First change in the VSHN management, André and Marco
16. Jul 2020
As announced in this blog post we’re changing our corporate governance. A first step is that André Keller leaves the management and Marco Fretz joins with a strong focus on organizational development and daily operations. This change happens on request of André because he decided to shift the focus back to technical work and day-to-day customer service management and resign from his management role. Here is why:
When VSHN was founded back in 2014 the first management of VSHN was assembled. VSHN always followed a role concept, this includes the members of the management. This means that being a member of the management is not considered a full-time job (yet) but an additional role. Members of the management work primarily in System Engineering, Finance, Sales or Project- and Product management.
With VSHN rapidly growing over the last years, certain roles became more and more effort and mental load for VSHNeers – especially the management member role. This made it harder for VSHNeers to concentrate on their daily job – which in case of André was always being a System Engineer and taking care of customer needs in projects and daily business.
“In fall 2018, the management team went to Malta for a week-long retreat, where we focused on the challenges that came with our growth as well as the company strategy for the upcoming years. Among other topics, part of these discussions were the individual goals of the members of the management. This was when I first started to really think about my own role in the company and what the things are that I enjoy doing and I find interesting and what aspects of the job I would rather do without. As you can imagine this is not something that is easily figured out in a few hours. At least for me it was a process lasting several months.
At the end of this process I started to realize that it is not my ambition to be part of the management, I would rather concentrate on the day-to-day business, working on projects together with our customers and partners.”
– André
“One of the things I love about VSHN is the fact that everyone has the chance to evolve beyond the current job description, that you can take new roles and resign from roles you don’t like anymore.”
– Marco
The new board and management structure will have a strong focus on people, organizational development (OrgDev) and the refining of the strategy set by the board. André is happy to handover his position in the management to Marco Fretz who has been supporting the management in an advisory capacity for some time. Marco started early 2016 as a system engineer at VSHN. From the beginning he became more and more interested in organizational topics far beyond his daily job and contributed with constructive ideas and concepts to the success of VSHN.
“Being an “old” VSHNeer, knowing all the good and bad stories and having an open mind I’m sure I can be a driver for the changes VSHN needs to overcome future challenges. Together, we can improve things for us as VSHNeers and our customers likewise – and maintain our great family-like culture we value that much.
I know André long before VSHN and I’m convinced this decision is the right one for both André and me. We all should focus on where our ambitions are to be successful and happy – privately and in our job.”
– Marco
Marco Fretz
Marco is one of VSHN's General Managers and Chief Operating Officer.
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How time flies! Almost six years ago we founded VSHN. In the beginning, eight of us sat in an open-plan office. Decisions could be made quickly and easily in a team. The flip side of the coin was that due to the limited number of people, many VSHNeers had to take on several roles within the company. There was no dedicated unit to take care of the employees’ needs. Or one that drove technical developments. The same applied to marketing, and not only there. We all wore many hats at once.
In the meantime, VSHN has grown to five times its size. And many tasks – including those mentioned above – are now carried out by certain bodies. One area, however, was not affected by these changes: the leadership of VSHN. The same VSHNeers continue to sit on the management and board. While this continuity is gratifying, it was gradually recognized that change would do us good here too and that we should pass on the baton. Especially since focus and interests of some members of the management have changed and the role of management as such has moved towards a more of a coaching function. Furthermore, we want to ensure that VSHNeers who are closer to the day-to-day business can influence important decisions more directly based on their knowledge. Therefore, we have decided to change and expand the Corporate Governance of VSHN this year.
On the one hand, the role of the board will be strengthened in order to relieve the management, increase compliance and represent the owners. In addition to the strategic planning and orientation of the company, the core tasks of the board will include supervision of the management and medium- to long-term financial planning. The management will focus on the operational management of the company and the implementation of the corporate strategy, short-term financial planning and the representation of the company internally and externally.
This will result in several personnel changes in the coming months, primarily in the management of VSHN. The first switch took place at the beginning of the month. André Keller, who has been a member of the VSHN management since the beginning, has decided to devote more time to his squad and daily business and to pass on his management hat. In his place Marco Fretz joined the management on 1 July.
At this point we would like to thank André for the last almost six years in the management (and countless further VSHNeer years to come!). And we are looking forward to working closer with Marco as a member of management.
André and Marco explain in the following blog post in detail what this change means for them.
Updates:
As the next step, Markus Speth joins the management of VSHN on October 1st, 2020.
VSHN appoints new Co-CEOs and Members of the Management.
Patrick Mathers
Patrick is Founder and Member of the Board of VSHN.
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Zurich, June 23, 2020: VSHN is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Rancher Labs.
Who or what is Rancher?
Rancher Labs delivers open-source software that enables organizations to deploy and manage Kubernetes at scale, on any infrastructure across the data center, cloud, branch offices, and the network edge. With 30,000 active users and greater than 100 million downloads, its flagship product, Rancher, is the industry’s most widely adopted Kubernetes management platform. For additional information, visit www.rancher.com and follow @Rancher_Labs on Twitter. With Rancher, we are adding another Kubernetes distribution to our portfolio besides Red Hat OpenShift. An extensive article with many more details about Kubernetes can be found here and Sebastian Plattner from Puzzle explains in his blog post, how to build a Kubernetes Cluster with the help of Ansible and Rancher.
Why Rancher?
VSHNhas been working successfully with Rancher since 2018 and is now officially a Rancher Partner. With Managed Rancher, VSHN takes care of the setup, 24/7 operation, monitoring, backup and maintenance of a Rancher cluster. Hosted in a public cloud of your choice or on-premise in your own data center. We offer our Managed Rancher Services under the brand APPUiO. Tobias Brunner, Head of DevOps & Partner of VSHN – The DevOps Company said about the partnership:
„With the addition of Rancher, we are diversifying VSHN – The DevOps Company’s portfolio by adding another Kubernetes distribution and listening to both the market and our partners who have asked for Managed Rancher.”
Rancher Rodeo event 2020 in Zurich
VSHN and Rancher Labs have already had joint appearances, for example at the first official Rancher Rodeo Event in Zurich on February 19, 2020, where our VSHNeer Adrian was able to hold a talk: https://twitter.com/vshn_ch/status/1230057034772553731
About Rancher
Rancher was started in 2014 to create software that would simplify the lives of teams who were building applications using containers. The market was new, Docker had just been introduced and questions about how to manage, secure and orchestrate containers were pressing and exciting problems to solve. Within a year we introduced the first version of Rancher, an open-source software platform for teams innovating around containers. By 2016 we had adopted Kubernetes as an orchestrator and had thousands of teams using Rancher to run containers in production. As our community has grown, we haven’t stopped innovating. Rancher 2.0 became the first enterprise-grade platform for delivering Kubernetes as an enterprise service. Projects like K3s and submariner continue to push the Kubernetes community forward. All along we’ve maintained a commitment to building open-source software that supports users as they innovate everywhere.
About VSHN – The DevOps Company
VSHN (pronounced ˈvɪʒn like “vision”) is Switzerland’s leading DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes and 24/7 cloud operations partner. VSHN was founded with the intention to fundamentally shake up the hosting market. As a lean startup, we have focused on operating IT platforms through automation, agility and a continuous improvement process. Completely location-independent and without our own hardware, we operate extensive applications according to the DevOps principle agilely and 24/7 on every infrastructure, so that software developers can concentrate on their business and IT operations are relieved.
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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Recruiting and onboarding new employees during Corona
12. May 2020
A lot has been written about home office and remote work during the Corona / Covid-19 crisis. We also wrote a blog post about our experience, but more on a social than on a tool or process level (everyone has probably heard now that there is a videoconferencing tool called “Zoom”).
But what about hiring? What about onboarding new employees remotely?
As we at VSHN already gathered quite some experience with both topics, want to share this experience with you.
Recruiting employees remotely
We were searching for several new #VSHNeers, both in the technical area and non-technical within sales & marketing, when the Corona pandemic hit the economy and life of millions of people.
We as a company agreed on 100% home office, which works brilliant since day one, but how to continue our hiring efforts? How can we figure out if someone is #VSHNary if we can’t meet them in person? After a short discussion and because we are always trying to be practical, we figured out we have to somehow transform our current physical interviews to online meetings. Our (physical) recruiting process looked like this: a first 1h in person or video call and after that, the 2nd round for which we planned half day to allow the candidate to meet as many VSHNeers as possible including a lunch break together with the whole company. Our recruiting process is described in detail in our handbook if you are interested. At the end, we basically moved the whole structure and all parts of the interviews, meeting different people in groups of 2 and also a quick test afterwards to fully remote. Everything except the lunch break, which is a shame because that was the moment when the candidate meet the whole company and talk to other VSHNeers who were not involved in the interviews. But other than that, the recruiting process was shifted to remote.
It actually worked pretty well, the feedback from our candidates was also very positive and we were able to already recruit new VSHNeers fully remote. As a nice side effect, moving the recruiting process remote also helped us to further streamline it and make it more standardized. One important thing we learned is that you need one moderator who is responsible for the whole meeting process and the video calls, so that the candidate has one go-to person for questions.
Onboarding employees remotely
This month (May 2020), already two new VSHNeers started their journey at VSHN. Delia and Sandro are currently trained fully remote by their “Götti” (mentor) after meeting once in person to receive their new work laptop and office keys.
Of course, it is not an optimal start that we can’t meet in person to get to know us. Video calls work perfect for technical things, but it’s really hard to grasp the non-obvious like the company culture. But as we all know, it will only be a temporary situation and we hopefully all get back to normal soon, so we have to make the best out of it. But of course we are all looking forward to meeting each other again in person soon.
We believe having a “Götti” (mentor) for new starters is remotely even more important than physical. It just makes it easier for the new hires to ask questions and just have someone to talk to about all the non-standard or documented things.
We will keep you updated about our remote experience and hope this helped you a bit.
If you want to learn more about how we at VSHN work remotely together, check out our handbook.
All other Coronavirus / Covid-19 related information and how we cope with the situation can be found here.
Thanks for reading and all the best.
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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Having Fun in Home Office Times We’re already at our second week of Home Office in the COVID-19 quarantine. It is time for me to reflect and make a short interim evaluation. As the person responsible for People Ops in VSHN, it is my natural concern to ensure that all VSHNeers stay motivated in these times, that we keep in touch with each other, and that nobody feels alone. And since we always wanted to enable work flexibility, so that anyone could work from anywhere in the world, the rollout of Home Office happened fast and without complications. Each one of us has their company laptop, and many of us had enjoyed working from home, way before the coronavirus crisis. Therefore we could find ways to motivate each other, and we could ask each other for guidance; for example, whether it is really necessary to wear trousers (apparently yes) and whether it is normal to have really unproductive days (yes, it is. Don’t put yourself under too much pressure.) The team could find answers to all of these questions without any trouble. But how can we keep the team together if we can only see each other through a webcam? Have regular remote meetings After a short while we came up with the “Z’noomi” (a pun between “Zoom” and “Znüni”), a daily videocall meeting every morning and every afternoon, where we just hang out with a cup of coffee and talk to everyone. The idea of a “remote beer” every Friday afternoon also caught up quite quickly with the team. Rumour has it, that even part-time employees not working on Fridays participate in it! Take the time to know each other better During our Z’noomis we can meet the pets of our colleagues (particularly when they walk on the keyboards) or enjoy a small tour of their homes! Hobbies provide yet another possibility to learn each other better. This is why we watched a presentation of the renovation of the home of one of our colleagues, or became “beta listeners” to freshly recorded tunes from the guitar of another VSHNeer. Play with one another! The classic “LAN-Parties” aren’t new, but who has tried playing Dungeons and Dragons remotely? VSHN has! Another game that started this week: show your gardening skills. Each VSHNeer will receive (or has already received) a small package with a starter kit inside (earth, seeds, and pot) to brew their own beer, and prove themselves that they are up to the situation, and can grow something out of these seeds. Which plant will appear first? Which will be the biggest, strongest, or more beautiful? To be honest, we VSHNeers are not well known for our gardening skills, but this exercise will surely teach us about it (well, as long as the Post is able to deliver all packages…)
And if your french isn’t that strong, no worries, we have Google translate for that! 😂
Small gifts keep friendships alive Whether you ask somebody how they are doing in an unscheduled videocall, or pat them virtually on the back, or make sure that a change worked out well and that a customer has been successfully served, or praise their haircut (even if no hairdressers are available): show your gratitude! Praise is balsam for the soul. What do you do to keep contacts alive? We’d be glad to hear about any ideas you might have, so that we can keep the fun in our home offices in the upcoming weeks. 😊 Stay healthy! Your VSHNeers
Aarno Aukia
Aarno is Co-Founder of VSHN AG and provides technical enthusiasm as a Service as CTO.
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We are experiencing unprecedented times due to the coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on people’s health, our daily lives, as well as on businesses and the economy. In these special times and increasing challenge that we all currently have to master, we at APPUiO would like to make a contribution. Therefore we offer you as “immediate help” an APPUiO Public account on cloudscale.ch with 1100 mC CPU, 2.0 GiB memory for a full 90 days free of charge, which corresponds to a value of CHF 300. Just go to , enter your e-mail address and the following voucher code: APPUIO-COVID19 Hurry up, there is a maximum of 100 codes available and the promotion is valid 1x per user or company. Best regards and stay healthy! Your APPUiO team and your VSHNeers
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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Moneycab.com: Herr Mathers, bitte erläutern Sie kurz was Ihr Unternehmen macht. Patrick Mathers: Die Digitalisierung macht heute vor keiner Branche mehr halt. Das bedeutet, dass so gut wie alle Unternehmen nun auch gleichzeitig IT-Firmen sein müssen, egal ob es sich hierbei um einen Finanzdienstleister oder einen Detailhändler handelt. Zudem wird die benötigte IT komplexer, schnelllebiger und risikoreicher, weswegen Software kontinuierlich weiterentwickelt werden muss. Damit sich unsere Kunden trotzdem auf ihre Kernkompetenzen konzentrieren können, entlasten wir sie, indem wir uns um den Betrieb ihrer Applikationen kümmern – unabhängig davon, ob diese in einer Cloud oder im Rechenzentrum der Kunden betrieben werden.
«Die VSHN hat von Anfang an auf Kollaboration, Agilität, Open Source und auf starke Kundenbeziehungen gesetzt.» Patrick Mathers, CEO VSHN
Was machen Sie besser oder anders als Ihre Mitbewerber? 2014 haben wir festgestellt, dass sich der Markt zwischen Software-Engineering und Hosting/Betrieb auseinander entwickelt. Gleichzeitig kamen neue Themen und Innovationen wie DevOps und Container-Technologien auf. Die Nachfrage nach einem spezialisierten Betriebspartner, der mehr als nur reines Hosting anbot, stieg. VSHN unterstützt Kunden partnerschaftlich auf ihrem Weg der digitalen Transformation, um Applikationen automatisch testbar, deploybar und skalierbar zu machen und auf beliebiger Infrastruktur zu betreiben. Neben der engen, agilen und offenen Zusammenarbeit und Beratung übernehmen wir auch die Verantwortung für die Stabilität unserer Services inklusive 24/7 Support. Ihr Unternehmen hat beim Digital Economy Award in der Kategorie Highest Digital Quality gewonnen. Laut Jury-Präsident Marcus Dauck setzten Sie einen neuen Qualitäts-Massstab fest. Wie ist Ihnen das gelungen? Die VSHN hat von Anfang an auf Kollaboration, Agilität, Open Source und auf starke Kundenbeziehungen gesetzt. Dieses Ökosystem an Partnerschaften hat es uns ermöglicht, fokussiert Innovationen voranzutreiben und ein hohes Qualitätsniveau zu erreichen. Daraus ist beispielsweise Appuio hervorgegangen, unsere Schweizer Container Plattform basierend auf Red Hat OpenShift, die wir zusammen mit unserem Partner Puzzle ITC aufgebaut haben. Speed, Fokussierung und Qualität auf höchstem Niveau haben die Jury begeistert. Das ist auch personell eine Herausforderung, richtig? In der Tat! Es stellt eine grosse Herausforderung dar, wenn man technologisch immer an vorderster Front stehen möchte und hierfür qualifizierte Mitarbeiter gewinnen will. Wir versuchen jedoch ein positives Arbeitsumfeld zu schaffen, welches bei bestehenden und zukünftigen VSHNeers nicht nur mit Fringe Benefits wie Office-Massagen, flexible Arbeitszeiten, Home Office oder dem attraktiven Standort gleich beim Zürich HB punktet. Wir erreichen dies auch mit einem hohen Grad an Transparenz und Mitsprache, die nicht bloss auf dem Papier besteht, sondern tatsächlich gelebt wird. Es kann zum Beispiel jeder VSHNeer an den Management-Sitzungen teilnehmen und eigene Themen einbringen sowie sämtliche Sitzungsprotokolle einsehen. So sind auch der Open Source Gedanke und die Transparenz in unserem öffentlich zugänglichen VSHN Handbook für jeden klar ersichtlich: https://handbook.vshn.ch Weshalb und wofür betrachten Sie den Preis als Bestätigung? Wir betrachten den Preis als Bestätigung für unsere bisherigen Arbeit und als Ansporn, uns kontinuierlich weiterzuentwickeln.
«Mit Project Syn können wir bei unseren Dienstleistungen beinahe 100% an Automatisierungsgrad erreichen und mittels ausgefeilter Tools den Self-Service für den Benutzer optimieren.»
Ihr nächstes Projekt steht bereits am Start: Project Syn, Next Generation Managed Services. Was genau ist Project Syn? Mit Project Syn bauen wir die neue Grundlage für Managed Services auf beliebigen Kubernetes Clustern auf, sei dies in der Cloud oder beim Kunden vor Ort. Ausschlaggebend für die Entwicklung sind unsere gemachten Erfahrungen im Betrieb von Managed Services auf klassischen Virtual Machines mit Mitteln, welche für moderne Cloud Native Infrastrukturen nicht mehr zeitgemäss sind. Mit Project Syn können wir bei unseren Dienstleistungen beinahe 100% an Automatisierungsgrad erreichen und mittels ausgefeilter Tools den Self-Service für den Benutzer optimieren. Im Zentrum steht dabei immer der Softwareentwickler und die Applikation, welche betrieben wird. DevOps, das perfekte Zusammenspiel von Entwicklung und Betrieb, wird dabei dank vielen integrierten Werkzeugen unterstützt. So nimmt zum Beispiel GitOps, die Versionisierung von Konfigurationsdaten, eine tragende Rolle ein. Project Syn ist ein von uns initiiertes Open Source Projekt und kann von allen genutzt werden. Der Code ist auf GitHub gespeichert: https://github.com/projectsyn. Somit bringen wir uns auch ein weiteres Mal aktiv in die Open Source Community ein. Im Zuge von Project Syn geht VSHN eine strategische Partnerschaft mit Crossplane ein. Warum gerade Crossplane? Crossplane bietet eine innovative Multi-Cloud-Management-Plattform für Cloud Native Applikationen und Infrastrukturen über verschiedene Umgebungen und Clouds hinweg an, welches ein integraler Bestandteil von Project Syn ist. Und da unsere beiden Firmen ähnliche Werte wie Transparenz, Kollaboration und vor allem den Open Source Gedanken leben, streben wir eine vertiefte Zusammenarbeit an.
«Wir peilen ein stabiles Wachstum in der Schweiz an und planen mittelfristig Niederlassungen in Kanada und Malaysia, um unsere Kunden noch besser und rund um die Uhr betreuen zu können.»
Was waren und sind die Herausforderungen, welche mit diesem Projekt verbunden sind? Die grösste Herausforderung ist es, eine gute Balance zwischen dem Aufbau der neuen und der gleichzeitigen Weiterentwicklung der bestehenden Betriebsplattform zu finden. Wir bewegen uns in einem sich stetig wandelndem Umfeld, täglich werden neue Projekte angekündigt und die verwendeten Tools werden unentwegt weiterentwickelt. Hierbei muss VSHN am Ball bleiben und die richtigen Prioritäten setzen, was uns dank engagierter und aktiver Mitarbeiter sehr gut gelingt. Was können Sie uns zu Ihrem Unternehmen sonst noch sagen? Mit derzeit 42 Mitarbeitern, den sogenannten „VSHNeers“, betreuen wir weltweit für mehr als 350 verschiedene Partner über 1’500 Server in verschiedenen Clouds und bei Kunden On-Premises und überwachen mehr als 85’000 Services von unseren Büros in Zürich aus. Da hohe Datensicherheit unabdingbar ist, sind wir zudem seit drei Jahren ISO 27001 zertifiziert. Wie sehen die mittel- und langfristigen Pläne von VSHN aus? Wir sind noch lange nicht am Ziel! Unser Credo ist, uns jeden Tag aufgrund der Feedbacks unserer Kunden und Partner weiterzuentwickeln. Wir peilen ein stabiles Wachstum in der Schweiz an und planen mittelfristig Niederlassungen in Kanada und Malaysia, um unsere Kunden noch besser und rund um die Uhr betreuen zu können. Und natürlich werden wir weiterhin täglich bestrebt sein, unseren Kunden unsere Services auf höchstem Level anzubieten.
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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The Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s flagship conference gathers adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities in Amsterdam, The Netherlands from March 30 – April 2, 2020. Join Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, CoreDNS, containerd, Fluentd, TUF, Jaeger, Vitess, OpenTracing, gRPC, CNI, Notary, NATS, Linkerd, Helm, Rook, Harbor, etcd, Open Policy Agent, CRI-O, TiKV, CloudEvents and Falco as the community gathers for four days to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing.
VSHN at KubeCon & CloudNativeCon
Also at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2020 in Amsterdam #VSHNeers will be onsite to see the latest developments and gather impressions.
Please contact us if you would like to meet us on site. We look forward to hearing from you!
Swiss CNC Get Together at the KubeCon & CloudNativeCon 2020 in Amsterdam
VSHN will again organize a Swiss CNC Get Together Meetup at this year’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2020 in Amsterdam to bring together Swiss colleagues & friends in a relaxed atmosphere who are attending KubeCon.
Please register on our Cloud Native Computing Meetup page, if you want to participate in the Swiss CNC Get Together. We are looking forward to meeting you!
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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At least we hope you like our report on our DevOps in Switzerland study and the results.
In autumn 2018 and one year later in 2019, we conducted a study to investigate how Swiss companies understand DevOps and whether they already work according to DevOps principles. The status of DevOps in Switzerland was clarified, reasons for and against an introduction of the DevOps philosophy and where the development is going. The results were compared between the years in order to be able to directly identify conclusions and trends.
Download the Report
Here you can download the report: DevOps in Switzerland Report 2020 Enjoy reading and we look forward to your feedback on the study. Your VSHNeers
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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In the last months of 2019, Daniel, Manuel, and I were working in Vancouver. You can find more about the reasons behind choosing Canada in our blog post VSHN goes to Vancouver. But now, enjoy the recap video about our findings and to give you a glimpse into life in Canada. Enjoy and let us know what you think. 😃
matthias.indermuehle
Matthias is co-founder of VSHN AG, member of the executive board, and partner
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The year 2019 is drawing to a close. With this review of the year we want to look back on an awesome year. Of course we will be there for you over the holidays – see our opening hours Christmas/New Year 2019. We wish you and your family a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Another milestone in the still young, 5-year history of VSHN. With exciting new projects such as acrevis Bank or neon and partnerships with Red Hat and Crossplane we have been strengthened in our daily work and in our strategy again and again this year. Also the decision to focus on the operation of modern container platforms and future technologies such as Docker, OpenShift and Kubernetes and the close cooperation with partners still seems to be right. Thanks to the continuous and healthy growth, we were also able to increase our workforce to 42 employees. Our new VSHNeers in 2019 are Simon G., Janine, Daniel H., Adrian, Soufiane, Nuno, Tatjana, Isabel, João, Ivan, Daniel B., Gabriel, Manuela. We see the daily contact with our partners and customers as a confirmation of our previous path and at the same time as a motivation to become even better in the future and to push the DevOps philosophy forward. This philosophy also includes lived transparency, which is proven by the publication of our VSHN Handbook. At this point we would like to thank our employees, partners and loyal companions. 👏 We will continue to develop in the future and will not rest on our laurels. And that we don’t just talk, but also do is proven by K8up or, above all, our Open Source Project Syn:
Project Syn
Project Syn is a pre-integrated set of tools to provision, update, backup, observe and react/alert production applications on Kubernetes and in the cloud. It supports DevOps through full self-service and automation using containers, Kubernetes and GitOps. You can find more infos about Project Syn on: https://vshn.ch/syn Check out Project Syn on GitHub: https://github.com/projectsyn
VSHN wins gold at Digital Economy Award in the category Highest Digital Quality. Who would have thought? VSHN – The DevOps Company wins gold at the Digital Economy Award in the category Highest Digital Quality. We couldn’t be happier and would like to thank all #VSHNeers who made this success possible.
Computerworld once again ranked the top 500 of the strongest Swiss ICT companies in 2019. The measured total turnover of the companies listed in the ranking rose further to around 78 billion Swiss francs, driven by digitisation and cloud adoption.
Together with our partner Puzzle ITC, VSHN AG is building an OpenShift-based technology platform for the Eastern Swiss regional bank acrevis. The technology platform consists of business, integration, security and delivery layers and enables acrevis to implement a two-speed IT.
Open Source has become indispensable in many areas. One of the most important advantages of Open Source software is the gained speed and flexibility, which are essential not only for Fintechs, but also for traditional banks.
DevOps stands for a new culture and approach in the collaboration of traditionally separated departments. Development (software development) and Operations (IT operations) are pulling together to increase software quality and availability and thus customer satisfaction.
iX Magazine article: Cloud-to-Cloud MigrationOur CTO Aarno Aukia has contributed an article in iX Magazine 4/2019 on cloud-to-cloud migration. The challenge of Cloud-to-Cloud MigrationThere are many reasons to change the cloud provider or the cloud model. But migration is not an easy task. There are different migration options based on the underlying data.
VSHN supports VIS. Some of our VSHNeers are former ETH students and try to maintain contact with the students through various alumni associations. For example, VSHN supports VIS – the Association of Computer Science Students at ETH Zurich – by sponsoring various events. Recently an information evening took place in our office, where interested students could ask us about our daily work. We were very happy about the active participation and look forward to the next time. 🙂
VSHN is Bronze Sponsor of Hack’n’Lead. We are very happy to support women++ and the hackathon Hack’n’Lead as Bronze Sponsors. Hack’n’Lead is the first women-friendly hackathon in Switzerland and aims to promote diversity in IT and to inspire women to pursue careers and computer science.
The first participation in the Powercoders program for refugees was a complete success: we were able to hire Bashar as fulltime VSHNeer after his internship.
VSHN is Red Hat Advanced CCSP (Certified Cloud and Service Provider) Business Partner. We are very pleased to announce that we are now official Red Hat Advanced CCSP Partner. With this certification we want to further strengthen our cooperation with Red Hat and the Red Hat Ecosystem and look forward to a successful partnership.
VSHN is proud to announce a partnership with Crossplane. Zurich, Nov 21, 2019: VSHN is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Crossplane.io for Project Syn – VSHNs next generation Managed Services framework.
VSHN is Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) member. Among other things, VSHN supports the CNCF by organizing the Cloud Native Computing Meetups in Zurich and we sponsor the KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona.
Those who understand the cloud only as an IT topic have already lost. Many companies want to move their IT into the cloud, but how does that actually work? At the Glenfis Cloud Talk, visitors learned from three perspectives how to take advantage of the cloud and how to avoid obstacles. Daniel Wolf (Glenfis), Dominik Zemp (Microsoft), Aarno Aukia (VSHN) and Harald Häuschen (Helsana) gave inputs on the subject of cloud computing.
CNC meetup #5 2019. Our fifth Cloud Native Computing Meetup 2019 took place on November 7th at Ergon Informatik in Zurich. Many thanks to Ergon for providing the great premises and sponsoring the Apéro.
Forum EPFL 2019. On Tuesday, October 8th, the VSHN team participated in the Forum EPFL 2019 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Forum EPFL is the largest recruitment event in Switzerland. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet talented engineers in the French-speaking side of the country!
APPUiO at the Cloud Computing Conference 2019 in Germany. APPUiO participated 2019 as Cloud Native Loft Sponsor at the Cloud Conferences of the Vogel IT-Academy in Bonn, Hanau, Hamburg and Munich. Success Story by APPUiO and Flexis at the Cloud Conference Hamburg 2019: From the Road to the Cloud – Optimization of Logistics Processes with Docker, Kubernetes and APPUiO.
VSHN at AWS Summit Switzerland 2019: As we previously announced, we are proud to have participated in the last AWS Summit Switzerland as Bronze Sponsors. The event happened on Wednesday, October 2nd 2019 in Trafo Baden. It was a great opportunity to meet partners and customers, and to learn more about the thriving AWS ecosystem.
Red Hat Forum Zurich 2019. Also this year we attended Red Hat Forum Switzerland in Zurich with APPUiO as sponsor and with a booth on site. In 2019 the event took place at StageOne in Oerlikon and the number of visitors this year was even higher than in the last years. About 900 participants found their way to the 8th Red Hat Forum.
VSHN at topsoft 2019. topsoft 2019 is one of the most important Swiss IT trade fairs for systems, technologies and know-how for future-oriented companies. Together with our partners Batix, Webgate and Migros, VSHN exhibited at topsoft 2019.
VSHN receives Rising Star award: VSHN – The DevOps Company receives the award Rising Star of the ISG Provider Lens Switzerland 2019 study at the award ceremony night in Spreespeicher Berlin. We are of course very happy that we were able to place ourselves so successfully in the study alongside many well-known global players from the IT world. The VSHNeers Patrick Mathers (CEO) and Markus Speth (CMO) receive the Rising Star from ISG Director Heiko Henkes and are very pleased about the award.
KubeCon & CloudNativeCon Europe 2019 in Barcelona: KubeCon Europe 2019 took place in Barcelona at the Fira exhibition centre, where the Mobile World Congress also takes place. As Silver Sponsor of the Linux Foundation, VSHN was present with its own booth. The flagship conference of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation gathered users and technology savvy people from leading open source and cloud communities from Kubernetes to Prometheus, OpenTracing, Fluentd, gRPC, containerd, rkt, CNI, Envoy, Jaeger, Notary, TUF, Vitess, CoreDNS, NATS, Linkerd, Helm, Harbor and etcd from 20 to 23 May 2019 in Barcelona. For four days, like-minded people met to promote the know-how and further development of cloud computing.
DevOpsDays Zurich 2019. We were Platinum Sponsor at the DevOpsDays Zurich 2019 and had our own booth with APPUiO. The number of visitors doubled again this year and you can definitely say that DevOpsDays has developed into one of the most important DevOps events in Zurich.
Our third Cloud Native Computing Meetup took place on Thursday May 9 in the Swisscom Tower in Zurich. Many thanks to Swisscom for providing the great premises and to Cloudreach for sponsoring the Apéro. The third CNC-Meetup 2019 was very well attended and after interesting speakers we had an exciting round of talks in a pleasant atmosphere and a wonderful view over Zurich.
Switzerland is the 6th region in Europe (europe-west6) and the 19th region of the Google Cloud Platform worldwide to offer computing, storage, big data and network services. It is connected to Google’s well-equipped, secure and private network to provide global access to all services of the Google Cloud Platform.
Our second Cloud Native Computing Meetup took place on Thursday Feb 21 in the Swisscom Tower in Zurich. Many thanks to Swisscom for providing the great premises and to Nine for sponsoring the Apéro.
On January 30th and 31st 2019, the Container Stack, a two-day event on Kubernetes with one day of workshops and one day of conference, took place for the first time at the FIFA World Football Museum Zurich. VSHN was co-sponsor of the event.
Between the Container Stack workshop on Wednesday Jan 30th and the conference on Thursday Jan 31st 2019, we organized a Knative CNCF meetup at VSHN. Mark Chmarny (TPM Serverless, Google) and Sebastien Goasguen (Founder, Triggermesh) spoke about about Knative, the Kubernetes framework for building, deploying, and managing serverless workloads. Despite the short notice (we planned the meetup 1 week in advance) we had a full house at VSHN.
On Jan 31st 2019, the Inside Channels Forum 2019 with the big players of the Swiss ICT industry took place in the Kultur- and Kongresshaus in Aarau. VSHN was there and our CTO Aarno held a Transformation Talk with the topic “How we made the entry into the IT business with DevOps, Cloud and Docker” (in German).
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we are going to finish this amazing 2019 with the latest news about Kubernetes.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we are going to talk about Cloud Security, its many facets and threats, and how smart teams can mitigate them.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we are going to showcase some cool examples of excellent learning resources created by and for the DevOps community.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. Last week was full of conferences, new product announcements, and exciting news! There was ServiceMeshCon, then KubeCon / CloudNativeCon, and even MulticloudCon. This VSHN.timer will feature what we think are the five most prominent news of the week.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. In this exceptional edition with 7 items we are going to talk about managing „classic“ virtual machines with Kubernetes, a subject suggested by VSHNeer João Pinto; then we’ll dive into Helm 3.0 and into a deluge of conferences!
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. In this edition we are going to talk about languages, tools, and good ideas to write quality code.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. In this edition we are going to talk about building containers without falling in the root trap! This subject has been suggested by VSHNeer João Pinto, based on his research on the topic.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. In this edition we are going to talk about how to learn and to get started with Kubernetes, the standard platform for cloud-native applications.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. In this edition we are going to talk about ideas, tools, and approaches that make (or break) early 21st century startups.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. In this edition we are going to review the latest Kubernetes news, tools, and events. Hang tight, for the world of Kubernetes is advancing fast, fast, FAST!
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. In this edition we are going to talk about ethics, remote teams, writing skills, and career development in a modern, distributed DevOps team.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. In this edition we are going to talk about container runtimes, the basic building blocks enabling everything we do every day at VSHN.
Red Hat OpenShift 4: This summer Red Hat released OpenShift 4. At first glance, the new major version is a continuous development of OpenShift 3 with relatively manageable changes for the user. But if you look under the hood, you will quickly see a completely revised OpenShift. The blogpost of Benjamin Affolter on the APPUiO blog examines the changes of OpenShift 4 and describes them in detail.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better. In this edition we are going to showcase several solutions for developers to deploy Kubernetes clusters locally. Turns out there are a lot of them!
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system and making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we are going to talk about GitOps, the new trend in the world of cloud-first apps and Kubernetes.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system and making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we are going to talk about OpenShift, the Kubernetes-based container technology by Red Hat.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system and making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we are going to talk about Kubernetes security; hang tight, this is a hot topic and there is a lot of material in this edition!
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system and making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we feature interesting articles about HumanOps, the next logical step in a path that leads to software made by humans, for humans.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system and making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we will talk about Quality, the Saint Graal of software characteristics, particularly critical in these days of 12 factor apps.
What a great time! Deployment automation, cloud platforms, containerization, short iterations to develop and release software—we’ve progressed a lot. And finally it’s official: Kubernetes and OpenShift are the established platforms to help us do scaling and zero downtime deployments with just a few hundred lines of YAML. It’s a great time.
Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system and making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we feature interesting articles about DevOps, one of the most widely misunderstood and misquoted words in the modern business of software.
Welcome to the new VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system and making us think, laugh, or simply work better. This week we feature a few articles stating what is in everyone’s mind: Kubernetes is becoming the new standard platform for cloud applications.
VSHN – The DevOps Company is pleased to announce K8up (pronounced /keɪtæpp/) at KubeCon / CloudNativeCon 2019, our Open Source backup operator for Kubernetes and OpenShift.
Serverless is one of those hot topics that, as many others in our industry, looks a bit like a good old idea recycled and brought back to fashion. Yet Serverless (or “Function as a Service”) looks like a natural evolution to a movement that started more than a decade ago, when Heroku and Google App Engine came under the spotlight. (This blog post is the transcription of the presentation given at the CNC Switzerland meetup, May 9th 2019. Slides are available at the end of this page.)
Section 1 – Kubernetes Operators, Operator Framework, and Operators SDK: Here we discuss in a general setting about Operators, Operator Framework, and Operators SDK.Then we will discuss about the Operators SDK emerging popularity in GitHub, and in general about the “Operator SDK workflow” adopted for generating and handling operators.
#VSHN5 – the big party for the 5th birthday of VSHN. On November 20 2019 we celebrated #VSHN5 together with our partners and friends. The party for the 5th birthday of VSHN took place in the Heile Welt in Zurich.
VSHN is proud to announce Project Syn, the next generation Open Source managed services framework for DevOps and application operations on any infrastructure based on Kubernetes.
5 years VSHN – The DevOps Company. We can hardly believe that it has been 5 years since we founded VSHN. Our first 5 years were fantastic and it is hard to find words for the experiences we made during that time. Just this much can be said: We say thank you 1000 times to all partners, customers and all others who have accompanied us on the way so far and look forward to the future and the next 5 years! 🎂
VSHN goes to Vancouver – Part 1: Currently Daniel, Manuel, and I are working from Vancouver. Therefore I want to tell you a bit about why we are here and then give you a glimpse into life in Canada. VSHN grew a lot since we started. We went from one customer to over 350. With the number of customers, their requirements and the number of managed systems grew as well, and with all of that the amount of work we have to do during the night.
VSHN was sponsor of the Lehner Cup 2019. World class ice hockey in Sursee. The Lehner Cup 2019 is already history again. With a 5 : 3 victory against the team from Kazakhstan, Barys Nur-Sultan (HK Barys Astana), the EV Zug secured its second tournament victory at the Lehner Cup after 2014.
On Wed. August 7 2019, the 5th VSHN DAY took place, where our team meets annually for a voluntary off-site strategy day to discuss the future of VSHN. VSHN Day 2019 Intro: Back to the Future. VSHN co-founder Tobias Brunner (@tobruzh) ignited VSHN Day 2019 with a review. What was the idea behind VSHN? Why did the first VSHNeers join forces in 2014 and founded VSHN AG?
In Switzerland, a father is legally entitled to only one day’s leave for the birth of his child, that is just as much as you get for relocating. That’s why VSHN introduced four weeks paternity leave last year. I was very lucky to be the first VSHNeer to benefit from it: end of November our son Lias was born.
VSHN AG is the leading Swiss partner for DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift and 24/7 Cloud Operations. VSHN helps software developers run their applications agile and 24/7 on any infrastructure while relieving the burden on IT operations. VSHN was founded with the intention to fundamentally shake up the hosting market. As a lean startup, we have focused on operating IT platforms through automation, agility and a continuous improvement process. Completely location-independent and without our own hardware, we operate extensive applications according to the DevOps principle agilely and 24/7 on every infrastructure, so that software developers can concentrate on their business and IT operations are relieved. With APPUiO.ch, we have created a Red Hat OpenShift based Swiss container platform, where we can offer Managed Services as a PaaS solution (Platform-as-a-Service) on any infrastructure: public, dedicated, private and on-premises. At VSHN, we believe in openness and transparency, so we let you decide where to store your data (we call this multi-cloud strategy). Either locally in your own data center (on-premise) or at a cloud provider location of your choice. Take a look at our services and learn more about our services and how we can possibly support you. Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter (@vshn_ch and @APPUiO), to keep up with the latest news.
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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We wish you all a wonderful Holiday Season and a happy New Year!
Opening hours holidays 2019
We are there for you during Christmas and New Year to ensure the operation of your platforms.
During the holidays we are reachable as follows:
Dec 24 2019: 9.00am – 4.00pm
Dec 25 2019: closed
Dec 26 2019: closed
Dec 27 2019: 9.00am – 6.00pm
Dec 30 2019: 9.00am – 6.00pm
Dec 31 2019: 9.00am – 4.00pm
Jan 1 2020: closed
Jan 2 2020: closed
from Jan 3 2020: 9.00am – 6.00pm
Of course, we are available day and night for our 24/7 Support SLA customers also during Christmas and New Year in case of an emergency. Happy holidays and see you soon in the new year!
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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VSHN is Red Hat Advanced Certified Cloud and Service Provider Business Partner
12. Dec 2019
We are very pleased to announce that we are now official Red Hat Advanced CCSP Partner. With this certification we want to further strengthen our cooperation with Red Hat and the Red Hat Ecosystem and look forward to a successful partnership.
What is Red Hat CCSP?
Certified Cloud and Service Provider Program Enterprise IT organizations are using cloud technologies to reduce costs, improve operational flexibility, and compete in today’s market. The Red Hat® Certified Cloud and Service Provider (CCSP) program lets you offer trusted cloud services to your customers with the products they already use in their datacenters, accompanied by Red Hat’s award-winning technical support.
“The Red Hat Certified Cloud and Solution Provider program is designed to encompass nearly all service provider models, spanning the public cloud to on-site managed services, offering our customers a secure, stable, and trusted partner ecosystem upon which to build their next-generation IT projects using Red Hat solutions.”
MICHAEL FERRIS VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCT MARKETING, RED HAT
About Red Hat
We’re the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. We help you standardize across environments, develop cloud-native applications, and integrate, automate, secure, and manage complex environments with award-winning support, training, and consulting services.
About VSHN
VSHN is the Ops in DevOps: VSHN – The DevOps Company automates the operation of applications so that software developers can focus on their business. VSHN is the leading partner for DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift & 24/7 Cloud Operations. With APPUiO, we operate one of the largest container platforms in Switzerland on which we can offer managed services as a PaaS solution (Platform-as-a-Service) on any infrastructure. WE RUN YOUR APPLICATION – in the cloud or on-premise.
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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Zürich, 28.11.2019: VSHN wins gold at Digital Economy Award
VSHN wins gold at Digital Economy Award in the category Highest Digital Quality
Who would have thought? VSHN – The DevOps Company wins gold at the Digital Economy Award in the category Highest Digital Quality. We couldn’t be happier and would like to thank all #VSHNeers who made this success possible. The moment of certainty was captured on video by our friend David Kilchenmann from Puzzle, thank you very much, Dave! 😊
The Digital Economy Award Night
At the Digital Economy Award Night, 600 guests from the digital industry, research, business and politics celebrated the digital achievements of the year. The award ceremony took place in the Hallenstadion in Zurich in the presence of Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin.
Winner in the category Highest Digital Quality 2019: VSHN – The DevOps Company
Jury president Marcus Dauck:
«VSHN is setting a new benchmark for both SMEs and larger companies in the clearly defined service segment with the highest quality and strong global growth from Switzerland. As a young company, in a technologically rapidly changing environment, relying on sustainable but flexible services is not a matter of course and requires perseverance. Speed, focus and quality are at the highest level and have impressed the jury.»
The entire wording of the winning speech can be found in the official press release of the Digital Economy Award AG.
The Certificate Holders
At the Digital Economy Award Night on November 28, companies and organizations in five special disciplines were again awarded certificates: • Security: First Security Technology • Industrie 4.0: Side Effects • Lean, Agile & Scrum: SBB Informatik, VSHN, Aduno Gruppe / Viseca Cards Services SA, Five Up Community • Open Source: Zammad • User Experience: ti&m, Aduno Gruppe / Viseca Cards Services SA, interactive friends
About Digital Economy Award
The Digital Economy Award is organised by the ICT trade association swissICT and the specialist publisher Netzmedien AG and was created through a merger of the Swiss ICT Award and the Swiss Digital Transformation Award. The next award ceremony will take place on November 25 2020 in the Hallenstadion in Zurich.
All #VSHNeers celebrate the award together
The day after the Digital Economy Award, the entire team was able to take a look at the “Cup” at our Christmas party.
What’s next?
Even after winning the Digital Economy Award, it won’t get boring – have a look at our “Next Big Thing”, Project Syn.
VSHN is proud to announce a partnership with Crossplane
Zurich, Nov 21, 2019: VSHN is proud to announce a strategic partnership with Crossplane.io for Project Syn – VSHNs next generation Managed Services framework.
Cloud Agnostic with Crossplane
VSHN has always been cloud agnostic and will further enhance this paradigm by partnering with Crossplane – „The open source multicloud control plane“. By leveraging Crossplane, the user of Project Syn can specify the backend services needed in a completely cloud-independent way. Provisioning of these services happens fully automated, handled by the tooling in the most optimal way. As an example: when a MySQL service is requested, Crossplane would provision a cloud service if the cloud provides it or deploys it inside the Kubernetes cluster leveraging a service operator. This way the user doesn’t have to care about the implementation and can fully focus on the application. Project Syn is designed to run on all Kubernetes distributions and clouds. It’s prepared to support all the specific features of any given cloud and Kubernetes distribution by abstracting the specifics. This means Project Syn will run on OpenShift with APPUiO.ch, Rancher Kubernetes and all managed Kubernetes offerings. Support for even more Kubernetes flavors and clouds are added on demand. Plans exist to support single node Kubernetes Clusters using Rancher k3s.
Why Crossplane?
Tobias Brunner, Head of DevOps & Partner of VSHN – The DevOps Company:
“After several weeks of evaluation, we’re excited to be using Crossplane as a cornerstone in our next-gen hosted DevOps product. Crossplane is an extensible open-source platform that adds declarative cloud service provisioning and management to the Kubernetes API with excellent support for GitOps-style continuous deployments for cloud-native apps that is at the heart of the next-gen offering of VSHN.”
About Crossplane
Welcome to Crossplane! Crossplane is an open source multicloud control plane to manage your cloud-native applications and infrastructure across environments, clusters, regions and clouds. It enables provisioning and full-lifecycle management of applications and managed services from your choice of cloud using kubectl. Crossplane can be installed into an existing Kubernetes cluster to add managed service provisioning or deployed as a dedicated control plane for multi-cluster management and workload scheduling. Crossplane enables the community to build and publish Stacks to add more clouds and cloud services to Crossplane with support for out-of-tree extensibility and independent release schedules. Crossplane includes Stacks for GCP, AWS, and Azure today.
About VSHN – The DevOps Company
VSHN (pronounced ˈvɪʒn like “vision”) is Switzerland’s leading DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, Openshift and 24/7 cloud operations partner. VSHN was founded with the intention to fundamentally shake up the hosting market. As a lean startup, we have focused on operating IT platforms through automation, agility and a continuous improvement process. Completely location-independent and without our own hardware, we operate extensive applications according to the DevOps principle agilely and 24/7 on every infrastructure, so that software developers can concentrate on their business and IT operations are relieved.
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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Announcing Project Syn – The Next Generation Managed Services
20. Nov 2019
VSHN announces Project Syn
VSHN is proud to announce Project Syn, the next generation Open Source managed services framework for DevOps and application operations on any infrastructure based on Kubernetes.
Project Syn is a pre-integrated set of tools to provision, update, backup, observe and react/alert production applications on Kubernetes and in the cloud. It supports DevOps through full self-service and automation using containers, Kubernetes and GitOps. And best of all: it is Open Source.
Project Syn combines tools and processes to make the best out of containers, Kubernetes and Cloud Services
VSHNs mission is to automate all aspects of software operations to help software developers to run their applications on any infrastructure. Since 2014, we have been using Puppet and Ansible to automate monitoring, backups, logs, metrics, service checks and alerts. Project Syn is the next generation of application operations tooling packaged as containers and orchestrated on any Kubernetes service. Project Syn provides an opinionated set of integrated tools and processes on any Kubernetes service and cloud infrastructure provider:
GitOps and infrastructure as code: declare the application environment requirements in Git and let the tooling take care of creation/changes
Observability and insights: service checks, metrics, logs, thresholds, alert rules and paging
Service provisioning: declare backends and other service dependencies as portable Kubernetes Objects (CRD) and let the tooling create the infrastructure-specific service (e.g. database service, S3 storage service, etc) with best-practice default configuration
Backup: regularly back up all user data from each service and persistent volume
Application container deployment automatically integrating the topics above
Work on any Kubernetes service and cloud provider
The Project Syn tooling is a fundamental part in your DevOps journey and provides you with production quality Ops.
Cloud Agnostic with Crossplane
VSHN has always been cloud agnostic and will further enhance this paradigm by partnering with Crossplane – “The open source multicloud control plane”. By leveraging Crossplane, the user of Project Syn can specify the backend services needed in a completely cloud-independent way. Provisioning of these services happens fully automated, handled by the tooling in the most optimal way. As an example: when a MySQL service is requested, Crossplane would provision a cloud service if the cloud provides it or deploys it inside the Kubernetes cluster leveraging a service operator. This way the user doesn’t have to care about the implementation and can fully focus on the application. Project Syn is designed to run on all Kubernetes distributions and clouds. It’s prepared to support all the specific features of any given cloud and Kubernetes distribution by abstracting the specifics. This means Project Syn will run on OpenShift with APPUiO.ch, Rancher Kubernetes and all managed Kubernetes offerings. Support for even more Kubernetes flavors and clouds are added on demand. Plans exist to support single node Kubernetes Clusters using Rancher k3s.
Details of Project Syn
Project Syn will become an Open Source project in the near future. It consists of several components, working together to bring the necessary features for running applications in production on Kubernetes, acting as an operations framework. Multiple Kubernetes distributions are supported and it can be installed on an already existing Kubernetes clusters or it can even provision a new one. Taking care of what is running inside a Kubernetes clusters (including the Kubernetes cluster itself) is in the heart of Syn.
Production readiness
Syn is made for production. It brings all aspects needed to run an application in production like monitoring of all important services and backup of data.
Self-service
All parts of Syn are engineered for self-service. Define what you need – declarative in code – and the platform does it for you. Be that provisioning of services, inside or outside of the cluster, configuration consistent backup incl. monitoring or setting the matching monitoring and alerting rules, the platform automatically takes care of it.
Developer happiness
By being able to work with the platform without external dependencies, the developer can express the needs for the application in code (e.g. “a Postgres database is needed”) and do this individually.
Service provisioning
Provisioning services like databases outside of the cluster (e.g. in the cloud) or inside the cluster is completely automated by Project Syn, leveraging the endless possibilities of Crossplane. It is a key part of the platform and fully integrated with all the important production readiness features. Crossplane abstracts the specifics of the service to be provisioned. As a user of the platform you just tell Crossplane what you want. e.g. a MySQL server, and Crossplane then takes care to deploy the best matching service, depending on which cloud it runs. On AWS, Crossplane would provision an RDS instance, on a cloud without a managed database offering, it would provision an in-cluster MySQL instance managed by a matching database operator, installed and configured by the Project Syn platform. The reconciliation process of Crossplane ensures that the provisioned services are configured as intended all the time and will take measures should the configuration drift apart.
Best-practices configuration
Project Syn makes use of best-practices configuration, learned from running Kubernetes and applications on top of it in production since many years, and applies them continuously. As the best-practices evolve over time, they are integrated as they are learned.
Data protection
Data safety is key. Project Syn makes sure to continuously backup the important data on a filesystem level and also on an application consistent level. All data is stored encrypted at rest and in transit by leveraging possibilities of modern application offerings.
Security
No secrets are stored in plain text, they all live in protected key stores. By applying best-practices configuration we ensure secure configuration by default of all components. Only TLS secured connections are used.
Configuration auditing
All configuration is stored in Git and applied using the GitOps pattern. This allows to have full auditability and history of the full configuration. By signing the generated configuration data we ensure that only trusted configuration is applied to the cluster. In-cluster configuration reconciliation ensures that the configuration is up-to-date all the time and matches the intended state.
Regular maintenance
Project Syn components are regularly maintained in a fully automated way. This is to ensure that latest patches are installed and no vulnerable components are part of the system.
Decentralization
A key part of Project Syn is a decentralized approach. All parts are designed to work without relying on a central management service.
Open Source
One of the goals of Project Syn is to make use of existing and fantastic Open Source applications and glue them together to form a unity. To name a few – the most important ones:
Kapitan
Jsonnet
Crossplane
Argo CD
Prometheus – Alertmanager
Grafana
Loki
Vault
Alerta
Renovate
All Project Syn components specifically written for tying all these tools together will become Open Source as well. Contributions from Project Syn are continuously brought upstream to support these tools.
Project Syn as Managed Service by VSHN
Project Syn is an Open Source project and can be used by anyone for free. VSHN in addition offers Project Syn as a managed service. Taking care of the Project Syn platform with engineering, 24/7 operations and maintenance is key part of the offering. By adding additional services VSHN ensures that the platform can be trusted to run business-critical application workload.
Alert handling
Reacting to alerts and handle them according to a specified SLA, including 24/7 operations and continuous improvement of alert rules based on a day-to-day experience
Expert pool
The Project Syn experts at VSHN are available to help the user of the platform
Developer support
Supporting the users of the platform by actively participating as part of the development team enables the user to get the best out of the platform. We provide the Ops part in the DevOps chain.
SLA
Specific SLAs are available for applications running on the Project Syn platform
Best-practice curation
Delivering of best practice configuration learned by operating many Project Syn enabled clusters in production all over the world
Container image curation
Only VSHN tested and approved images are running on the platform which ensures stability and security
Regular maintenance
VSHN carries out regular maintenance on all involved components by keeping them up-to-date to latest bugfix and security updates
Active project Syn development
Customer needs are actively developed by VSHN engineers and brought into the Project Syn platform
Assisting services
Assisting Project Syn platform services are provided, like:
Customer portal with self-service capability and deep insights
Service desk
Image registry with curated and tested images
Inventory
and more
Early Access for Project Syn
The foundation for Project Syn is already prepared. We are actively looking for early access users of the platform, helping to test it and shape the future of Project Syn. If you are interested in getting a glimpse at our next generation managed services platform, please fill in the form below and let us know. [hatchbuck form=”Contactform-vshn-ch”]
Tobias Brunner
Tobias Brunner is working since over 20 years in IT and more than 15 years with Internet technology. New technology has to be tried and written about.
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Codey is Live: New Features & Lock In Your Price Until April 30th
VSHN is 5 years old. As we reached this symbolic milestone, we looked backwards and realized that one of our greatest assets, right after our incredible team, was our culture. The VSHN culture encompasses all of our values, and our day-to-day practices. It is what we think, and how we think about it. It is what makes us different, and hopefully, what makes us work a bit better every day. As much as it defines our behavior and values, having such a rich culture can also be a hindrance; particularly when new VSHNeers join the team. It can be complicated, sometimes even overwhelming, to figure out all of the ins and outs of our ways of working and collaborating. Not only from a technical point of view, but also from a human one. It is for that reason that we assembled and condensed most of our culture into the VSHN Handbook, which we now proudly reveal to the world. The VSHN handbook contains most of the information required to know us in detail; how we recruit new VSHNeers, how we work in squads, and even how our salary system works. Besides being available as a website, the VSHN Handbook is also available in PDF, EPUB3, Kindle and even as a man page! For those curious about how it’s made, we have used the excellent Antora documentation generator, based on the not less impressive Asciidoctor toolchain. Feel free to read, download and share, and let us know your opinion in the form below!
Aarno Aukia
Aarno is Co-Founder of VSHN AG and provides technical enthusiasm as a Service as CTO.
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Last Thursday, it was Swiss national future day, we had Adriano visiting us. Adriano had an entire day to get to know our, well, considerably challenging work environment.
Adriano’s personal resumé
“It was a very nice day at VSHN. I learned to program and it was really cool! I learned a lot of stuff on the computer. For example, about programming I did learn things I had never heard of before. I learned to manage HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I’ve seen how programmers work. It was really nice to work at VSHN. It was a beautiful Swiss Future Day.”
Adriano also learned to install virtual machines all by himself, manually from scratch and fully automated using Vagrant. You can view his day programme on the VSHN GitLab account at https://gitlab.com/vshn/one-day-at-vshn We’re happy that Adriano had a good time. We also enjoyed to have YOU with us, Adriano! We’re looking forward to next year! (Hopefully with a few more girls then, because DevOps is for girls & boys alike!)
Aarno Aukia
Aarno is Co-Founder of VSHN AG and provides technical enthusiasm as a Service as CTO.
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Codey is Live: New Features & Lock In Your Price Until April 30th
Fintech & Insurtech 2019: Open Source in Banking & Interview Acrevis Bank
11. Nov 2019
Am Beispiel von Kubernetes ist das ganz leicht zu veranschaulichen: Kubernetes ist eine Open-Source-Plattform zur Automatisierung der Bereitstellung, Skalierung und Verwaltung von Container-Applikationen und der De-facto-Standard in der Cloud-Orchestrierung. Kubernetes (“K8s”) hat ein riesiges und schnell wachsendes Ökosystem und unterstützt eine Reihe von Container-Tools, wie etwa Docker. Die Orchestrierung mittels Kubernetes wird von führenden Cloud-Plattformen wie Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix und anderen unterstützt. Kubernetes ist also eine Plattform mit unzähligen Erweiterungsmöglichkeiten und kein fertiges Produkt ab der Stange.
Ohne die Unterstützung und Kooperation all dieser Unternehmen und der freiwilligen Zusammenarbeit von Entwicklern auf der ganzen Welt wäre diese Leistung kaum möglich oder gar nicht erst vorstellbar.
Warum Open Source im Banking & Finance-Umfeld?
Warum aber sollte sich eine traditionelle Bank für Open Source entscheiden? Bleibt mit Open Source nicht die Sicherheit auf der Strecke? Mit Open Source habe ich ja keinerlei Garantien und erhalte im Notfall keinen Support! So oder ähnlich lauten oft die Aussagen, die gegen Open Source ins Feld geführt werden. Aber neben den Kostenaspekten gibt es eine Vielzahl von Argumenten, die für den Einsatz von Open Source auch im Banking- oder Insurance-Umfeld oder anderen regulierten Branchen sprechen.
Einer der wichtigsten Vorteile ist ohne Zweifel die Geschwindigkeit. Die Wichtigkeit der Geschwindigkeit und Flexibilität, der Möglichkeit des schnellen Reagierens auf Markt- und Kundenanforderungen, ist nicht nur für Fintech- oder Insurtech-Start-ups entscheidend, sondern insbesondere auch für traditionelle Banken und Versicherungen. Im Niedrigzinsumfeld und angesichts der stark wachsenden digitalen Konkurrenz müssen sich Traditionshäuser laufend neu erfinden, um den Anschluss nicht zu verpassen. Aber was ist mit der Sicherheit?
Mehr Augen – mehr Sicherheit
Aus den folgenden Gesichtspunkten wird die Security in Open-Source-Projekten gewöhnlich als höher eingestuft, als in proprietärer Individualsoftware:
Eine Sicherheitslücke wird von einer Community mit unzähligen Entwicklern in der Regel schneller erkannt.
Sicherheitslücken werden schneller behoben beziehungsweise gepatched, da der Quellcode frei zugänglich ist.
Zudem gibt es viele IT-Unternehmen, die das Testen, Hardening und Supporten verschiedener Open-Source-Technologien übernehmen und die Software sozusagen “veredeln”. Red Hat macht dies beispielsweise mit Openshift, der Kubernetes-Distribution mit zusätzlichen Features und Support für Unternehmen.
Open Source im Jahr 2019
Open Source ist ein milliardenschwerer Markt. Das beweist nicht zuletzt die Übernahme von Red Hat durch IBM: 34 Milliarden US-Dollar für ein Unternehmen, dass sich auf Open-Source-Software spezialisiert hat. Oder der Wandel, den Microsoft durchlebt hat: 2001 hatte der damalige CEO Steve Ballmer Linux noch als “Krebs” bezeichnet und Open-Source-Nutzer als “Bande kommunistischer Diebe”. Seither hat sich Microsoft mehr und mehr gegenüber Open Source geöffnet und gehört heute zu den grössten Unterstützern von Open Source, was sich sowohl positiv auf das Image wie auch auf den Aktienkurs von Microsoft ausgewirkt hat.
Zusammenfassend kann man durchaus behaupten, dass Open Source aus keiner Industrie oder Branche mehr wegzudenken ist. Die Nutzung von Open Source wie auch die Contributions nehmen immer weiter zu, insbesondere auch innerhalb stark regulierter Branchen oder Behörden und Ämtern, wie am Beispiel des Bundes mit dem “Leitfaden Open-Source-Software in der Bundesverwaltung” zu sehen ist.
DevOps, Cloud Native und Open Source
Eine moderne IT muss flexibel und schnell auf sich ändernde Anforderungen reagieren, ohne dabei den Sicherheitsaspekt zu vernachlässigen. Softwareentwicklung und Betrieb müssen zusammenarbeiten, um agil und anpassungsfähig zu sein. DevOps, Cloud Native und Open-Source-Software sind die Enabler einer modernen IT.
Wie sich die Regionalbank Acrevis durch Open Source neu erfindet
Mona Brühlmann, Leiterin Digitalisierung bei der Acrevis Bank
Article by Markus Speth, CMO, VSHN – The DevOps Company and David Kilchenmann, Key Account Manager, Puzzle ITC.
Open Source in the banking world
Open Source has become indispensable in many areas. One of the most important advantages of Open Source software is the gained speed and flexibility, which are essential not only for Fintechs, but also for traditional banks. A strong community is the backbone of successful Open Source projects, which in most cases are now considered to be more future-proof and cost-efficient than paid software or proprietary developments. Many open source projects such as Linux, Git, MySQL, Docker and, most recently, Kubernetes would hardly be conceivable without the Open Source concept.
The example of Kubernetes is very easy to illustrate: Kubernetes is an Open Source platform for automating the deployment, scaling and management of container applications and the de facto standard in cloud orchestration. Kubernetes (“K8s”) has a vast and rapidly growing ecosystem and supports a number of container tools, such as Docker. Kubernetes orchestration is supported by leading cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix and others. That means Kubernetes is a platform with countless expansion possibilities and not a ready-made product off the shelf. Without the support and cooperation of all these companies and the voluntary cooperation of developers all over the world, such an accomplishment would hardly be possible or even unimaginable.
Why Open Source in Banking & Finance?
But why should a traditional bank opt for Open Source? Doesn’t security fall by the wayside with Open Source? With Open Source I have no guarantees whatsoever and receive no support in an emergency! These or similar statements are often made against Open Source. But in addition to the cost aspects, there are a number of arguments in favour of using Open Source in the banking or insurance environment or other regulated industries. Without a doubt, one of the most important advantages is speed. The importance of speed and flexibility, the ability to react quickly to market and customer requirements, is not only crucial for Fintech or Insurtech start-ups, but also for traditional banks and insurance companies. In the low-interest environment and in the face of rapidly growing digital competition, traditional companies must constantly reinvent themselves in order not to miss the boat. But what about security?
More eyes – more security
For the following reasons, security in open source projects is usually classified as higher than in proprietary individual software:
a security vulnerability is usually detected more quickly by a community of countless developers.
vulnerabilities are fixed or patched faster because the source code is freely accessible.
In addition, there are many IT companies that test, harden and support various open source technologies and “refine” the software, so to speak. Red Hat does this for example with OpenShift, the Kubernetes distribution with additional features and enterprise support.
Open Source in 2019
Open Source is a market worth billions. This is proven not at least by the takeover of Red Hat by IBM: 34 billion US dollars for a company that specializes in Open Source software. Or the change Microsoft has undergone: in 2001, former CEO Steve Ballmer described Linux as “cancer” and Open Source users as a “gang of communist thieves”. Since then, Microsoft has become more and more open to Open Source and is now one of the largest supporters and contributors to Open Source, which has had a positive impact on both Microsoft’s image and share price.
In summary, it can be said that open source has become an integral part of every industry. The use of Open Source as well as the contributions continue to increase, in particular also within strongly regulated industries or authorities and offices, as can be seen in the example of the Swiss federal government with the “Guideline Open Source Software in the Federal Administration”.
DevOps, Cloud Native and Open Source
A modern IT must react flexibly and quickly to changing requirements without neglecting the security aspect. Software development and operations must work together to be agile and adaptable. DevOps, Cloud Native and Open Source software are the enablers of modern IT.
How the regional bank Acrevis reinvents itself through Open Source
Mona Brühlmann, Head of Digitalization at Acrevis Bank
Thanks to open standards, Acrevis is prepared for the changes in the digital world – because nothing is more secure than change. Mona Brühlmann, Head of Digitization at Acrevis Bank, explains why Acrevis relies on Open Source. Interview: Marc Landis
In which application areas does Acrevis use Open Source software?
Mona Brühlmann: Acrevis uses Open Source for all customer-oriented digital offers such as onboarding, online mortgage or new customer portal. For the new digitization platform, we rely 100 percent on Open Source. Be it the security layer with Modsecurity and Keycloak, the delivery layer with Gitlab CI and Jenkins, the core of the platform with Red Hat AMQ or the foundation of the solution, the container platform “APPUiO”, based on Red Hat OpenShift. In the future, more and more software will be deployed on the APPUiO platform, including more and more Open Source software.
What were the challenges in building the digitization platform?
Our idea was to start small with the platform and grow with the requirements. Among the challenges were well-known ones such as costs and timelines, coordination with the various suppliers and among the individual suppliers. In addition, short decision paths, adherence to compliance requirements, differentiation from existing IT solutions and internal communication were also important to us. State-of-the-art interfaces were to be provided for the users of the platform to accelerate the connection of new Fintech start-ups to the bank. As a service provider or supplier to a bank, new features must be made available quickly and suppliers must be able to use them independently of other suppliers. The release cycle of several months should be eliminated and new features should be able to be used at any time. For the technical know-how in this area as well as for the implementation and operation, we were searching for a partner who we found with “APPUiO”. The two IT experts from Puzzle ITC and VSHN supported us in various areas, from compliance clarifications to set-up and operation of the container platform.
Why did you choose Open Source?
Operating costs were an important factor, but not the only one. It was especially important to us not to create dependencies on suppliers. Every supplier already uses Open Source components today, but this is often not communicated to the customer. The trend in IT is towards Open Source. In addition, Open Source components in the digitization platform are much more stable and faster than proprietary technologies.
To what extent are there still reservations about Open Source in the banking world today?
Banks are still looking for the supposedly secure way and are often unwilling to find the courage for something new. Compliance and security are often cited as reasons. Another major barrier is the fact that behind many Open Source projects there is a community and not a company that checks and applies security patches or offers appropriate support. However, technology companies such as Red Hat, which provide guarantees for Open Source technologies, are exactly filling this gap. The reservations of the banking world are certainly partly understandable, but if you take a closer look at Open Source, you will very quickly see that Open Source is also the future for banks.
Here you can find the complete article in the Netzmedien special publication Fintech & Insurtech 2019.
VSHN and Open Source
You can find our understanding of Open Source here.
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People
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We can hardly believe that it has been 5 years since we founded VSHN. Our first 5 years were fantastic and it is hard to find words for the experiences we made during that time. Just this much can be said: We say thank you 1000 times to all partners, customers, and all others who have accompanied us on the way so far and look forward to the future and the next 5 years!
Coffee, cake & happy VSHNeers 🎂😊
We celebrated our fifth anniversary in the VSHN office with delicious cake, a speech by our Chairman Bruce, and new hoodies for every VSHNeer!
