Narrator: You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the skil framework.
Suresh GP: I'm a big fan of sacred lab in genetic right. I
do a lot of work on consulting coaching on site allottee.
Engineers and I, as I start with a lot of the operations teams,
they are leveraging these new approaches because reliability
is becoming the most important question at a board level.
Eveline Oehrlich: Welcome to the humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Evelyn early Chief Research Officer at people search. Our
podcast title today is navigating the future. deep dive
on a AI ops certification. Very exciting topic, very close and
dear to my heart. And we have a very special person with us
today. We have Shor's GP who is the managing director at Tao
solutions. Hello, Suresh.
Suresh GP: Hey, Evelyn. Thanks for having me at this podcast,
really looking forward for some great conversation today.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yes, likewise. So let me share quickly show us
your background with our listeners so that they know who
they are dealing with, because I think that's quite important. So
sure, she is the managing director of top solutions in
Singapore, USA and India. He is one of the top 2021 CRMs. He is
top 25 influencers in the ITSM by HDI and also a global
ambassador of DevOps Institute, which is where shrewish and I
actually have met. He is the co author of the SRE practitioner
and observability foundation course of DevOps Institute. He
has over 22 years and more industry. And he's a respected
thought leader in areas of ITSM, DevOps, Site Reliability
Engineering, and PRM. And he provides consulting coaching for
Fortune 2000 organisations. So shortage, my first question is,
what does top solution stand for?
Suresh GP: Well, it's a great question that you asked me, top
solution stands for taking you beyond. So when we started top
solutions, in 2014, we wanted to build a company that took our
customers business partners to envision business outcomes. So
wherever they are in the journey of transformation, as we all
call it, we want to take them in to envision business outcomes.
So top was playing the role of consulting coaching training
organisation to take them beyond.
Eveline Oehrlich: Super. Wow, I love that, that that is really
sharing some passion there you have with customers. And I've
always noticed that with you every time we had interacted in
the larger group, which led leads me to you've been an
ambassador for the DevOps Institute since 2019. Is that
correct? Yeah, that's right. That's absolutely right. Great.
So first of all, thank you, and congratulations to have such a
long journey. And I, you and I have not met in person. So we
have to put that on our dance card, as I like to say, but
besides that, tell us a little bit about the role of an
ambassador, how, what is it? And how has that helped you?
Suresh GP: Absolutely. I think, if you remember, if I remember
correctly, I was the first DevOps Institute Ambassador
picked up by the DevOps Institute, way back in 2019. And
that's a very great honour, right? So DevOps Institute was
looking at improving their brand equity by handpicking
ambassadors across the globe, right. So the purpose of being
an ambassador was to spearhead the humans of DevOps as you and
I know, we've been very passionate about spearheading
the humans of DevOps. So the primary objective of being an
ambassador was to share knowledge and wisdom across
people. Now, if I look at what is that helped me over the
years, being an ambassador for the last five years now, it's
been an amazing opportunity to do knowledge sharing in terms of
skill updates, skill up events, DevOps meetup days, and helping
people to build DevOps capability. Now, one of the
things that fitted, fitted to my mission, as part of running top
solutions was to make an impact to people globally in the form
of consulting, coaching and training. And for me, there's so
much joy when you give back to the community, right? And I've
always believed Evelyn, that if you don't give back to the
community, then it's a crime because we have got so much
benefits by being a part of this cohort by being part of the
larger mind share. And it is only appropriate to give and
share learnings and also help and mentor people. And I think
for me, that has been a fulfilling my personal mission
and as actually made a lot of friends and network across the
globe.
Eveline Oehrlich: very honourable and impact you have
made absolutely I can see that. And then when you said 2019, and
five years ago, I'm thinking, Is it really five years ago? Oh my
god, that is very scary. Okay. Let us continue. So I say you
are also an instructor, but I think you said you don't like
the word instructor but I still will say tell me a little bit
about that role at at DevOps Institute and what you've been
doing so in this role,
Suresh GP:
Eveline Oehrlich:
Suresh GP:
Eveline Oehrlich:
Suresh GP:
Eveline Oehrlich:
Suresh GP:
Eveline Oehrlich:
Suresh GP: Right. So I would call myself as a facilitator
Evelynn rather than instructor I've been always passionate to
teach marignan best practices and best practice framework
since 2014. As a trainer or facilitator, I learned a lot
from the participants, right, and the opportunity to deliver
engagements, both physically and virtually remember, prior to
COVID-19. Were doing a lot of those training programmes and
was integrated workshop physically. And it's been an
enriching experience, right. For me, it's also the passion of
giving back, as I said in the earlier question, and it also
reinforces when I was awarded the best coach or trainer award
by the business relationship management institute in 2019, at
New Orleans, and it was a testimonial to provide great
value to participants. And for me, it is also to instil the
habit of continuous learning, because one of the things that I
believe truly as a facilitator is to keep ourselves on a
continual learning spree. But also make sure that we are well
aware and acute with all the latest trends. And you know
better because you do a lot of research in terms of providing
value added content for people in the industry. So make it a
practice to execute myself with industry leading certifications,
that has helped me to connect the dots over various aspects.
This is particularly important because a lot of these training
programmes or workshops, you get people from different
backgrounds who come there and connect. So you will have people
from development, infrastructure operations, testing, project
management, ci organisations, so it has helped me to connect the
dots with various leading best practices and frameworks,
including DevOps, ITIL, app engineering, observability, and
EOPS.
Eveline Oehrlich: And in the AI ops, we have a common passion.
As you might remember, maybe in one or the other meetings, we
discussed AI ops, I've been researching and advising in my
previous career at Forrester Research on the topic of
application performance management. And this topic,
interestingly, has changed in morphed into multiple topics
today. It's actually there's an entire new paths, in particular
growth and adoption around AI in IT operations. And if we think
about AI ops, and it's, it's, it's origine really was defined
by a analyst friend of mine at Gartner. And it really was a
simpler definition at the time in terms of AI ops was the
adoption of AI in terms and in ways IT operations to make it
much easier for folks in IT ops to analyse and predict things
before they could cause impact. And that's kind of the backdrop
I wanted to share. But before we get into a AI ops, you've been
doing work around this. And you've, I'm sure have some
thoughts and on the expansion of APM into AI ops and
observability. Were in it. This couple of questions here. So
give us your thoughts on this entire APM into AI ops and
observability. And then where in it? Are these new approaches to
monitoring us to are these users who are the target audience for
AI ops APM does still exist? observability? What are your
thoughts around all of that?
Suresh GP: That's a great question, Evelyn. So I think
thanks a lot for your work around the application
performance management space, that has revolutionised the way
we look at the whole ecosystem today, right? Today, if you look
at a lot of our customers, they are looking at the end user
experience, right. So today, we are living in an attention
deficient syndrome, and even a single minute of downtime is
going to make them make people paranoid about it. Now, we are
traditionally focused on monitoring this at a server
level. But then I think this whole proliferation of devices
that we are dealing with tablets, desktops, mobile
devices, has brought us the whole client specific
information. And I think APM does a great job to look at
providing us great insights towards user experience from the
client side part. It is only logical for APM. aspect to go
into the predictive aspects. Remember, in the earlier word,
we used to do reactive from an incident management standpoint,
everything some happened, something broke down an accident
server going off, we actually did something to fix that. So it
was more reactive as part of incident management, then we
started to move towards event monitoring, as well as the
overall correlation engine, where we kind of becoming a
little more proactive, determining the thresholds and
aspects in which we wanted to start with. But now the world is
changing. A lot of our customers that we are dealing with are
saying how can you be more predictive? We don't want to be
the same level of reactive and proactive because we have
invested a lot of time and efforts on processes, best
practices, tools, and also on the skill side. So can you help
us to move into that predictive space? Now, that's where the
real genesis of AI ops becomes very important, because APM
tools give you a little bit of an understanding around what's
good, what is the probably the problematic areas and you're
able to nail down. But I think we need to move towards that
element of predictability. So a lot of people do ask us about
difference between monitoring and observability, just for all
our viewers monitoring is telling you the symptoms, right?
It tells you something is broken, but it doesn't tell you
exactly what is broken. So but observability, on the other
hand, is able to give you a little bit of identifying root
causes, right? And root causes is not just one to one, there
could be one too many reasons why something failed. And that's
an area that I think is important to assimilate to make
that work. So that probably answers your first question. The
second one, where he talked about who is the user of these
automation? Or where are we applying it? I'm a big fan of
cycle app engineering, right? I do a lot of work on consulting
coaching on site allottee engineers. And I, as I start
with a lot of the operations teams support teams and SR ease,
they are leveraging these new approaches, because reliability
is becoming the most important question at a board level.
Right? So gone are the days that we were just talking about
keeping the lights on Bau that is gone off, right people are
looking at now to become reliability is the most
important first class citizen. Now if you're asking reliability
to be the first class citizen, how are we going to even make
this work? So this requires us to have new approaches to move
towards that predictive service management option. And for me,
all the saris and operations team are looking at what can I
do to self heal and auto remediation options because at
the end of the day, we talk a lot about these style, right, we
spent way too much time on resolving incidents. So we are
not leveraging the power of a ops. So hopefully, with a ops
with predictability, can we actually bring in that level of
runbook automation self scripts, which will help us to do self
healing and auto remediation because it will do two things,
it will reduce recoil, it will improve my productivity, and we
can focus on things that really makes the most important sense.
So for me, those are the real people who are really looking
out for leveraging AI ops to make their life and the
organisation better.
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Eveline Oehrlich: You know, as a literally old IT ops person, I
would just want to go back to my role I had many years back,
leveraging this type of technology. So very exciting.
Thank you. Let's get to the meat of our conversation, which is
your work on the AI ops certification? today. So people
sorted in DevOps Institute, one can get certified for AI ops
tell us shores? What does that entail? Are there any
prerequisites one has to go and have before that? How difficult
is it what we'll want to learn? Tell us a little bit about the
certification course because I really would like the audience
to get excited about it. And of course, take and get certified
so that they can actually do some very amazing things in
their role.
Suresh GP: Absolutely. I think AI Ops is pretty hot on the on
the block, I call is that a opsis? That new kid on the block
with DevOps Institute peoplecert certifications? It's a two day
course. It's well curated by experienced practitioners
telling us, what is the value of AOPs? But your first question,
this is a two day course delivered by people sir DevOps
Institute partners. So top solutions is one of the elite
partners of the DevOps Institute. So who can be
attending this session like anyone from IT support IT
operations predominantly, because it's talking about AI in
the, in the view of Operation setup, right. So if you are from
it servicemen background, if you are from an IT operations
background, you want to leverage the power of air ops to reduce
incidents, because that's going to be a very important key era
that has that would become a much more important exercise.
Now, one of the things we are very passionate about as top
solutions is that we offer a range of certification courses,
that fits very logically. Now, I'm trying to bring this because
you've asked this question of what are some of the
prerequisites. Now what we have seen in the last eight to nine
years, as we have started to work with the DevOps Institute
products, we we have a big fan following when we started off
with site lab engineering foundation, then they actually
enhance their career options towards Cipherlab engineering
practitioner. And then we moved on to observability Foundation,
because in SRE practitioner, we only focused on one module on
observability. And they wanted to have a dedicated aspect of
observability, because the whole trend of moving from monitoring
and observability became more more important sense. So as
people went on through the observatory Foundation, they
understand in the maturity model, one of the important
aspects of the maturity model is becoming more towards
predictability. And that's where the aiops really fits in, very
logically. And that's how this AOPs foundation course is being
structured. So as far as the content is concerned, I want to
give you a high level topics of what we cover in the two day
programme. So we first set the context of what is a ops in the
organisational context, right? What are the core technologies?
So we talk a little bit about data, we talk about machine
learning, we also start to focus on what are your operation
metrics, because typically, the operations team have the first
call resolution, they look at response time resolution time,
MTTR, NT TD. Now, how does that all play out with the advent of
AI ops, because we need to make sure that this is helping them
to make an impact in the way that they solve incidents. It's
becoming more proactive. So we also share some of those
practical use cases of how AI ops can be beneficial because
what I've seen is a lot of people are asking for what kind
of use cases can I pick up that we can start implementing
because this certification programme is not just to give
you the principles, the philosophy, the practices, but
also instilling a level of curiosity, of how can I pick up
some of these learnings that I've had in the two day
workshop? Back to your workplace, and it's also about
the mindset and we you and I know very much as part of
transformations. It's also a bringing up the cultural
mindset, the cultural nuances of thinking, how can we work as a
team to holistically fullest facilitate this whole
transformation? So we talk a little bit about evaluating the
aiops impact. And finally, the proof is on the on the pudding.
Right? So we talk about implementing AI ops in the
organisation. So what we also do, Evelyn as part of this work
workshop because we have designed it, we give some
practical use cases and demo how we went about implementing AI
ops in organisation that is very fascinating for people because
you can learn a lot of theory about people process technology.
But how does it all work together in tandem? And how can
we make that more practical? And that's where I think there's a
lot of value in people getting that benefit of AI ops and
relating it to the workplace.
Eveline Oehrlich: Sounds like an exciting two days, certainly, I
think. Now, the next question, you've already alluded a little
bit towards it, but I'll ask it again, it's, it's in two parts.
We know it's not just done to have a certification right as a
single person, because the approach of AI Ops is actually
beyond what one person potentially can do relative to
automation of the challenges around services and software and
availability. And as you stated so beautifully the reliability
as a first class citizen, I love that, by the way, it's certainly
a great opportunity for people out there who are wanting to
advance their careers. But so here comes the question, What
can one expect as a once a person has gone through the
certification? Is this worth a promotion? Is this a change in
role is the more money? Other benefits? I think you like I
said, You alluded to a few of those things already. So that's
the part one of the question. I'll pause, and then we'll go to
part two. Sure.
Suresh GP: So that's a great question. Because at the end of
the day, Evelyn, you and I know very well, right, people are
investing time and effort and money, right? What is the return
on investment? Let's be very clear, right? So a lot of times
we do this intake process, Evelyn, where we ask these
questions, you know, why are we attending this course, you know,
sometimes they say that my manager asked to attend this
course, that's why I'm doing it, or I want to go to a career
progression. So we really want to understand the needs of your
audience. And I think that's very important, because each and
every one has got their own expectations, in involvement,
interest, and stuff like that. So but what I've seen over and
beyond, in the last six, seven years that I've actually been in
the training space, one of the most important reasons people
attend these workshops is to become relevant in the digital
age, you and I know with all this chat, GPT and generative
AI, there's a huge push, and people are trying to reevaluate
themselves to see whether I still remain relevant. Do I know
things that are making me competent to be at the
workplace, because there is always a threat to humanity in
terms of whether the robots and AI is will replace people. But I
always believe that there's a lot of work that human beings
can do. And that's why we do this episode of humans of
DevOps, but how to make one productive, right? Because with
a lot of things that people are juggling day today, it's
important for people to be more productive to focus on things
that really matter the most, which means we need to leverage
technology advancement to make it more impactful to the
business at the end of the day, or to be harnessed the business
doesn't care about whether it's DevOps, SRE, a ops machine
learning observability, they want to really look at
profitability, improve market share, ensuring reliability,
improving customer experience. So we need to understand various
scenarios and use cases. And for me, this will become a very
important part of addressing the needs of the business. Because
to be honest, if you want to get your promotions, if you want to
have a pay raise, you have to solve real world problems. If
you want to solve real world problems, it also means that we
need to understand what's the burning or challenge that your
organisation faces. And I tell jokingly, if you want to get
promoted, you need to solve your boss problem. And then you get
advanced in your career ahead. So that's my thought around this
whole space of what people gain stand to gain. What is it for
me, when they go about these certification programmes?
Perhaps one caveat is attend these courses with someone who
is practitioner, right? So we are not teaching a course by
death by PowerPoint. But bringing in the real world
experience, people can interface and understand how we can apply.
Eveline Oehrlich: Well said, now take that up one level and share
with us a little bit about the bigger approach for the team.
You already said that for the business. But I think what I'd
love to see is a little bit more around, what can I do to bring
the team along right? And how can I impact the rest of the
site reliability engineers or others, beyond my own career?
What are your thoughts there?
Suresh GP: That's a great one, right? So I always want to start
with a quote, right if you want to move faster, walk alone, but
if you want to move farther, walk along with your team. So
it's absolutely important to carry your team along and I call
this as a cohort, pod squad, whatever you call it is right
because As at the end of the day, it's the team that matters.
Right? So having said that, I think each and every one in the
value chain will have to play that infinite game like what
Simon Sinek plays, right? So you need to continuously improve
yourself to be a better version of yourself, call it as version
two, version three, or version 2023 in a way that we can
improvise the whole aspect of doing it. So I asked and, and
request a lot of people who go through the certification,
whether your individual start thinking about the big picture,
right? What is your role? And what is your overall focus as a
company as a product as a service company? As a cohort?
What do you want to achieve? Right? How are your roles
typically fitting, so it could be a sight lap engineer, you
could be a DevOps engineer, you could be an operational
specialist, think about what is your current role that you're
playing in? So what is the focus of end goal? So you can call it
as k RAS? You can call it as OKRs. You can call it as KPIs,
whatever you call, what is your end objective? What's the
outcome that we are envisioning to keep this done? Now, you all
know that the whole landscape is changing pretty fast. And we
have to adapt and adapt to the changing lifecycle, right? So we
call it the Guca. World of volatile, uncertain, complex,
ambiguous word. So what it means is that we have to reevaluate
our processes look at process reengineering, look at the tool
stack of tool chain that we are having, and seeing what does it
take us for making this shift moving forward? So I ask people
to come with a curious and inquisitive mindset, because
when it comes to the programme, you're not just coming up for
the ticking the box to get yourself certified, but start
thinking about what problems should I address going back to
the workplace. So please make a note of having your questions
listed down when you come from this programme, because you
might not get all the answers immediately. But at least you
will start thinking on those lines. That's the first thing,
understand the big picture. And for me, it's also about
continuous learning and improvement, you don't learn
just by doing certification programme or reading books,
attend meetups, this DevOps meetups, the skill updates, the
podcast that we are all talking about, because you get a lot of
wisdom from these people who are passionately sharing day in and
day out. And more importantly, think about how you can
contribute back to the workplace because there's no much fun,
even if they don't contribute back, because then I feel a
sense of belonging, that I'm not just worried about my career, my
progression, I'm not selfish enough. But I want to give back
to the team. And if everybody in the value chain resonates with
that philosophy, then how can I make my life my job my business
a lot more productive? Effectively? You think it's
gonna be magical? I think that's a man, one of my final code is
that you don't think like, how do you build high performing
teams, high performing teams are not built by high performers.
Frankly, it's ordinary people doing ordinary things
extraordinarily well. So how can you have ordinary people doing
ordinary things extraordinary? Well, because you're driven by a
purpose, you're driven by the big picture of making an impact.
And if everybody starts to think with that purpose, how we can
make the life of our customers of partners of our providers
better, I think you would have had a definite impact and this
certification will become a fuel to go in that journey of making
things magical.
Eveline Oehrlich: Very inspirational. I love listening
to you, but we have to finish our podcasts. And I have one
closing question for you. If you have time for doing something
fun. What do you do?
Suresh GP: Well, I love travelling across the globe and
meeting people with different ethnicity, culture and
diversified experience. I've had the opportunity to do it in 26
different countries, and I'm still learning. I love reading
books playing badminton, and I'm a fitness freak, so I do
swimming regularly. Finally, I love posting content around
productivity hacks and entrepreneurship because I think
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So I wanted to kind
of bring in some of those aspects of people can think
there is there is aspects beyond work and have fun around the
journey.
Eveline Oehrlich: You have been exceptional. This has been
fantastic shores. Thank you so, so much for your time. Really
appreciate it.
Suresh GP: My pleasure even to have me on this podcast and hope
the viewers get inspired to do this some of the certificate
courses and enhance them in their career. And thank you so
much for doing the great work for inspiring a lot of humans of
DevOps, to take action and move forward in their career.
Eveline Oehrlich: Fantastic. We have been talking to shores GP
Managing Director at taupes solutions again, thank you for
joining me today shortish on humans of DevOps podcast. Humans
of DevOps podcast is produced by peoplecert and DevOps Institute.
Our audio production team includes Daniel Newman shots and
Ingrid sides. I am humans of DevOps podcast executive
producer, evolutionarily, if you would like to join us on a
podcast, just contact me or reach out to humans of DevOps
podcast. asked at DevOps institute.com. I think that's
the longest email, soil. I'm Evelyn early. Talk to you soon.
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