My Professional Journey: Vol. 3 – The Cloud-Native Transformation (2012–2019)
About This Section
This is Volume 3 in a multi-part documentation of a professional journey spanning from 1999 to present. Each volume captures a distinct technological era and the principles that transcended it:
- Vol. 1 – The Proprietary Era (1999–2006): The Proprietary Era
- Vol. 2 – The Cloud Transition (2006–2012): The Cloud Transition
- Vol. 3 – The Cloud-Native Transformation (2012–2019) (This section) - The era of Open Source dominance (Cisco, Red Hat)
- Vol. 4 – Software-Defined Everything & AI (2019–Present): [TBD]
Why This Section
This volume is a tribute to the era where “Open Source” ceased to be an alternative and became the standard. It covers seven transformative years spent at Cisco, Red Hat, and F5 Networks—three organizations that were at the very center of the infrastructure revolution.
If Volume 2 was about the emergence of the cloud, Volume 3 is about its standardization. This was the period of the “Container Wars,” the rise of Kubernetes, the maturation of OpenStack, and the fundamental shift from hardware-centric networking to Software-Defined Networking (SDN).
The Technical Context of That Era
This was the era where “Software-Defined” stopped being a buzzword and became the operating model. We moved from configuring individual switches via CLI to programming the entire network fabric through policies. The “pet vs. cattle” metaphor became reality: servers were no longer lovingly named and maintained; they were ephemeral resources, spun up and destroyed by the thousands.
The “Container Wars” raged—Docker Swarm vs. Mesos vs. Kubernetes—until Kubernetes emerged as the undisputed operating system of the cloud. It wasn’t just about virtualization anymore; it was about orchestration. The “Upstream First” philosophy became the golden rule: if it wasn’t in the community code, it didn’t exist. We moved from manual runbooks to Ansible playbooks, treating infrastructure as code. It was a time of rapid, sometimes chaotic innovation, where the ability to learn a new tool was more valuable than years of experience with an old one.
But more than the technology, this section honors the culture. The shift from proprietary vendor lock-in to community-driven innovation. The lessons learned about collaboration, upstream contribution, and the power of shared standards. It is a thank you note to the mentors who taught me that in a software-defined world, culture is the only true infrastructure.
Introduction
This section chronicles a seven-year journey (2012–2019) through the heart of the open source infrastructure revolution.
From the hardware heritage of Cisco, witnessing the pivot to software and the birth of ACI and OpenStack integrations, to the pure open-source ethos of Red Hat, where the “upstream first” philosophy redefined how enterprise software is built and delivered, and finally to F5 Networks, bridging the gap between NetOps and DevOps in a multi-cloud world.
These years were defined by a rapid acceleration of abstraction—moving from managing servers to managing clusters, from configuring switches to defining policies.
The Cloud-Native Transformation: From hardware-defined to software-defined.
Colleagues and Collaborations
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| Exceptional colleagues and teams during the Cisco, Red Hat, and F5 eras | ||
Contents
Timeline
- Comprehensive Timeline - 2012 – 2019
- Chronological documentation of professional activities, community contributions, and milestones during the Cisco and Red Hat years.
Companies
- Cisco - The bridge between hardware heritage and software future (2012–2016)
- Red Hat - The open source standard and the rise of Kubernetes (2016–2019)
- F5 Networks - Leading the hardware-to-software transition for major Telco infrastructure (2019)
Professional Development & Learning
- Professional Development (2012-2019) - Overview of certifications, community contributions, and the shift to continuous learning in an open ecosystem.
Assets
The assets folder is organized into subdirectories for better organization:
Images
Companies (assets/images/companies/)
- Office locations and team environments
Certifications (assets/images/certifications/)
- Red Hat and Cisco certification documentation
Logos (assets/images/logos/)
- Technology logos from the Cloud-Native era (OpenStack, Kubernetes, Docker, Ansible)
Files
Publications (assets/files/)
- Technical whitepapers and community contributions
Summary
This collection documents the era where open source and open standards became the bedrock of enterprise IT. It is a retrospective on the move from “lifting and shifting” legacy apps to rebuilding them for a distributed, ephemeral world.
This archive honors the open source communities and the brilliant colleagues at Cisco, Red Hat, and F5 who drove this transformation.
Next Volume
Vol. 4 – Software-Defined Everything & AI (2019–Present) [TBD]
The journey continues into the modern era. (Currently a living chapter).
Previous Volume
Vol. 2 – The Cloud Transition (2006–2012)
The inflection point where cloud computing went from experimental to inevitable.
Section created: December 6, 2025
Professional journey period: Vol. 3 (2012–2019) – The Cloud-Native Transformation
Purpose: Time capsule and tribute to the era of open standards and containerization