Notes on data, AI, IT
and security
No marketing fog. The way I think about real problems with founders and managers.
Event-driven architecture: when it helps and when it creates noise
A practical look at event-driven design - what problems it solves, where it adds complexity without benefit, and how to decide whether you need it.
IT budget planning: the three layers most plans collapse into one
Annual IT budgets fail when run costs, change costs, and investment costs are mixed together. Separating them makes the conversation with management much more honest.
Legacy IT modernisation: a risk map for executives
How to think about replacing outdated systems without breaking the business processes that depend on them.
Microservices vs monolith: when splitting is actually justified
Why moving to microservices is not automatically the right decision, and how to tell whether your team and system are ready for the complexity it brings.
Software import substitution in Russia: what it actually means for IT leaders
A clear-eyed look at the Russian domestic software registry and what it really changes in procurement and enterprise architecture.
Vendor dependency: calculate the exit cost before you sign
Why the cost of switching an IT vendor needs to be assessed upfront, and how it affects platform choice and contract terms.
Lift-and-shift: when moving to the cloud does not deliver what you expected
Why mechanically moving infrastructure to the cloud without changing architecture preserves old problems and adds new costs.
Microservices: the real problem is not service size, it is contracts
When companies move to microservice architecture, they discover that the main difficulty is not splitting the monolith - it is managing dependencies across APIs.
IT budget for 2017: infrastructure versus product
How to think about IT budget allocation when pressure to cut costs and pressure for digital transformation arrive simultaneously.
Vendor lock-in: measure the cost of leaving, not the cost of entry
The question when adopting a platform is not only what it costs to get in. It is what it would cost to get out - and whether you can honestly answer that before signing.
On-call rotation is a management problem, not an IT problem
Unstructured on-call duties burn out engineers and leave incidents without clear ownership. The fix is not a tool - it is a set of decisions that only management can make.
Deployment frequency as a safety metric, not a speed metric
DevOps changes not only how fast code ships, but how risky each change is.