I like watching bad movies. I can’t help it really; I was born this way. Sometimes I’ll be sitting around with my older brothers, and we’ll talk about ridiculous movies, nonsensical movies, movies that are so stupid that they defy logic…and yet…they’re hilarious. “Did you see Tremors?” someone will ask. “Five times… at least!” is the reply. “OMG… really? Me too!” So you can see it’s a genetics issue. Nonetheless, no matter how bad the movie, there’s usually one or two redeeming moments. Maybe a small life lesson buried in the chaos, OR (if I’m lucky) a movie quote that will last a lifetime!!! 

Such is the case from the 1976 film, The Gumball Rally. A film with a potluck cast of movie leftovers. All the movies were baked, but they had enough ingredients to make one more. This comedy tracked several international auto enthusiasts participating in an illicit crosscountry race in the U.S., coast to coast. As bad as it was, it did contain an awesome quote from Ferrari driver Raúl Rafael Juliá y Arcelay who says “Whatza behind me, iza NOT important.”  Raúl is a Puerto Rican actor, playing an Italian…if that helps drive my point home.

I have used this line many times in my life and my career. All while not believing it one bit! I love the journey. I love to remember and cherish the journey. From time to time I like to appreciate where I’ve been to put context around where I’m going. December marks a full year that I’ve been with ONUG. It’s incredibly gratifying to be working with incredible people within ONUG who make the conferences and working groups a reality. I’m also incredibly impressed with the ONUG membership; enterprise consumers and suppliers working together in the ONUG Collaborative and bringing their thought leadership to benefit the community.

Each working group accomplished so much this year. Let’s take a quick look:

• The Automated Cloud Governance Working Group expanded the role that the Cloud Security Notification Framework (CSNF) will play in the “connected community” of multi-cloud consumption.  This team is currently working on design patterns for PoCs which will put CSNF into various security landing zones.
• The Network Cloud Working Group produced a powerful playbook which is a guide to creating agile networks in today’s complex, hybrid-multicloud networking environments. Next up is the Network and Cloud Edge revisions.
• The Cloud Native Security Working Group was focused on Zero Trust and how enterprises should position themselves for successful ZT deployments. Check out all of their blogs and podcasts on the topic. Next up for this team is Zero Day. What does it REALLY mean and how should your organization prepare?
• The HyperAutomation Working Group was retooled and renamed. We combined the Orchestration & Automation and the AIOps Working Groups and formed HyperAutomation. Check out the inaugural blog and podcast on why this work is so important. There is also an entire C-Level Podcast series on this topic from industry experts.
• The Policy as Code Working Group is brand new and incredibly exciting. There is so much energy on this team to solve problems and create real industry guidance regarding how we should all be thinking about PaC!

My hope is that you will consider joining the ONUG Collaborative and bring your thought leadership to our efforts in 2023. Then you will see that what was behind us “iza” important.