Jonas Björk is product owner for Bineros' Container as a Service (CaaS) offering.
where he manages the development and operation of container-based solutions and helps many of our customers get started on their container journey. In this interview, we take an in-depth look at how our CaaS solutions make everyday life easier for our customers, what new doors are opening, and what the most common questions he receives about container operation are.
How did you end up working with container development, operations and training?
I have always enjoyed working with Linux server operations, so container management was a natural progression from that. The fact that I teach is largely because I discovered that I have a talent for teaching and that I am good at passing on what I know. It would be a shame to waste such a superpower, I think!
Briefly explain how CaaS benefits our customers.
By letting our skilled technicians take care of the underlying platform, our customers can focus on delivering updates and features in their applications and services. Our technicians work with multiple clusters and detect errors and disruptions early on, which means that other customers are often not affected by problems that have already been detected and resolved.
What opportunities does CaaS create for our customers?
One of the biggest advantages of our CaaS solution is that it relieves customers of the technical burden of infrastructure management. This allows them to allocate their resources to innovation and improving the user experience of their products. By not having to worry about platform operation and maintenance, they can also more effectively scale up their operations and quickly adapt to changing business needs.
What are the most common questions you receive from customers regarding container-based operations?
Security is often a recurring theme, perhaps due to recent developments in the world around us. In that case, it is good to be able to respond that container-based operations offer both higher intrusion security and availability.
Why choose CaaS at Binero?
We have extensive experience in container operations and currently operate systems that are critical to society. We own our own data centre, are based in Sweden, and place a strong focus on security and privacy issues.
What is the relationship with our CaaS customers like?
It depends somewhat on the customer's needs. We have weekly meetings with some customers where we go through the operational solution and plan the future together, while other customers feel that one meeting a month for follow-up works well, and some just want to contact us on demand.
What usually comes as a surprise to our customers after they have purchased CaaS from Binero?
The high availability of our technicians and their level of commitment to their operational solutions.
What is it like to help organisations on their container journey?
It is a privilege of our work to be able to work so closely with our customers. It is exciting to meet a customer for the first time and listen to what they want and need, then plan a solution and finally implement it and go into production. For me, it is a magical journey, and very rewarding to be a part of.
There's a rumour going around town that you can convert a Windows technician to be able to deploy and operate a small container environment. Is that really true?!
Haha, well, what can I say? There are many talented Windows technicians out there, but then they are faced with a situation where an application provider has decided to run the application in a container-based operating environment on Linux. For many, this is difficult, partly because it is Linux, and partly because it is a container. These are two completely new areas that they have rarely encountered before.
Two years ago, I wrote a training course on how to get started with container-based operations for Windows technicians. In the course, I begin by explaining what Linux is and how it works. Three days later, participants have deployed and are managing applications in an OpenShift cluster themselves. Anyone can work with container-based operations, as long as they have the right conditions to get started.
