OSS Think Tank - NetflixOSS - OSS as a Competitive Differentiator

Open  Source  as  a  Compe//ve  Differen/ator  

Ruslan  Meshenberg  25  March  2014  

NeAlix  

Who  am  I?  •  Director,  PlaAorm  Engineering  •  Leading  NeAlixOSS  Program  

•  @rusmeshenberg  

Compe//ve  Differen/ator  

•  When  a  business  makes  their  product,  or  service,  different  and  unique  

Open  Source  

•  Open  Source  SoNware  is  one  that  can  be  freely  used,  changed,  and  shared  by  anyone  

Wait  a  minute…  

•  How  does  giving  away  soNware  for  free  create  compe//ve  advantage  /  differen/a/on?  

Openness  vs.  Strategy  Simon  Wardley  -­‐  Researcher  at  the  Leading  Edge  Forum  

Beware  of  Geeks  Bearing  GiNs:  Strategies  for  an  Increasingly  Open  Economy  

Simon  Wardley  -­‐  Researcher  at  the  Leading  Edge  Forum  

ABOUT  HOW  NETFLIX  OSS  STARTED…  

   First,  a  story  

Before  NeAlixOSS,  our  Open  Culture  

What’s  our  policy?  

Establish  our  solu/ons  as  Best  Prac/ces  /  

Standards  

Hire,  Retain  and  Engage  Top  Engineers  

Build  up  NeAlix  Technology  Brand  

Benefit  from  a  shared  ecosystem  

Goals  

ESTABLISHING  BEST  PRACTICES  

NeAlix  PlaAorm  Evolu/on  

Bleeding  Edge  Innova/on  

Common  Pa]ern  

Shared  Pa]ern  

2009-­‐2010   2011-­‐2012   2013-­‐2014  

NeAlix  ended  up  several  years  ahead  of  the  industry,  but  it’s  not  a  sustainable  posi/on  

Certainty  vs.  Ubiquity  Simon  Wardley  –  Researcher  at  Leading  Edge  Forum  

Bleeding  Edge  Innova/on  

Common  Pa]ern  

Shared        Pa]ern  

Making  it  easy  to  follow  Exploring  the  wild  west  each  Fme   vs.  laying  down  a  shared  route  

BUILDING  TECH  BRAND  

NeAlixOSS  in  the  Press  

Over  1000  Meetup  members    

SHARED  ECOSYSTEM  

Community  contribu/ons  

•  Announced  March  2013  •  $100,000  in  10  categories  

Judges  

Aino  Corry  Program  Chair  for  Qcon/GOTO  

Mar/n  Fowler  Chief  Scien/st  Thoughtworks  Simon  Wardley  

Strategist  

Yury  Izrailevsky  VP  Cloud  NeAlix  

Werner  Vogels  CTO  Amazon   Joe  Weinman  

SVP  Telx,  Author  “Cloudonomics”  

To  a  somewhat  mixed  reac/on…  

But  overall,  a  great  success!  

HIRE,  RETAIN,  ENGAGE  

Standard  hiring  prac/ces  

What  you  really  want  

Github  is  your  resume  

BONUS!  

Side-­‐effects  –  code  quality  

WHAT  IS  THIS  PLATFORM?  

Assump/ons  

•  Slowly  Changing  •  Large  Scale  

•  Rapid  Change  •  Large  Scale  

•  Slowly  Changing  •  Small  Scale  

•  Rapid  Change  •  Small  Scale  

Speed  

Scale  

Everything  Works  

Everything  Is  Broken  Hardware  Will  Fail  

SoNware  Will  Fail  

Enterprise  IT  

Telcos  

Startups  

Web  Scale  

NeAlix  Global  PlaAorm  

Cassandra  Replicas  

Zone  A  

Cassandra  Replicas  

Zone  B  

Cassandra  Replicas  

Zone  C  

Regional  Load  Balancers  

Cassandra  Replicas  

Zone  A  

Cassandra  Replicas  

Zone  B  

Cassandra  Replicas  

Zone  C  

Regional  Load  Balancers  

Manage  the  Cloud  

PlaAorm  Libraries  

Persistence  Systems  

Common  Infrastructure  

Effec/ve  and  happy  developers  

BIG  Data!  

In  use  by  many  companies  

h]p://www.meetup.com/NeAlix-­‐Open-­‐Source-­‐PlaAorm/  

@NeAlixOSS  

More  Use  Cases  

More  Features  

•  From  pieces  to  PlaAorm  •  Be]er  training  /  ramp  up  •  Be]er  portability  •  Contribu/ons  from  end  users  •  Contribu/ons  from  vendors    

What’s  Coming  Next?  

Whole  is  greater  than  sum  of  the  parts  

Takeaways  Func9onality  and  scale  now,  portability  later  

Moving  from  parts  to  a  plaAorm  Rapid  Evolu9on  –  Low  MTBIMSH  

(Mean  Time  Between  Idea  and  Making  Stuff  Happen)    

hKp://neAlix.github.com  @NeAlixOSS  

@rusmeshenberg