We’re investigating the nature of these Innovation Engines in a series of What To Think podcasts, sponsored by Pivotal Tracker, and columns by VentureBeat editor at large Dylan Tweney. Tune in here to learn the secrets behind the tech world’s most successful platforms.

John Purrier is a founder and board member of OpenStack, and is currently Chief Technology Officer for Automic. As Chief Technology Officer, John is responsible for driving Automic’s automation strategy. John was most recently CTO of CenturyLink Innovation Labs, and before that he was Strategic and Technology leader at Cloud Foundry-based AppFog, led the development and delivery of the first three releases of Microsoft Exchange Server, and led R&D for the Rackspace Cloud.

We talked with him about the transformation of enterprise IT architectures, the shift towards DevOps and the need to maintain 24-7 uptime in the enterprise, and about the need for automation and integration of enterprise IT services. We also talk about what has happened with OpenStack, and how the “beautiful dream” of open, interoperable cloud platforms as a service (PaaS) hasn’t really come to pass.

“The reality of the matter is that PaaS is not ‘NoOps’ … someone has to keep the platform up and running,” Purrier told me.

Plus, Jordan Novet and I tell you what to think about:

• Twitter’s new algorithmic timeline and its disappointing quarterly results,
• Zenefits CEO Parker Conrad resigning, and
• Marc Andreessen sticking his foot in his mouth over colonialism.

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