One of my favorite presentations at the recent DevOps Enterprise Summit 2015 was Jeffrey Snover of distinguished engineer at Microsoft talking about his 16 year quest to bring what is today called Windows Nano Server to market. Interestingly when I spoke with Gene Kim about what he thought were some of the best presentations of DOES he also brought up Snover’s presentation as well.
Windows Server without Windows was something once considered heretical from anyone at Microsoft. As Jeffrey relayed to me in the interview below and on stage, he paid a price for evangelizing for this. But today we have a version of Windows Server that has only 1/20th of the footprint of regular Windows Server. It runs on mainframes, command lines and has virtually (no pun intended) all of the functionality that you need for a server in the cloud without the GUI overhead that Windows usually brings.
As importantly for me, Jeffrey also gave us a glimpse of what it is like to work in Satya Nadella’s Microsoft. It sounds like a very different place than when Steve Ballmer was CEO. Is also sounds very refreshing as well.
Here is my interview with Snover:
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Here is Jeffrey’s actual presentation at DOES ’15
Alan Shimel is founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Techstrong Group, a Futurum company, and a member of Futurum's executive leadership team. A technology entrepreneur, media executive and industry commentator, Shimel has spent more than three decades building businesses, communities and media platforms serving enterprise technology professionals, including co-founding StillSecure, a network security company, and the DevOps Institute, a DevOps certification and training body. At Techstrong, he leads a portfolio of media brands including devopsy.kinsta.cloud, Security Boulevard, Cloud Native Now, Techstrong AI, Techstrong IT, Digital CxO, Platform Engineering, Techstrong Semi and Techstrong TV, along with a growing portfolio of events, educational programs and digital communities. With more than 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, Shimel is a familiar voice in the space and was an early advocate of the DevOps movement, helping bring DevOps practices into mainstream enterprise technology. His work today spans cybersecurity, DevOps, cloud-native technologies, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and digital transformation, and he hosts popular programs including Techstrong Gang, Shimmy Says and Still Cyber, After All These Years. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Politics from St. John's University and a Juris Doctor from New York Law School.