— Dustin Kirkland, Project Sputnik: Developer Focused Dell XPS13
Back at DevOpsDays Austin last week, John and I sat down for a (now-a-days) rare recording. He was interested in talking about the presentation I’d given the day before on lessons learned form working on a DevOps product, Crowbar, at Dell.
Here’s the slides for the talk I gave this morning on lessons learned from working on a DevOps product in a large company, that is, Crowbar in Dell.
Sometimes it seems like It’s near impossible to get anything innovative, interesting done in a large company – it’s as if BigCos are goaled to prevent just that. While you can’t type a URL without hearing how a Ramen-fueled startup got ground breaking product out the door, you rarely hear about how the other side of the exit lives in Large Company Land. This talk will use the story of Crowbar at Dell to grope out how to get good things done in big technology companies, esp. when it comes to something as BigCo esoteric as DevOps!
I’m amazed when I find a skunk-worked project that’s blossomed into a valuable, strategic asset for a company. In the case of Dell and Crowbar, it’s even more astonishing: Dell has traditionally been a stone-cold hardware company focused on shipping more boxes each quarter, Crowbar is an open source piece of software whose business model depends on the nuanced dynamics of open platforms strategy. You’d never think these two things would go together. And yet, Crowbar exists and has had amazing success (both externally and internally) in an extremely short time. With the access I have to the “real story,” being at Dell now after six years at RedMonk covering tech from the outside, I’ll go over lessons learned on getting DevOps and a DevOps product through the Brazil-like pneumatic tubes of a $62.1B company.
I didn’t actually go to SXSW this year, but I co-hosted a few happy hours with one of my Dell colleges, Barton George. I’ve been “moonlighting” to work with the Web|Tech group here at Dell (which Barton is part of), which is focused on developers, ISVs, and web companies. From two folks in a garage to the Facebook’s & Zynga’s of the world. Overall, it was great, as always, to catch-up with the crowd that comes to Austin.
Barton captured several, quick video interviews, doing some actual content creation while I just had drinks with friends ;>
The first night:
The second night:
The third night:
It was great catching up and talking with folks about what I’ve been up to at Dell from my day job in corporate strategy for software to side-projects like Web|Tech and the internal incubation program I help run.
We’ll see you next year!
Check out the XPS13 in action.
— Steve Felice, Dell plots late-2012 consumer tablet launch
