Andrew Hillier sits down with Dan Ciruli, who leads the cloud native product management team at Nutanix. Dan’s got some great stories from his days at Google—back when cloud native and Kubernetes were just getting started, in addition to the knowledge and wisdom he picked up along the way.

Andrew and Dan talk about founding a CNCF project, and what it entailed, as well as Kubernetes in the early days and its cloud-centric evolution. Dan dives into founding the OpenAPI initiative and how it all went down. Of course, a common question is what product managers do in open source? Well, Dan and Andrew discuss it and share some good insights.

Dan discusses the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), resource optimization on NKP, and how to give consistent view across cloud and on-prem. Dan and Andrew dive a little into the current impact of AI (although, more discussion will likely come in the future on this topic).

And just when you think it’s all code and cloud, Dan drops the story of how he spent a year as tour manager for the rock band Chevelle (yep, that Chevelle)! Turns out, wrangling open source projects and rock bands aren’t as different as you’d think!

Densify is certified for the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) to provide automated resource optimization for containerized environments—bringing AI-driven insights and precision scaling to NKP users for improved performance and cost efficiency.

ABOUT OUR GUEST Dan Ciruli

Dan Ciruli is the Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Native at Nutanix. His (very long) career in product management includes stints at Google, Zuora and EMC, and in open source he was a founding member of the OpenAPI Initiative and sat on the Istio Steering Committee. In his spare time he’s active in acting and musical theatre. Give him half a chance and he’ll try to speak Spanish to you!

ABOUT DENSIFY TALKS

Densify Talks is a podcast hosted by Andrew Hillier, Co-Founder and CTO of Densify, a cloud optimization software company. The podcast focuses on interviews with IT and technical leaders and innovators who have experience in delivering cloud and Kubernetes-based infrastructure within large enterprises.

LINKS

• Dan in The Red video for Chevelle @1:20 and @1:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trinU3VD1Zo&list=RDtrinU3VD1Zo&t=80s