It’s a great Red Hat day in Minneapolis — Go Microservices !

Cross posted from the Red Hat Events Blog.

It was a great day in Minneapolis! The Microservices with Apache Camel was held at Target Field (inside the ballpark, overlooking the field of play). “Takes a lot to put together an event like this but can certainly be a lot of fun! Go microservices!,” says Red Hat associate Jen Fissel.

I had the privilege of hosting the event and kicked off the event with a reference to the connected world we live in that requires enterprises to be agile while being integrated across the systems of yesterday with the evolving applications of the future. The future of Enterprise IT, containers, are here today and microservices are the stars of the show. Welcome to Minneapolis!

Microservices and containers will change the way we build, maintain, operate, and integrate applications. When microservices are designed with discipline and a careful selection of the outer architecture, applications will be more portable and adaptive. In the future, better application and service integration will be the number-one requirement for distributed microservices applications.

There is something to be said about using microservices for the right reasons and more importantly, implementing it right.  And who better to obtain experience based insight from than the speakers for the day that includes the founders, co-founders of Groovy, Camel and key committers to the Kubernetes project!

And thus began the parade of stars at this show!

In addition to sharing deep insight based on their own experiences, each speaker shared an anecdote or used a metaphor that reinforced their message very well.

“I would like to probably cry trying to integrate Jenkins and Nexus !! Thank you, Fabric8 and Kubernetes,” said James Strachan adding some empathy to the life of the developer

“Installation is easy — even from a bar with a drink!” Ibsen explained that he actually did this from the Copenhagen airport. Gives more meaning to what you see behind the screen!

Simplicity of the user experience stood out for me in Davies’s session. “I love PokemonGo! It is powered by Kubernetes,” said Davies, subtly implying that it is all about simplifying the experience of the development and the operations teams.

Rawlings’ session was the first one in the afternoon after lunch — some of the attendees went “public” — so to speak — and got to sit in the bleacher seats of the Target Field outside. “Continuous delivery is more than one tool” quipped Rawlings.

All the attendees at The Metropolitan Club were in rapt attention when James was waiting with baited breath for the results of his demo!  You can almost sense the excitement!

It was fascinating to see the intriguing graphic that Posta shared about the steady decline in the average life expectancy of the S&P 500 company.

Posta explained that “microservices is all about optimizing …”

Wait for it …

Wait for it …

For Speed !

All the speakers assembled for a panel with an engaged audience where most of the questions originated from the audience. Containers and microservices must be a hot topic for sure!

Well, if installation is really that simple — even after a drink at the bar, why not go for it! The attendees networked over a drink or two at The Metropolitan Club fully loaded with thought-provoking insights about microservices, containers, devops — well, in a nutshell — the future of Enterprise IT!

One really does not need any overly scientific techniques to assess how engaged an audience is. In my role as the host, I had an eye on the audience as a whole and I never perceived any significant departures from the session or attendees multitasking with laptops and mobile phones during the sessions. And then I realized — not only was it a great day in Minneapolis — there was also great content being shared by an all-star lineup of speakers with an emerging generation of innovative developers.  Hello there!

It is a journey that has just begun taking us closer to the future of Enterprise IT, one microservice at a time! Go containers!

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