The SolarWinds Query Report 2021: Database Priorities and Pitfalls
The rise of hybrid IT and the accelerated adoption of cloud-native apps have evolved traditional database design, management and monitoring. Workloads are rapidly shifting to the cloud and application performance is heavily dependent on the performance of the underlying database. Meanwhile, the global COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to make significant changes in the last […]
A New DevOps Test Environment Platform is Needed
Test environment management is bottlenecking DevOps transformations and is driving the need for a new test environment management platform solution. On-demand test environments in which developers and testers do not have to wait for a shared environment are sorely needed. The evidence is clear. In my book Engineering DevOps I indicated that finding and setting up […]
5 Steps to a Seamless Multi-Cloud Migration
With digitization the topic of discussion in almost every boardroom since the onset of COVID-19, it’s no coincidence that migration to the cloud has skyrocketed in tandem. In fact, at the onset of the pandemic, 87% of IT decision-makers noted that the remote restructuring of the workplace would push their organizations to accelerate cloud migrations. […]
4 Steps to More Agile Operations
After over a year of business disruptions, modern enterprises have realized that speed and agility are the only way forward. In fact, according to Gartner’s Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2021 eBook, “Organizations that don’t focus on efficiency, efficacy, and business agility will be left behind.” In order to stay future-ready, organizations across all industries are moving to adopt an operating […]
Nolij Consulting Brings Expertise Beyond the Public Sector
Alan Shimel talks with Ashley Mehta, CEO and president of Nolij Consulting, about the company’s deep expertise in health care IT, digital health care transformation, testing and evaluation, and the use of emerging technologies to solve issues in the government IT space. Now, the company is going commercial, and Mehta explains how their expertise can […]
Multi-Cloud Is Not About Lift and Shift
Multi-cloud is often framed from the perspective of “lift and shift.” In other words, an organization takes a computing environment previously running on one cloud and transfers it over to a different service provider. Cloud migration may make sense for cost savings or performance benefits and such a shift may be necessary when migrating on-premises […]
How No-Code Will Transform DevOps
In the years that low- and no-code development tools have been available, the movement has been slow to gather pace. Until recently, the vast majority of app and workflow development has remained firmly in the hands of professional coders. That is about to change—and fast. Gartner forecasts that the global low-code development technologies market is […]
The State of DevOps Is Just Fine
There is a growing amount of hand-wringing about the state of DevOps; that adoption is not progressing apace, or that the full benefits of the methodology are not being realized by the majority of adherents. That we can and must do more and do it better, etc. That is just stupid. Or, my first reaction: […]
Shopify Gives Devs More Creative Freedom
Shopify’s Unite 2021 conference was held on June 29, 2021, and the e-commerce platform had some big, developer-centric news to share. Alan Shimel spoke with Shopify’s Glen Coates about the developer-first business model that is giving developers the most opportunity to build their businesses with a new 0% revenue share model, and how developers can […]
DevOps Database Platforms Slash DX Bottlenecks
An enterprise with many databases and various data requirements for DevOps continuous delivery presents a problem. For example, test data provisioning is a challenge today, particularly in pre-release testing of database updates. Standard practices involve shared database environments that need to be maintained from one test to the next, slowing test cycles and generally not […]
Are You Wasting Money in the Cloud?
I’m not the first person to point out the issues with Andreessen Horowitz’s blog post outlining why Dropbox is repatriating from the public cloud to data centers and saving an enormous amount of money. But while others have brought up valid points about how Dropbox is not representative of most companies and that the value […]
How ESM Enables Digital Transformation
The pandemic has forced organizations of all sizes to overcome colossal challenges and embrace flux. We’ve all heard stories about businesses having to adopt a new communication tool and train staff overnight, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Many companies are in the middle of fundamental transformation, enabling enterprises to create more business […]
Swinging the Pendulum of IT Back to QA
I was reading Nuria Manuel’s excellent article about quality assurance (QA), and it got me thinking about the wide variety of ‘pendulums’ that impact IT. I call them pendulums because they follow the rule of “every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” and they work on fundamental truths of IT. For example, the one […]
3 Reasons Your Digital Transformation Stalled
The more a company modernizes, the more value it gets from the cloud, but not all digital transformation efforts are created—and executed—equally. According to Gartner, “87% of senior business leaders say digitalization is a company priority, yet only 40% of organizations have brought digital initiatives to scale … [and] without a shared vision across the […]
Don’t Look at This! IT’S A SECRET!
To continue the discussion about secrets after perusing this excellent report by GitGuardian—last time I went a little nuts about the number of secrets exposed in IT folks’ personal repositories. And it is a lot. I mean a lot of secrets. But you know what is scarier than, “A lot of secrets are leaked in […]
Engineering Applications for DevOps (Part 6)
This blog series explains how to engineer applications for DevOps. Topics covered in this blog series include: • Factors used to decide whether an application is a good candidate for DevOps. • Practices to engineer designs for DevOps. • DevOps applied to enterprise apps and software services. • DevOps applied to COTS systems. • DevOps […]
Engineering Applications for DevOps (Part 5)
This blog series explains how to engineer applications for DevOps. Topics covered in this blog series: • Factors to decide whether an application is a good candidate for DevOps. • Practices to engineer designs for DevOps. • DevOps applied to enterprise apps and software services. • DevOps applied to COTS systems. • DevOps applied to […]
Engineering Applications for DevOps (Part 4)
This blog series explains how to engineer applications for DevOps. Topics covered in this blog series: • Factors to decide whether an application is a good candidate for DevOps. • Practices to engineer designs for DevOps. • DevOps applied to enterprise apps and software services. • DevOps applied to COTS systems. • DevOps applied to […]
Rocky Linux Emerges as a CentOS Replacement
Rocky Linux was created to offer the community an alternative following Red Hat’s recent decision to shift its focus away from CentOS—the open source version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). However, the Linux distro’s popularly can also be attributed to how its creator sought to offer a superior alternative based on lessons learned during CentOS’ […]
Engineering Applications for DevOps (Part 3)
This blog series explains how to engineer applications for DevOps. Topics covered in this blog series: • Factors used to decide whether an application is a good candidate for DevOps. • Practices to engineer designs for DevOps. • DevOps applied to enterprise apps and software services. • DevOps applied to COTS systems. • DevOps applied […]
Engineering Applications for DevOps (Part 2)
This blog series explains how to engineer applications for DevOps. Topics covered in this blog series: • Factors to consider when deciding whether an application is a good candidate for DevOps. • Best practices for engineering designs for DevOps. • DevOps applied to enterprise apps and software services. • DevOps applied to COTS systems. • […]
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs): Org-as-Code
We are all familiar with ‘everything-as-code’—a pattern that started with infrastructure-as-code and has now extended to other areas such as architecture-as-code, security-as-code and more. However, all the incarnations we have seen so far have been less than ambitious! The dawn of cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology is moving us firmly toward organization-as-code. Org-as-code is […]
Engineering Applications for DevOps (Part 1)
This blog series explains how to engineer applications for DevOps. Topics covered in this blog series: • Factors to consider when deciding whether an application is a good candidate for DevOps. • Best practices for engineering designs for DevOps • DevOps applied to enterprise apps and software services • DevOps applied to COTS systems. • […]