Maintainer, Open source Architect, PhD
Kashif Khan is Co-Chair of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) TAG Infrastructure and a maintainer of the Metal3.io project. He works as an Open Source Architect and Product Owner at Ericsson Software Technology in Finland and holds a PhD in Computer Science. A research and open-source enthusiast, Kashif’s current focus is on Kubernetes deployments on bare-metal systems in distributed cloud environments.
Telecom infrastructure demands the performance of bare metal and the flexibility of virtualized environments—but unifying both under a single operational model is challenging. At Ericsson, we’ve built a cloud-native platform powered by Kubernetes, Cluster API, and Metal3.io to automate the lifecycle of telco-scale infrastructure spanning bare metal, OpenStack (via CAPO), and KubeVirt based virtualization.
With nearly tens of thousands of servers in production, this platform delivers fully declarative lifecycle management, zero-downtime upgrades, and consistent observability across heterogeneous environments—all while meeting stringent telecom SLAs. This session shares the architectural principles, automation patterns, and operational lessons that make large-scale hybrid infrastructure practical and reliable. Attendees will learn how open-source collaboration and upstream innovation are enabling truly telco-grade cloud-native operations.
