Starting off on a new adventure …
It’s been over 6 months since I left my job at Nutanix to find out what’s out there. It has been a gratifying and career-building experience at Nutanix + PernixData combined. I was fortunate enough to work at PernixData (which was acquired by Nutanix in its 4.5 years run) where not only I got to work with the best minds in the industry but also allowed me to build amazing products. The journey has been filled with numerous product-building cycles (from scratch) working with amazing people. This journey made me a better engineer, a better manager, and a better leader.
As I look back and wonder how many of us get a chance to be part of multiple product development cycles. I feel grateful for being able to contribute to different products being built from scratch. Initially as an individual contributor and then as a product engineering leader — PernixData FVP (A distributed server-side caching system), PernixData Architect (Datacenter Cost visualization and optimization tool), PernixData Next Generation All-Flash Storage Array (MVP), Nutanix DB Xtract (Migrate physical SQL Server databases to Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure), Nutanix VM Xtract (Migrate virtual machines “almost live” from VMware ESXi to Nutanix HCI), Nutanix Xi IoT (An AI-Enabled edge-computing platform for modern IoT Apps), Nutanix Karbon Platform Services (Kubernetes based multi-cloud platform as a service). That’s seven software products shipped in the last 9 years. I’m not counting numerous revisions along the way for each one of them.
This journey turned me into a serial product builder and made me realize how much I enjoy building useful products.
Products for Consumers?
Somewhere along this journey, I started to feel I need to contribute to something that directly improves people’s productivity, improves their efficiency in achieving their goals, and makes their life a bit simpler. All the products I built till now, have enabled enterprises to accomplish these goals but I never built a product for consumers. Maybe it’s time I take a diversion in my journey and explore what’s out there in this new direction?
With that in mind, I decided to leave Nutanix and take this road myself. That was in May 2021.
Technologies for the future
For the next 2 months, I spent exploring possible technology domains I want to work in. I have been interested in immersive technologies like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality for quite some time, and have played with Oculus GO. I began playing with Oculus to learn what kind of immersive experiences are available and explore if there is something I could build on this platform. I had few ideas around using VR in education like Virtual Field Trips or as a tool for teaching science concepts via immersive experiences. I played with Unity to learn the basics of virtual experience building and created a POC (proof of concept) app to deploy on Oculus GO.
Soon I realized that building an education product/service on this platform is difficult given the limitations of current hardware (and its possible adverse effect on the vision of young kids). In addition, the hardware has a very high price point which is not affordable to schools. The cost of hardware and software is too much to make it available in the education field. But I think this is just a temporary phase and it will change in the coming time. I believe companies are investing in making VR affordable to the masses. I truly believe VR will change the way kids learn and see beautiful things the world has to offer that they wouldn’t see otherwise. I’m rooting for that future.
Augmented Reality
Then I switched my attention to Augmented Reality and observed that AR is much more accessible to the masses as both Apple and Google have made huge progress in bringing AR frameworks (ARKit on iOS and ARCore on Android) to smartphones and tablets. Considering there are billions of smartphone users, pretty much all of them have access to these technologies. Both are viable platforms for delivering next-generation AR Experiences.
It looked very promising for building a super useful app or a service that fulfills my three goals: 1) directly improves people’s productivity, 2) improves their efficiency in achieving their goals, and 3) makes their life a bit simpler.
So I decided to pursue AR as the next tech I want to invest my time with.
One problem: I didn’t know much about it. So, I must learn as much as I can about it!
Apple ARKit
I’ve been an iPhone user, and have used the AR features of Amazon’s eCommerce App to place virtual furniture in my living room. But my interaction with AR has been very limited (I admit, I didn’t participate in the Pokemon GO phenomenon).
To get myself familiar with concepts in AR, I started experimenting with Apple’s ARKit — SDK for building AR apps. With a little bit of SwiftUI coding, and help from ARKit tutorials I was able to build a prototype App for landscape design. Why landscape design? I needed a real-world problem to solve with AR and ensure my learning process goes hand in hand with me building something useful. I had recently converted part of my backyard into the paved patio and I thought there is scope for improving how these projects are done.
By applying concepts of plane detection, 3D object placement, raycasting, texture application, and Apple’s app UI design guidelines, I continued to improve the end-to-end AR experience.
I’ll write more about this specific App I’m building in the coming weeks.
In the past 2 months as I coded my app, I became increasingly confident about AR’s promise to change people’s lives and I think it's a great field to contribute to. It’s been very encouraging to see what this little prototype app can do. I’m going to continue my new adventure on this road. I’m hoping I’ll meet like-minded people along the way, and who knows, one day we will start something together.
What’s next? I’ll continue to share updates from my new adventure. For now, follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/akhileshjoshi for updates.
