Notes on data, AI, IT
and security
No marketing fog. The way I think about real problems with founders and managers.
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.
API gateway: a team contract, not just a routing tool
Most API gateway conversations stay at the infrastructure level. The part that actually matters is what it forces teams to agree on before they write a line of code.
Microservices and teams: why a service boundary is a responsibility boundary
Moving to microservices changes not just the architecture, but how teams negotiate contracts with each other.
Containers in enterprise: where the pilot ends and the platform begins
Docker and containerisation have moved from hype to real deployments. I look at what it takes for a pilot to become an infrastructure platform.
Shadow SaaS subscriptions: a management risk that grows quietly
Employees connect cloud services without telling IT. I look at why this has become a systemic problem and how to manage it.
Technical debt: it is an ownership question, not a metaphor
Technical debt gets discussed as a technical concept. For leadership it is first and foremost a question of who makes decisions and lives with the consequences.
Microservices: the management cost nobody talks about
Moving to microservices is not purely a technical decision. It introduces real operational load on the organisation that rarely appears in the pitch.
Lift-and-shift cloud migration: what is hidden in the bill
Why moving applications to the cloud without rearchitecting often costs more than expected, and what to examine before starting a migration.
DevOps is not a toolset, it is a culture change
Why companies that implement DevOps as a technology end up with expensive tools instead of faster releases - and where the real lever is.