Jason Forrester is the man who until 2015 led the division that manages Apple's data centers, having the role of overseeing including the creation of some of the data centers that Apple currently relies on to support its online services .
Jason Forrester joined Apple in 2011, when Apple had only two data centers that were only responsible for supporting the company's internal traffic and delivering some applications or music from the iTunes Store, he managed to convince the management to approve the construction of many others which support Siri, iMessage, iCloud and many others.
Given the multitude of services and software that Apple has, Forrester claims that there have been an enormous number of problems over time, most of them unknown to Apple's hardware or software suppliers, so its teams have had to creates many own services to keep the network running and update it as needed extremely quickly.
Then I landed a job at Apple, where I had a ringside seat on one of the most challenging network expansions in history. When I arrived in 2011, Apple had two data centers, mostly handling internal traffic and doling out songs and apps from the iTunes music store. By the time we left, Apple had several more centers stuffed with an incredible amount of network devices to handle billions of Siri and Map queries, iMessages, and cloud services.
The problems became so big at one point that the only solution to keep the services running was to use engineers to develop software that would monitor and more efficiently manage all the servers that Apple had in its data centers.
We were dealing with problems our vendors had never contemplated, much less figured out. We began exploring radically new approaches, including a handful of supposedly open-sourced solutions so we could dive into the guts of our network ourselves – say, to look directly at the data coming off network processors. As much as we wanted these technologies to work, they didn't.
Based on the talented people who worked in the Internet services division, Apple managed to create a lot of software that allows it to get everything that its servers have to offer, but all these innovations are not known to outside companies, and many of the they could radically change the way global content distribution networks work.
So we developed some of our own, including a provisioning tool for upgrading the software on thousands of switches without taking the network offline. If you haven't heard, Apple likes to keep such internal accomplishments to itself, so I can't share the results. Let's just say we were able to accomplish in minutes what would have taken hours, days, or even weeks.
Although within Apple he managed to make a name for himself and participate in the creation of innovative systems, Forrester still reached the point where he no longer wanted to keep all the secrets that Apple required him not to tell the world, so in during 2015 he decided to resign.
Slowly, our desire to share our ideas with the world began to overshadow the thrill and pride of working for Apple. My team and I left in 2015. Truth be told, I spent a few days crying on the couch. My mood only improved when we started to test our ideas with potential customers.
He and many talented Apple engineers left the company and created their own startup that aims to bring many innovations in the field of networking and server management, some technologies being developed within Apple, the company losing them due to secrecy which it imposes on all employees.
