Jonas Björk is product owner for Bineros' Container as a Service (CaaS), 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 dive into how our CaaS solutions make everyday life easier for our customers, new possibilities, and the most common questions he gets about container operations.
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. I decided to become a trainer mainly because I discovered that I have a talent for teaching and that I am good at passing on what I know. I think it would be a shame to waste such a superpower!
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 to 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 scale up their operations more efficiently and quickly adapt to changing business needs.
What are the most common questions you receive from customers regarding container-based operations?
Security is usually a recurring theme, perhaps due to recent developments in the world around us. So it's nice to be able to respond that container-based operations offer both higher intrusion security and availability.
Why choose CaaS from Binero?
We have extensive experience in container operations and currently operate systems that are critical to society. We own our own data center, are based in Sweden, and have a strong focus on security and privacy issues.
What is the relationship like with our CaaS customers?
It depends a little on the customer's needs. We have weekly meetings with some customers where we go through the operating solution and plan the future together, other customers feel that a monthly follow-up meeting works well, and some just want to contact us on demand.
What usually surprises our customers after they purchase CaaS from Binero?
The high availability of our technicians and the level of commitment to their operational solution.
What is it like to help organizations on their container journey?
It is a privilege 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, implement it, and finally put it into production. For me, it is a magical journey and very rewarding to be a part of.
There's a rumor that you can turn a Windows technician into someone who can deploy and operate a small container environment. Is that really true?!
What can you say? There are many talented Windows technicians out there, but then they encounter an application provider who has decided to run the application in a container-based operating environment on Linux. For many, this is challenging, 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. The course begins with an explanation of what Linux is and how it works. Three days later, participants are able to deploy and manage applications in an OpenShift cluster on their own. Anyone can work with container-based operations, as long as they have the right conditions to get started.
