At Splunk, our transition from a customer-hosted, on-premise model to a cloud-native architecture brought fundamental challenges — both technical and cultural. One of the earliest and most pressing concerns was infrastructure cost. As a company historically dependent on customers provisioning their own compute, we faced a steep learning curve in operating and scaling workloads efficiently in the cloud. Meanwhile, competitors were already cloud-native — built from the ground up for elasticity and low operational overhead....

While at Splunk, transitioning a monolithic on-premise product into a scalable, multi-tenant cloud platform was a transformative engineering endeavor. Among the most complex and impactful areas of change was our approach to Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). The legacy model: manual, ticket-based, and weeks-long; was incompatible with the velocity required for cloud-native innovation. The Problem 1. Manual Releases Bottleneck Innovation Our release process was fragmented and painfully slow. A typical release cycle involved:...

A new day, and with it, new possibilities. I was especially excited to see the full-scale replica of the goddess Athena statue housed in the Parthenon at Centennial Park. As had become our routine, we started the day with a light breakfast and drove the short 2.5 miles to the park. At first, we were puzzled—there didn’t seem to be a clear entrance to the Parthenon. We almost gave up, thinking it might be closed, but decided to walk the grounds anyway....

I woke up feeling a little wistful—it was time to leave the camp that had become our cozy home for the past two days. But before we said our final goodbyes, we had room for just a bit more adventure in the Smokies. Figure 1: Saying goodbyes, Under Canvas, Smokies NP I suggested Grotto Falls, and the ever-helpful concierge gave it a nod of approval. That morning, I swapped out the bottomless coffee for something with a little more homegrown flair: Wagh Bakri chai, Mitu’s trusty travel staple....

I had a head full of dreams and sleep still clinging to my eyes when Nidhi nudged me It’s already 5:45! I leapt out of bed, chasing visions of bears and strong morning coffee as we hit the road for our early hike in the Smokies. By 6:30 AM, we rolled past the Cades Cove Visitor Center, only to see a line of cars already queuing up. The loop here is a well known 11-mile one way scenic drive through wide Tennessee meadows, dotted with historic cabins and country churches more than a century old....

Nashville seemed like the perfect mid-year escape when our neighbor Mitu floated the idea. Our travels along the East Coast have been, well… let’s just say, a bit lacking, and the thought of glamping in the Smokies had just the right amount of rustic charm and modern comfort to win us over. In my usual fast-fingered fashion, I booked flights on United before noticing that Delta was offering nearly $900 in savings (that’s no pocket change!...

Happy 25th birthday, my love. It’s hard to put into words what it feels like to see you reach this moment — this beautiful, rich stage of life. Figure 1: Always stylish, Coit Tower, San Francisco I remember holding you in my arms, this tiny bundle of wonder, and even then, I knew there was something extraordinary about you. And now, here you are, independent, strong, thoughtful, radiant, and entirely yourself....

In 2020, the world changed overnight. Conference rooms became kitchen counters, watercooler chats turned into chat boxes, and our wardrobes quietly redefined “business casual.” Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Webex went from “nice‑to‑have” to cultural artifact in weeks. Yet the old rules of social chemistry didn’t copy‑paste cleanly. In a 1‑to‑1 video call there’s nowhere to hide, no pastry table to rescue you, and definitely no way to pretend you “just happened to bump into” your boss....

(Read Part 1: Deep Alignment) In part two of the Leading Change series with Craig Ross from Verus Global, we explore how to lead with greater self-awareness and intentional focus. We learn how the mind reacts to pressure, how emotions shape our reality, and how to shift energy from blame to action using the Event Energy Map—a practical tool to help build ourselves and others a shared reality. Stay Focused in High-Stakes Conversations The mind can focus on only one thing at a time....

Last week I had an opportunity to participate in a powerful leadership workshop led by Craig Ross from Verus Global. It was energizing, insightful, and packed with practical tools to help grow as a collaborative leader. We focused on two core imperatives that must work together: Business: 3-6 months outcomes, like launching our new enterprise cloud platform and modernizing our existing product portfolio. Human: How we work together to get there, through collaboration, accountability, and leadership that’s both empowered and empowering....