In this episode of The Landscape, we sat down with Duffie Cooley, Field CTO at Isovalent (now part of Cisco) and a CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) member. Duffie shared his thoughts on shaping the cloud-native ecosystem, the open-source projects capturing his attention, and what excites him about the future of the CNCF.
What you will learn in this episode:
- The Role of the CNCF TOC: How this committee guides the technological direction of the CNCF, supports open-source projects, and manages the rapid growth of the cloud-native space.
- Exciting CNCF Projects: Why Duffie is enthusiastic about Kubeflow for machine learning workflows, Cilium and Tetragon for networking and observability, and Prometheus for monitoring.
- The Growing Role of AI on Kubernetes: Insights into Kubeflow’s integrations with tools like Istio and the potential for other CNCF projects to step into similar roles.
- The Open-Source Community’s Power: How volunteers play a pivotal role in driving innovation within the CNCF.
In this episode of The Landscape, I had the pleasure of speaking with my good friend Duffie Cooley, Field CTO at Isovalent (now part of Cisco) and an influential voice in the cloud-native community. Duffie is a member of the CNCF’s Technical Oversight Committee (TOC), a key group responsible for shaping the technological direction of the CNCF. We discussed his work with the TOC, his favorite open-source projects, and the broader trends in cloud-native technologies.
Duffie Cooley:
Hi, I’m Duffie Cooley. I’m the Field CTO at Isovalent, now part of Cisco, and you can find me online as “mauilion” everywhere.
Bart:
You’re part of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee. For those who don’t know, what does the TOC do?
Duffie:
The TOC, or Technical Oversight Committee, is one of the key committees that form the CNCF. Our job is to define the technological direction of the CNCF. This includes accepting projects into the CNCF at the sandbox level, helping them progress to incubation, and eventually graduate.
It’s also about structuring how the TOC operates and ensuring we’re not overloading any one component with too much work. The cloud-native space is expanding rapidly, and part of our role is to manage that growth effectively while supporting the amazing volunteers who contribute to this community.
Bart:
Which three CNCF projects are you most excited about right now?
Duffie:
That’s a tough question because I’m a TOC member, so I’m involved with a lot of projects. But here are a few that stand out for me:
- Kubeflow: It’s a project that enables machine learning workflows on Kubernetes. The abstractions it provides are fascinating, and I’m particularly interested in how it integrates with other CNCF projects, like Istio.
- Cilium and Tetragon: I’m a little biased here because of my work with Isovalent, but I love the innovation happening in the networking and observability space.
- Prometheus: It’s always been a favorite. The work in metrics and monitoring is foundational to cloud-native ecosystems.
Bart:
Speaking of Kubeflow, AI and machine learning workloads are becoming more prominent on Kubernetes. What should people know about this project?
Duffie:
Kubeflow is all about enabling AI and machine learning workflows in an automated way. It provides abstractions to help manage resources effectively and integrates well into existing Kubernetes environments.
One interesting aspect of Kubeflow is its dependency on Istio as part of the stack. I’m curious to see if other CNCF projects might replace Istio in that role, and I plan to dig deeper into its architecture this year to understand the possibilities better.
Bart:
What’s next for you, Duffie?
Duffie:
I’m looking forward to diving deeper into projects like Kubeflow and contributing to the TOC’s work as the cloud-native space continues to grow. It’s always exciting to be part of this community and see the incredible innovation happening every day.
Bart:
Thank you so much, Duffie. Always great catching up!
Duffie:
Thank you! Cheers.