RedMonk April 2025 Update
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It’s Spring, and after all the beautiful short-lived blossoms, the plums are now showing on the tree outside my window. London has had a lot of unseasonably beautiful blue sky lately to enjoy the longer days. But… it’s conference season, so I have been spending a lot of time inside.
Our team has been traveling a fair bit, and as for me - well, I have run my own conference, Monki Gras, as part of a cluster of events. March into April involved a triple play of Monki Gras in London, then Kubecon EU, also on my home turf, before heading to Vegas for Google Next.
Kubecon was buzzing, it continues to grow in Europe, with an engaged end-user community, and sponsors happy with all the leads they were taking. Google NEXT is growing too. Arguably it’s outgrown its digs at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
I have also been helping to finish a book, which is going to be published by IT Revolution in November, called Progressive Delivery. It’s been brewing for quite a while, and the team (shout out to Adam, Heidi and Kim!) are really excited about it. A word to the wise though - whatever you do, never ever ever get yourself into a situation where you’re both running a conference and finishing a book at the same time.
So a bit about Monki Gras - a RedMonk conference and a labour of love. We found a beautiful venue this year, a church in Shoreditch, which really suited us. The theme was Sustaining (Software Development) Craft. In the face of the rise of AI and the somewhat perilous economic situation it’s not feeling so much like developers are the New Kingmakers any more, so convening a meeting like this is all the more important. Something life affirming, career affirming, humanity affirming.
Just like our other conference Monktoberfest, we had a great turnout of folks from underrepresented groups and people trying to break into tech - which was definitely helped by partnering with Code Your Future and Next Tech Girls. Thanks to MongoDB for supporting our DEI program. You’re making a difference - one of my favourite stories this year was that a young woman from Code Your Future that spoke at Monki Gras 2024 now has a job at Cap Gemini - another delegate that works there had seen her speak at the event and it had helped her application. So many warm fuzzies!
The talks were honestly absurdly good. The community was more engaged and engaging than ever, and we smashed it on catering. My favourite combo was combining soft, tangy, Swiss cheese with the pillowy gluten-free waffles (I still have no idea how they make them so good, and so… wheaty?).
Spring is of course a time of renewal, and we have some news there too - Dr. Kelly Fitzpatrick is moving on. And while we’ll be sad to see her go, we’re sure she’ll do great with her new thing and we all wish her well.
Talking of renewal, I am super pleased to announce that this month we won’t be featuring our regular community member looking for a job. For the simple reason that the amazing human that we planned to feature - Kat Cosgrove, literally just signed a contract for her new role yesterday. We’ll update you on that next time. Talk about green shoots!
Have a great Spring into Summer. We look forward to hearing from you - let us know if you have any questions about developer and infrastructure trends. The feedback loops between developer experience and AI are moving so fast now that now we recommend more conversations with us, with a more rapid cadence. The old time frames for product management just won’t cut it any more.
Talking of product management, I highly recommend you check out my colleague Rachel’s piece - Vibe Coding is for PMs. It’s a banger.
Signing off for now,
James Governor
Links Roundup
- If Troy Hunt, creator of Have I Been Pwned? can get phished, then literally anyone can get phished. This is an important read for everyone - yes everyone. Be careful out there people, because the scammers are getting smarter all the time.
- A Signal feature that everyone should be aware of, especially now.
- Meta released its Llama 4 model, which was initially ranking well on LLM leaderboards.
- ...Except that Meta got caught gaming AI benchmarks.
- From Corey Quinn at the Duckbill Group - AWS Reserved Instances are being quietly deprecated in favor of Savings Plans
- We like the way Rizèl Scarlett makes the connection between how MCP enables vibe coding and then also offers practical tips on how to do it safely and effectively, but really we are linking because this line is just so very good: “It's a freeing experience. But too often, we're Icarus with the keyboard, vibe coding too close to the sun.” (and for those who want to know what Goose is, or MCP for that matter, here's a guide for you!
- While the industry rushes headlong towards MCP, Google drops a definitely not competing complementary Agent2Agent Protocol.
Recent RedMonk Research
- Some RedMonk news from Steve.
- Kelly left us this lovely post on her way out. We will really miss her. RM clients mentioned: Atlassian, Dynatrace, and IBM
- There's been a lot of discussion about vibe coding for developers, but we think it's even more exciting to explore how tools like Cursor can enable teams adjacent to developers. For PMs, it can change how we define requirements and how we collaborate with dev teams. RM clients mentioned: Github
- Some thoughts from the RedMonk team on the recent IBM M&A news. Come read our deal analysis on the Hashicorp merger and the Datastax acquisition announcement. RM clients mentioned: Hashicorp, IBM, Red Hat, and Salesforce (Heroku)
- What's the opposite of a hot take? A cool take. We're a little late to the Google-Wiz M&A party (hospital stays will do that to a publishing schedule) but Rachel Stephens finally published her thoughts on the announcement news RM clients mentioned: AWS and Google Cloud
- Several observability vendors have come out with “Frontend Observability” products recently. What should we make of this new observability category? In this RedMonk post Kate Holterhoff addresses what frontend observability is; why today’s application developers might need it; and who is the intended user/ buyer. RM clients mentioned: Google, Honeycomb, Launchdarkly, Sentry, Elastic, Cribl, Dynatrace, Cisco/Splunk, Sentry, Observe, and Embrace
- Shadcn/ui—a hugely popular open source React UI component library—is a critical piece of frontend infrastructure you’ve never heard of, and AI app developers are taking notice. In this post, Kate Holterhoff discusses what a UI component library is and how we got here. RM clients mentioned: IBM, Google, GitHub, Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce
Recent Videos and Media Appearances
- Kate Holterhoff in a hilariously awkward interview on Between 2 Servers.
- At Dynatrace Perform in Las Vegas, RedMonk’s Kelly Fitzpatrick explores the newly announced Observability for Developers solution. Observability for Developers: How to get started with the Dynatrace Live Debugger
- At TDX 2025, Salesforce’s developer-focused event, Rachel Stephens talks with Adam Zimman, Head of Product Marketing for Heroku, about the evolving role of Heroku within the Salesforce ecosystem. RedMonk Quick Take: Heroku at TDX 2025
- Also at TDX 2025, Rachel Stephens chats with Avanthika Ramesh, Senior Director of Product at Salesforce, about the difference between bots and agents in the Salesforce ecosystem. RedMonk Quick Take: Bots vs. Agents at TDX 2025
- Ever wondered what agentic AI actually means—beyond the buzzwords? In this RedMonk Conversation, Maya Murad, Technical Product Manager on IBM’s Research Incubation team, pulls back the curtain on how IBM is exploring, building, and scaling agentic AI. What You Wanted to Know About AI Agents but Were Afraid to Ask (with Maya Murad)
Exclusively on the MonkCast
- A RedMonk Conversation: Cloud Foundry’s Paketo Buildpacks (with Ram Iyengar): Ram Iyengar, Chief Evangelist at the Cloud Foundry Foundation, discusses Paketo Buildpacks and their role in simplifying containerization in the cloud-native ecosystem, with Kelly Fitzpatrick, senior analyst at RedMonk.
- A RedMonk Conversation: Ram Iyengar on DevX at Cloud Foundry from cf push to Korifi: Ram is again featured in this conversation with Rachel Stephens, where they discuss developer experience from cf push and the promise of PaaS, to Korifi, a developer platform built by the Cloud Foundry community for deploying cloud-native applications on Kubernetes.
- A RedMonk Conversation: Andrew Hutchings on the WordPress War: Andrew Hutchings (aka LinuxJedi), a software engineer at wolfSSL, discusses what he terms “a war going on within the WordPress community” with Kate Holterhoff. The discussion delves into the current litigation and Andrew's WordPress Slack ban, including this so-called war’s broader implications for open source projects.
- A RedMonk Conversation: RabbitMQ Was Designed for the Cloud Era (with Alexis Richardson): Alexis Richardson, Founder and CEO of ConfigHub, discusses the evolution and significance of messaging in distributed systems, and particularly RabbitMQ, with Kate Holterhoff.
- A RedMonk Conversation with John O’Hara, Inventor of AMQP, on Why Standards are Worth Persevering With: John O’Hara, inventor of the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), discusses this standard’s history and development with Kate Holterhoff.
- A RedMonk Conversation: Science Fiction, the Hacker Ethic, & We Just Build Hammers (with Coraline Ada Ehmke): In this RedMonk conversation, Coraline Ada Ehmke discusses her new book, We Just Build Hammers: Stories from the Past, Present, and Future of Responsible Tech, with Kate Holterhoff, senior analyst at RedMonk. In addition to outlining the book’s argument and major themes, they consider lessons speculative literature can teach us about what it means to be a hacker and the importance of connecting historical narratives with contemporary tech justice movements.
- A RedMonk Conversation: Do Frontend Developers Want Frontend Observability? (with Todd Gardner): Todd Gardner, CEO of Request Metrics and TrackJS, discusses “Frontend Observability” with RedMonk senior analyst Kate Holterhoff. In an attempt to answer the question “Is Frontend Observability Hipster RUM?,” Kate and Todd delve into the concept of frontend observability by exploring its definition, historical context, and the uphill marketing hurdles involved in educating web developers about observability tools.
Speak at The Monktoberfest 2025
Our call for proposals form is open at this link. In the past, we've had first time speakers, we've had people who've been doing it for years. At the end of the day, we're simply looking for excellent talks you wouldn't hear at any other conference.
Meet the Monks
Events we'll be attending:
- Devopdays Atlanta: 29 - 30 April 2025, Atlanta, GA
- IBM Think: 5 - 8 May 2025, Boston, MA
- Config: 6 - 8 May 2025, San Francisco, CA
- Red Hat Summit: 19 - 22 May 2025, Boston, MA
- Microsoft Build: 19 - 22 May 2025, Seattle, WA
- RenderATL: 11 - 13 June 2025, Atlanta, GA
Events we'll be hosting:
- The Monktoberfest 2025: 2 - 3 October 2025, Portland, ME
Our mailing address is:
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Portland, ME 04101
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