#014 – Kubernetes for Humans Podcast with Pini Reznik (Container Solutions/re:cinq)

Itiel Shwartz: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Kubernetes for Humans podcast. I’m Itiel Shwartz, your host today, and with me, we have Pini Reznik. Pini, happy to have you here.

Pini Reznik: Thank you for inviting me. 

Itiel Shwartz: Can you start by introducing yourself? What are you currently doing, and could you share a bit about how you started using technology and your personal journey?

Pini Reznik: Sure. My name is Pini Reznik. I’m originally from Israel, though I wasn’t born there, but I started my career in Israel at Check Point, like half of Israel’s high-tech sector. I’m a software developer by education, and I’ve spent most of my career in software configuration management—doing build servers, version control, and things like that. So, I’ve been working on internal development tooling for more than two decades now.

At some point, I moved to the Netherlands, where I live now, and spent some years at TomTom, a big GPS company. Eventually, I started a company called Container Solutions, where I served as a co-founder, CTO, and held various other positions. Container Solutions was essentially started because of Docker. We were looking into continuous integration, DevOps, and related areas, and when Docker came out, it was clear to me that it was exactly what I had been doing before with all kinds of strange tools like chroot and others.

Itiel Shwartz: Back then, were you working in a company, or were you consulting?

Pini Reznik: I was in a tiny company called Ugly Duckling. When Docker started, that’s when we decided to start Container Solutions as a consultancy focused 100% on containers—hence the name Container Solutions. In hindsight, the name might not have been the best choice because, these days, who cares about containers? They’re essential but so deep in the infrastructure that they’re like air or water—just a given.

Itiel Shwartz: So, if you had to rename your company today, what would it be?

Pini Reznik: At some point, we strongly focused on Kubernetes, and though I’m no longer part of Container Solutions, back then, we thought Kubernetes was a broader topic that went beyond containers, orchestration, and microservices. It also included organizational structure, culture, and so on. We even created a Kubernetes maturity matrix that presented a broader concept than what’s typically presented by, say, CNCF. So, today, I would probably avoid a name centered around containers and instead choose something like Kubernetes Consultancy or Kubernetes Solutions because it’s a broader and more complete focus.

Itiel Shwartz: So, Pini, maybe share a bit about your experience with Kubernetes. When did you start using it, and how did you perceive it?

Pini Reznik: Just for background, we started Container Solutions in 2014 and began talking about containers at the start of 2013. We organized the first Docker meetup in Amsterdam in early 2014. At that time, the only scheduler available was Mesos, so it took a few years for Kubernetes to arrive. There were what we called the “orchestration wars,” with a dozen or so options, though there were three or four major ones. In the end, Docker lost that war, as did Mesos, and Kubernetes wasn’t immediately obvious as the winner. But Kubernetes won, I think, because it was more open and community-driven rather than closed and commercial.

Itiel Shwartz: What was it like helping companies adopt Kubernetes? Could you describe the typical customer journey and the challenges they faced?

Pini Reznik: Most of the time, people would come to us and say, “We decided to go to the public cloud, Kubernetes, all the buzzwords. We just need an engineer for a month to set it up.” But I would say, “Let’s pause and understand the business needs first.” Kubernetes can be set up quickly, but that’s not the point. Especially in the early days, there was little understanding of what it really meant to use Kubernetes. People wanted Kubernetes, but they didn’t consider whether their infrastructure or internal processes supported it, or if their application architecture was even suitable. It was often a struggle, and companies needed to be prepared for a multi-year transformational project.

Itiel Shwartz: So, what advice would you give to a company looking to migrate to Kubernetes? What’s the expected timeline, and what are the biggest pitfalls?

Pini Reznik: My advice is to take a moment and do some strategy work upfront. Understand the current landscape, business goals, and application architecture. If your applications are heavily monolithic and don’t fit on a Kubernetes platform, there will be challenges. You should be prepared for a multi-year transformational project. On average, transforming a company with 100 developers to a fully cloud-native setup is a multi-year effort. You can usually get to production within six months with a small piece of functionality, have a meaningful setup in a year, and become fully cloud-native within two to three years.

Itiel Shwartz: What about developers? Should they be using Kubernetes more, or not? What’s your take on that?

Pini Reznik: Developers definitely need to understand Kubernetes and have access to it. They should be able to deploy their applications on Kubernetes because it’s part of the distributed execution environment that they need to understand. However, this doesn’t mean that developers should also be responsible for supporting Kubernetes in production. That’s a complex topic, and typically, you have development teams that build the applications, platform teams that support the platform, and SRE teams that help ensure quality and stability. Each team has its own responsibilities, but developers must understand how Kubernetes works to develop effectively for it.

Itiel Shwartz: What do you see for the future of Kubernetes and cloud-native development?

Pini Reznik: I believe the future is about optimizing systems and ensuring that we’re not destroying the planet by building bigger and more complex systems. We need to focus on reducing carbon emissions and overconsumption of resources. The next stage is making sure that the systems we build are not only scalable and efficient but also environmentally responsible. There’s a growing emphasis on sustainability, and the entire ecosystem will need to adjust to this new reality. That’s where my current work is focused—helping companies become more sustainable, eventually achieving net-zero carbon emissions.

Itiel Shwartz: That’s a very important direction. Any last words before we wrap up?

Pini Reznik: Software drives the world and is creating new social and governmental structures. We have a lot of power, and with that power comes responsibility. We need to understand how we can ensure that the systems we build keep the planet safe for future generations.

Itiel Shwartz: Absolutely. It was a pleasure talking with you, Pini. Green Ops is becoming more real, both from a cost perspective and due to government regulations. I wish you the best of luck, and thank you very much.

[Music]

Pini Reznik is the CEO and Co-Founder of re:cinq (https://re-cinq.com/) , a Green Software Services business that is helping save the world by reducing carbon emissions produced by Software and IT systems. Former Software Engineer, long-time manager, tech executive, and entrepreneur.

Pini was previously CTO and Co-Founder of Container Solutions, a Cloud Native Services business, where he participated in and led dozens of cloud-native transformations and collected extensive hands-on experience in both technical and organizational aspects of the transformation. He is also the author of O’Reilly’s Cloud Native Transformation  book. 

Itiel Shwartz is CTO and co-founder of Komodor, a company building the next-gen Kubernetes management platform for Engineers.

Worked at eBay, Forter, and Rookout as the first developer.

Backend & Infra developer turned ‘DevOps’, an avid public speaker who loves talking about infrastructure, Kubernetes, Python observability, and the evolution of R&D culture.  He is also the host of the Kubernetes for Humans Podcast. 

This is an AI generated transcript of the conversation