 Hey Sebastian, you know thanks so much for joining us in the car ride, you know You've already been in the car a bit yourself But yeah, we But we'll do our little tour and it'll be it'll be fun You can you know do the ride along but do you want to introduce yourself tell us a little bit about Who you are and and what you do? Yeah, sure. I'm Sebastian. I lead the Kubernetes competence center we renamed it actually to contain a competent center and platforms and I'm also today in the city of summit with the other end user enterprises and I do Transformation evangelism you could say so I have many many ideas and publications and I do like 20 to 25 keynotes a year about enterprise transformation Basically on people first processes and on how to create a lasting transformational force rather than doing some adjustments in your mailbox science Yeah, just here's the note that tells you how you need to change your life Yeah, you haven't found that to be effective. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, we've been pretty effective actually We've created the competence center four years ago. We started out just three of us two engineers and me They already built proprietary kubernetes control plane okay for two years at Audi and You remember the 2019 market. It was like a super control plane heavy startups doing their own control Kubernetes itself so Or doing an abstraction layer Above cloud provider Yeah, that is it so anyway this You've seen it back then The focus is a completely different now control planes are commodity Allocating compute is commodity. It's not a business case anymore. It's a value at right, right, it's just like it was like 2019 or before and Yeah, and we we started out like this creating our own platform and enabling project teams to Securely deploy their workloads to and run them on a kubernetes. Let me ask you a background question like like why? Like what what was the driver to create this team in the first place? Like what was the you know, what was the goal? Did somebody just wake up one day and be like we need to modernize somehow or or was there like some business goal? Or like what was the driver that started that transformational event? The transformation definitely is a completely different thing De-coupled from the team itself and it's technical capabilities that are rated there It's I have a like a 10 year background in startups being in startups in in the Munich area for 10 years and For example before Audi we created an IP TV solution that is markedly to know and I Was responsible for the apps from the first customer to 1.25 million customers. Yeah, that's that's a few yeah, yeah, and and then when I'm going To to Audi we wanted to bring some startup culture into the enterprise. Okay, and obviously we had to wait until we were able to deliver and prove That our methodologies that are ways of working that our culture Is paying off and that it can survive in an enterprise surrounding an enterprise environment, right and Like I said, it's decoupled from the technical capabilities and what we're focusing on because the team Was focusing on the Kubernetes control plane to assist one project team. Oh, okay that's basically how it started and Taking it from one project team to many project teams with an inner source way of handling the things That paid off and we are 14 people now. Mm-hmm and we're a competent center. We are Consulting other platforms in there How they want to build things how they want to create things what focus they're on if they're an infrastructure platform or rather Abstraction layer above it a business integration layer Serving a couple of managed services to a Homogeneous group of workloads for example, okay, and just so does your team provide Software or does it provide more like guidance and architecture and design all those things like so, you know How do you you know kind of what is the competency center kind of you know? What does it give to the your customers in a sense? Yeah The first and foremost thing of them all is a platform to deploy workloads. Okay, so there's a focus on two things It's secure runtime. Mm-hmm. That sums it up perfectly It's just security and runtime we focus on and you have these let's say normal workloads That don't have too many special requests. Mm-hmm and they can all deploy very easily to that platform and Run your workloads to see ICD and it just makes sense for the biggest Amount of applications in the organization and Then you have some applications obviously that have a very special use case like machine learning AI use case of Tremendous amount of workload peaks. Mm-hmm, and you want a different consumption model in Scalability obviously and Maybe they need a couple of managed services, right? Then we create something like a business integration layer business domain services and we consult these people that I want to own The business integration layer on how to do that and how to consume the infrastructure layer Gotcha. Okay. So let me and I'm not sure like I'm not sure if you can entirely get into this But so when you are talking about these, you know, kind of software teams and development teams Are they mostly like the stuff that kind of runs outy or is it the stuff that actually like runs in the cars? Or both or you know, or is there how's that how's that division done? Is it different kinds of engineering? You know, yeah, it's completely different from each other. So We don't run things in the car that would be Completely differently regulated. Okay, because it's regulated like a bringing hardware to the streets, right? IoT or any steering software. It's Basically from a legal point of view if you do a software update on On a IoT device in your car, right? It needs to run through the same processes as as if you've built the entire piece from from scratch, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm not unhappy about that to be honest It makes sense doesn't it so they can't patch your car dangerously, right, right? Yeah, I've seen I've seen a lot of software people safe to processes in this case just makes sense You don't want to sing in transportation Transportation trains It really makes sense, right? So so mostly what you're working with is the kind of all the software that runs out itself, right? Yeah, yeah, we have Audi. He has six thousand six hundred applications. It's quite a number. Yeah And obviously there is On-prem there is public cloud There is all the flavors that you can think of right and all the needs all the requirements That you can think of in any organization. We have them we find them Yeah, yeah, which doesn't make our job easier to be honest Right, it's like that's where you were saying kind of the beginning about transformation It is it is nice in theory to be able to send out an email that says you will all be out in Kubernetes It's on AWS and yeah, just that never works enablement is everything right you need to you need to Be sexy enough that the people Want to work with you and I'm never forced to work with you right right So if you have a like a traction of force that really attracts the people to work with you because they know if if you work with these guys with Sebastian and the team and They force you kind of to have success right right We don't let loose of the hand of our project teams until they have success Right, they're running productively in the cluster or we consult them very very early on where to go elsewhere like Where they can get the help to be successful exactly exactly because we know all the platforms in the VW group and Sometimes we just say well, this is a classic on-prem case. Maybe you just Move on to our colleague over there. His name is this and that and Or RVS for example mainframe. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so we're not like super keen on lifting and shifting monoliths and We're it's not Kubernetes is not always the answer nor is Public cloud always did the right answer. So We are very very early in the in the consulting process for a project and then we can advise them on pursuing the right path on being successful and they're actually in the well yet I want to create because the compute for them usually is like They're not very motivated in this topic because it's just Annoying for them. They want to create business value in their own. Yeah. Yeah, but not really border about the infrastructure Right, right often it happens that they create something. Yeah, they're like super proud of it And then they they're like, okay, we're to run it right, right Yeah, no, I totally understand so so You know, you said there's what six thousand something plus projects, right? Yeah So how do you how do you do that transformation? Like, how do you scale your team of would you say less 15? Something like that like to get to support that many different teams. Yeah, actually with me. It's 15. Okay. Yeah, so The the way to do it is like not investing too much energy in fighting the silo as they put it. It's a Mind-boggling and useless fight that you can invest 80% of your energy your political energy, but also your and entire day of work into talking to people and Fighting the silo so to say it's It makes more sense to respect the seller because it's the way to organize big Organizations like enterprises. We have 87,000 people at Audi 140,000 people at the W group. So it just makes real sense to not Invest too much energy into that rather than asking why you would even fight the silo What's the business value you want to take out of this and you can Define that quite easily if you ask a couple of times why you're doing that. Anyway, why is deaf Ops a thing? Why is deaf sec Ops a thing this end-to-end responsibility? Obviously make sense in a wider sense and You can create that through the silos. For example transformation usually happens that people define a process They get the tech for it They decide upon the tools and then they tell the people what to do or they define roles Yeah, that fill out this organizational structure and then they hire for the roles and That is so not people centric and what happens then is that the people satisfy the process rather than solve the problem Because they don't even know what the problem was in the first place. They're so far away from what the people who made the process Had intended or whatever. Yeah, so and they want to get shit done. Actually, they are really like maybe passionate about and their field of work in there. So what we do is we look at the people first and I Ask my team always. What are you're passionate about? We have this stuff on the plate Pick one Be good at it. I know if you're passionate about it, you will be just nailing it. You will be really good at it If you if you have the motivation to deep dive into that so we put people first and then Let them choose the best tech to solve the problem mm-hmm usually bleeding edge is the thing in our competent center, okay, and And then automate it, right because we're not too many people, right? Right, we need to automate stuff to make it work in scalable Mm-hmm, but what happened if you automated the tech through passionate people is you you receive a process It's a natural. Yeah process that evolved through the automation of what he did before. Yeah, and then you can process the process and Make it a thing in your organization like a rule, right, right to say a rule to follow but you haven't created it by Thinking about how it could work you have created it by actually solving a problem, right, right? Yeah, you're kind of I mean it's you saw the bottom up versus top-down kind of thing You can say so you solve the problem first and then you scale the solution, right, right That's actually you know at a much smaller scale You know, it's kind of what we're doing like even within our like this spark program that we do all these software projects for third parties is We you know, we want all the teams use github Okay, so the first thing we do is we start establishing repos for the students and when they're doing the student teams or whatever And then the next thing we do is okay Now let's build a little tool that we can now modify the contributors file and it will put the right people on it Right and so to the process kind of you know Creates itself while we automate it It's it's adaption adaption is the magic finger. Yeah. Yeah, so It's what happens often is that people decide upon a tool and It has zero adaption because nobody's motivated to use it But if you let the passionate people like this 10 to 20 percent in every company That's really a super passionate and and hard-working about Solving the issues if you let them like work with everybody else on The right tools to solve the problem you will have adaption While choosing it, right? Even the PUC becomes very quickly adopted adopted. Yeah, right, right? So just kind of to delve into the silo comment I I'm not sure so when you say silo though, what what do you mean by that like what? What what is in one of the silos or what causes those silos to? appear that you think are a good the good type of silo for example my team is definitely a Silo as well because we are just responsible for our infrastructure. Mm-hmm. There is No end-to-end responsibility towards the developer and has problems. Mm-hmm. So the developer Sometimes even is an external company and then you have internally a service owner So it's responsible guy product owner platform or whatever. Yeah, so you have a Limited number of people that own the thing and a completely different department or even company that creates the thing and We have users as well. So let's not forget about the users. So there's a user Department and there's a development department and there's a service owner or business partner manager Oh, whatever that that might be something like a process guy. Yeah, and and there's the infrastructure There's the the people that run stuff infrastructure or that run applications and These are completely different responsibilities and the you can cut responsibilities through creating Set of contracts like terms and conditions service level agreements and stuff That is necessary from a legal point of view. We also do that. We have a clear Responsibility border where we say this is nothing. We are like this is our legally responsible for okay But what we do is we have a culture beyond terms and conditions and so we go To the other end to the very other end of a non-existing and to end responsibility We talked to the developers we bypass sometimes the process guide because he trusts us. He's like Why would I? Cause like you're here with this conversation guys. Yeah. Yeah, just I trust you I trust you make the best out of it And why should I cause friction here? Yeah by by listening to the other guy Understanding something wrong and giving it completely wrong to the next guy You've you've just described why the entire role of developer advocacy exists. Exactly. Yeah, and If you have these friction walls that between user and developer between The orchestrator, which is the process guy the product owner And the infrastructure department you have a couple of friction walls that you can automate through mm-hmm Just automate through it. I mean requirement engineering between users and product owner that makes sense That's a different different path but from developer to process owner or finance Guy mm-hmm and infrastructure. That's two very very strong friction walls in a in a unilateral way Often and then it arrives at infrastructure and we have to send it all the way back And say no, we can't accept this because of this you didn't meet the requirements of running something in a Kubernetes cluster Your container has root is not allowed in our infrastructure and stuff like this, you know and and If we if we just enable the people the development teams in the first place If it is really take their hand and show them everything they need to know to work with our platform with Kubernetes itself with cloud native With a vertical of cloud provider native services Like here's your AWS account for example, or here's your Azure account You can connect that your own account and that service like an RDS with your container Mm-hmm. I don't need to provide that I Won't as a platform team. I won't provide it better than Amazon doesn't itself, right? Why should I resell that service like internally? So just get it directly from there connect your database? Yeah, that's a red light. Yeah, this guy didn't agree with me. That's why I was kind of like Yeah, um, hello so The having having these these verticals of cloud native services That you can connect to your container and having the infrastructure Really just focusing on Something that everybody needs. Mm-hmm the common denominator in infrastructure security in runtime. That's it period Mm-hmm. Everything else kind of qualifies a special needs that not everybody has like the hundred percent, right? you have many 80 20 use cases there, but it's not a hundred percent hundred percent security in runtime and and The set you have a set of Projects and That if you enable them enough in using the cloud native technologies They can help themselves first of all which reduces support Tremendously like they to support. Yeah, and they don't write ten tickets each day because they have a question They know how to run the stuff in the food. So right first enablement or the enablement in general to Be on the platform the educational layers our utmost Focus when onboarding people need to learn Using these technologies very well to work with us to be on our platform and then We have them automate that stuff, right? Once once it's automated. They just automate through the silos, right? Okay, all the DevSecOps benefits. Yeah, all the business value out of it and You respect the silos. Mm-hmm interesting So, but you your you or your team, right? You know goes kind of out and directly works with the you know kind of individual development team Yeah for like their first project kind of is that exactly? Yeah. Yeah, and their second project They're already semi-professional on it. Yeah. Yeah, so this is way less Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, sometimes it's just an hour and they're done Right they deploy pre-life and then the same week they have deployed abroad and so the the applications though that are You're talking about are they mostly the net new ones or are they? You know migrations are like rebuilds or rewrites or or is it because you said you don't do a lot of lift-and-shift Yeah Lift-and-shift where it makes sense we can talk about it, but it's not possible without a rewrite So just lifting and shifting is This is a myth actually. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, it's a very small kind of Set of projects I think that lift-and-shift is probably a good idea if you're going to cloud native because he really should it's really if you If you're the only way you can really take advantage of that new Architectural environment is by re-architecting it and it's not just like you know, you're not just kind of rewriting code You're actually improving the capability of the system, which you know, that's often not something that is Necessarily obvious with that kind of lift-and-shift scenario Asking why why would you lift-and-shift something? Yeah, if you're not improving it, right? Well, that would need auto-scaling for example, right, right, but the the one kind of scenario where it's kind of like, you know I like the the lift-and-shift model, which is really like We're just taking this this old golden image VM and now we're managing it in Kubernetes through like Kupferd or whatever And it's like that kind of level of lift-and-shift I think makes a lot of sense because you can kind of get to that single pane of glass stuff, you know and all that jazz But you're not actually Changing much about the application itself, right? You know, and then you wait for the next like Logical round for when you would do the you know rearchitecture or whatever You know if you ever need to maybe you just end of life that particular piece of software Who knows that might happen as well? Yeah, but yeah to answer the question like precisely it's It's new stuff. It's like always I would even say a hundred percent. I haven't seen any lift-and-shift scenario Yeah, there's one. Okay. Let's say 90 95 percent Right, right. Well, and but I think that also gives you an advantage in your How you're working with those teams, right? Because those teams are expecting to be building new and therefore learning new And they're probably really excited about building new And so I think that also helps your kind of adoption connection. Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly When it comes to the different business domains of an enterprise like an OEM You have shop for systems obviously and you have a lot of legacy systems There's some modernization going on in all the places So it's not only about software creating software creating digital services. Sometimes it's also about Migrating an entire factory to a new system and Managing IOT devices So the use cases are very very diverse and in this kind of field we're more in a consulting role We don't do these kind of platforms ourselves. We don't manage them ourselves We focus really on the multi cloud multi-ten public cloud multi-tenancy use case With our own platform, but as a competent center we consult other platforms and their Emerging state or in their planning phase. We are supporting enterprise architecture management. We're supporting portfolio management like everything an enterprise needs in terms of know-how about Infrastructure and Kubernetes and cloud native technologies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna kind of ask you I wanted to do a quick shout-out for the car though Like I am so impressed the sight lines on this car because you know It's like when I'm trying to take a there's one of these turns that I take where there's basically a bike lane right next to me And like I can actually see in the mirror. Yeah, clearly where their bikes are and I you know, I just the design is Amazing, isn't it? Yeah, it's really it's really nice. So sorry, but I was gonna ask you the and so do you You know, what is the magic for how do you know when? They belong in which of those environments Is it is it a lot of talking is there a fact you have somewhere that tells you the answer? Because I'm sure there's a lot of people who would like that We've been trying to like make a matrix out of where you can go through and see where you might belong to But we found out this is This is not very good because people then Tell other people they know what they want and we can't ask them the free wise Okay, because often People really tell you Very precisely what they want, right, but they're completely on the wrong path Right by their order. So like ordering a peanut butter and they're allergic to it, right? Yeah, so and that happens actually quite often because they're not very deep into these technologies so what we're doing here is We talked to each and every project and Or platform initiative on their business goals. We really consult them in product management That's that's what I do. I pre-qualify them in their requirements before they even talk to engineers. Okay. Yeah this is super important actually because We need to find out why they're doing stuff in the first place and then What happens most of the time and I'm really honest here is that I tell you we already got that talk to him Yeah, yeah They've many initiatives access because the company's so big and we didn't know we already have it, right? Yeah, and there needs to be that Couple of guys that just know the people and just pinpoint you to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I totally got I said the The you know the the client that already or the person who already knows the requirements and you know knows exactly the answer And then he's completely on the wrong path, you know, like I've mentioned many times before I spent a long time in consulting Yeah, and getting you know giving the customer or whoever to stop giving you the solution and instead tell you the problem Yeah, you know a huge part of the the conversation in the office very difficult That's that's a nice turn around to the transformation people first. Yeah. Yeah It's interesting All right, well, thank you so much Sebastian and for the car obviously We really you know really appreciate and I think it's been a lot of fun So yeah, like your nice little tour of Amsterdam nowhere near as exciting as when you when you drove over here But from a driving experience It's just nice being in the car with the massage I haven't even attempted to figure out the console All right, well totally thanks again really appreciate it and yeah so much