You know Talos Linux and Omni are the right choice for your organization, but does your manager? It might be difficult to convey the value because you and your manager likely have different goals and vantage points. Beginning this kind of conversation can be stressful. You can’t know how they might respond or what next steps there could be, and that’s okay. By bringing solutions to real problems, you’re helping your team and elevating yourself beyond day-to-day work.
If you’ve found a solution to a problem, why not share it?
We’ve heard stories like this from countless technologists over the years, and we’re here to help you make your pitch. Put on your business hat, and let’s get to it.
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What Your Manager Needs to Know
Your manager needs to know how this change is going to benefit the team, including your output, way of working, and the infrastructure you’re capable of building. Looking at the business, its quarterly goals, and the types of projects or problems that are coming up, what kind of themes are going to resonate best? Here are some common examples.
- We need to resolve vulnerabilities and improve security…
- Our legacy systems have become too complex to manage…
- We need to tackle recurring technical issues…
- The cost of our infrastructure has grown and we need to control costs…
- We need to scale without adding more engineers to the team…
- We need an easy and repeatable way to create our development environments…
Making the Pitch
Step 1: Set the scene
Make sure to pick the right setting to pitch your manager. This most likely means a low-pressure meeting like your weekly 1:1 rather than a department-wide check-in. This will ensure you have the time to go through the details and your manager is less likely to make a snap decision.
Every manager will want to understand the business benefits of a solution before making a change. They need both the technical solution to a problem as well as the financial value it will bring. In other words, they don’t necessarily care that something is broken. What they care about is the team’s time, productivity, and results.
It’s their job to make sure the team performs, so we want to help them understand what Talos Linux and Omni bring to the table. Plus, this will arm them with information when they need to get buy-in or resources to make it happen.
If possible, start with a real-world example. Did your edge clusters go down last week? Did your cloud bill jump last month? Is your system multiple versions behind for fear of updating? Use concise, specific examples to show why you should be considering an alternative in the first place. Be sure to keep the conversation objective and solution-focused.
Step 2: Tell your manager what our products are
It’s time to make the pitch. We recommend keeping it simple. Let the details come later.
Talos Linux, an operating system purpose-built for Kubernetes, does the one thing we need it to do: support our Kubernetes clusters. It doesn’t have the extra things other OSs have that complicate workflows, add costs, or introduce vulnerabilities. Simplicity makes it reliable, secure, and laser-focused. It does exactly what’s needed and nothing else.
Omni enables enterprise Kubernetes management across <insert your environment here: bare metal, data centers, hybrid, edge> environments. It scales up as well as down, meeting our infrastructure needs so we can focus on product development instead of managing the operating system or Kubernetes. By integrating Kubernetes and the operating system into one enterprise authentication system, we will have a highly secure system that is easier to install, manage, and provide authenticated access to our Kubernetes services.
Step 3: Answer your manager’s questions and objections
Now that you have your business hat on, you’ll be more than ready to answer your manager’s questions. It’s your manager’s job to know what this solution means for the team, so they could–and should–ask you several questions in order to learn more. This can be nerve-wracking if you don’t like conflict or don’t have these conversations often. Fortunately, your manager is likely well-versed in these discussions. Don’t think of this as personal or a one-and-done ordeal. This is the start of a conversation.
Before going into that 1:1, have a mental list of the questions or objections your manager is likely to raise. This preparation will help you answer questions quickly and easily without stress. Here are a few topics that are likely to come up:
- Talos Linux is not associated with a Foundation. What if they change the license?
- Talos Linux was made to be open source and will always be available via the MPL 2.0 license. Sidero has a commitment to open source and community-contributed development for Talos Linux.
- Sidero built Omni, an enterprise SaaS, to provide features, management, and support for those organizations that need more features than they can get from Talos Linux alone.
- Can’t we do what we need via open source Talos Linux instead of buying Omni?
- Yes, but this is the pets versus cattle conversation. Open source is like a pet: it needs management and additional open source tools, such as Cluster API, to create the toolchain we need in our environment. They may be free to use, but it costs more overall, requiring: resources to manage the open source environment, the education to keep up with the tools, and effort to pull together the security tools to make our environment invulnerable.
- With the complexity in our environment, I recommend Omni, which includes the security and management features we need, so we can provide a high functioning environment to our developers. This allows operators to spend time on higher-value activities like lowering infrastructure costs or increasing productivity.
- Isn’t Omni another subscription with vendor lock-in?
- Whether you use open source toolchains or a SaaS product, we are still committing to using a technology stack. With Omni, we get a product that’s backed by a company, has enterprise support, and assured SLAs. Also, by using Omni, we will deploy vanilla upstream Kubernetes, so if we find a better solution for managing the clusters and hosts in the future, we will not be locked in.
- This will be yet another OS to support, which means work.
- True, but Talos Linux was designed for Kubernetes and will make our Kubernetes clusters easier to manage and more secure. It will solve some of the management and security issues we have with our current environment.
- Because supporting Talos Linux is exceptionally easy as it was built for simplicity, flexibility, and easy in-place upgrades, we will have less to do than with our current environment.
- We don’t want to add another vendor.
- By keeping our current vendors, we will continue to pay for everything that comes with them, regardless of whether it’s good or bad and whether we need it or not. We’ll have a more productive and efficient environment using Omni and Talos Linux than sticking with one vendor.
- Why is it so different?
- Talos Linux and Omni don’t look like what we are currently using because they were built from scratch to manage Kubernetes infrastructures. No SSH, no bash, and other design choices all contribute to a better way of managing deployments and with this design. They add a higher level of security to our infrastructure.
- Sidero hasn’t been around a long time.
- Sidero has a large number of enterprise clients that are using Omni and Talos Linux in production. They’ve had no enterprises switch away from them to another solution. And with the growth they’ve seen this year, they are seen as a replacement for legacy systems in this space.
Step 4: Wrap it up
When the conversation is done–or you’ve run out of time–it’s time to wrap up and clarify what happens next. Do they want to see case studies? Do they want to chat with the Sidero team? Or maybe they want to learn more and see Omni in action.
The one pager below will give you more step-by-step instructions for how to make the most of your pitch. We recommend you check it out. Good luck and don’t forget to reach out if we can help.