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Ken Ahrens

Co-Founder of Speedscale | Cloud Native App Performance | Scaling Workloads on Kubernetes

Ken Ahrens is the Co-Founder and CEO of Speedscale, a company he started in January 2020.1 Speedscale helps companies detect and fix application issues in production environments more efficiently by providing realistic, performant non-production environments.1

Professional Background

Ken has extensive experience in the technology industry, spanning over two decades:

  • Prior to founding Speedscale, he held leadership positions at New Relic, Inc., including Sr. Director of Solution Architects and Principal Architect.1
  • He worked at CA Technologies as Sr. Director of Presales, managing the Application Delivery Presales team for North America.1
  • Earlier in his career, he held roles at companies like Pentaho, iTKO, Inc., and CA | Wily Technology Division.1

Achievements and Expertise

  • Ken was recognized as the Enterprise Technical Sales MVP at New Relic in both 2016 and 2017.1
  • He has significant experience in areas such as Application Performance Management (APM), Service Virtualization (SV), and cloud-native application architectures.12
  • Throughout his career, Ken has focused on helping companies develop and manage complex web applications.3

Education

Ken holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.1

Entrepreneurial Journey

As the CEO of Speedscale, Ken is working on automating API testing for cloud-native applications, particularly those running on Kubernetes.2 The company launched in August 2020 and has received backing from notable investors including YCombinator, Sierra Ventures, and Tech Square Ventures.2

Personal Interests

Outside of work, Ken enjoys outdoor activities such as mountain biking with NICA (National Interscholastic Cycling Association) and camping with the Boy Scouts.2 He's also interested in technology projects at home, like programming Raspberry Pis, and enjoys reading science fiction and fantasy.2

Highlights

Aug 28 · linkedin

Developer environments are becoming increasingly important in today's software engineering landscape.

The better your environments, the faster you can iterate.

But there's still a lot of confusion on what they are, and how they should work.

Our blog takes a look at what you should know about developer environments, including:

▪️What they are ▪️Difference between IDPs and developer environments ▪️What types of dev environments exist ▪️How to increase dev productivity with dev environments

https://bit.ly/46PGZHC

#DeveloperEnvironments #PlatformEngineering

Aug 14 · linkedin

Slow apps can be the result of an issue with the API logic itself or an external, third party or database. Before attempting to fix the problem, you need to identify the root cause. That's where a tool like Speedscale comes in. Speedscale helps isolate these bottlenecks so developers can pinpoint exactly where to focus their efforts.

Our latest blog provides a practical scenario showing you how to use Speedscale to isolate a performance bottleneck:

https://bit.ly/4crdYTV

Related Questions

What inspired Ken Ahrens to start Speedscale?
How did Ken Ahrens' experience at New Relic influence his approach at Speedscale?
What are some key achievements Ken Ahrens has had in his career?
How does Speedscale's technology differ from other application testing tools?
What challenges did Ken Ahrens face when founding Speedscale?
Ken Ahrens
Ken Ahrens, photo 1
Ken Ahrens, photo 2
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Location

Atlanta Metropolitan Area