[Full Episode] Staying focus is the key to success @OpsTreesolutions's founders #devops

Hi everyone uh today we are in conversation with uh the founders of uh opst stre uh s sir and Shankar sir uh s sir takes care of the technical side of the things in op3 CD of the company and Shankar s is uh CEO of the company so over to you uh so let's do s a little bit introduction and then we'll jump into the uh wi discussions yeah yeah so hi everybody As hi sandip so as as you already introduced i Shankar J I am the co-founder and CEO at opy Solutions and opy labs

and we started this company in 2014 with a very clear Focus that we wanted to set up a very high velocity U very reliable cloud devops and security company and as we look back now we have been fairly successful with very large Enterprises Fortune 2 company uh Fortune 7 company uh very large companies like Optum companies in India almost all startups large uh unicons deacons Etc leveraging our services uh and using us as their only devops team so we have been uh so we have been uh like quite uh successful in achieving that and our

journey continues so as of of today we have started working with even the larger Enterprises of India and uh getting uh their uh sort of uh business and getting their confidence to manage even their business in 2018 we started Building our product also called buildpiper uh which is a end to end uh delivery platform uh internal development platform sort of uh architectural guideline platform Etc quite quite powerful in a way and uh in 2021 December we launched the product and there also we have Fair success with companies like lenscart Pine Labs uh Standard Chartered and

even many more customers leveraging our product for their complete devops operations so that Would be it over to you sandep thanks Shankar and thanks sandip for hosting us so hey everyone sandep the side I'm co-founder and e of the solutions I take care of the technical aspects of the company ensuring that whatever latest that comes into Cloud Dev secops area we learn that uh in viive that and then help our partners in the maturity journey in addition to that I another personal initiative that I that is very close to my heart is in Terms of

Open Source contribution and sanep as you are already aware that DeVos is a lot about open source ecosystem and that's what reflects in the opy philosophy as well so talk about all the dimensions of DeVos right whether it is containerization whether it is software configuration via man via ncble or Cloud orchestration via terraform or monitoring grafana dashboards prus exporter in all those areas we actively contribute back to the Open source ecosystem in fact recently we have introduced redis operator it's almost one to half one to two years but the kind of uh uh usage that

we have seen that is astonishing so companies like MPL Walmart all those companies are leveraging our our our redis operator same goes with our logging operator so Microsoft Azure on their website have mentioned that okay logging operator is the operator that you can use to set up Logging on your kubernetes cluster uh and continuing with that Journey from last four years we have been actively publishing one blog every Tuesday without fail you can imagine publishing one blog is difficult right but you have consistently for four so that talks about it and then let's say Workshop

events we do a lot of stuff that's that's pretty much about me and OB Shanker already talked about off Solutions in build fiber so I will not Talk a lot about that but yes cool uh thank you very much sir I mean there is a I mean lot to learn and uh huge achievements actually especially in the open source community we'll come back to this uh later uh the first question would be I mean very very simple PL question sir uh why opst stre started and I mean everybody is doing devops in their own team

I mean do you think uh uh you had the expertise or you wanted to do it in certain way what was the main Reason behind it I think Shankar can answer this in a much better fashion oh okay exactly so in 2014 when this company started uh I don't think many people understood or knew what devops is it was a very very new word coined even actually sandep started working as a devops engineer even when people did not know this word at all they were just they were just doing build and release automation so sandip

was started working for a large Company via his ex employer and he we both of us were Java developers so sandep worked for for that project for almost 8 nine months and felt that his profile was getting sort of blurred because he was in he was a Java developer architect and he was being asked to work as a release engineer so he decided to quit his job and take a job for as a release engineer but uh wherever he went people were wanting to hire him for his release capabilities And not for Java capabilities then

that there was something in this that he was not understanding then he started there is some yeah gone so he started hiring his replacement but he was not able to hire replacement also for him so then he felt that okay this appears to be some upcoming field where people are not there so he joined snapd as the devops manager almost the only person doing devops for snapd at that time and uh That was his beginning In the devops Journey but in parallel started doing a lot of books he started helping others in projects and he

found that there was a lot of scope so after two to three years of that time frame when he joined snapd he called me up saying I'm getting lot of work but I'm not able to scale can you help me and that is how both of us got together to sort of create this company called opst Stream So it came out of natural pull in the market so There was a natural pull and that is why when we when we started working at for opst stre and for almost uh till 2020 we did not have

any sales or marketing team but we were consistently growing and uh because of our good work and word to mouth uh positive feedback we were always we had more work than we could uh we could uh deliver and uh that has been the sort of uh type of validation we have had in terms of honesty and quality of delivery what can Do with you is what we have seen right s you want to add something you have summarized perfectly well the only thing that Shanker didn't talked about is that uh he came he was he

was from product background right and he always wanted to build product and that's how this build Piper came into the picture so we all Shankar always had that inherent feeling that we should build a product but uh uh we decided okay let's do Services let's let's Always remain bootstrapped uh fundamentally strong financially strong and that's where we stand today as well having having a very good product and services uh so uh on top of it uh just um uh from this question ke does it really uh does it help uh help you a lot in

this way that uh after doing Services you got to know so many architecture so many uh way of thinking doing things in and number of companies and then you uh I mean kind of had that expertise and after getting that expertise you kind of put it into a product is it something you are right you are right that uh uh services companies acquire a lot of knowledge and if they are doing their work very well they are not just trying to solve the uh just trying to sort of become a Services rather than just trying

to become a serving company TR tries to become a thought leader let's say so all our customers for whom We have worked we have tried to do very good work rather than just fulfilling what they have do or retarding their process we have been ruthless automator by the way and because we have ruthless automation for all our customers so one of our customers was saying that you are in the business of self cannibalizing your own business oh okay so basically you go and automate your customers work and because you go and automate your customers work

you do not have more work So I told as a reply that there is enough and more work in the market so let's say even if we self cannibalize you will recommend us to so many people that we'll grow as a company and that has been happening with us but there was an additional Advantage which I did not realize at that time is that you come come to know of doing very good ways of doing work and that sort of that sort of gives you a very good Headway on telling the world how you should

do typically a Work by a product and that is what happened with build Piper but I think there is one more thing which is very very important that I I as a person and sandep also quite much very much inclined towards doing product so so we sort of had that product mindset we all even even at if you look at our open source contributions you'll find that there's a very typical product mindset in those contributions that we have generalized the things it is a reusable Component things like that not just a accelerator so then when

we started doing build Piper we could do it very well we could it requires a lot of dispassion by the way because if I'm if we are putting our time in a product we are sacrificing the velocity of the services company growth by the way so it requires a lot of dispassion to and lot of passion on the other side to develop the product develop a separate team fund it Etc and luckily we could do it with The services so it's it's hard to do by the way because Services is almost like a Genie you

unbottle it it starts growing it starts pulling you in all directions uh it asks you to do lot of things but we have remained focused we did not we did not decide to do everything we did only develops Cloud security for a very very long time almost 10 years now that sort of gives you that repeated ability to learn grow become better that is very important Focus is very important s what do you think you say about right right and especially see the difference that we have seen is that let's say we being an expert

right building a product or somebody decides to build a product in devops but then that kind of domain expertise right that kind of maybe you have Dom expertise but those scenarios that typically becomes very very difficult and that's why a lot of SCH searching needs to be done but since we Were doing day in day out so that's why we have sort of created it as a journey and for a lot of our customer it feels like a DeVos assistant to them our product our customer Fe is like that it's a devop it's a devop

person for us only for me which is taking my state system to the state where I wanted to be from Day Zero itself that is the biggest uh difference that we have seen at least in Market exactly exactly no wor no but uh that kind of really stand Out for me that uh you FOC you you remain focused on doing DeVos because uh uh as you entered into this service industry uh you get so much work and uh there is so much uh pulling from the inside that okay let's do this let's do that as

well but remaining focused and doing devops only it was kind of uh things really making more sense in a way I mean as you look back today basically right s i for that you have to be very very strong will I remember was only one Year of our operation we only had two client and then after a year one client came to us said that why don't you do a development for us and I will give you a let's say work of 10 or 15 20 developers we were only 5 10 people right so just

imagine the kind of work that we were getting and that from Us customer but the good thing with Shanker is that he's a Visionary right and then he is very strong without an iot doubt he simply said that no we don't want to compromise Other quality because let's say we are focusing on DeVos now if we go to some other direction probably we will not be able to do jce to Devos and to development as well at least right now we are able to do justice to Devos and that's what has been a quality of

us for last 10 years right we have been consistently delivering high quality work to our customers exactly that you can say a recipe of success for us that we always remain very very Focused yes sir that I have seen sir you are not only standing out actually you're knocking it out of the park I have seen some of the engineers and even I couldn't uh clear obre as you know I mean I interviewed for in 2018 I couldn't clear it and those Engineers were really smart and they were doing a number of things and those

days they were uh were talking about platform engineering Automation and I was like okay this I'm I only know about Kubernetes uh Cloud Docker do you really want me to explain or something but they were like do you know how how to create all these playb this playground and everything and I was like I think I should go back but no worries that that was also good so coming coming to build Piper uh um uh I'm sure it would have been U so many iterations prototyping feedback taken go to market a strategy and everything Would

have been done because uh this if I think is a company within a company I mean you treat as a company a startup within a startup basically so what was the feeling or kind of thinking behind this because you knew that okay we need to build some product but how it has to be and how it will be gradually built over the years and over the time basically how it was because it's been quite mature now yeah so I just want to tell you that Like we said we were very focused on doing devops we

were very focused on this product also so we have spinned up a SE separate company called oby Labs private Limited this is this product is not in oby Solutions it's not a not an entity within an entity it's a separate company it has separate complete separate team the Pro Management development uh devops everything is separate Marketing sales everything is separate so unless and Until you give separate attention to a product that product cannot become mature because see if you are doing same people you doing two things they cannot focus on two things obviously and something

which is bringing you money today is always priority than something which may bring money tomorrow so services will give you money today now let's say you can mint as it is going whereas product you have to invest a lot and then ultimately at some time later It will start becoming the pull effect will come and the prod will become uh positive Revenue generating company right but because we had a separate team separate Focus luckily very early in our journey almost eight months or nine months in the development uh process we had a customer for the

product I think I can name the customer it is original for sure and that thing I think that they agreed to use the product was very very uh very very important uh sort of Success for for us and we we are very grateful to them that they use the prod very early and at that time also it was stable it was serving their work processes although it was very different but they give gave us lot of feedback they gave us a lot of feedback we learned from it and then uh there were some customers who

did not use our product but in the POC phase they gave us so many feedback and that led to really making our product so so nice and So powerful that in 2021 I believe when uh 21 September time frame when lens 22 or 21 I don't remember s lens card when lens card was yeah between 21 22 only 22 only when lenscart was evaluating the product they could find that the the the thinking the templatized thinking which we have in the product the template approach we have taken the ability to absolutely modify the behavior of

the product by the End customer if they want they like That feature a lot so they were able to govern manage ensure auditing and they took our product against uh opx Packer so so that is what happened and like and then then after lenscart took our product of such a large Enterprise and uh they had uh complex uh processes and they grew very fast exceptionally fast that contributed a lot into the overall so I will tell you that um if we do our so in in successes we have learned in Failures also we have learned

so I I cannot name you but there was a company which was which leverage our product for three months there's lot of lot of back and forth they said they need this they need that Etc and ultimately they did not take the Brad but we are very thankful to them also because they could they could teach us so much about what we need to build in the product ultimately so it's a we have learned very seriously from both uh type of Customers and because of that today we have become quite mature in our offering s

you want to say something n NE uh you I think you have summarized all the journey all those experiences that we had but I think the best again I think uh the decision that you take early right in a very uh in a very deterministic fashion that actually defines you so I remember very beginning we created a complete separate Entity and that's why typically people have always that doubt that okay a service company cannot build product because typically the mistake that they do that Within Service Company from their current team only they get the product

built right and then prior changes and that is the decision that we took that okay we should have a separate team and whatsoever be the case they will never ever get involved into services so then you have that Focus Right that's what that was that was the one of the main decision that we took and one thing I want to tell you one thing I want to tell you that somehow the mindset of people who want to do services and the people who want to do product of very very different luckily very early in our

journey we found people who wanted to do products so we started off with two three people but they were exceptionally different people they all they were they were I think Created by God to do products by the exactly they born for it basically pardon they were born for it I think yeah they were born for it and they if they were not there this part would not have been there so that is also a factor I missed to mention so they have contributed their sweat and blood and not for anything not for money I can

tell you for sure we were paying them almost nothing but they were born to do that they were they were passionate Enough to do only that so they have like I have seen these people early not going to their home for three days in a trot okay we had a small we had a small conference room so they were they would sleep in the conference room work there continue for two two days three days so it used to surprise us so what but that is what actually is very very important to find a team which

is passionate about doing product development even if they are given a chance they would not want To go to services that is there is you have to identify such people use in product and services should have the services people that makes a lot of difference and yep yep right yes I think the leure sh focus should be there if you really want to build a product in service based company there should not be overlapping of time or basically the priorities that that should be the key I think if I can Summize in way and you

have to really think about the uh product way so that I think really worked out for build Piper and I have seen it I mean it it it it does really work uh well and just like the engineers of OB stre basically exactly uh so coming on to next uh next thing sir uh what I mean off is quite mature it has been doing really good now and build Piper is also being uh recognized or kind of being adopted on a Enterprise level so what is next I mean What kind of challenges you are trying

to solve next or how it is really going to work out for uh opst and build Piper in future so basically what we have done till now is that we have built the background for a very good services company and we have also built the background for a good product company the time is to scale so last one year there was obviously the market was not um sort of gone into small sleep Sort of there was a small recession in the market people were slightly indeterministic the the trend continues but as soon as the Market

opens opens up I we feel there's a small small green shoots of open opening up appearing in the market that is what we feel so we would want to sort of uh find more partners for our product company across the globe so we are we have uh set up an entity in us and we also set up an entity in Dubai And we are uh we are talking to some very large Enterprises in us and also some very large Enterprises in Dubai for product uh adoption yeah adoption and we are running at various stages in

some companies everything is done and we are about to sign the contract in some companies uh we are doing the POC but they are exceptionally large Enterprises by the way similarly for services um we have done our pivot so we as we were Both sandip and we were have always worked in the startup ecosystem have worked very closely with uh startup people those people moved into different leadership positions in large startups and most of our customers were were around this ecosystem so except uh except some Fortune companies if you look at our uh clientele they

would be mostly very large startups in India so I don't want to name them but any any startup large startup we imagine would Mostly be our customers but uh uh but now what we are trying to do is we are trying to penetrate into the Enterprise ecosystem so that takes own sweet time you have to really show your value proposition so product opens are lot of doors for us because build Piper draws a lot of interest and through through sometimes through products sometimes through Services we are able to penetrate uh large Enterprises in multiple Geographies

and our plan is to then have very clear B forcation in different geographies and have leaders uh in those geographies so in Dubai we have started started identifying some leaders who would work with us in Long Run and so is the case in us so we would want to build a noal organization where every geography has its own noal leadership and they work to build the company in that geography so that is the approach we are Taking even in India for Hyderabad for Bangalore we are taking a noal approach we want to build the company

around those leaders in those oh yes so one a couple of more things that I want to add siip is that see being in a service based domain now it's always that you should always remain ahead in the curve right and you have to take a lot of strategic initiatives right and then uh every year we choose some strategic initiatives and then we Work on them so for example last year we said that we want to strengthen our partnership ecosystem so then uh we started working with AWS very very closely in a years time we

became AWS Advanced Consulting partner garnered couple of competencies as well for example War eks at Tech competency and then we started working in a very close fashion with AWS right similarly gcps again gcp also we are working very closely and soon we want to Become very close associate with them same applies for Azure as well so this is what we did last year uh this year we are planning so see devop I think you you are also aware right earlier it used to be plain simple devop implementation exactly exactly now maturity is coming into the

system and things are getting democratized right so another initiative that we have said that instead of playing simple devop now we want to do a competency or domain Driven Dev for examp in a box initiative we have started an initiative that is called finte in a box now what we are saying that uh let's say when people Implement DeVos for companies it's typically exploratory exercise right you go there figure it out then you implement then some you hit hit B next right but we are saying that we being a company who is expert obviously in

DeVos but then we want to understand the complete fintech domain As well right and then we will tell you that okay how Devo should be implemented in fintech it will never be an exploratory exercise right okay he will tell you that okay let's say the new RBI governance policies are coming in right so you should take of all those aspect it should not be that okay they came then somebody rais concern then it will get fixed right or let's say you start implementing infrastructure and they gradually reach out when you do Compliance audit and all

those stuff now why not it can be done from Day Zero itself so that is something uh another strategic initiative that we have taken in Services area Shankar you want this this is really good sir actually I mean I haven't seen this approach because uh uh you work with all almost all of the uh domains in the industry and if you provide very specific Consulting and uh kind of work stream towards their focus area uh they would kind of really love It and lot of these startup I mean they really struggle uh with the things

because they know their business they know n number of things about their company but devops in a ftech or any ACH or any other way is kind of really different everywhere basically so if you know the recip how to implement it and you have perfected it so that would be really I mean kind of hit for them so this is I thinking sir I mean this this is going To really uh boom absolutely so data governance is very important so there also we are working for fintech so the fintech in a box will be absolute

complete compliance related uh things so it will take care of data it will take care of devops and security and that there I think I missed to mentioned that now we have also started diversifying our services so instead of working now instead of like for example sandep is our leader in Devop so he takes care of complete devops uh vertical technology leader Etc we are hiring vertical leads in data and QA QA automation also and okay under them we will start building the these service lines in our company also the data is already taken up

we have already hired the leader and he is sort of building the data database and data uh services in the company and so is the case with QA automation VAP and uh QA so so these these two areas we've Started already started expanding so Vision wise we want to now uh sort of provide the same consistency and quality of delivery which we have been giving in devops into other areas also with the same type of uh template which we have followed for devop so somebody at the top who understands this better than anybody and then

he builds the team very well and then we provide the high quality delivery to our customers under his Leadership so that the bu yeah okay I think you perfected it now moving on to other other areas or other way I can say it now the PO is kind of Greater in QA and data data platform so I think we launching in them but I I think this is this is also going to be hit uh yes but it be consistent with our theme s so what we said that you focus on your development right but

ensuring that the product that you are building or the services that you have They should run smoothly right so you need devops you need a testing all the flavors of testing whether it is VAP performance security Automation and then obviously data is something where you do have to do analytics on top of your application that's where also we can help focus on your core product right rest of the thing we can take care of us rely on us you can rely on us basically exactly exactly I this is kind of I mean very strategic thinking

said that okay Devop we perfected now what is next burning issue which is data governance and security and uh QA so this is kind of in in a in a right way from my my perspective as well sir um coming to uh next question sir which I really wanted to ask you because I have seen you really talked about it a lot and you kind of advocates for it basically so the question is around uh platform engineering sir uh uh so how it is and how really it should be uh do you think People are

doing it correctly in current environment or what changes would you suggest to make so whenever PE whenever we go to somebody with our product build Piper gener try to slot us uh against let's say uh gav actions or let's say Argo CD and that is a that is absolute misunderstanding about our product so build pip is actually a this is actually a platform engineering tool but what is a platform Engineering tool it is absolutely new terminology if you go to Google and search platform engineering you would get different kinds of answers but that that this

is something a segment which is getting created by the way and uh uh we are sort of envisioning it in a very different fashion it's a very different manner what we are saying is let's say whenever you are building your uh product you should have a very good Central catalog software catalog Management first of all so what are your different teams what are the different services in each team what is the quality maturity of those Services what is the overall maturity of your company so there's a software catalog which is telling you your current state

so any cxo can come look at the catalog look at their maturity what is the current code which is deployed what is the current code which is built etc etc all those details then second is agile governance So generally what people do is they have they use jira or some other tool itm tool for uh agile management and they use Jenkins or some other Tool for delivery now they are not integrated with each other so technically anybody can go and do deployment in production and not have any approval on jira there's no way you could

stop them stop them from doing it or there will be lot of scripts which will be used to maybe put some gate checks till somebody can Circumvent it right now Builder has a very seamless integration with J service now uh create and ensure that you have complete end to end change management done very well without even anybody creating a ticket mhm everything gets created automatically by build Piper Etc so the complete agile governance piece is done very well very very well in our product so that is another area then infra governance is another area which

is very very critical very well serviced In the market so when you say infr governance you would want to have a certain quality of uh certain quality of there there will be certain quality of um code you should write for infra then there should be certain Security checks which should be there for infra and cost checks also somebody can launch a very large machine for an llm processing and then forget about it by the way now that Cost is being incurred by the company I've heard some CTO tell that people were creating very large machines

to do some llm analysis and they were forgetting to switch it off or we wanted to put some governance around it this cost governance because cloud is so easy to use with great power comes great responsibility you also have to very careful about using it so that all those pieces are there in the product by the way so that is another area then you Want to have or byse standardization right you want to have compliance you want to have security and it should be standard across the organization now if you have jenin scripts you have

so many so many pipelines let's say 100 pipelines how do you ensure that every pipeline is compliant but in our product for one team there need to be only one pipeline M because it pipeline does just the workflow how build happens how deployment happens is configured in the Service not in the pipeline so you have one Pipeline and you have one template that template decides what happens during build what happens during deployment so if you want to embed some checks you have to change it in one place so I was talking to a large Enterprise

so I asked them if you today want to introduce check marks in your uh in your complete organization how much time will it take so he was smiling I would say it at least six months for you To do it right for using build Piper it takes a minute to do it and you could gradually migrate people to the new template the old template can be phased off and you can report have reporting as to who is still using old template and then C them to use the new template and that is what that is

what it takes in terms of effort whereas if you are having fragmented release processes you have to go in every instance of junkins make the changes or every instance of Pipeline Etc so it's a complex so what I'm trying to tell you is a platform which is enabling you to deliver your software has to be so mature that it eliminates the maximum amount of sweat that people do to ensure they can do standardization and once that is there it becomes so easy to navigate and make everybody comfortable they can do their debugging shift left is

possible everything is possible so there are some levers around which we Have built the product and that is what we call platform engineering it's very very important that the Ops should be invisible invisible Ops so it's very important it's a very important terminology that your devop team should be not talking to anybody they should be developing the platform which should be the visible part where people should come and work interact with and if there are any problems they report problem in the platform and the platform is fixed Then your developers are enabled there is no

cycle time wastage there is no dependency no bottleneck like that s to you sure sure U maybe I can talk talk about one one of my let's say experience or let's say understanding that I built over past two years right so see what I have seen is that when we talk about platform engineering it's not a simple solution right it is not a very simple automation it is a product in itself right now exactly let's say if a company Decides to build a product then obviously they want to have those dedicated people and working on

T working on that particular platform over a period of time in my experience what I have seen and I have some examples there where let's say a certain company who who has a product right now they started building let's say a platform for themselves but then it took them for the two or three years but as you know s a lot of iteration is there right and then With the people going that that that knowledge gets lost right yes yes exactly when that knowledge gets know then you are in in in a lingbo state right

you cannot move forward you cannot move backward this is a kind of a challenge that I that I have seen so let's say if if as a company you want to build a platform by yourself it's a very good thing to do because ultimately we are all solving tech but then this is one of the biggest challenge that you Should always plan for that as a product company you create contingency for your product team as well but let's say when you decide to build up another product for solving your platform challenges it has to be

taken as another product only and then all the uh let's say Innovation that you're doing investment that you're doing you have to keep track of that typically I have seen that company misses that and then after some time that question of Roi comes into the Picture let's say when you buy a product that Ro question comes from day Zero but when as a company you start building a platform that never comes into the picture but after three years four year then that Ro question starts coming into the picture and that's where lot of company then

get into that soul searching so that is another very important decision that a company should take exactly exactly question of build versus bu come into the Picture actually sir actually I was coming to that only because uh two things which I really wanted to discuss with you were uh other than opst stre and build Piper were uh doing platform engineering and how do you really make decisions about build versus buy how how I mean what are the pros and cons how do you really V it and if you are going to uh kind of uh

uh show it to someone or kind of proposing someone pitching to someone what will be your I Mean thought process behind it yeah absolutely see um this is a this is a subject which is very close to my heart I also written an article about it on LinkedIn uh maybe I'll send you the link so oh thank you so basically what it is that any company any company if they are doing a product they have to very carefully think what should be built in house and what should be leveraged from an expert who is building

it very Well now my recommendation in that article which I have written is let's say if you are if you are building the core of your product MH this which is your differentiator for example that should always be built in house okay so let's say let's say you are trying to you are trying to build a something like something like U book my show or some something like that so unless and until you have written the algorithm of how The seat selection should happen etc etc you would not be able to differentiate from other players

who are maybe leveraging a similar software some unique idea in your mind which you trying to implement which will differentiate you from others right that sort of should be always built in house should be done by your own team and they should be very passionate about it only then you will win the piece because see today the uh unless you are Doing very very disruptive thing the market is always replacement right the better takes over the uh other solution which already existed right you take over from them and you run the business right for example

in our case build Piper people are already solving their problems of cic CD and in a way is doing platform engineering but what we have done is we have built a very smooth way of delivering software and they have started liking our way of doing it and They have started using this product so we are in a way replacing other so now question is when I'm building my core if I'm using the my own team I can also build the periphery with my own team also right so peripheral things which are not the core of

my function if I start building it myself it consumes lots and lots of energy and it either would deviate my focus from the core or I would not be able to focus on the periphery and that will remain my weak Link my recommendation is always that you build your core and delegate the periphery to people who are doing it as their core for example doing platform engineering is our core functionality so it is our core but for most of the companies who are doing product development platform engineering is their peripheral function right it is not

their core function now but people who are doing core product development they should delegate their peripheral Function to companies who are doing it as their own core function so that they can rely on us to do their work very well and but sometimes people may think why not build because this is an ongoing cost this is an ongoing cost let's say if you leverage build Piper every month you have to pay but the fact is any product should be able to leave money in the bank accounts if it is not doing that it's not a

product yes are you getting my point so let's say if you Would build and let's say if you would uh maintain it right it would mean building will mean a huge amount by the way and then maintaining it is again a cost now if the product is able to at least run at less than the maintenance cost only forget about the building then it is a valid product right so we prove we prove to our customers that if you build your core and then maintain it the cost you will spend in maintaining it is more

Than we would take as your our license fee okay and generally generally it makes sense to them that first is building is a huge effort it would it would mean quite a bit by the way so at least at least one one and a half years of seven eight people team would be needed to build a very suboptimal solution compared to build P because you would build it just in your context right so it would be Etc and still you would need a very large team to maintain It whereas build Piper is a standard of

the self Cost product which which can be used and uh it sort of runs at a cost lesser than the maintenance cost that is the that we are not like AWS by the way so AWS is very lucky product which or any Cloud for example so they charge you more than you would spend on on let's say building buying a server by so if let's say one year but still people use it because it has it own value props it's it's an amazing value prop our Product we are saying that if you would be spending

less than the maintenance cost when your use are you want I think sir I just wanted to add in in this since you said this about cloud and all because uh it's about perspective and the way people sell it because uh nowadays people are not selling mattresses they are selling the uh sleeve and the way AWS is selling is actually it is not selling the services it is selling the Comfort or the way the Easiness absolutely basically absolutely so to The Branding branding and the actually you make it a you make it a sort of

for example when you are selling an iPhone you are not selling an iPhone because it is very um it is it is like if I need it it is it is my desire yes exactly it becomes your aspiration so you convert your product into an aspirational goal for people so so maybe people large organizations for them the moving to cloud is an aspiration so Similarly because it obviously enables the velocity for developers a lot so no doubt it it it increases the speed of innovation but it comes with its own cost no doubt we being

uh we being a devops company would know that very well by the way but anyway s you want to add something I think I pre-answer the question before asked exactly exctly but uh just wanted to check sir uh I mean after build versus buy and all Those discussions basically uh uh what do you think uh most people really buy I mean they I I mean do they have really uh pulling for buying or it is just uh uh thought process that no I'm really stubborn and I'm going to build it what is the scenario you

have seen there are different kinds of leaders MH the whole world is even today majority of workload is still not on cloud right because there are so many different kinds of leaders different Kinds of uh mindsets and uh we come across different lot of different kind of people there are some people who who are sort of who who who are like our ambassador sitting in the organization work through the complete layers of the organization to get the product into the system because they know what advantage it can bring to the ecosystem and there are others

who would say that uh I think we are all done we are running well with our own system and we do not want to use The product there are both kinds of leaders but I have seen that people who are wanting to achieve lot achieve more they are not stuck onto what they are doing today they want to move forward for example there are there would be devops leaders who would be happy with doing cicd and maintaining this as a state very well but there are others who want to move to AI who would want

to move to data engineering they Don't want to remain where they they are they want to move ahead they want to use systems which are very stable who can ensure that he can be free to do more so we have a achieve more campaign by the way so build Piper runs and achieve more campaign so we are seeing our leaders able to achieve more because of build Piper they're able to transform themselves into a data engineer or much bigger devops problem sets can be solved uh security is always a sort of um Stepchild for any

any organization so it's a very most important but least urgent item until there is a security incident right so exactly our leaders have people who have adopted our product have moved on to doing much more valuable things for their organization and that has been that has been their Vision so so that is how I feel I may not be absolutely correct but this is my understanding of the system so so continuing to that I think As Shanker said it is very very contextual right so let's say somebody who's just starting right now for them doing

that investment for years and having something in place from Day Zero that is something very easy right making that decision some customer who has let's say invested a lot and created let's say as Shanker said that a decent uh setup which is ensuring that DeVos practice is running fine for them it is a big change because they have already Done a lot of investment not doing a new investment that's a challenge but as Shanker said that uh let's say whether they want to innovate further are they innovating right now or not that is another Factor

on the basis of people decide right so that context becomes very very important in which state of Journey you are in are you already matured are you do you have that focus of keep on maturing or you want to mature but then you want some partner Like us who can help them in that maturity Journey or you're just starting and then you obviously you don't want to spend you want to completely focus on your core work but then you want somebody to take them pain away right so these all various context comes into the picture

basis of which people decides whether they should build or they should buy right thank you sir I think this really settles the battle between build versus Buy so this is going to be the highlight I think so this brings to the last question sir actually I mean as you mentioned in starting in your intro uh regarding the open source because there are people uh in the market or Engineers they are really wondering about how to start contributing towards open source how to start what are the areas they should really Target and what are the benefits

of doing open sourcing basically and why it is really Important so a lot of people ask this question to me and I I have a very simple answer and I think it's very straightforward as well so let's say if somebody wants to start open source and a lot of people recommend it that it is as straightforward as starting with let's say bugs that are being raised in that open source because let's say if you go into some project the first thing that people do is put you in a support work right that okay look at

the Baus Issues that are coming into the picture so that you have that understanding of that complete ecosystem you understand that computer architecture and then you start contributing right so it is as simple as that now the question why you want to do it so again the answer is very straightforward why somebody wants to work let's say companies like Google Walmart all those company because the people that works there you get an opportunity to work with them Financial aspect is there but ultimately that is the aspect now when you work in open source project uh

and if you're working in a good open source project without getting into a company you're getting an opportunity to learn from somebody uh somebody that kind of an experience right and then obviously it will improve your profile your capability as well and what we have seen that in fact we also uh let's say treat people very highly who are contributing Into open source system so let's say it is in your profile that you have contributed into an open source project which is used let's across multiple places for us also it becomes very very easy decision

making that okay this person has proven credentials right you don't have to interview that person because that person has already proved himself but I think let's say if you want to somebody wants to do open source contribution the prime reason should be That okay I will get an opportunity to work people who are very good in their field mhm so I think let's say the only motivation for people to do open source contribution should be this that I will learn from other people experience okay because I think I think almost all the open source projects

basically uh there are people contributing from all across the world and you get to learn in your you uh wherever you are working in your team you have a way of working basically Or maybe in your company you have way of working but if you work with the global uh Workforce I mean uh in a Way You Are being trained to work remotely or in your own way basically so I just wanted to say uh that would be really good for someone who is really starting up or kind of experience and want to learn how

uh basically Loosely coupled teams can be and solve a global problem basically so that is good uh s you were saying something no no I was saying that I Think there's also one more aspect that some people uh some have the ability to focus on one thing very for a very long time MH such people are very rare by the way who can focus on one thing for a very long time exactly that is a very important aspect towards being an open source contributor sandep do you agree or not so basically what will happen is

you you can start writing a small utility and that small utility you can publish for people to use but then People will start complaining they will say this feature is not not there that feature is not there not somebody who's doing open source he has to then consistently go and fix those bugs so it is as if as if there's a child who is not growing up so you have to constantly guide constantly Mentor uh take care of the child and till it becomes really a large grownup kid who can manage all by themselves so

the op Source contribut will take care of the that so you have To take care of that child for a very long time and you have to be focused passionate about that particular work for a very because people will not get get associated in the beginning in the beginning people will only complain that this feuture is not there that feature is not there but when you start fixing it and it picks up Tempo then for slowly and steadily more and people more and more people get attached to it so somebody in the beginning has to

be the Anchor and that anchor has to be a person who can work for a very long time in a and sandep and his team uh have that uh longer Vision longer Vision they can remain stuck to something that is very important this is my assessment from what I have seen right s yes yes Shanker it's almost two years we have been working on multiple open source contribut contribution yeah it has it has to do That Journey cool cool uh thank you very much uh I think uh that will really help the uh open source

contributors who are really eager to to I mean kind of contribute towards the open source uh uh there there was one more thing I mean I think when I was talking to you last time uh regarding U the my gulum or devop ninja program do do you want to uh shred some light on it because there are so many engineers and I mean they really Want to get into devorce but they don't know how to get in and uh kind of get a internship which da pays well uh and you get to learn on the

job so where some uh again I would like Shankar because it's a brainchild of Shankar and yogesh these two people brainchild idea okay why we should do my gulum I think we should start with that backstory and then we can give go into more details okay okay sir so basically see we are a we are a service company so we always Have to bake our own bread typically product companies take uh people who are trained in services companies and then train then sort of um leverage them to build their products for example myself I was

working with global logic in the beginning then I went to ZB Etc so any any any if you go to any sort of prod company generally they don't take um freshers a lot so they take people who have who have worked in some company where which was services and then they They recognize their abilities and they sort of work for larger oration after that so uh we as Service Company can do not have the freedom or the um sort of prerogative to hire people from let's say Google or Microsoft right we have to build our

own talent and that is why this devops ninja program started where we wanted to bake our own bread so people who were very aspirational who wanted to learn and grow we brought them into a program spent sufficient time With them and all of those people who persisted so who who passed the stress test by the way so our ninja program almost like a stress test it's stress test is an understatement by the way so it's a very very difficult uh program initially it used to be for three months now it is seven months program it's

very very very sort of thorough in in its approach and people who have uh who are leaders today in our company where one time Dev so so it's a very very successful program uh what we do is we sort of start with a abari phase where uh it's a two we uh two we program where a lot of people join there around 100 people or 120 people join the batch okay and they they are taken through that two week phase and by the way this is a paid program people pay we do not pay they

pay so okay okay so so they pay 2,000 Rupees that's all and then Just to ensure that they have some seriousness and then we run through that phase of two weeks and we teach them AWS and then at the end of the program we select around 30 25 to 30 people not more than that out of those 100 100 people who go through the viari phase which is a three Monon program where we train them on various topics of devop so it could be uh Linux AWS an terraform Docker Etc and and at the end

of the 3 Monon phase we select around Seven eight people maximum 10 out of those 30 25 30 35 people and these 10 people go through the Snak phase which is a three-month industrial training proper on job training sort of they they are trained on GA they are trained on project management aspects how to do how to report their work etc and they do real work and then at the end these people get absorbed into obst as employees so that is how it it goes so this is a very very successful program By the way

people have changeed their careers from being uh gym trainers to devops Engineers or let's say clerks in government offices to devops so I am surprised magic sandep and his team does to the people and the kind of confidence people build at the end of seven months that they can change their lives it's it's transformation journey by the way s you want to talk about it I am also astonished the kind of Impact that we are making into the lives of people right because at the end of the day it gives you that uh that happiness

that okay you helped somebody change the trajectory of that person's life right so that is very very impactful but obviously as shank said that it a very rigorous program so and the criteria that we have the initial criteria it is not about capability it is about seriousness Dedication that we judge people on the basis of which we Decide people and then obviously people get groomed uh okay sir uh so basically uh people come abari and then is natak and then they get absorbed into VII and then Snak okay ABI viari Snak and then they get

absorbed into off stream basically okay so all uh this whole time the seven months U they they have to pay some amount or how it is till till what in the first first phase it is only 2,000 Rupees then in the second phase three months they have to pay I think some 12,000 rupees per month for three months that's all okay okay so and what is the conversion rate on the Snak to getting full-time work SN 100% okay maybe there one or two outlier 70 80% definitely 80% definitely is there right something yeah at least

it's a guaranteed program so we hire everybody and oh okay okay that is good you you kind ofak then you Definitely will get a job but then let's say if you're not able to perform so we would say at least 8 25% people uh remain in our company as employees but you really train them well because I mean you get to know during this pH I mean this phase that in which area maybe because somebody is in Kill out somebody good is in cubern somebody good in NC so in a in a way or something

somebody gets absorbed basically in company okay that that will really Really be helpful for the new age Engineers who are coming to uh the workforce and they are looking forward to uh kind of break into the devops because a lot of people they do internship and do a number of things but they are really not sure which thing they should really learn so and they they are really willing to spend money because they are spending lot of money in these training centers and all but I will definitely recommend them to try Out this program uh

maybe I I'll just uh send the link of uh whosoever is asking or maybe I'll put it in the uh video description sir sure I think uh I'm done with my question any closing advice you would like to give to Engineers leaders or maybe any predictions you want to make about Devo industry I will I can tell you that the uh uh the trend is changing so when we started the company and for a very long Time people were struggling to set up their cicd processes Etc now mostly the cic processes are at least claimed

to be done whether they are done not done but that budget is spent so so and in most places it is also done but generally the cic is no more a problem for people now even if it is a problem people will not know that it's a problem for them so they will feel that they C is done but uh where people are wanting to spend Their budgets today on SRI on ensuring being little more security compliant uh ensuring that their uh kubernetes adoption Journeys are really solidified so these are the areas where people are

maybe more uh open to uh investing their money and AI is always there so AI sort of AI Ops ml Ops Etc that that discussion is happening so Investments are not coming in the direction but people are talking about It but people are spending a lot on SRI SRI Ops uring that the liability is measured uh they are Quantified the SLI slos are taken care of so that discussions has started this is what we are hearing and large Enterprises have started wanting to modernize so they are wanting to move away from Jenkins based delivery to

a platform based delivery so that is a very good phase because build Piper will catch that wave tools like build paper Will catch that wave today so that is so because Enterprises have have become tired of having fragmented systems every every team having own delivery methodology Etc they want to standardize so this is the trend we are seeing uh to the people I would like to say please remain focused irrespective of where the trend is moving jobs will be there in all areas you will have CI jobs you'll have cd job you'll have Linux job

even today Linux administrators are very Valuable yes in spite of devops in spite of everything Linux administrators are still sought after today actually it it has become so NE sir that in today's world uh if you say that you are uh I mean you really need a Linux administrator then it has to be really really smart guy who is doing only Linux Administration and the way they I know some of these Linux administrators and they are really fabulous and it doesn't take them even seconds to perform all These tasks on on machines so I'm really

astonished because nowadays those jobs were Mainline or kind of stream main jobs now they have become really Niche database administrator dbas DBA Architects R dbms and all those things we are really kind of a niche jobs now and they are getting paid more than devops Engineers nowadays sure so my recommendation is do not jump from here to there there to somewhere else that is a method but will not sustain you very Long remain become very very focused so today people have started talking about five shaped Engineers com shaped Engineers etc etc I I am not

I I am not somebody who would recommend you to do that while you can have idea about you try to become a com with a very small hair but at least some hair should be very long you should go very deep into learning at least few skills very very well very very well and you cannot Escape if you want to really Become some valuable person you cannot Escape being one some expert in some areas very good experts so this is my recommendation s at least become at least become master in some areas just like opst

exhaled in the devops area exactly sir over to you sir uh one last advice I think Shankar has already covered something but maybe I will put it from a different perspective so I think we are living in a very very exciting time when I started my career The technology was changing it was changing there as well but it was changing let in three four five years right and then I was wondering that okay do we have to keep learning but now the the pace has taken a very different level right it is changing so quickly

sir yes but which means that your fun fundamental should be very very strong right and then you should be very very adaptable in terms of exploring new things and learning new things so Typically what I have seen is that people as soon as they get into their comfortable position they they become then they become lenient with their carrier when their aspirations right so I think the kind of environment that we are in it requires a lot of attention so there is a statement that Shanker and we always discuss that uh your life is like rowing

a boat right MH if you're not rowing rowing the boat then you are not but it's not like that you are there you Are going backwards yes yes if you have to remain there you have to row and if you have to if you row with a lot of effort then you will move ahead in your life and I think we are living in that era so you have to be very very honest with yourself whether you are rowing or with whether you are rowing with a lot of effort so that you should that's what

I will recommend to the people so I think I I can relate to it sir because I I have always uh seen this thing uh Either you are rowing or going U forward or you're going with the flow or with the exam because you're always against the exam so I mean life is going and changing things are changing but the as long as you are rowing and keep on learning keep on hustling I think this is going to be working for you so yes thank you sir I think uh this will be end for of

our conversation I think we will meet again on some very neich uh uh topics like fofs or something so really Appreciate it really appreciate your time thank you very much sir I'll I'll be in touch sir thank you very much sir bye good day it was nice talking to you s thank you very much sir bye thanks