about IT edge, for example. Today’s edge represents a next-generation
shift where data processing occurs. While processing has already been seeping out of traditional
datacenters and into regional sites and public cloud infrastructure for some time now, edge
computing is pushing it out even farther, to many more distributed, remote locations.

8 OPINIONS
The Fragmenting Datacenter Between networks
For many organizations, the traditional datacenter is splin- Until recently, the term “edge” was used predominantly
tering to allow workloads to run in the place best suited in the context of communications networks. In networking
for them, based on such variables as performance, cost, parlance, the edge signifies a device—usually a router (or,
security, and management. Those processing locations if you're going back a couple of decades, multiplexers,
can be the datacenter, a public cloud infrastructure, and, gateways, and other types of gear that may have attached
increasingly, small satellite datacenters that aggregate data to routers). This equipment linked local corporate networks
processing from nearby devices. Some workloads simply to a wide-area network (WAN) and/or the Internet.
run best directly within the network-connected machines
we call Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors, and The WAN edge is and was physically one or more such
those devices might be anywhere in the world. devices in a datacenter, server room, or wiring closet,
each with a LAN connection on one side and a WAN
Welcome to the modern-day “edge.” connection on the other. When mobile networks took
off, of course, the network edge expanded to include
The primary goal of edge computing is to reduce latency anywhere there was a user with a smart mobile device
in situations where instantaneous application response and a network connection.
times can save an organization piles of money, while vastly
improving the processes or decision-making, and even Between users and networks
save lives. In my time as CIO at Pandora, we focused on the edge
concept from the perspective of the content provider
IoT and Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices can be located in who ran our own content-delivery network, or CDN. As
planes, driverless cars, agricultural fields, in underwater a music streaming and Internet radio service, we cared
robots, on oil rigs, and a million other places. Many are greatly about quality of service. No one wants to listen to
hard at work collecting data that can be most valuable music that’s choppy or has dead spaces while the content
at the location where it’s created—not after it’s been stream is buffering. CDNs, like those operated by Akamai,
hauled back over a long-distance network to a corporate Cloudflare, Fastly, Netflix, and others, use a number of
datacenter or public cloud, then sliced, diced, and tricks to accelerate the delivery of music and other media
evaluated. In today’s world, there are classes of actionable to Internet-connected devices to avoid this type
data that age fast. of performance degradation.

Stale data can have disastrous results. A matter of millisec- A primary technique they use is edge caching, which
onds delay can make a difference when a self-driving car involves storing replicas of content in multiple servers
needs to detect and avoid a pedestrian, so cars will contin- placed strategically at the edges of the Internet so that
ue to process the most important data on-board, locally on they’re closer to users. Because physical distance incurs
the device edge. Similarly when a surveillance system with latency and latency is anathema to real-time content like
facial recognition tries to identify a fleeing criminal, it may streaming music feeds, being close to the network edge
not be desirable to risk a network path traversing multiple arose as an important solution for Pandora for shrinking the
networks into and out of the public cloud. users’ physical distance to the source of our content. They
helped boost performance and, in turn, the all-important

How the Edge Has Evolved

customer experience.

The edge is an IT concept that’s been around for decades. Similarly, traditional communications service provider
If you want to consider the big picture, you can think of the (CSP) networks have edges. Because these edges are
edge as the intelligent device (or collection of intelligent critical to CSPs’ ability to deploy services with solid
devices) closest to one of the following: customer experiences, there’s an Open Networking
Foundation project called Central Office Re-architected as
• The external routers in your datacenter (your edge) a Datacenter (CORD), using virtualization and cloud-native
technologies to help the CSP edge similarly deliver high-
• The transition point between communications performing end-user experiences.
networks (the network edge)
Reducing latency and boosting performance may be
• A person using the device to get a computational increasingly important in IoT applications. The speed with
which IoT applications can affect a person’s health, safety,
result or consuming content from it (the device edge)
or decision-making parallels what we accomplished with
• An unmanned machine (IoT device) using local com- CDNs and what CSPs are now trying to do with their
pute to derive a computational result (device edge) own networks.
Between IoT Apps and datacenter over a network, helping to ease network

Processors bandwidth requirements and cost. It also reduces

processing resource requirements and costs in the cloud
Real-time IoT applications are cropping up in planes, under
the ocean, in autonomous vehicles, in smart utility meters, or datacenter.
smart buildings, in Web-connected surveillance cameras
on light poles…the list goes on. That might seem like a minor consideration, if your
enterprise is piloting small IoT rollouts. But with a possible
Edge computing combines with analytics, artificial 75 billion devices connected to the IoT by 2025 and using
intelligence (AI), and automation directly in these devices— public cloud resources for storage and aggregate analyses,
or in some cases, in mini-datacenters very nearby—to the volume and cost will add up fast.
make data actionable almost instantly. Consider, for

How Enterprises Are Coping

example, that financial trading systems, augmented and
virtual reality, surveillance cameras, healthcare monitors,
and industrial robots generate vast amounts of data that How are IT teams embracing edge computing, from a
are the most valuable at the moment they’re created. management and security standpoint? With pockets of
Edge computing attempts to make it available right at processing everywhere and billions of IoT endpoints
that moment. opening up portals into organizations' networks and IT
infrastructure, this could become a thorny task.
Transporting data over large distances for processing,
either to a traditional datacenter or a public cloud, incurs In some cases, such as in factory environments, the IIoT
delay that real-time applications can’t tolerate. The devices that need managing and securing may already
analytics and AI can be bundled into the local processing be local. So they can be controlled by local systems and
so that the data becomes actionable almost in parallel with personnel according to existing policy and procedures.
it being processed.
Beyond that, enterprises will choose between
There are other, secondary benefits to edge computing in traditional datacenter providers, new entrants and
the IoT world. Perhaps most important, local processing if CORD is successful, new locations that are within
filters data, reducing the volumes sent to the cloud or telecom companies.

10 OPINIONS
Containers
From a management perspective, smart enterprises are policies in a standard way across private clouds, public
managing the edge around containers. The approach clouds, and edge locations, so that every time a new device
is parallel to what happened when work-flows became is introduced, you don’t have to secure it separately and
mobile and there were no longer definable network introduce the potential for error.
perimeters. Containers take virtual machines (VMs), which
free application software and operating systems from While all this integration work is not yet complete,
hardware, a step further. They give code just the minimum significant progress is expected this year. With some
it needs to run, helping keep ports and libraries you hard work and a bit of luck, this orchestration will be
don’t need from being exploited. Many options exist and available by the time large-scale IoT and edge computing
can be architected along with VMs or hyperconverged implementations are ready in most enterprises.
infrastructure (HCI).

Orchestration and integration efforts

In addition, the industry is working to make on-premises,
edge, and public cloud environments operate similarly
enough that managing the distributed environment
looks like a simple extension of your datacenter. Part
of these efforts involves developing cloud-native tools
that empower companies to build and run highly Steve Ginsberg is a CIO Technology Analyst at GigaOm
and a musician who is based in San Francisco. He’s the
scalable applications in any cloud or edge environment.
former CIO and VP of Technical Operations at Pandora,
Increasingly, you should be able to create centralized one of the Internet’s largest streaming platforms.
 Philippine Telegraph & Telephone Corporation (PT&T) has
embarked on a business and tech transformation journey
orchestrated by new owners determined to reestablish the
company’s status as a major telco. As a key player in that
transformation, Ella Mae Ortega wears a lot of hats.

She’s the company’s CIO, tasked with overseeing the

internal IT needs of the company, and is responsible for
providing IT solutions to external customers, as well.
She’s also about to expand her team, as her company
begins to roll out value-added IT services to small and
medium businesses.

It’s a decidedly full plate, and that’s just the way she likes it.

An Anomaly Among Peers

With this level of responsibility in a high-tech company,
Ortega is something of a rarity. Women account for just
26 percent of the computing workforce, according to
McKinsey & Company. These figures, astonishingly, have
been on the decline for the past quarter century. Yet
Ortega has managed to land a C-level executive job at
a tech firm in a country where it’s largely unheard of for
women to be in top executive positions.

The gender gap is far from limited to the Philippines.

Women receive only 19 percent of Bachelor’s computer
and information science degrees, McKinsey estimates.
That low figure is despite nearly three-fourths (74 percent)
of young girls expressing interest in science, technology,
engineering, and math (STEM) fields and computer
science, according to Girls Who Code. When it comes to
computers, girls and women obviously become deterred
somewhere along the way.

It remains something of a mystery as to why. Despite

reports of diversity programs and commitments to gender
equality, the proportion of women in the workplace
overall has stalled, according to McKinsey’s Women in
the Workplace 2018 report. The study reports: “Women
continue to be vastly underrepresented at every level.
For women of color, it’s even worse. Only about one in
five senior leaders is a woman, and one in twenty-five is a
woman of color.”

One stumbling block, of course, is the crossroads all

workers reach when it comes to juggling career and
family. More often than not, it’s the woman who makes the
sacrifice: according to Pew Research, about 7 percent of
stay-at-home parents are men compared with 27 percent
of women.

In this regard, Ortega once again goes against the norm.

It was her husband who took charge at home when the
couple’s second child was born. “I tend to be someone

NEXT 13
who doesn’t want to follow the normal course of things,” you work with are the ones who enable the execution of
she concedes. your business plan,” she says. “No matter how good a
plan is, you need to get your team on board with the plan
Bucking the Odds early on.”

Ortega hasn’t let the gender gap get in her way. She Providing these people with specific responsibilities and
describes simply “being herself” in an industry where tasks gives them some skin in the game to succeed,
women often report having to struggle against established according to Ortega. Their success, she says, flows along
old-boy networks, clichéd labels, and time-worn prejudices to their managers, company executives, and the business
to make their mark. as a whole, like a series of dominoes.

In this respect, knowingly or not, Ortega may subscribe to Inspiration: Mom and Office
the escalating mantra for so-called “authentic leadership.” Automation
It’s a leadership style that, in a nutshell, demands leaders
who are comfortable in their own skin at work, embrace The eldest child born in the Philippines, Ortega always
emotion as a positive trait, know their strengths and looked up to her mother, who ran her own business and
weaknesses, and put the mission and the goals of the often had her young daughter type up correspondence,
organization ahead of their own self-interest. purchase orders, and invoices.

Indeed, says Ortega: “What has helped me is a strong “I could see where word processing and other office
personality. I know I can do the same job others can. I automation changed the way my mom operated her
don’t overthink the fact that I’m different. I guess you’d just
call that having confidence.”

She also credits her mentors and training program at IBM

Global Services where she cut her teeth on tech. “One of
the first things I learned from my regional manager is that
you have to hit the ground flying—not just running. You’re One of the first things
surrounded by people who can help you, but you have to
stay resourceful, to think out of the box, and survive on I learned from my
your own, without relying too much on others. I had to
really study and learn the ropes about the IBM hardware,
regional manager is
the software and services business, and the company’s
partner ecosystem, as well.”
that you have to hit

Management Style
the ground flying – not
just running. You’re
Though she started out in the sales and marketing field,
“I had to thoroughly learn tech to be able to sell and to surrounded by people
support customers. And I was surrounded by engineers.”
While most of her male peers would question her who can help you,
credentials or experience in the early part of her career,
she says, she never found the need to be dominating or but you have to stay
aggressive in her behavior, believing that firm and honest
opinions would take her to where she is today. resourceful, to think
When Ortega became a sales manager and found herself out of the box, and
managing people older than she was, for example,
“building their trust was #1,” she says. “One thing I survive on your own,
learned as a manager is that you really have to
understand the people around you, especially people without relying too
you manage, professionally and personally. Because
every person is different.” much on others.
And she feels that leaders are only as good as the people
who support them. “I have a strong belief that the people

14 OPINIONS
business and made life easier back in the early 1990s. I with her PT&T customers and for building smart cities
got intrigued,” she says. “I wanted to be part of the IT down the road.
revolution and do something that would really transform
the way companies do business.” Analytics also plays a role in understanding customer
behaviors and buying patterns, for improved and better
Like many of her Filipino peers, she got her degree in targeted marketing. To that end, “We’re also running a
business administration. But while many of her friends mini data governance project for standardizing the way
took the finance and banking career path, she decided we capture customer data that we store,” Ortega explains.
to try her luck at an IT curriculum that was available
to BA majors. “I took the hardest courses as electives: Compared to the U.S. and Japan, says Ortega, “the
engineering, management information systems, and so Philippines is a late adopter of technology. There is still
forth. I like math and numbers.” much to be done. If you don’t adapt, you’ll be left behind
by your competitors who can do things better than you.”
In fact, at around age 10 or 11, she told her parents that
she wanted to be an engineer in a culture that she says And what advice does she have for those few women who
overwhelmingly prefers children to become doctors stick it out with IT careers?
and nurses.
“Be confident enough to show everyone that you can do a
She describes herself as the sibling with “the strongest lot of things concurrently and do them well. It’s possible to
personality. I was always outgoing and active in school and be a leader and follower at the same time.”
extracurricular activities.” Keeping herself well-rounded
continues to pay off in her current role, where she says,
“there’s lots of room for growth and improvement.”

Embracing Change
Ella Mae Ortega is General Manager, IT Services, at
One growth area she describes is aligning tech with the PT&T in the National Capital Region, Philippines. Since
business at PT&T. She says analytics is playing a big role graduating Cum Laude at the University of the Philippines
Diliman, she has gained more than 22 years of leadership
in that and is currently one of the telco’s biggest initiatives.
experience in multinational businesses in the information
technology and services industry.
“We’re starting with using analytics to improve internal
operations for greater efficiencies.” She says she’s very
interested in applying the same technology to share

NEXT 15
BUSINESS
17
CLEAR
Let Me Be

How Radical Candor in the workplace

can strengthen teams and empower
employees to do their best.

By Kim Scott,
author of Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass
Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
The idea of Radical Candor, caring personally while chal- of dollars for two different startups giving presentations.
lenging directly, is simple to understand, but not easy to put I thought I was pretty good at it. So I wondered, why had
into practice. But if you can put it into practice, it will help no one told me? And what was it about my boss that made
you build teams that enable everyone to do the best work it so seemingly easy for her to give me such a memorable
of their lives and build the best relationships of their careers. dose of Radical Candor? It’s important to note that when she
delivered the feedback, she didn’t personalize it. She didn’t
To explain what I mean by Radical Candor, I’ll share an say I was stupid. She said saying “um” made me sound
example from my own career. I had just joined Google stupid. There’s a difference.
and I had to give a presentation to the founders and CEO.
Like any normal person, I was nervous. Luckily for me, the Care Personally, Challenge Directly
business I was leading was on fire, and everyone responded In the case of my boss, her ability to get through to me came
positively to me. When I was done, I was feeling pretty down to two simple things. I knew, from past experiences, that
good. As I walked out of the meeting with my boss, she she cared about me—not just as an employee, but as a human
began telling me about the being. I also knew that she
things that had gone well in was never going to let her
the meeting. concern for my short-term
feelings get in the way
Eventually, she said, “You I knew that my boss of telling me something I
said ‘um’ a lot in there. cared about me—not just as an really needed to hear. She
Were you aware of that?” employee, but as a human being. I also cared for me personally and
Inwardly I was relieved knew she was never going to let her concern challenged me directly. In
because that didn’t seem so for my short-term feelings get in the order to practice Radical
bad. I waved my hand as if way of telling me something I really Candor, both of these
to brush off the statement needed to hear. elements need to be part of
and said, “Yeah, it’s a verbal the equation.
tic, no big deal.” Then she
said, “I know a great speech What does it mean to care
coach. I know Google would personally? This is what I
pay for it. Would you like an introduction?” I made the think of as the “give a damn” dimension of Radical Candor.
brushoff gesture again and said I was too busy to meet It can be difficult in the workplace because somewhere
with a speech coach. At that point, she stopped walking, around age 18, when we get our first real job, people tell
looked right at me, and said, “I can see from the way us to be professional. Many people take that to mean they
you’re waving me off that I’m going to have to be a lot should leave their emotions, their humanity, at home and
more direct with you. When you say ‘um’ every third word show up to work like some kind of robot. This mindset
in your presentations, it makes you sound stupid.” makes it almost impossible to form real relationships with
anyone. When you’re focused on just being professional, it’s
That got my attention. And I went to the speech coach. too easy to start down the road to apathy. Apathy can lead
to treating others like foes instead of friends—and to serious
A lot of people might think it was mean of her to say that office politics.
I sounded stupid, but it was the kindest thing she could
have done for me at that moment of my career. If she The simple way to combat apathy and unnecessary office
hadn’t used just those words with me—and by the way, politics is common human decency, which is something ev-
someone else might not have needed those words—I eryone deserves. And when you’re really lucky, you actually
wouldn’t have gone to the speech coach. And I wouldn’t love your colleagues and have real human relationships at
have realized that she was not exaggerating. I literally said work. Those relationships are what help you do the best
‘um’ every third word. work of your life, and they also give your work meaning.

This was real news to me because I had been giving pre- Unfortunately, love is not all you need. The Beatles got
sentations throughout my entire career. I had raised millions that wrong. You also need to challenge people directly.
This is what I think of as the “willing to piss people off” their feelings, you fail to tell them something they really
dimension of Radical Candor. Most of us are very reluctant would be better off knowing. You fail to challenge them
to piss people off because of what we were told not at 18 directly. I call this quadrant Ruinous Empathy.
years old, but at 18 months old. We were told, “If you don’t
have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” One of the worst moments in my career was when I had to
fire a team member whom everyone loved. He was a great
And if you’re a manager or a team leader, congratulations! guy, but his work was subpar. For the 10 months he worked
It’s now your job to say it. I would even argue that if you with us, I failed him by not telling him directly when his work
really care about your colleagues, it’s not just your job wasn’t good enough. When I let him go, I made myself a
to say it, it’s actually your moral obligation. You must tell very solemn promise that I would never make that mistake
people when they’re screwing up, in a way that helps them again, and I would do everything in my power to help
not screw up again. You also must tell people when they’re everyone around me avoid making that mistake as well.
doing great work, so they can do more great work; Radical
Candor applies to praise as well as criticism. Begin Practicing Radical Candor
Behavior change is hard. And Radical Candor does require
The Feedback Framework: behavior change, because most people have a habit of
Avoid the Pitfalls silence when it comes to calling
What makes Radical Candor out problems—as well as when it
radical is that it’s a deviation comes to providing praise. Very
from the norm, which tends few people change their lives
to fall somewhere between around a philosophy. You need
acting like a jerk and avoiding to identify specific things you can
confrontation altogether. The do. Here are some concrete ways
purpose of Radical Candor is to think about giving and receiv-
to create a new normal where ing guidance.
feedback—what I prefer to call
guidance—is both kind and Solicit Feedback
clear, specific, and sincere. Radical Candor is not solely
about bosses giving feedback
Because Radical Candor can to employees. In fact, it starts
be hard to put into practice, I by soliciting feedback up, down,
developed a simple framework and sideways. You start by asking
that you can keep top of mind in for feedback because you need
the heat of the moment. These to prove you can take it before
are names for mistakes that we all make, all the time. Use this you start dishing it out. One of the best moments to solicit
framework like a compass to help guide individual conversa- Radical Candor, especially from the people who work for
tions to a better place. you, is in a one-on-one meeting.

Sometimes we challenge someone directly but fail to show Come up with a go-to question you can use. One I like
them that we care personally. That results in Obnoxious is, “What could I do, or stop doing, that would make it
Aggression. When we realize we’ve been a jerk or fallen easier to work with me?” The key thing is to show people
into obnoxious aggression, we often wind up in the worst that you really want to know the answer. It’s not just a pro
place of all: Manipulative Insincerity. This means you’re forma, “Do you have any feedback for me?” If you ask
neither caring personally nor challenging directly. It’s a that, you’re wasting your breath. Nobody at work wants to
false apology, or acting with apathy, or those moments give you feedback.
when people behave in a political way, backstabbing, or
being passive-aggressive. When people do speak up, listen with the intent to under-
stand, not to respond. Manage your own natural tendency
Most mistakes that get made in the workplace happen in to feel defensive. Try saying, “Just to make sure I under-
the final quadrant, where you do care personally about the stand…” and then say it back to them, respectfully. You
other person, but because you’re so worried about hurting want to make the person feel heard.
Finally, reward the candor. If you agree with the feedback, Criticize in private, praise in public. It seems kind of
this is easy. You fix the problem and let people know. obvious, but people forget this all the time. One of the
“Thanks so much to Joe for telling me about this problem. tricky things is that, it’s easier to look smart offering
Here’s what I’ve done to fix it. Have I gone far enough?” criticism than praise. But remember, your job is not to
look smart; it’s to help your team improve.
If you disagree with the feedback, however, it’s a little
more complicated to figure out how to reward the candor. Make sure your feedback is not about personality. Radically
Find whatever five or ten percent there is in what the candid feedback is not calling someone stupid or a genius
person said that you do agree with and point that out, because that doesn’t show the person how to stop or repeat
and then say you’ll get back to them. You’ll want to explain what they did. In addition, this focuses on personality versus
why you disagree with what was said. Give a respectful, behavior. Behavior can change; personality can’t. Practicing
longer explanation of why you disagree. Disagreements Radical Candor means you are being specific and sincere.
can be great ways to strengthen relationships—what
really destroys relationships is when you make people Gauge Your Feedback
feel invisible. Both dimensions of Radical Candor (Caring Personally and
Challenging Directly) are sensitive to context. They get
Give Praise and measured at the listener’s
Criticism ear, not at the speaker’s
After you’ve received feedback, mouth. You may think you’re
move on to giving praise. being radically candid, but
We start first with the good stuff one person may not have
before we start giving criticism. heard any criticism at all,
It’s important to correct for our another may have heard it
innate negativity bias! as ruinously empathetic, and
yet another as obnoxious
Specific praise helps the person aggression. You have to
and the team understand what adjust for each individual.
success looks like. You might You have to be not just self
think that praise is equivalent aware, but relationally and
to Care Personally, and criticism culturally aware.
is equivalent to Challenge
Directly, but that’s not the Radical Candor works only if
case; radically candid praise the other person understands
and criticism both include care that your efforts at caring
and challenge. The purpose of personally and challenging
praise is to show people what directly are delivered in
to do more of. The purpose of good faith.
criticism is to show people what to do less of.
Adjust your feedback for the person you’re talking to, and
The best guidance I’ve gotten in my career has usually also for the culture where you’re working. I managed a
come in impromptu, two-minute conversations. And go team in Tel Aviv and a team in Tokyo, and Radical Candor
humbly into those conversations. The reason I call it candor sounds very different in Tel Aviv than it does in Tokyo.
and not truth is that if I say, “Let me tell you the truth,”
you’re immediately defensive because I’m kind of implying If you’re not sure how what you’re saying is landing, pay
I have a pipeline to God and you don’t know shit from attention to the person’s response. Sometimes, people
shinola. Not a great way to start a conversation. will get sad or angry. That’s your cue to move up on the
Care Personally dimension to understand why the person is
Be humble and state your intention to be helpful. Say, having this response. It is not your cue to get mad or shut
“Here’s what I see. I’m curious to know what you see. down or back off. Meet emotion with compassion.
Let’s figure out if it’s a problem, and if it is, let’s work “It seems like you’re upset. How can I help?”
together to solve it.”
Perhaps the person will brush you off the way I did to my Last but not least, share these ideas and frameworks with
boss. They won’t hear it. This is when you want to move to your team. Think about those moments in your life when
the Challenge Directly dimension of Radical Candor. It is someone has told you something that stung a little bit
your job to get through to people. It is your job to be clear at the time, but helped improve your career in the long
enough for them to understand, while also kind enough for run. Share these stories with your team. It’s hard to share
them to hear what you’re saying. failures with your team, but when you show grit, it makes it
much easier for people to understand Radical Candor and
Respond to defensiveness by asking them to repeat back how it can improve their relationships at work and in life.
what you said, to gauge whether they understand. You
can name how you feel: “I don’t feel like I’m being heard
here.” You can say what my boss said: “I can see I’m going
to have to be a lot more direct with you.”

Encourage Feedback A lot of people might think it

was mean of her to say that I
As a manager of a team, it’s important to encourage
sounded stupid, but it was the kindest
feedback and Radical Candor between people. Don’t thing she could have done for me
let team members talk badly to you behind each other’s at that moment of my career.
backs. Encourage them to go talk to each other directly. If
they can’t resolve it, get them to come talk to you together
at the same time. Be as fast and fair as possible. Conflict
resolution may not be your favorite part of the job, but it is
part of your job.
The right
choice
To Backup and Recover Your
Nutanix-led Data Center

Powerful backup and recovery

Purpose-built for Nutanix

Optimized for Nutanix AHV, Files, and Objects

Now available with Nutanix Mine

Join us in the Platinum Village to speak to our technical experts!

People Power

THE SECRET
INGREDIENTS
TO A WINNING
WORKPLACE
Find out how world-class Noma’s hiring philosophy
helped the restaurant become a culinary supernova.

Since 2007, Peter Kreiner has been CEO of the legendary

two-Michelin-star restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Opened in 2003 by innovative chef René Redzepi, the
restaurant is renowned for its unique interpretation of Nordic
cuisine. Noma has been ranked by Restaurant magazine as the
#1 restaurant in the world four times in the past decade. It has
also been ranked in the top five restaurants in the world three
times during the same period.

What’s the key to Noma’s success? The inventive, playful dishes

made from fresh, locally sourced ingredients, certainly. But
just as important is the warm, welcoming environment that
Kreiner, Redzepi, and team have created for their guests. In this
conversation, NEXT Magazine learns more about Peter Kreiner’s
approach to hiring staff and how choosing the right people has
contributed to the landmark restaurant’s stellar success.
NEXT Magazine (NM): How much of Noma’s success do personality. And that goes for all positions, the people I
you attribute to your staff? have on the business side, the operations as well as the
chefs and front of house. All of them.
Peter Kreiner (PK): For me, the team and everything that
we do at the restaurant plays a vast role in the success NM: Why is curiosity such an important quality to you?
we’ve had. Of course, the main thing is the fact that René
came up with the approach of using the Nordic terroir as PK: If you are curious by nature, then you are open. You
the guiding star for all the ingredients and everything he want to learn, explore the world. You want to know all
puts together on the plate. That has obviously created a about things. And when you do that, you gain a lot of
strong narrative. But if we were not able to actually deliver knowledge, and that means you have more to give to our
something from a service perspective that lived up to guests as well. Everybody at Noma is part of creating the
people’s highest expectations, then I don’t think it would guest experience. It’s not only the waiters, not just the
matter if it was a traditional cuisine or something new. chefs, it’s all of us working in different roles and capacities.
Our team and human effort are the main reasons we have We all need to take the approach that our customers are
achieved what we have. our guests and they should be treated as such.

NM: When hiring new employees, what kind of person NM: What kind of guest experience are you trying to
do you look for? achieve at Noma?

PK: The ideal candidate is a person who is very curious, PK: I want people to have fun. I want them to be
willing to learn, and who likes people. I believe that the challenged. I want them to be excited. I want their
personality, the drive, the willingness to learn and adapt to experience to be playful and, of course, super delicious.
new things—these are the most important things to us. We Then, when it comes to all the more basic things, I want
have traveled around the world with our staff, we have put everything to be super smooth, super professional, but still
them in new situations, and we have pushed people done in a very down-to-earth way. We don’t want to be stiff
far beyond their comfort zones. But I think the ability to in our approach, in the way we serve, the way we speak
adjust and to come to us, not just with confidence and the to people. We want to be thinking ahead, thinking about
belief that they can add to the team, but with humbleness what can happen and hopefully, feel and believe that we
and willingness to learn, because we have our way of are two steps ahead of whatever can happen. When I get
doing things. feedback from guests who’ve dined with us, it makes me
extremely happy and proud when people say that they
Of course they need to have skills, but I truly believe enjoyed the food—and that they also found that it was a
that it’s easier to learn job skills than it is to change your very special atmosphere, how everybody seemed to love
I believe that no
matter what you do,
if you are working in
tech or restaurants or
media, it all depends
on good people.
Ensure that you have
the right ones on
board. They’re the
ones who make a
difference. Look out
for them, take care of
them, let them grow,
and listen to them.
what they’re doing and how that transforms the way it feels
to be there for guests. That’s very special to me and I’m
very very proud of that, of having that atmosphere.

NM: What makes your staff love what they do?

PK: We hire people that we know we can truly trust.

People we know will deliver. People who can grow with us,
learn new trends, the things we’re doing, and also add to
it. We’ve never believed there was only one or two people
in the restaurant with that passion for coming up with new
and innovative ideas. We always welcome input and ideas
from everybody on the team.

I hope and believe we’ve created a place where it’s

genuinely a nice place to work. We try to do a lot for our
staff—I know a lot of restaurants do. But one of the latest
things we’ve done is we have closed for dinner on Saturday
night. Now if you want to go to Noma on a Saturday, it’s
for lunch only. And our entire staff has Saturday night off.
That is something that we’re quite proud of. To hopefully
create a restaurant where people can also see themselves
for a while, even the people who don’t have big aspirations
of opening a restaurant or becoming entrepreneurs in
other ways.

On top of that, we’ve created a culture where we nurture

and encourage and support colleagues in their own
dreams. For example, we had a pastry chef for 10 years
named Rosio Sanchez, an amazing chef. She worked
many years for us but now has two taquerias as well as a
restaurant in Copenhagen, and they are just mindblowingly
good. Not only have we supported her endeavors, we’ve
also partnered with her to open.

NM: So it seems like the respect you give your

employees and the freedom to innovate are a big
part of what keeps them loyal and happy at Noma.

PK: Yes. In the restaurant trade, you see quite a lot of

turnover of employees. That’s very common. But at Noma,
we have managed to keep people for two or three years or
longer, which some will probably agree is relatively long for
our industry. That makes us happy, but more than that, it
also means we’re working with a tight group of people.

NM: You mentioned previously that you have traveled

with your employees and their families. Can you explain
a bit about that?

PK: Back around 2013 or 2014, we started to entertain the

idea of potentially moving Noma. Things were going well;
we didn’t need to do it, but we liked the idea of deciding
ourselves when to change things up instead of being
forced to. And one of the things René and I had always
dreamt about was to experience the world. And if we could
do that, the team would be better. So in 2015, 2016, and Allow yourselves to be inspired by other businesses that
2017, we created popup restaurants—one in Tokyo, Japan, aren’t even in the same line of business as you are. And
one in Sydney, Australia, and one in Tulum, Mexico. then take the time to do something different and attack
your problems from different angles to increase your
We closed Noma in Copenhagen and brought with us chances of solving them. And never give up.
our culinary philosophy and our name sign and opened
for a couple of months in these three locations. When NM: Can you think of a time when Noma was facing a
we went to Australia, we brought the entire staff, from challenge and the team worked together to solve it?
René and myself to the chefs and front-of-house staff and
dishwashers. And their families. I’ll say that was probably PK: From 2010 to 2012, three years in a row, we won the
the best team-building exercise we could have done! world’s #1 restaurant award. But in 2013 we experienced
some trouble. Some guests came down with norovirus after
We acknowledged that was a big ask of our employees, eating at Noma, and it became an international story. One
but that’s why we look for curious people who like to learn month later, we learned we had lost the #1 restaurant spot.
and who can adapt quickly to new situations. And the Although the norovirus turned out to be caused by factors
popup experience—the overwhelmingly positive response completely out of our control, it still hurt us, and 2013 was
we had—was very humbling. In Australia, we sold out a a really dark time for us. We had been this effective, well-
10-week schedule in about half an hour. That really makes oiled machine that was in the business of making people
you humble. happy, and we were doing the exact opposite.

NM: What advice do you have for other businesses So when those situations happened, we said, "what do we
who want to create that positive environment for do?" Our solution was to come together and say, “look, we
their staff? lost it and these things happened. We need to go out as
a team and show the world what we really believe we can
PK: Show your staff that you really care about them. I do.” So we rallied and worked even harder, and ultimately
believe that no matter what you do, if you are working become even closer as a team. We’ve had ups and downs,
in tech or restaurants or media, it all depends on good but we’ve always remained a cohesive team.
people. Ensure that you have the right ones on board.
They’re the ones who make a difference. Look out for NM: You forgot the happy ending to that story—you
them, take care of them, let them grow, and listen to them. rebounded and won Best Restaurant again in 2014.

Encourage a culture of coming together and being a PK: (laughs) Yes, we did. It was a happy time for us. And
team. I think we should all ask ourselves what we have honestly, for us it was a bigger achievement to re-win the
done today to make a coworker shine or look better. It award in 2014 than it was to win it any of the other years.
gives everybody a sense of belonging, that they’re part
of the team, and they stay longer and want to give more
to your workplace.
TECH/TRENDS
 SOU
ND
SCIE
NCE
Discover the exciting ways technology is transforming the way
we hear—and experience—the world.

32 TECH/ TRENDS
The ability to hear and interpret sounds helped keep
our earliest ancestors alive by alerting them to nearby
danger. It enabled the development of spoken language,
which then gave rise to love poems, Bach concertos, rap
wunderkind Drake, and TED talks.

Regardless of how sound revolutionized human history, our

sense of hearing is quite limited compared to some other
animals. We can detect sounds from 20 Hertz to 20,000
Hertz—but some whales can hear single-digit frequencies,
and dolphins and bats can perceive ultrasonic frequencies
as high as 150,000 Hertz.

Thanks to today’s technology, however, the limits of what

we hear are expanding. Advances in technology are
pushing the boundaries of our perception, allowing us to
hear better, strengthen connections with each other, find
more meaning in what we hear—and even redefine what it
means to be human.

The following stories are just a sampling of the exciting

developments happening today in the science of sound.

Building Bridges through a

Shared Musical Experience
Deaf people have typically experienced music through
vibrations, by standing close to a speaker at a concert, for
example, or putting their hands on a piano while it’s being
played. Though they can detect rhythms and beat, the
experience lacks nuance.

Mick Ebeling considered the situation absurd. He thought

there should be a way for deaf people to experience music
more fully—if not by hearing the actual sounds, at least
feeling more of the dynamic changes and intensity. But
then, Ebeling is used to looking at tough situations and
finding innovative ways to resolve them.

As the founder of Not Impossible Labs, an award-winning

content and technology solution company in Los Angeles,
Ebeling brings great minds together to develop low-cost,
tech-based solutions that solve specific problems and help
people in need.

With Daniel Belquer­—Director of Technology—at

the helm, NIL partnered with deaf singer/songwriter
Mandy Harvey and other deaf and hearing musicians to
create a revolutionary platform made up of wearables,
hardware, software and wireless tools that translate
audio to vibrations listeners can feel across their entire
bodies. Ebeling and his team call it the “Surround Body
Experience” that solutions partner Avnet refined and
helped scale.
By donning a battery-powered harness, two wristbands,
and two ankle bands, individuals can “feel” the music in
real time through more than 20 distinct points of vibration.
Each vibration point has its own dynamics, so wearers
might feel a powerful drum solo as strong vibrations in the
ankle bands, which would melt into the background to be
replaced by stronger vibrations on the torso as the singer
begins a new verse.

Ebeling and his team tested the platform at a Music: Not

Impossible live concert on September 21, 2018, during the
Life Is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas. Approximately 200
concertgoers, a mixed crowd of deaf and hearing music
lovers, were able to suddenly experience music like they
never had before. The result was a completely inclusive
event that brought people together in new ways.

“To see the moment when everything stops being

technical and we have this moment when people who can
hear and people who cannot hear … have no boundaries
anymore—it gives us the opportunity to strip away
the work and just be people experiencing something
together,” says Belquer.

Ebeling has cracked the code to getting people excited

about his causes. The secret is passion. “Passion is
contagious,” he says. “Especially when you are out to
right a wrong. When you operate from the heart, others of
like mind can sense it. It’s visceral, and there’s no stronger a text alert to a family member or designated contact. A
power than when all these like minds and hearts come finger tap on the device or a voice command connects
together to solve problems worth solving.” the hearing aid to the internet through a nearby mobile
device. Accessories like microphones and wireless remotes

A Truly Smart Hearing Aid

help users hear their television and people talking in
noisy environments.

and Next Generation’s

EarPods?
Early in the development, Bhowmik knew that a smart
hearing aid would be truly remarkable if people who
had perfect hearing would find the device useful in their
In early 2017, Achin Bhowmik was faced with an existential daily lives. What if they replaced or inspired innovation in
dilemma: keep giving robots, drones, and machines more today’s wireless Bluetooth earbuds, he thought. This means
human-like senses, or start helping people live better lives. the device could be used to talk on the phone, listen to
The opportunity to re-invent hearing aids and turn them podcasts or music, and replace touch screens with voice
into multi-purpose, internet-connected wellness devices commands to control devices. The discreet device could
was a chance of a lifetime. be a personal assistant for interacting with the digital world
and even offer voice search and speech transcription.
Bhowmik joined Starkey Hearing Technologies with a chief
goal of bringing the capabilities of artificial intelligence Part of the device’s appeal will come from health
and machine learning into what has remained a mostly monitoring features, including heart rate monitoring,
insular hearing device industry. If done right, he strongly steps taken daily, and cognitive activity. The ability to tap
believed that smart hearing devices could be quite into language translation from more than 25 languages
valuable for people both with and without hearing loss. to provide real-time translations could also be a game-
changer. In the future, the hearing aid will feature a
The first revolutionary product from Bhowmik's efforts hydration sensor to alert the wearer they need to drink
is Livio AI. The tiny device has built-in Bluetooth so it water. It will measure body temperature and track emotion
can connect to iOS and Android devices. It has sensors downswings, sleep patterns, and automatically fine tune
that can detect if the wearer takes a fall, which triggers settings to optimize for different environments.
 We will look back in 10 years’ time
and say this was the moment when
people’s attitudes about hearing loss
and hearing aids started to change
because we were empowering them
with all of this technology.
– Dr. Dave Fabry, Starkey Hearing Technologies’ Chief Innovations Officer

Smaller, More Effective teacher at the front of the classroom, perhaps, or the

Cochlear Implants
spouse of a deaf person while eating at a loud restaurant—
to wear a remote microphone that would send signals
directly to the implanted device.
Cochlear implants have been enabling deaf people to hear
since the 1970s. While moderate hearing loss can typically Now researchers at several nationwide centers, including
be resolved with hearing aids, severe or profound hearing NYU Langone Health, are hoping that artificial intelligence
loss requires a cochlear implant. The implant is made up could make it easier to program the devices. Traditional
of two components: The device implanted in the cochlea programming is extremely subjective because it consists
of the inner ear that receives signals and stimulates the of a patient giving verbal feedback to a technician who
cochlear nerve to simulate sound, and an external device manually programs the device. The effectiveness of the
is worn behind the ear and contains microphones, digital programming relies heavily on two variables: how accurate
signal processing chips and a coil that sends signals to the and clear the patient’s feedback is and the technical
implanted device. expertise of the programmer.

Technology has significantly improved the devices and With AI, however, that variability is greatly decreased. The
wearer experience since the early days. The size of the technology uses psychoacoustic and other tests to adjust
external device and battery life are much improved, says devices to recommended pitches and volumes. The system
Jan Larky, Audiology Director of the Cochlear Implant can send sounds directly from the tester’s computer to the
Center at Stanford University School of Medicine. Because implant’s processor, and settings are recommended based
many wearers still perceive a societal stigma about hearing on results that are compared to a database of performance
aids, size matters—the smaller the better. A smaller size information from many patients. Researchers expect
also allows wearers to protect the device more easily in outcomes to improve as they continue to add information
water, so deaf children could take swimming lessons, for to the database and integrate it with the system’s
instance, and wear the external device in the pool so they predictive capabilities.
can still hear the instructor.
By removing the guesswork from implant programming,
The microphones in the external device are better as well. AI enables more patients to get optimal performance from
Wireless technology makes it possible for someone—a their implants.
The Artist Who
Hears Colors
Born with achromatopsia, or complete color blindness, he says. “The antenna could be charged by the energy
artist Neil Harbisson grew up seeing the world in shades created by my own brain activity, by the energy of my
of gray. In 2003, while studying music composition at breath, by kinetic energy or by adding a small turbine in
Dartington College of Arts in England, Harbisson met a blood vessel.”
Adam Montandon, a guest lecturer on the topic of
cybernetics. The two clicked and hatched an idea that Harbisson’s cybernetics have changed the way he
would change the student’s life forever. perceives the world. And while he considers himself
technology, he says he doesn’t identify with machines or
“We started a project together with the aim to extend robots—quite the opposite. “I now feel closer to nature
my color perception to the level of other humans,” says and to other forms of life. Having an antenna makes
Harbisson. “Adam created software that transposed colors me feel closer to insects and other creatures that have
to sound and I started wearing a camera attached to my antennae; hearing through bone conduction makes me feel
head that connected to a five-kilo computer that I wore closer to dolphins and other marine species that perceive
in a backpack. I then used a pair of headphones to hear sound through their bones; having ultraviolet and infrared
the colors.” After memorizing the sound of each color, perception makes me feel closer to insects and mammals
the information became subliminal and Harbisson simply that perceive these colors. I feel a stronger connection with
began to hear the notes and feel the colors. nature now than I ever did before. Technology can bring us
back to nature.”
Over the years, the contraption quickly evolved and
became more refined. The headset disappeared and
became an antenna, and Harbisson decided to bypass his
ears to detect colors and use bone instead, which conducts
sound much like wood does. By 2010, the computer was
gone, replaced by a chip attached to the back of his skull
that sent sound to his occipital bone. The final significant
step was a two-year search for a surgeon willing to drill the
antenna directly into Harbisson’s skull, so it would merge
with the bone.

Today, Harbisson says his perception of color has reached

a much higher quality. He can detect 360 distinct colors
as well as infrared and ultraviolet shades. With the ability
to connect his antenna wirelessly to other cameras or
antennas around the world, he can receive videos, images,
music or telephone calls directly to his skull. He identifies
himself as a cyborg because rather than simply wearing or
using technology, he feels he IS technology.

Harbisson can hear the color in music—he says that

listening to Mozart is a “yellow experience”—as well
as paint vibrant geometric images of famous speeches,
based on the notes in the speakers’ voices. A secondary
effect of hearing color is that hearing sound now also Want to Learn More?
gives Harbisson a perception of color. He can listen to the
Not Impossible Labs
sounds of a city and assign it a color: “Lisbon is yellow
www.notimpossible.com
turquoise,” he says, “and London is very golden red.” He
hears music in faces and works of art and even in food. Starkey Hearing Technologies
www.starkey.com

The artist’s evolution continues. His next goal is to find a American Cochlear Implant Alliance
way to use his body’s own energy to charge the antenna. www.acialliance.org
“The use of electricity, batteries, or solar energy makes no
Cyborg Arts (Neil Harbisson)
sense since our body is constantly creating energy,” www.cyborgarts.com
NEXT 37
 TEN COMPANIES THAT EXPERIENCED
MILESTONES THE SAME YEAR
NUTANIX WAS FOUNDED.
On September 23, 2009, Nutanix started disrupting the
enterprise IT infrastructure market with software-defined
hyperconverged infrastructure. To mark our ten year
anniversary, take a look back with us at some other tech
milestones from a decade ago and wonder with us: could that
really have been 10 years ago?

takes over MySpace

in Internet traffic.

Uber
Markus Perrson
released the
alpha version
was founded
of Minecraft to
in March 2009.
200M players.

Bitcoin was introduced After more than five years in beta,

on January 3, 2009 by Gmail finally went public on July 7,
Satoshi Nakamoto, 2009; Google announced the Google
a pseudonym. Chrome OS on the same day. 2009
is also when Google added GPS
functionality to its mobile OS.

38 TECH/ TRENDS
 launched the Bing
search engine and
Windows 7.
launched Farmville,
its most successful was founded in
game, in June 2009. June 2009.

Apple
released the iPhone Jack Dorsey & Jim
3Gs ("s" for successor) McKelvey create Square,
on June 19, 2009. Inc. in May 2009.

NEXT 39
 IT
By Ken Kaplan

DevOps is
Reshaping
& Fueling Dynamic
Learning Organizations
Best-selling author and technology workplace researcher Gene Kim talks
about his new book, The Unicorn Project, and how the DevOps movement is
revolutionizing how IT organizations bring business value.
DevOps has been described as the realignment of IT around business value. Gene Kim sees it
as a management approach that’s more agile and boundary-crossing than traditional command-
and-control methods built around siloes. He said this new DevOps approach helps developers
and operations professionals work faster while maintaining secure and reliable IT systems. But
it’s much more than that.

Kim is an author, researcher, former CTO, and founder of security company Tripwire, and a
devoted advocate for IT best practices. He thinks the world is still a long way from exploiting
the true promise of technology, and this drives him to find answers everywhere he goes.

He co-authored The Phoenix Project, a best-selling fiction book that describes the challenges
of dealing with legacy IT and rebellious human nature that sparked the rise of DevOps. His non-
fiction The DevOps Handbook is a go-to guide on the subject. His 2019 release, The Unicorn
Project, is a fictional tale about developers and business leaders who join forces in a race
against time during a period of unprecedented uncertainty and opportunity.

Decades of research show high performing technology organizations collaborate across teams
with different specialties. This is at the core of DevOps, and he said it’s playing a bigger role as
companies deal with digital transformation.

“DevOps is a set of cultural and technical practices and cultural norms that allow us to deliver
application services quickly to customers while preserving world-class reliability and security
stability,” said Kim, at the Nutanix .NEXT 2019 DevOps event in Anaheim, CA.

Ten years ago, most people believed that was impossible.

“These days it’s increasingly commonplace in not just the tech giants like Facebook, Amazon,
Netflix and Google, but in every large, complex organization out there.”

The Phoenix Project outlines what the world was like before DevOps. Kim said new software and
hardware releases are scary now but were much worse a few decades ago. IT teams would take
months to prepare and often weeks to execute properly.

“It was a risky activity that would cause fear and tsunamis of unplanned work, if not a
catastrophe,” he said. “Often it came at a huge cost and toll on everyone involved.”

That meant the people inside technology organizations and their company’s customers.

He said whenever updates don’t take or digital releases go wrong, they inflict bad experiences
on customers, and this must be avoided.

Psychological safety is as important

to the knowledge worker as physical
safety is to the manufacturing worker.
You can't do great things if you have
a culture of fear.
Always in a Deployable State
Things have improved even as new technologies and updates occur more frequently than ever
before. Software and hardware companies are better at preparing and delivering new updates.
And IT implementers now make new releases part of their daily work, said Kim.

“The notion is that we can deploy when we want to, multiple times a day, without drama, chaos,
confusion, and disruption,” he said. “It might not be something that the customer sees all the
time, but it means that we're always in a deployable state.”

Kim said every day, DevOps teams are deploying or staging new applications and services. Maybe
it’s a test environment, where customers or users can try things out before they’re generally
available.

“It becomes really a business decision whether to release or not,” Kim said, “as opposed to a
technology decision where the question was always, ‘Can we?’ or ‘When are we able to?’”

Kim sees enterprise software evolving to become more like Gmail, where things are changing
behind the scenes all the time with little or no downtime for users.

“No more big patch updates. We're living in a world of more real time updating.”

He said consumers are already used to this. Whenever a mobile device manufacturer or a wireless
services provider pushes an update, they just accept with a click of a button.

“Sometimes it might baffle us and it's like, ‘Where did my button go?’ But I think we now accept
it as a part of daily life: software updates. In general, that’s a good thing.”
MOVE FASTER
STORE MORE
PROCESS EVERYTHING!
DATA-CENTRIC INFRASTRUCTURE
Modernize your data center by freeing-up data and virtualizing
storage for seamless private, public and distributed clouds
powered by Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and Intel®
OptaneTM technology.

www.Intel.com/cloud
The Unicorn Project
In The Unicorn Project, Kim describes the feelings and
motivations that drive DevOps today. The book outlines
five ideals: locality, outcomes, culture of innovation,
psychological safety, and focus on customers.

A sense of locality, that everything is at our fingertips,

is critical.

“Everything that we want to work on is at hand within

our team, within the small area of code, as opposed to
scattered everywhere,” said Kim.

He said shifting to DevOps puts the focus on outcomes,

workflows, and joy for the work, as opposed to boardroom
drudgery, fear, and panic that comes from having to
recover from failure.

The third ideal is creating a culture of innovation.

“That means prioritizing the improvement of daily work

over daily work itself,” he said. “The opposite of that
is accumulating technical debt for decades then we go
slower and slower.”
“That's great for productivity,” he said. “It's great for
The fourth ideal is ensuring a culture of psychological safety. employee engagement. It's better for the customers we
serve. This is a good thing.”
“Psychological safety is as important to the knowledge
worker as physical safety is to the manufacturing worker. In a decade from now, Kim believes academics will
You can't do great things if you have a culture of fear.” say DevOps was something genuinely transformative
beyond technology itself. He sees DevOps as the next
The fifth one is a ruthless and relentless focus on mode of management, beyond command and control
the customer. approaches that have dominated management for the
last hundred years.
“This is in contrast to focusing on our silo,” he said. “In
that mode, we think and act more like union leaders than “I think they'll say it was a subset of dynamic learning orga-
we do business leaders. Greatness comes from really nizations, of which the most famous is Toyota,” he said.
focusing on those customer needs.” “The Toyota production system is the most famous exam-
ple of a dynamic learning organization, where learning is

Future Shaped
part of everyone's job and the job of the leadership is to
make sure that they create a workforce that can out-learn

by DevOps
the competition. I think that's magnificent and really sets
our sights on how great this will be.”

When he watches his kids learn to code and build He said it’s no secret that everyone wants less hierarchy
webpages in a matter of minutes, he sees them adept and fewer rules, yet most organizations still cling to
at handling very fast feedback. They're used to a kind of old ways.
freedom and joy that comes from using new, responsive
technologies. He said this is increasing expectations for “A whole bunch of schools of thought say that this
systems and work environments that make almost (DevOps approach) is the way we're going to create
anything possible. genuine organizational learning.”

Ken Kaplan is Editor in Chief for The Forecast by Nutanix.

Find him on Twitter @kenekaplan.
Excerpt Page 27-28
from a centralized build, integration, and test system, they
really have no idea what will happen when all their work is
merged with everyone else’s.

The Unicorn Project Josh spins his chair around to Maxine. “Mrs. Chambers,
By Gene Kim I’ve got to go show Randy something, but I just emailed
you what we’ve got in terms of documentation for new
developers—it’s the wiki pages where I’ve assembled all
This highly anticipated follow-up to the bestselling
of the release notes we’ve written and the documentation
title The Phoenix Project takes another look at Parts
Unlimited from the perspective of Maxine, a senior from the development teams. There’s also links to the
lead developer and architect, as she is exiled to the stuff we know we need to write. Hopefully that will get
Phoenix Project. This is a story about rebel developers you started?”
and business leaders working together and racing
against time to innovate, survive, and thrive in a time Maxine gives him a thumbs up. As they leave, she logs
of unprecedented uncertainty...and opportunity. Get in with her new laptop and is able to get in and open
a sneak peek at the book here, available for purchase her email, miraculously working the first time. But before
later this fall! looking at what Josh sent, she pokes around to see what
else they’ve installed on her new laptop.
“Maxine’s one of the most senior engineers in the
company, and she’s been assigned to us for a couple Immediately, she is mystified. She finds links to HR
of months to help us. She’s the lead architect for the systems, network shares to company resources, links to
manufacturing ERP systems. Can you show her what she expense reporting system, payroll, timecard systems…
needs to know to get productive around here?” She finds Microsoft Word and Excel and the rest of the
Office suite.
“Uh, hi, Mrs. Chambers, nice to meet you,” he says,
holding out his hand, looking puzzled. He’s probably She frowns. This configuration might work for someone
wondering how he ended up being responsible for in finance, she thinks, but not a developer. There’s no
someone who could be his mom, she thinks. IDE or code editors or source control managers installed.
Opening up a terminal window, she confirms that there
“Nice meeting you,” she says, smiling. “Please, just call aren’t any compilers, Docker, Git…nothing. Not even Visio
me Maxine. And my friends call me Max,” she adds, even or OmniGraffle!
though it usually irks her when her daughters’ friends
call her by her first name. But Josh is a work colleague, When they bring in a new developer, what do they actually
and she’s glad to have a native guide who can show her expect them to do? Read emails and write memos?
around. Even if he’s not even old enough to drive, she
jokes to herself. When you hire a plumber or carpenter, you expect them to
bring their own tools. But in a software organization with
“Okay, let me know if there’s anything you need,” Randy more than one developer, everyone shares tools to help
says. “Maxine, I’m looking forward to introducing you to the team be productive. Apparently here on the Phoenix
the rest of the team. Our first staff meeting is next week.” Project, the toolbox is empty.

Randy turns to Josh. “Tell me more about the build failures.” Not giving up, she opens her email to find the link
Josh sent. She smiles when, as promised, it takes her
Maxine listens in on the conversation. The more she hears, to an internal Wiki page, a tool many engineers use to
the worse she feels. All those stories about caveman collaborate on documentation. (It always amazes her
technical practices in the Phoenix Project are actually true. friends that the term “Wiki” predated Wikipedia by over
She’s learned over her entire career that when people can’t a decade.)
get their builds going consistently, disaster is usually right
around the corner. Her smile quickly disappears as she scrolls up and down
the Wiki page. Is this all of it?
She looks around at the entire floor. Over a hundred
developers are typing away, working on their little piece If so, she is really in trouble. The “documentation” is only
of the system on their laptops. Without constant feedback one page.
46
10 Things You May Not Know About

Kubernetes By Greg Muscarella, VP of Products, Nutanix

What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is the highly popular open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling,
and management of containerized applications. In other words, it’s a system that makes it
easier for IT to deploy and manage modern applications faster, for less money.

While traditional virtualization enables you to split physical servers into multiple virtual machines
(VMs) to more efficiently share resources, containers enable you to split up applications into
smaller, more portable pieces of code to more efficiently use the underlying infrastructure and
move more easily across different clouds and internal environments. However, large applications
can be made up of hundreds of different containers. Companies with a lot of applications may
find themselves with more containers than their development teams can possibly manage and
maintain. That’s where orchestration tools like Kubernetes come in.

If this article caught your attention, there’s a good chance you knew that already. But here
are ten things you may not know about this rapidly evolving system that is revolutionizing
software development.
 1. Kubernetes just 2. Kubernetes is the only orchestration service offered as a
turned 5 years old! managed service by the top three major cloud vendors
Google first announced the
release of its open-source
container manager on June
10, 2014.
Google Kubernetes Amazon Elastic Container Azure Kubernetes
Engine (GKE) Service for Kubernetes (EKS) Service (AKS)

3. The “building blocks”of 4. Kubernetes and 5. The Kubernetes Project is

Kubernetes are called containerization transform governed by the Cloud Native
containers, pods, nodes, the datacenter from being Computing foundation (CNCF),
and clusters. machine-oriented to a sub-foundation of the
A container (aka Docker container) application-oriented. Linux Foundation
is a self-contained Linux execution Containers encapsulate the The Linux Foundation has more than
environment. application environment, abstracting 50 active projects, with CNCF and
Pods are a group of related away many of the machine details Kubernetes being one of their largest.
containers that share resources from the developer. This supports
and a local network. the move to a DevOps model
Nodes are the actual computers and by enabling developers to focus
devices that pods run on. on application and microservices
Clusters are groups of nodes. management, without worrying
about the underlying infrastructure
or operating system.

80%
8. Kubernetes is as popular
in private datacenters as it 70%

is in the cloud 60%

50%
On-premises use was even higher
in 2017 (51% vs. 43%), according to 40%
the latest Cloud Native Computing
30%
Foundation (CNCF) Survey. This
is most likely due to the growing 20%
popularity of private clouds.
10%

0%
Amazon On-Premises Google Azure OpenStack Digital VMware
(EC2/ECS) (GCE/GKE) Ocean

Mar’16 Jun’16 Nov’16 Mar’17 Dec’17 Jul’18

 CI/CD pipelin
es are transf
Saying that
application
real-time d
evelopmen
orming IT
s is as big a t and deplo
from mainfr change as yment of
ames to cli the industry
This revolu ent/server ’s move
tion is bein is no exagg
primary fea g driven by eration.
tures: fault two of Kub
with auto sc to lerance and e rnetes’
aling. IoT, b high availa
all require ig data, an bility
the greater d AI/machin
responsive
ness that K
processing
power, stab
e learning Additional Resources
ubernetes ility, and You can learn more about
provides.
Kubernetes at:
kubernetes.io

New Kubernetes releases at:

github.com/kubernetes/
kubernetes/releases

Cloud Native Computing Foundation at:

cncf.io

Other Linux Foundation projects at:

linuxfoundation.org/projects

6. There is a major new 7. Kubernetes was designed for cloud-native applications, but it
release of Kubernetes can also run traditional enterprise applications.
about every 3 months. If you don’t refactor your legacy applications (monoliths) to be cloud native, you won’t
At the breakneck speed at which be able to take advantage of Kubernetes’ key benefits: high availability, scalability,
Kubernetes innovates, it can be a full- and simple upgrades and versioning.
time job just to keep up.
It’s possible to lift and shift many monoliths, however, making modifications such as
logging to stdout (not to disk), creating a healthcheck, and setting memory limits will
help ease the way.

9. Supporting continuous integration/continuous deployment 10. Kubernetes is very

(CI/CD) pipelines is the most popular use case capable of handling
for running Kubernetes Stateful Applications
Kubernetes and microservices are pushing developers away from old monolithic pipeline Initial focus on stateless applications has
processes to agile design, testing, and deployment. led many to believe that Kubernetes was
not ready for stateful applications such
Automating the development and deployment of applications and microservices with as MySQL. However, Kubernetes has
tools like Jenkins offers significant benefits when compared with standard VM-based quickly become the preferred platform
deployments. Native-compatibility between Jenkins and Kubernetes makes setting up for stateful cloud-native applications
your own CI/CD pipelines a snap. with robust support for Stateful Sets and
Persistent Volumes.
LIFESTYLES
51
Caroline Wozniacki lives her life
with dedication, discipline, and
a strong sense of self—on and
off the tennis court.
Photo Credit: Quinn Rooney
When Caroline Wozniacki was 12 years old, three years
before she entered professional tennis on the WTA tour, she
had the opportunity to meet someone in the public eye who
she looked up to. It was Venus Williams. Wozniacki went up
to Williams and asked if she’d hit a few balls with her. And
she did.

“It really made my day. It made my month,” says Wozniacki.

“It just made me want to practice harder and be better and

My family
try to achieve as much as I could. It meant so much to me.”

has been
Today, 29-year-old Wozniacki has already achieved
the pinnacle of tennis, winning the Grand Slam singles

my biggest
championship at the Australian Open in 2018. She has
ranked #1 in the world (the first woman from a Scandanavian

inspiration.
country to take the top-ranking position), won more than 30
WTA singles titles, and in 2017 ranked first in Forbes' annual

My parents
list of the Top 10 Most Influential Women in Sports. She
also carried the Danish flag in the opening ceremony of the

set good
2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, an experience she
describes as “a dream come true.”

No doubt, Wozniacki knows what it’s like to be looked up to. examples for
“A lot of people tell me I’ve inspired their kids, and that’s me and my
brother, in
a great feeling. I want to be the best example I can be,
especially for the young generation,” she says. “When I can

the way they

give back and make someone’s day or week or whatever it
may be, I’ve done something good.”

Giving back off the court is important to her, too. Recent are with each
other and
involvements include Project Medishare for Haiti, which is
currently celebrating 25 years of healthcare in Haiti, Urgent

in showing
Dogs of Miami, a Miami Dade, FL located Animal Services
shelter, and shopewspa.com, which donates money from

the way for

its retail site to Haitian charities. Wozniacki also supports
a variety of charities through clinics, galas, and events. In

us. I always
2014, she ran the New York City Marathon to benefit Team
for Kids.

want to make
INSPIRED BY FAMILY
them proud.
Wozniacki was born in Odense, Denmark, to a pair of
athletes. Her father was a former professional football player
in Poland and Denmark, and her mother was on the Polish
national volleyball team. Her father began teaching her how
to play tennis when she was 7. By age 9, Wozniacki was
defeating him and her older brother on the court. Her father
has been her coach ever since.

Both parents taught their daughter to believe in herself.

NEXT 53
FASHIONISTA FLAIR,
BUSINESS SENSIBILITY
Named as one of the best-dressed athletes in the world by
Sports Illustrated, Wozniacki does have a flair for fashion
and modeling. In addition to being on the cover of ESPN
the Magazine twice and ESPN the Magazine’s Body issue
and World Fame 100 issue in 2018, Wozniacki has graced
the cover of Elle Denmark, Haute Living, and Hampton’s
Magazine, as well as been featured in the Sports Illustrated
swimsuit edition for three consecutive years (2015-2017)
and Vogue Magazine.

Wozniacki’s interest in fashion doesn’t play out solely

in front of the camera. In a collaboration with OVVO
Optics, she created the C. Wozniacki + OVVO Collection
of men’s and women’s sunglasses. The 11 pairs in the
collection are named after her family and friends, along with
famous Danes.

Wozniacki, who says she’d probably have a career in

international business if she wasn’t a tennis champ, enjoyed
rolling up her sleeves and being involved in the whole
design process. She worked with the OVVO team on each
pair to ensure that the design replicated her style and taste.
As for functionality, her sunglasses had to be light so they
can be worn for hours and constructed so they don’t slide
off the face.

With all her accomplishments, Wozniacki doesn’t plan

on slowing down soon. On and off the tennis court, she
doesn’t let herself be affected by people or situations that
don’t empower her to be her best self.

“There are always things you can do better. But at the end
of the day, I try not to compare myself to anyone else.
I’m proud of the things I’ve been doing,” Wozniacki says.
“Obviously, I want to be the best tennis player that I can
be and win tournaments, but I think life in general is more
important. I try to be a better wife, sister, daughter, and
friend, and to help the people around me who need help.
Those are the things that are really important to me. I just
try to be a great person every day and build up the people
around me.”

Wozniacki lives by her conviction. Her athleticism, hard

work, and self-discipline make her a world-championship
tennis player. Her belief in herself, strong sense of family
and giving back, and desire to build up the people around
her make Wozniacki someone kids can look up to.

54 LIFESTYLES
The primary goal of
edge computing is
to reduce latency
in situations where
instantaneous
application response
times can save an
organization piles
of money, while
vastly improving
the processes or
decision-making,
and even save lives.
56 LIFESTYLES
Fran Scott grew up on a farm in West Yorkshire, From farm
U.K., where there was plenty of opportunity for her to be
hands-on and practical. Her affinity toward science and to doughnut
engineering was patent.

“I would always make things, test things out,” says Scott.

fetcher to fame
Her parents, both scientists, encouraged her homemade
experiments. “If I didn’t understand something, instead of
as a popular
giving me the answer, they’d say, ‘let’s go find out.’” children’s
Even though at the time, the little girl may have wanted
her parents to just give up the answer, Scott was already
science TV show
beginning to internalize a notion that would guide her future.
demo maker,
“The finding out is science,” she says, simply.
engineering
Scott has always aimed high, starting with her desire to
be a Nobel Prize-winning scientist in primary school. After enthusiast and
ranking top of the class in her first year at the University
of Nottingham in the U.K., Scott won the opportunity to presenter
spend her third year in Australia. A neuroscience major, she
chose to work on stem cells and stem cell regrowth in the Fran Scott gets
paid to do what
lab. Scott returned to the U.K. enriched by a fascinating
experience but sure that lab work wasn’t her bailiwick. She

she loves.
spent her fourth year at the university earning a Master's in
Science (MSci) degree, providing her a combined Bachelor’s
and Master’s in neuroscience upon graduation.

On an afternoon trip to London, Scott’s friends coaxed her

into visiting the famed Science Museum. They knew she’d
like it. Turned out she loved it, so much that she left the
museum with employment contacts that soon led to a job
interview. In a short timeframe, Scott started her career as a
science communicator at the museum.

Initially, she spent a lot of time presenting how the science

exhibits worked to museum visitors and went on to write the
museum weekend presentations and workshops.

Scott soon became enthralled with building props and

demonstrations and crafting the presentation narratives.
After a while at the Science Museum, her thoughts turned Scott was the only scientist on the team. She designed
toward television, specifically, television’s reach. all the in-studio science games, oversaw the explanatory
graphics, briefed presenters, and crafted some of the large
“I love what the Science Museum did, but people had to science stunts.
come to us,” says Scott. “What if we could go to them?
What if we could be in their front room when they flip on “I worked so hard. It was my dream job,” she recalls. “It was
the telly, and science is there?” a fantastic stepping stone for me, and it made me realize
how much I love developing demonstrations.”
She started researching children’s science programs, sorting
her findings on a Her other behind-the-
spreadsheet. scenes TV experience in-
“I was really worried cluded work on programs
that we were missing such as Horizon and Bang
an opportunity to Goes the Theory, along
educate our children with BBC-branded science
well through engaging stage shows.
television that gets
the science right,” Lights! Action!
says Scott. “It’s not Fran!
necessarily that I
wanted to be that In 2012, a chance meeting
person in front of the landed Scott a screen test
camera. I just wanted for a new science-based
someone to do it who CBBC show called Abso-
was female. It just so lute Genius with Dick and
happened that person Dom. She won the role.
was me.”
For five seasons, Scott
A tipoff from a friend joined Dick and Dom
led her to interview as they explored how
for a new children’s science and engineering
science show on has changed the world.
CBBC called Richard Her specialty was the
Hammond’s Blast Lab. demonstrations.
She was offered a job
as a runner, and left She wasn’t seeking
her position at the a spot in front of the
museum, taking a camera and didn’t know
drastic pay cut. After a if she’d be any good. But
short while making tea she knew what she didn’t
and buying the office like to see on children’s
staff doughnuts she couldn’t afford, Scott noticed the TV television. In the science shows she watched as a kid, the
series producer looking up how to make giant bubbles. boys would know everything while the girls pointed and
giggled at things.
“Oh, I hope you don’t mind me saying,” she said to him,
“but if you want to make big Even as a kid, Scott could sense when people in front of the
bubbles, you need to use glycerin.” camera didn’t quite know what they were doing. “What if
And she offered to go buy some. the person presenting totally knew what they’re doing and
wasn’t just reading lines?” she mused. That’s the person
Her days of making tea runs ended Scott wanted to be on camera.
that afternoon. While she describes
it as “being just in the right place at Much of her career to that point was inspired by the lack
the right time,” it was the begin- of female scientist role models on children’s television. As
ning of a winning match-up. “I a role model, particularly for young girls, Scott’s aware that
knew the science, and they knew she has a big responsibility. She succeeds in this role by
how to make telly.” staying true to who she is and being genuine.
“I don’t want to encourage the epidemic of kids just want- And when she’s not revealing engineering prowess on
ing to be famous. It’s not a life, and it shouldn’t be an aim. television or crafting science demonstrations for the Royal
What I do on TV is what I do day-to-day. They just happen Institution, she’s running Great Scott! Productions, her white
to be filming me on TV for some of the time,” Scott says. label science communication company. Her team develops
high-caliber stage shows, demonstrations, and workshops
“It’s okay to be a girl and be intelligent and do science. for schools and businesses in the U.K. and abroad.
That’s not a bad thing. Having someone visually there for
young people is a good sign, be that me or be that another “Sometimes children’s eyes aren’t opened up to how
person,” she adds. amazing science and engineering can be. It’s no fault of
the teachers,” says Scott. “That’s where my job and people
Engineer Rising like me come in.”

These days, Scott is involved with more adult-oriented

programs, where her “engineer at heart” takes center
stage. Late in 2018, she was featured as the engineering
judge for the second season of LEGO Masters in the
U.K. and has been an engineering expert on programs
such as Engineering Catastrophes, How Hacks Work, and
Abandoned Engineering.

Scott is also the science content producer at the

Royal Institution, where she develops and builds the
demonstrations for the institution’s renowned Christmas
Lectures. She’s the perfect fit for this series of annually
produced programs that introduce young people to science
subjects through spectacular demonstrations.
Be confident
enough to show
everyone that
you can do a lot
of things con-
currently and
do them well.
It’s possible to
be a leader and
follower at the
same time.
 Join us for
.NEXT Conference
June 30 – July 2, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois

Pre-register now to receive priority

registration at 40% off!
www.nutanix.com/next-2020