Overview

Aniket Kanade – he has 20+ years of experience in the Telco industry and has been closely working with cloud native tools and system architecture. He talks with Sri Krishna about his experience in tech, especially around observability space.

What We Talk About

  • Aniket’s journey from the early internet era to the present day.
  • Evolution of the technology sector, from bare metal servers to AGI.
  • Focus on the telecom industry’s transformation and adoption of cloud-native technologies.
  • The importance and challenges of observability in modern tech.
  • Future trends in observability, including AI and OpenTelemetry.

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Podcast Highlights

Aniket’s Journey:

  • Started in the early 2000s, witnessing the evolution from bare metal servers (HP Non-Stop/Tandem) to virtualized environments, and then to containerization with Docker and Kubernetes.
  • Experienced the shift from 3G to 5G in the telecom industry, which significantly drove the adoption of cloud-native technologies and containerized network functions (CNFs).
  • Transitioned from self-managed Kubernetes to Red Hat OpenShift, and then to Azure Operator Nexus (AON) for hybrid cloud solutions.

Observability in Telecom:

  • Observability is crucial for telecom operators to monitor network health and performance across vast deployments.
  • Traditional network operation centers (NOCs) are evolving into cloud-native observability platforms.
  • Challenges include managing observability in disconnected environments and adapting to the rapidly changing landscape of observability tools.

Challenges and Solutions:

  • Migrating from self-managed Kubernetes to managed services like OpenShift and AON presented significant challenges, especially in disconnected environments.
  • Adapting to evolving observability tools requires continuous learning and adaptation.
  • He highlighted the importance of OpenTelemetry as a standard for observability, aiming to stabilize the landscape.

Best Practices and Recommendations:

  • Start with OpenTelemetry to learn about tracing, metrics, and visualization.
  • Leaders should carefully evaluate the need for new observability technologies, such as AI-powered observability, and ensure they have the necessary skills and resources.
  • Open-source software is a valuable tool, and the idea that it is not supported is a misconception.

Future Trends:

  • AI-powered observability and forecasting using large language models (LLMs) are the next big trends.
  • OpenTelemetry will continue to grow in adoption and expand its capabilities, becoming a more comprehensive observability standard.
  • Building your own observability platform is generally not recommended unless you are a core technology company.