In this episode of The Landscape, we caught up with Matteo Bianchi, a CNCF Ambassador, platform engineering expert, and freelance cloud-native consultant. Matteo shared his insights into key CNCF projects, platform engineering trends, and how he simplifies complex technologies like eBPF in his work.
What you will learn in this episode:
- Matteo’s Contributions to Kubernetes: Insights into his work on the Kubernetes release team and his plans to continue contributing to release engineering.
- Excitement Around Argo and Kubeflow: Why Matteo prefers Argo for application delivery over Flux, and how Kubeflow simplifies running AI/ML workloads on Kubernetes.
- OpenTelemetry’s Observability Power: How OpenTelemetry enables developers to collect meaningful data across distributed systems for better insights.
- Platform Engineering Trends: Matteo discusses why end-user stories, like those from Reddit and Salesforce, are essential to understanding platform engineering in practice.
- Explaining eBPF “To My Grandma”: A look at Matteo’s creative approach to making advanced technologies like eBPF more accessible.
This episode is sponsored by OVHcloud.
Cleaned Transcript
Bart Farrell: In this episode of The Landscape, I got a chance to speak with Matteo Bianchi, a CNCF Ambassador and a leader in the platform engineering space. Matteo is exceptional at breaking down complex topics, often presenting them in a way he says he would explain to his grandmother—covering technologies like eBPF.
This podcast is brought to you by OVHcloud, the global cloud provider delivering industry-leading performance and cost-effective solutions. From managed Kubernetes to private registries, OVHcloud has the cloud-native tools you need. OVHcloud: the world needs different.
Now, let’s check out the episode with Matteo.
Matteo Bianchi: Hi, I’m Matteo Bianchi. I’m a cloud-native consultant and freelancer.
Bart: Very good. What is your area of focus as a CNCF Ambassador?
Matteo: My primary focus is Kubernetes. Recently, I’ve been part of the Kubernetes release team for the last two releases, and I plan to continue with release engineering. I also focus heavily on platform engineering and work a lot with the CNCF TAG App Delivery, particularly the Platforms Working Group.
Bart: Which CNCF projects are you most excited about?
Matteo: I’m very excited about three projects in particular:
- Argo: I love its focus on application delivery and its tight integration with Kubernetes.
- OpenTelemetry: It’s amazing for observability, enabling developers to collect and analyze data across distributed systems.
- Kubeflow: It’s a powerful framework for AI and ML workloads, providing tools for training, inference, and even edge deployments.
Of course, I also have great love for projects like Grafana and Prometheus, but these three are where I’m paying the most attention.
Bart: Let’s talk about Argo versus Flux—why do you lean towards Argo?
Matteo: The eternal debate, right? I spoke about this at KCD Austria. For me, Argo stands out because it focuses more on application delivery, while I find Flux to be more infrastructure-oriented. Argo works seamlessly with Kubernetes and has massive potential for cloud-native use cases. Plus, it has a better logo! (laughs) I always recommend Argo to my customers when possible, though I still respect tools like Flux and others like Temporal, which is great for workflows.
Bart: You also mentioned Kubeflow. Can you give us a quick overview of what it does and why it’s useful?
Matteo: Kubeflow is a comprehensive framework for running AI and ML workloads on Kubernetes. It supports training, inference, and even edge deployments. It’s highly extensible, customizable, and comes with great default configurations to get you started. If you’re looking to run AI on Kubernetes, Kubeflow is the easiest and most flexible way to begin.
Bart: For KubeCon, are you giving a talk or attending any sessions you’d recommend?
Matteo: I don’t have a talk at this KubeCon, but I plan to submit one for London. However, I highly recommend checking out a panel on platform engineering in banking that my friend Chris is hosting. It includes end users like NatWest Bank in the UK.
I’m also looking forward to talks by end users like Reddit, Salesforce, and ByteDance, all focusing on platform engineering. There are also great AI-focused sessions from Nvidia and Google.
Bart: You mentioned a talk you gave at another conference. What was it about?
Matteo: My talk was part of a series where I explain complex technologies as if I’m teaching my grandmother. This one was “eBPF 101 for My Grandma,” presented at SRECon EMEA. I dove into the basics of eBPF, its power, and its potential beyond security and observability. eBPF is such a performant way to interact with the Linux kernel without needing to write kernel modules or dive too deep into the kernel itself.
Bart: If people want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that?
Matteo: The best way is through my handle, MV, on social media. I’m most active on LinkedIn and BlueSky.
Bart: Fantastic. Thank you very much, Matteo!
Matteo: Thank you! Cheers!