Open source was taking over enterprises long before k8s. There was OpenStack, Hadoop, and obviously Linux itself has been widely adopted since before New Relic’s founding (2008).
Arguably micro services have increased the need for observability tooling, but even that “sea change” is years long in the tooth. Sure large enterprises are slow to adopt such trends, but it’s been happening and is hardly a sudden shocking development.
Maybe I’m just being pedantic or nit picky, but it does seem extra worrisome when the executives for a struggling company say something that sounds dramatically out of touch.
"Open source was taking over enterprises long before k8s"
True, also not related to the point I was trying to make. Executives tend to be handwavey and vague sometimes but I'm pretty sure the "sea change" they're talking about in this case is about containerization and the rapid evolution of open source projects in that space, many of them related to observability. Kubecon had 500 attendees in 2015 and 12,000 in 2019. It's hard to deny that the popularity of that community will sway popular opinion about what technologies to embrace moving forward. I think (and again, I am guessing as I have exactly zero information that the public does not have) that New Relic and other companies are in part making decisions like this because it's becoming clear they will be left behind if they don't, and quickly.
I bet the first post-covid Kubecon will have 20k attendees and be taken over by the execs and VCs who've realized that's where the devs are, just in time for the devs to stop going and start the next thing á la reInvent. Wish I had gone before it blew up.
I also feel like "struggling" is a bit of an overstatement for a company with a $4B market cap, but maybe that's just me. I'm sure most FAANG4LYFers look at that like a lemonade stand.
Arguably micro services have increased the need for observability tooling, but even that “sea change” is years long in the tooth. Sure large enterprises are slow to adopt such trends, but it’s been happening and is hardly a sudden shocking development.
Maybe I’m just being pedantic or nit picky, but it does seem extra worrisome when the executives for a struggling company say something that sounds dramatically out of touch.