Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Hull.
Josh’s journey in technology began in systems and network administration in the late 1990s.
He then took roles in management, spanning project, product, and program management while at Dell, Inc. He led both international and domestic information technology teams. In 2009, Josh co-founded Lypht, LLC, in Austin, Texas. Pronounced the same, Lypht has no affiliation with the ride-share company that was formed three years later. Lypht’s product focus was on business intelligence and the then-nascent cloud offerings in the market.
Josh focused on the cloud exclusively, leading teams that helped move legacy applications from traditional on-premises server environments into managed hosts in the cloud. Although the technology behind Linux containers (LXC) is decades old, the productization of containers in 2013-2014, led by Docker, helped to popularize the use of single-process containers deployed on servers rather than virtual machines that hosted entire operating systems. This has created an entire industry of both new cloud technology migrations and container orchestration.
Google open-sourced the Kubernetes container orchestrator based off their internal cloud orchestrator (code named Borg, after the hive-mind race of aliens in the Star Trek universe). Understanding the value in providing small and medium businesses the ability to leverage technology being used by some of the most profitable companies in existence, Josh co-founded Farmotive, LLC late last year (2017). Josh remains a managing partner of Lypht, LLC, and is the CEO of Farmotive.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The single-most challenging hurdle is convincing company owners and decision-makers to entrust their products to a new technology that is not yet considered a commodity. There has been an interesting evolution of perspective regarding the cloud from the beginning of this decade until today.
One can imagine the considerable reticence to trust a “cloud” deployment in 2010, yet today, if a CTO or CIO has not had at least one successful cloud deployment for a public offering, she would be expected to be able to speak to this lack of experience.
Technology, like the systems on which it’s deployed, is always improving and becoming adept at gently educating and advising the value inherent in leveraging scalable, elastic, secure and cost-efficient deployments has been paramount for success.
A similar hurdle is aligning with partners and co-founders that possess both the vision and technical acumen to be profitable and in-demand. Josh has been fortunate to align with partners that have helped him to lead successful operations.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Farmotive story. Tell us more about the business.
Farmotive provides a turn-key solution for companies with a profitable application that is running in production in either on-premises or “cloud version 1.0”, to migrate their solution into containers, orchestrated and managed by kubernetes. This combination of technologies allows for rapid application development and deployment with zero downtime. In layman’s terms, we ensure the products that you might use on your phone, desktop, laptop, or tablet, are constantly being improved, yet consistently available when you need them.
Lypht was a parent company of MommyPoints, a blog that helps families travel the world for significantly reduced costs by the strategic application of miles and points. Just prior to the publication of this interview, the MommyPoints brand was acquired, and is now TPG Family, part of The Points Guy, a Red Ventures company. In addition, Lypht provides guidance for companies interested in the application of new technologies in fixed-bid, well-defined deliverables.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Luck does play a role in individual and corporate success. It’s lucky to find the right businesses that can 1) afford to, 2) be benefitted by, and 3) are ready to make significant production changes to their profitable revenue channels. It is lucky to have leadership that understands and acknowledges, yet is not intimidated by, risk.
It is also lucky to be able to apply the timely reinvestment of working capital, in order to operate with no business or personal debt, while retaining full ownership and autonomy to make guiding business decisions.
Pricing:
- Lypht provides resources that range in price between $150 and $400 per hour, depending on the scope of work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://farmotive.io https://lypht.com
- Email: info@farmotive.com cloud@lypht.com
Image Credit:
kubernetes logo: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/logo/usage_guidelines.md; Summer Hull
Getting in touch: VoyageHouston is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
