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Showing posts from 2016

#FailOps

Many years ago, Oleg Vishnepolsky and I worked together at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center on the OS/2 1.1 port of the TCP/IP protocol stack.  Recently, I had a conversation with Oleg, who is currently the CTO at The Daily Mail Online, about DevOps and how it seems companies miss the whole point of what DevOps promotes.  During our conversation (via email), it came out that he was of the opinion that DevOps is not a successful paradigm to follow and asked me for my thoughts on the matter.  I decided (with his permission) to publish the conversation because it seems that a lot of people are of a similar mind when it comes to DevOps (just as there were similar attitudes when the OGC released ITIL in the late 1980's), and while I do agree that many companies are not seeing the benefits of DevOps that it is supposed to bring to an organization, I don't believe that the problem is with the paradigm.  Hopefully, my answers to Oleg will not only clarify why DevOps is import

Agility Has Its Limits

Automation and orchestration have given us free two-day shipping via Amazon Prime; next day shipping via the major postal companies; delivery via Uber or drone; and so on. These are all concepts that we are either intimately familiar with as consumers of these services or at least are cognizant of them because of news reports, TV commercials or YouTube videos. Convenience and Digital Transformation The value of convenience cannot be overstated.  However, there will always be times when these methods of delivery will not be enough.  For example, a freak snow blizzard in my area wasn't a big deal for me since I have snow removal equipment.  But as I drove past kids sledding in the field at the end of the street I wanted to buy a sled for my children also.  Next day shipping wouldn't have satisfied my need to have this now . Of course, Uber or drones could have delivered such an item theoretically.  But unless you live in NYC or a similarly sized metropolitan area and the goo

Digital Darwinism

"In 2014, CEOs must focus on leading their organizations to think like and become more like ‘tech’ companies, because within a few years, digital business capabilities will dominate every industry. Urgent action is needed because first-mover advantage is common in digital business, and fast followers must be very fast." - Gartner, "CEO Resolutions for 2014 - Time to Act on Digital Business," published in March 2014. A more succinct way to state the above is "continuously evolve or rapidly become irrelevant." You have to look no further to see the effects of gross negligence to adapt than the U.S. Post Office. Last year, I got divorced, sold the house, and moved to a new location.  My ex-wife moved to a different location.  And although we both created mail forwarding requests, she kept getting mail that was addressed for me. She moved over 4 months ago, and even today she is still getting my mail when it is mailed to my former address. When I asked