Sydney Cloud Native Dev Summit 2024

Audience

The 102 strong audience included:

• CISOs from Nine, Endeavour Group, OFX, the University of Wollongong and more
• Heads of Cyber from Tokio Marine Group, REA Group, Team Global Express and more
• Cloud leaders from CBA, ASIC, Ampol, NAB, Westpac and more

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The Agenda

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The event began with Nicholas Tan, CTO of Monoova, who discussed their transformation to cloud-native technology to enhance scalability, agility, and leadership in real-time payments. He emphasised how they had strengthened security through partnerships and the use of observability solutions from Logz.io for seamless transactions and system reliability.

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Lawrence Crowther from Snyk presented strategies for managing risk in cloud-native applications, focusing on container security, orchestrator vulnerabilities, API protection, and integrating security throughout the development lifecycle to build resilient applications.

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A panel featuring Rajini Carpenter of Beforepay Group and Harry Rao of TikTok explored harnessing AI in cloud-native app development. They addressed the complexities of integrating AI with cloud-native architectures, optimising developer workloads, training teams for AI integration, and tackling security risks and ethical issues.

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An interactive session engaged attendees in scenarios about deploying at scale, encouraging peer discussion to determine optimal actions. Katherine Squire then shared insights on fostering engineering excellence and technical advocacy, including articulating software engineering challenges, quantifying inefficiencies, aligning practices with business goals, managing technical debt, and optimising the software delivery lifecycle.

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Peter Lees from SUSE demonstrated how he overcame observability challenges using specific processes and tools. Joe Waller, CTO of Finder, provided an in-depth exploration of Finder's advanced cloud-native strategies, discussing technical challenges, innovative solutions, and future directions relevant to scalability and performance optimisation.

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Attendees participated in roundtable discussions on topics like implementing DevSecOps, transitioning to microservices architectures, securing cloud-native supply chains, and balancing cost and performance. A panel with Rebecca Meli, Gerald Bachlmayr, and Roberto Calero examined how to balance cost, performance, and reliability in cloud operations without compromising essential services.

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The event concluded with a debate on vendor lock-in featuring Cole Cornford, Joe Waller, Rebecca Meli, and Peter Lees. They explored the downsides of reliance on a single vendor, such as lack of flexibility and increased costs, discussed advantages like streamlined operations and enhanced support, and considered strategies to avoid or mitigate vendor lock-in through multi-cloud solutions and open-source technologies.

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Speakers Included:

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• Nicholas Tan, Chief Technology Officer, Monoova
• Lawrence Crowther, Head of Solutions Engineering APJ - Snyk
• Rajini Carpenter, Chief Technology Officer, Beforepay Group
• Harry Rao, Leader - Engineering, TikTok
• Katherine Squire, Expert Engineering Team Leader
• Peter Lees, Head of Solution Architecture, Suse
• Joe Waller, Chief Technology Officer - Finder
• Rebecca Meli, Chief Technology Officer, Jaybro Group
• Gerald Bachlmayr, Principal Cloud Architect, Cuscal
• Roberto Calero, Cloud Operations Manager, Blackwoods
• Cole Cornford, Chief Executive Officer, Galah Cyber

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Sponsors Included:

Snyk

Suse

Octopus Deploy

Sonatype

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Summary

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This conference was particularly important for the contemporary and future Australian business and government landscape because it addressed the critical need for organisations to modernise their IT infrastructure and adopt cloud-native technologies to remain competitive. As digital transformation accelerates, the ability to develop and deploy applications rapidly and efficiently is paramount. The insights and collaborations formed at Cloud Native Dev Sydney are expected to influence organisational strategies, drive innovation, and enhance the technological capabilities of businesses and government agencies across Australia.

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