RedMonk November 2024 Update
A small, sharp research firm focusing on developer-led technology adoption and developer culture. We help folks understand the industry by understanding you.
Greetings, friends of RedMonk. Senior analyst Kelly Fitzpatrick here with our first update since last week’s U.S. general election. Now if you have hit your limit on election news, go ahead and jump to the next paragraph: it is 100% an OK thing to do. If you’re still with me, let me say that it has been difficult to focus on the tech sector in any kind of apolitical fashion in the wake of last week’s results. It does not take an analyst to point out that these are, as has been said often in the last few years, unprecedented times. But we would not be RedMonk if we just pretended that the next four years would be business as usual. Nor can we tell you that we have any kind of certainty around what will happen next. While I will leave it to my colleagues to express themselves via whatever channels they choose--their writing, their socials, the conversations and activities they engage with in real life--I’ve dropped my immediate thoughts into a piece pondering how we all (in the tech industry and beyond) currently find ourselves navigating an era of uncertainty. And although (most of) the rest of this update will focus on non-election-related updates, feel free to reach out if you need to chat.
Speaking of socials, it is hard to believe that it has been less than a month since Kelsey Hightower kicked off a mass migration of tech folks from X/Twitter to BlueSky. If you are still on X/Twitter, it is worth checking up on the Terms of Service change that goes into effect on November 15, 2024 (tomorrow if you are reading this newsletter hot off the presses). If you are considering joining BlueSky, there is a proliferation of starter packs to help you find the communities you are looking for. And if you are looking for me and my RedMonk colleagues, here is where you can find us.
As you will see from the rest of our updates below, RedMonk has been busy writing, speaking, and traveling. On the events front, since our last update we’ve sent folks to events for GitHub, Google, IBM, Neo4j, and Red Hat. This week we have Rachel Stephens at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in Salt Lake City:
Rachel has a pretty full dance card, but do give her a wave if you see her. If you could not make it to the show--and/or are among the members of our community who did not feel safe making the trip to SLC--we hope to catch up with you in London in the spring for KubeCon EU.
While the Fall conference season is starting to wind down, AWS re:Invent is still on the horizon. Most of the Monks will be at re:Invent this year and are looking forward to checking in with members of our community. While you might catch us on the show floor, we are also cohosting RedMonk + Duckbill Group Beers at re:Invent on December 4. If you are in Vegas that week, we hope to see you there.
That’s it from me for now. Keep on reading to see what my colleagues and I have been working on. And until we meet/chat again: take care of each other, friends.
-Kelly
Links Roundup
Honeycomb’s Charity Majors interviews Honeycomb’s VP of engineering (and Monktoberfest alum) Emily Nakashima about frontend observability.
This is such a delightful interview about a shining light in the Sonos subreddit. (“The nice comments about Keith are essentially surrounded by the most blazing roasts of a company you’ve ever read.”)
A great read about building a ClickHouse-OTel-Grafana observability stack.
Part 2 of Kristen Foster-Marks’ series on Your Engineers Do Need Communication Skills. So Teach Them about Rhetorical Situations
Check out this research project on Hidden Curricula in CS.
The 2024 Last Week in AWS Charity T-shirt is now on sale; proceeds benefit 826 National, an organization that supports writing education.
Recent RedMonk Research
James Governor writes about Developer Engagement: How Cloudinary drives 45,000 registrations a month with YouTube
Rachel Stephens is not a lawyer, but she has questions about how we are talking about “agents” in IANAL: agent edition
Stephen O’Grady on open source and AI: The Narrows Bridge: From Open Source to AI
Headed to Vegas this month for the Formula 1™ race (or does your nerdiness lean towards fast cars and/or tech)? ICYMI: RedMonk Talks AWS Technology in F1™ RM clients mentioned: Amazon Web Services
More data (and excellent analysis) from Rachel on Valkey Momentum: Seven Months In RM clients mentioned: Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Percona, and Redis
Kate Holterhoff talks message queues in What Message Queue-Based Architectures Reveal About the Evolution of Distributed Systems RM clients mentioned: Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, Redis, Synadia, and VMware by Broadcom
Recent Videos and Media Appearances
Rachel guests on the Software Defined Interviews episode Open Source Money Ethics, How Analysts use AI, What Even is an Industry Analyst, and Advanced Chicken Nugget Diplomacy, with Rachel Stephens: In this episode of Software Defined Interviews, Whitney Lee and Coté dive into the insights of Rachel Stephens from RedMonk about the world of being an industry analyst. They discuss experiences from working as an analyst, the balance between qualitative and quantitative analysis, the challenges and misconceptions surrounding open-source business models, and the impact of AI on the analyst profession and beyond. They also discuss the 2024 DORA report, and a few other topics.
A RedMonk Conversation: YouTube for Dev Engagement, How Cloudinary Will Grow From 2M to 5M users.: James Governor from RedMonk and Sanjay Sarathy from Cloudinary discuss the company’s strategy for developer engagement, focusing on YouTube as a key channel. Cloudinary, founded by three developers, has grown to 2 million users and aims for 5 million. It targets specific ecosystems like JavaScript (Next, Nuxt, Vue, React,) sponsoring third party developers to create engaging, educational content. These efforts have driven registrations up beyond 45,000 monthly. We also discuss Cloudinary’s business model and plans for global growth.
What is an Integrated Cloud Native App Platform? How to Dynamically Configure Infrastructure with VMware Tanzu Platform: In this RedMonk conversation, Anu Srinivasa, director of product marketing at VMware Tanzu and Boskey Savla, staff technical product marketing manager at VMware Tanzu, demo and discuss Tanzu Platform with Kate Holterhoff, senior analyst at RedMonk. They explore the challenges faced by platform engineering teams and how Tanzu addresses these issues through its key tenets: enhancing developer experience, dynamic infrastructure configuration, and continuous application optimization. The discussion includes a detailed demo showcasing the platform’s capabilities, emphasizing its integration with both Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes, and the simplification of application deployment and management processes.
A RedMonk Conversation: Kelly Shortridge Talks Security at Fastly: Kelly Shortridge (Senior Director, Security Product Line at Fastly) joins RedMonk’s Kelly Fitzpatrick to talk security. The Kellys cover isolation and modularity (with a few nature metaphors from Kelly S.), bridging the gap between security and development teams, and secure by design thinking (this time with an ice cream cone metaphor). Kelly S. also covers how her security philosophy translates to Fastly through her work with both the Security product line and the Security Research Team.
Kate guests on the Maintainable episode Kate Holterhoff: From Front-End Engineering to Developer Advocacy: Welcome to another engaging episode of Maintainable! Robby sits down with Kate Holterhoff, Ph.D., a Senior Analyst at RedMonk and former front-end engineer, to explore the intricate world of software maintenance, documentation, and the future of developer roles. Kate brings her unique perspective from her time as a practitioner at a digital marketing agency, her academic background, and her current role in developer advocacy.
RedMonk analysts discuss takeaways from recent events:
RedMonk Quick Take: IBM TechXchange 2024: Rachel and Kelly discuss their experiences at the first two days of IBM TechXchange 2024.
RedMonk Quick Take: Stephen O’Grady and Kate Holterhoff on IBM’s Analyst Forum
RedMonk Quick Take – James Governor on Google Cloud Summit London 2024
Exclusively on the MonkCast
A RedMonk Conversation: Wesley Faulkner on the Developer Relations Foundation: Wesley Faulkner chats about the newly formed Developer Relations Foundation, part of the Linux Foundation. This conversation touches on the challenges of defining DevRel, the importance of global perspectives, & the challenges inherent in any attempts to formalize this profession.
A RedMonk Conversation: Why Dr. Scott Stephenson is Building Voice AI: Scott Stephenson discusses the history of speech recognition as well as current advancements around voice AI & their potential impacts on culture & industry.
A RedMonk Conversation: Andy Stanford-Clark and Clemens Vasters on a History and Evolution of Messaging: Andy Stanford-Clark and Clemens Vasters chat about the history and evolution of messaging technology. This conversation highlights the significance of message queues, the role of IBM and Microsoft in advancing message-oriented middleware, and the evolution of open protocols like MQTT, AMQP, and CloudEvents.
A RedMonk Conversation: Dan Moore on Newsletters, Authenticity, and Sweating the Assets: Hear Dan Moore’s thoughts on newsletters, authenticity, and "sweating the assets"
Tom Johnson, CTO of Multiplayer, stops by the MonkCast for a series of episodes on
Stop Diagramming, Start Designing: why diagramming tools are not enough
System Design is a Team Sport: why everyone should know something about system design (the conversation is great, but also check out the related resources list)
Observability 2.0, Dev Tools, and Debugging: what “observability 2.0” means for devs and other technical practitioners
A note from James
Don't forget it's Q4 so we're more than happy to talk about renewals and take on new clients. Please contact Morgan Harris at mharris@redmonk.com if you have any subscription questions.
Meet the Monks
Events we'll be attending in Q4:
Supercomputing24 11/17 - 11/22, Atlanta, GA
Connect.tech 2024 11/18 - 11/22, Atlanta, GA
AWS re:Invent 12/2 - 12/6, Las Vegas, NV
Events we'll be hosting:
RedMonk + Duckbill Group Beers at re:Invent: 12/4, Las Vegas, NV
Monki Gras 2025 27 - 28 March 2025, London, UK
Our mailing address is:
RedMonk
411 Congress Street
Portland, ME 04101
Copyright (C) 2024 RedMonk. All rights reserved.