Danny Fields (@forrestbrazeal, CTO/EVP @Avalara)) talks about operating large SaaS environments, customizations for customer demands, and transitioning from traditional software. SHOW: 618CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:New Relic (homepage)Services down? New Relic offers full stack visibility with 16 different monitoring products in a single platform.Spot by NetAppMore Cloud, Less Cost (Spot by NetApp)CloudZero - Cloud Cost Intelligence for Engineering TeamsSHOW NOTES:Avalara - Tax Compliance Software for your industryDanny Fields - EVP and CTO EngineeringTopic 1 - Welcome to the show. You’ve got a very broad background in engineering and leadership roles. Can you share with us a little bit of your evolution, and where you focus your time at Avalara?Topic 2 - Give us a little bit of background on Avalara (SaaS for Tax Compliance), and a little bit of details on what it means to run a SaaS platform for such a complex product offering? Topic 3 - You’ve been involved in a number of different SaaS platforms over the years. What are some of the biggest changes and challenges you face in running modern SaaS platforms today?Topic 4 - Taxes are a very complex ecosystem, especially with all the variants around the world. How does a product team think about balancing the desire to deliver a consistent experience (SaaS operations) and customer demands for uniqueness?Topic 5 - How do you think about balancing optimizations around Operations and taking advantage of all the new innovations happening in open-source, or from the cloud-providers, or just internal capabilities from your team? Topic 6 - Any tips for anyone looking to get into SaaS operations, or transitions from traditional data center software delivery? FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet