Varnish customer newsletter #1 2019

It’s time for the first Varnish Software customer newsletter of 2019. This time, we’ll run through everything you need to know about what’s new in Varnish; we’ll introduce you to our brand-new Tech Evangelist, Thijs Feryn, and share more of the latest Varnish news that matters for you in getting the most from your Varnish use.

What’s new in Varnish? | Meet Varnish Tech Evangelist, Thijs Feryn | Varnish nabs NAB award | Varnish Ops – new approach to managed services

Meet Tech Evangelist, Thijs Feryn

Early in 2019, we welcomed our new tech evangelist, Thijs Feryn. After 15 years at Belgian hosting company Combell and a long, enthusiastic history as a Varnish Cache advocate in the developer community, as well as the author of the O’Reilly book, Getting Started with Varnish Cache, Thijs joined Varnish full-time to help deliver the Varnish message globally.  

Read on to find out more about what drives Thijs’s passion for Varnish and learn how Thijs sees the Varnish future.

-Why did you join Varnish in the first place and what has made it different for you so far from other places you’ve worked?

It’s no secret that I love Varnish as a technology. I have worked with Varnish Cache for over a decade, I’ve done dozens of presentations about the subject and I even wrote an O’Reilly book about it.

Varnish Software was already on my radar for quite some time: I’ve spoken at a couple of Varnish summits, did a workshop at VarnishCon and it was Varnish Software that invited me to write the book. I always had a lot of affinity for the company, but I didn’t know a lot about the products and the ambitions of Varnish Software.

It was actually the CEO who reached out to me and invited me for a lunch meeting. At that time I had no real interest in a change. I had been working for Combell my entire career and was happy doing tech evangelism for them.

But after that meeting, it was clear to me that Varnish Software is a very ambitious company that was in real need of an evangelist. This was a unique opportunity for me and I believe that Varnish Software will give me the opportunities I need to become a better evangelist.

Having been on board for two months, I have noticed some differences. Combell is a bigger company, but the Varnish is a more internationally recognized brand. This is always a tradeoff, but it seems to suit me quite well. Working for a company that is distributed is also quite interesting. I work from home in Belgium. My colleagues are based in Norway, Sweden, London and the US. There’s lots of diversity.

We need the right tools and processes to communicate efficiently. But what I also like is that we are encouraged to travel to the different offices and have face-to-face meetings, which can be a lot more efficient than e-mail, chat or calls.

-What has been one of the biggest contributions you hope to make at Varnish? What are the challenges you foresee going forward?

I want Varnish Software to be the authority on all things Varnish and VCL. There are a lot of good community efforts and good resources out there regarding Varnish Cache and VCL. My ambition is to provide official resources (documentation, VCL code, framework integrations plugins) that are easy to find, relevant to the context of the user and easy to understand.

Another thing I want to do is democratize our enterprise offering for developers. We have official AWS, Azure & GCP images containing Varnish Enterprise. The price of the license is already included in the hourly cost. This lowers the barrier for users who don’t necessarily match the profile of “the enterprise”. Some of the advanced features we offer could really make a difference for developers.

For me, it’s a matter of properly evangelizing these topics to inspire developers.

-What should we know about you, i.e. why caching? What do you do when you are not working?

I’m a public speaker at heart. I’ve done more than 200 presentations in 15 different countries. Without a doubt, public speaking is my main instrument for evangelizing. The last four years I discovered the power of video and I’ve recorded dozens of them. Most of them are vlogs, which is my preferred format, because of its honesty and people-centricity.

When I’m not working, I love spending time with my wife and kids. I also love attending football games: I’m a Club Brugge season ticket holder and I run a successful Club Brugge fan vlog. It’s an ideal testing ground for new techniques, and these fan vlogs help me become a better content creator.

Work and personal life often cross paths. Maybe it’s all related to passion.

-What should we expect or look for from Varnish in the near future? Anything particularly exciting on the horizon from your point of view?

I’m extremely excited about our Edgestash module. This can be a game changer in the CMS and framework ecosystem. It allows us to “cache the uncacheable”.

Basically we can cache Mustache-style templates and their data separately. This would allow for storage of user-specific data without having too many cache variations. The only missing piece of the puzzle is accessing the user’s session data without accessing the origin servers, but our team already has a plan to figure this out.

-Any thoughts on where general tech trends are heading and how Varnish can contribute solutions to challenges new trends pose?

Prior to joining Varnish Software, I had no clue how big the OTT video streaming business was and what our role was in that industry.

Two months in, I’ve come to realize that this is a huge business, with lots of potential growth. I’m really proud to see that Varnish Enterprise offers unparalleled flexibility and performance in that market. At this point we have some of the biggest video streaming providers among our clients, which is a great honor.

Another challenge is to position ourselves in the container and cloud-native ecosystem. Docker and Kubernetes are very popular and they happen to leverage HTTP, which is our strong suit. It will be a matter of finding our place in this very hyped-up and noisy ecosystem.

Varnish Ops – a new approach to managed services

In conversation with both customers and prospects, we have learned that in addition to appreciating the flexibility of Varnish itself, many customers have also requested a more versatile approach to managed services. We can imagine what you’re thinking – “Managed services? That sounds a little dull, a little corporate and more than a little contradictory to the idea of a flexible approach.”

We know from experience across the various industries we serve that the initial Varnish learning curve can be steep, but worth it – the more you know, the more flexible and powerful our software becomes. But even the most enthusiastic Varnish users don’t usually have time to become full-blown experts. One customer told us that they knew Varnish Enterprise was right for them, but the time and complexity of setting it up to deliver exactly what they needed was something they preferred to leave to us.

We realized that we could pave a friendlier middle road for our customers with a solution we call Varnish Ops. The purpose of this new approach to managed services is to let our customers decide for themselves how hands-on they want or need to be, with our goal being to deliver a service that always has a person behind it.

You may have met our VP of Engineering, Espen Braastad. When we were creating Varnish Ops, we ‘personified’ it by visualizing Espen going from customer to customer and personally setting Varnish up, ensuring that all the pieces worked together. By giving Varnish Ops a personality, we redefined how we think about managed services as something personal and bespoke. We know infrastructure and performance are key to your business and success – but they are not necessarily your core business. Varnish Ops ensures that you can focus on your core business and your customers while we take care of the infrastructure;

LEARN MORE ABOUT VARNISH OPS