Pulumi‘s latest update introduces new infrastructure lifecycle management capabilities aiming to bridge the gap between Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and operational realities. In this episode, Joe Duffy, CEO and Founder of Pulumi, discusses Pulumi’s latest features and their benefits as well as providing insight into some of the key trends in open source. He says, “I think IaC is really table stakes for the cloud and I think that’s the biggest evolution that I’ve seen.”

Pulumi’s IaC technology and its evolution in the cloud space

• Pulumi offers IaC technology support for over 160 cloud providers, including Azure, AWS, and Kubernetes. Duffy tells us about the company’s expanded product line for deployment workflow, analytics, insights, and secrets management.
• Duffy discusses the evolution of IaC over the past year or so, remarketing that it has become essential for cloud computing, with organizations of all sizes needing to manage infrastructure in the cloud.
• Duffy highlights Pulumi’s unique approach of allowing any programming language to define cloud architecture. Duffy highlights the growing trend towards using general-purpose languages for IaC.

Pulumi deployments, drift detection, and TTL stacks for cloud infrastructure management

• Duffy discusses Pulumi’s new infrastructure lifecycle management capabilities, including drift detection and remediation, Time-to-Live (TTL) stacks, and scheduled deployments. There are new free tiers for users to try out the features.
• Duffy explains how these new capabilities bridge the gap between IaC and operational realities and how they accommodate different scenarios like live site issues or special deployment restrictions.
• Duffy highlights Pulumi Deployments as a deployment orchestration and workflow engine, explaining how it is helping customers deal with complex infrastructure deployment workflows.
• The new features in the latest Pulumi update include TTL stacks, drift detection, and programmable APIs. Duffy explains how these features will help empower developers and data scientists.

Open source licensing and its impact on companies

• Duffy weighs in on the rumors of IBM acquiring HashiCorp. He explains why he thinks IBM would be a fitting buyer and how the acquisition could be beneficial for HashiCorp, although it would be a significant shift from their open-source roots.
• IBM has a solid track record with open source and permissive licensing. Duffy criticizes Hashicorp’s relicensing strategy and suggests that IBM may even revert the licensing should the acquisition be successful.
• Duffy explains that open source is fundamental to Pulumi and that they had carefully considered their business model from the start to avoid future challenges. He stresses the need for a sustainable approach to commercialization.
• Duffy highlights companies like Confluent and MongoDB which have successfully monetized open-source projects through value-added services, similar to Pulumi.

Open source business models and challenges in the industry

• Duffy discusses the impact license changes can have on the open-source ecosystem. He feels that such shifts may deter new startups from choosing the open-source model but can also be opportunities for learning within the industry.
• Investors may need to reassess their strategies because of the risks of forking projects and fragmenting communities, emphasizing the negative impact of forks.

Guest: Joe Duffy (LinkedIn)
Company: Pulumi (Twitter)
Show: Let’s Talk

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.