Kapil Thangavelu’s journey into cloud resource management began with an unexpected detour. Originally considering a career as a history professor, he pivoted to software development after discovering Python in college. His early exposure to Python-based tools like Zope and Plone set him on a path that led through diverse technical landscapes, from GIS work at DARPA to managing ephemeral AWS workloads at the Library of Congress. Eventually, he found himself at Canonical, working alongside Mark Shuttleworth on Ubuntu Linux and leading the development of Juju, an open-source project designed to simplify cloud application management.
By the time Thangavelu joined Capital One to spearhead a major cloud modernization initiative, he had already formed strong opinions about the challenges of managing cloud resources across distributed teams. What he observed at Capital One reinforced a fundamental issue—application teams lacked a common mental model for how they were utilizing cloud resources. This realization led to a breakthrough: in software development, far more time is spent reading code than writing it. Cloud infrastructure needed a shared language and continuous workflow to align teams and streamline governance.
This insight gave birth to Cloud Custodian, an open-source project that introduced a “policy as code” framework for managing cloud resources. Instead of treating cloud cost optimization and governance as occasional cleanup tasks, Cloud Custodian enables organizations to embed policies directly into their workflows. This allows companies to enforce best practices for security, compliance, and cost management as a natural consequence of how developers interact with cloud infrastructure. By providing a domain-specific language (DSL) tailored for cloud governance, Cloud Custodian has helped enterprises automate and scale their cloud management practices effectively.
Now, as cloud costs continue to rise amid economic uncertainty, Cloud Custodian and Thangavelu’s startup, Stacklet, are at the forefront of cloud governance innovation. With enterprises facing mounting financial pressure to control their cloud expenditures, solutions like Cloud Custodian are becoming essential. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Thangavelu about the trends shaping cloud optimization and financial operations (FinOps), as well as how Stacklet is positioning itself to help organizations navigate this rapidly evolving landscape.