Notes on data, AI, IT
and security
No marketing fog. The way I think about real problems with founders and managers.
Infrastructure as code: what it is and why a manager should care
A plain explanation of infrastructure as code for non-technical owners and managers - what it solves, what it costs, and what questions to ask your team.
SaaS sprawl: how subscriptions become invisible IT debt
Dozens of SaaS services in a company are not just a budget problem. They are an architectural issue that affects security, data, and manageability.
Who owns the API: how to stop integration conflicts between teams
Why API design disputes slow down companies more than technical debt, and how to establish clear ownership without creating a bottleneck committee.
How to read a vendor roadmap as a non-technical manager
A software roadmap is a marketing document until you learn to ask the right questions. A breakdown of what to look for.
Cloud costs in 2022: why the bill grew without new projects
How currency swings and provider pricing changes shifted the economics of cloud for companies in 2022.
RPA: where process automation works and where it does not
A clear-eyed look at RPA - which tasks are genuinely suited to robotic automation, and where expectations diverge from reality.
Vendor exit strategy: how to think about software dependencies
Why companies need an exit plan for vendor dependencies, and how to start building one before it becomes urgent.
IT system resilience when conditions shift fast
How a manager should think about IT infrastructure resilience when the external environment changes quickly and unpredictably.
When to split a monolith: the questions matter more than the hype
Microservices are a popular answer to the scaling question. But the right question is not 'split or not' - it is 'why and when'.
Event-driven architecture: what managers need to know before committing
Events and message queues solve real coordination problems between services. They also introduce complexity that is easy to underestimate from a project plan.
Cloud vendor lock-in: the tradeoffs that actually matter
Lock-in is not automatically bad. The question is whether you are trading flexibility for something you actually need, or just for a lower list price today.
The unexpected cloud bill: what companies discover a year after migration
Why cloud costs end up higher than projected - and what you can do before it becomes a problem.