What happens when you build an ultra low-latency compute platform and then realize the round trips are going to kill you? Absent changing physics or your cap table: you partner! This RedMonk Conversation explores how Fermyon - a platform that compiles serverless compute into Wasm - partnered with Akamai - a company that started out as a CDN and has evolved into a full-fledged alternative cloud - to build a better together story. Join RedMonk's Research Director Rachel Stephens, Fermyon CEO Matt Butcher, and Akamai's Director of Product Management Allen Duet to discuss the future of serverless computing at the edge. This RedMonk video is sponsored by Akamai. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/akamai-fermyon/

In this RedMonk conversation, Austin Parker, Director of Open Source at Honeycomb and a maintainer of the OpenTelemetry project, chats AI, Olly, and OTel with Kate Holterhoff. They explore the implications of AI on SREs and observability practitioners, the development of honeycomb's MCP server, and the challenges vendors face in adapting to changes in the observability space. The discussion also touches on the balance between speed and quality in feedback, the complexities introduced by software abstractions, and the future role of OpenTelemetry in the AI-driven observability space. Honeycomb is a RedMonk client, but this content is unsponsored. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/10/23/rmc-austin-parker/

In this RedMonk Conversation on the Road at IBM TechXchange 2025, RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady chats with Kate Soule, IBM's Director of Technical Product Management for Granite about the newly announced Granite 4.0 family of large language models. Soule explains IBM's strategic focus on small, efficient models that are open sourced under Apache 2, highlighting how these models achieve better performance than previous generations while reducing costs and improving latency through new architecture and training approaches. This RedMonk video is sponsored by IBM. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/rmc-ibm-techxchange-granite-kate-soule/

In this RedMonk conversation, Pascal Martin, principal software engineer at Bedrock Streaming, and Valentin Clavreul, principal backend engineer at Bedrock Streaming, discuss the evolution of streaming architectures and their partnership with Fastly as a crucial element in optimizing performance with RedMonk's James Governor. They explore the challenges of scaling streaming services, the transition from PHP to Go for backend development, and the importance of interoperability with AWS and edge compute. The discussion also highlights the significance of observability in ensuring reliable architectures and the preparations needed for major sporting events like the Euros. This RedMonk Conversation is sponsored by Fastly. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/bedrock-streaming-from-cdn-to-compute-for-50m-people-watching-the-euros/

In this conversation, Rachel Stephens (Research Director at RedMonk) and Mike Milinkovich (Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation) discuss the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Mike explains the law, its implications for the software industry – particularly open source software – and the responsibilities it places on manufacturers. This episode covers: the evolution of the CRA from a “near-death experience for open source” in its initial drafts to a “workable piece of legislation” understanding the responsibilities the legislation places upon different industry roles exploring the CRA's potential impacts on open source communities discussing how to get prepared This discussion is emphatically important if you sell software into a European market. Come listen to Mike to help understand the new legal obligations that come with the CRA. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/10/8/rmc-cra-ecplisefoundation

In this RedMonk conversation, Taylor Barnett-Torabi , Staff Product Manager at Netlify, and Lyle Schemmerling, Senior Software Engineer at FusionAuth, discuss the impact of large language models (LLMs) on developer experience with Kate Holterhoff. They chat about the evolution of agent experience (AX), the integration of LLMs into documentation, and the challenges of ensuring that documentation remains relevant and secure in a rapidly changing landscape. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/09/30/rmc-taylor-barnett-torabi-lyle-schemmerling/

In this MonkCast with the Monks episode, RedMonk analysts Rachel Stephens, Kate Holterhoff, and James Governor discuss the current 'grumpy era' of AI, where developers are questioning the ROI of AI tools and their effectiveness. They check in on AI code assistants, vibe coding, agentic IDEs, AI spec-driven development, and the AI Engineer. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/09/11/ais-grumpy-fun-era/

In this RedMonk conversation, Emily Winck, Staff Engineer at CallRail, and Jess Burns, Engineering Manager at 1Password, join Kate Holterhoff to reflect on their shared experiences working on the engineering team at a digital marketing agency. In addition to trading war stories, they discuss the gender balance in engineering teams, how agency life compares to SaaS companies, the Covid19 pandemic, challenges of remote work, bootcamps, hiring, and the impact of AI on software development. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/09/04/emily-winck-jess-burns/

In this New Builders conversation, Kate Holterhoff speaks with Clare Liguori, Senior Principal Software Engineer at AWS, about Kiro. They discuss Kiro's Vibe and Spec modes, and how these both factor into better coding practices and outcomes for developers. Clare explains the importance of requirements in software development, the collaborative nature of spec-driven development, as well as Kiro's roadmap. This is a RedMonk video, sponsored by Amazon. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/tnb-clare-liguori-kiro-ai-spec-driven-software-development/

In this RedMonk Conversation, James Governor talks with Prashanth Shenoy, VP of Marketing for Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). They discuss the impact of VMware's integration into Broadcom, including the shift from perpetual licenses to subscriptions, portfolio and ecosystem simplification, and the evolving role of cloud admins, platform engineers, and developers. Shenoy outlines how VCF supports both VM and containerized workloads, integrates Kubernetes services, and enables flexible developer experiences. The conversation also explores VMware's Private AI strategy with NVIDIA, addressing digital sovereignty, GPU virtualization, and performance benchmarks for AI workloads.

In this MonkCast episode, Martin Rojas, UI Architect at PlayOn Sports and ReactATL Organizer, joins Kate Holterhoff to chat about the tech meetup scene, leveraging AI to enhance sports broadcasting, AI Guilds (not Dungeons & Dragons!), Micro frontends, React, and More!Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/08/19/martin-rojas/

In this conversation, Rachel Stephens is joined by Bowen Wang, Principal Product Marketing Manager at AWS. They discuss the newly enhanced AWS Free Tier program, which provides new customers with a zero-cost environment to experiment and learn about AWS services. That's right: no surprise billing! Come learn about how new customers can sign up for a zero-cost environment for up to six months and can receive up to $200 in credits upon sign up. For more information visit https://aws.amazon.com/free/ Here's the Corey Quinn post referenced by Bowen: https://www.duckbillgroup.com/blog/aws-finally-fixes-its-free-tier-problem/

In this RedMonk conversation, Jason Torres, Community Evangelist at Torc, chats developer communities with Kate Holterhoff. They discuss the dynamics of attending tech conferences, the role of Torc in the tech community, the current hiring landscape for developers, the globalization of tech hiring, the impact of social media on career growth, and the significance of authenticity in online presence. The discussion also touches on the future of developer advocacy and the challenges faced in the tech industry today. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/08/05/jason-torres/

In this conversation, Rachel Stephens interviews Kat Cosgrove – a prominent figure in the Kubernetes community – to discuss her journey into Kubernetes, the structure of the release team, and the role of corporate contributions in governing the project. They explore the expectations surrounding open source projects, the importance of sustainability, and the challenges faced by maintainers in the ecosystem. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/kat-cosgrove-shipping-kubernetes/

In this RedMonk conversation, Shawn (swyx) Wang discusses the evolving role of the AI Engineer with Kate Holterhoff. They chat about the definition of an AI Engineer, the differences between AI Engineers and traditional software developers, vibe coding, frontend observability, and the AI Engineer World's Fair. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/07/23/shawn-swyx-wang-ai-engineer/

In this RedMonk Conversation, Jeremy Meiss, Director of Developer Relations at OneStream, discusses the current state of DevRel with Kate Holterhoff. They chat about the importance of engaging front-end developers, the role of content and community, and the nuances of influencer marketing. Jeremy shares insights on how to effectively reach and engage developers, the significance of quantifying DevRel efforts, and the evolving landscape of developer engagement in the tech industry. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/07/17/jeremy-meiss/

At IBM Think 2025, RedMonk's Steve O'Grady sits down with HashiCorp CTO Armon Dadgar and IBM's Tarun Chopra to talk about what the IBM + HashiCorp deal means for devs. They dig into how HashiCorp tools like Terraform, Vault, and Nomad will stay core to the workflow, how IBM plans to invest across the full stack, and how everything will integrate with Red Hat and OpenShift. If you use HashiCorp in your day-to-day or care about hybrid cloud, automation, and scaling infrastructure as code, this one is for you. This conversation was originally published in video format on July 15, 2025.

In this RedMonk conversation, Daniel Roe, Nuxt Project Lead at Vercel, discusses the recent acquisition of NuxtLabs by Vercel and its implications for the Nuxt framework, UnJS, and Nitro. They chat about the importance of maintaining Nuxt's independence, the strategic vision behind Vercel's investment, and the role of community governance in open source projects. Daniel shares his personal journey in open source and emphasizes the need for sustainability and a positive approach to funding in the open source ecosystem. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/07/10/rmc-daniel-roe-vercels-nuxtlabs-acquisition/

In this RedMonk Conversation, Bob Quillin, CEO and co-founder of ControlTheory, chats with Rachel Stephens, Research Director at RedMonk. They discuss ControlTheory's launch and the observability landscape including the importance of feedback loops, and how ControlTheory aims to democratize instrumentation through OpenTelemetry. Bob shares insights on integrating with existing observability tools and the target audience for their solutions, emphasizing the need for more intelligent data management in the cloud era. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/blog/2025/06/30/a-redmonk-conversation-bob-quillin-talks-observability-opentelemetry-controltheory/

In this RedMonk conversation, Jacob Leverich, Co-Founder at Observe, Inc., discusses the evolution of the observability market, focusing on the founding of Observe, and the architectural decisions that shaped its development, with RedMonk's James Governor. They explore the transition from on-premises to cloud-based solutions, the challenges of data collection and interpretation, and the importance of user context in troubleshooting. The discussion also covers the impact of OpenTelemetry on the industry and the ongoing challenges of cost management in observability solutions. They explore emerging trends in data management, including the commoditization of data storage and the impact of AI on observability practices. This RedMonk conversation is sponsored by Observe.