Searching for Cheap TricksThe amount of AI content and conversations out there is getting exhausting. It’s almost as bad as the burbling font of platform engineering content that gets rewritten and published each week. The below RAND paper and commentary got me thinking though: a lot of the AI talk is just talk about applying new technologies in general. We are still really bad at the basic task of communicating requirements to developers, checking in on their work and seeing if they’re solving the right problems in a helpful way…and even knowing what business problems to need attention in the first place.

Just links and fun finds. Before “fun” was invented. Found in Amsterdam thrift shop.Relevant to your interestsI didn’t do link round-ups this past week, so there’s a backlog. Also, I’ve been using Perplexity to summarize some articles (not listed here, usually). I think it’s pretty good, and I recommend you use it. Amazon’s CEO says their AI tool has saved them a crazy amount of time - This oddly specific, and a big deal if applicable to other organizations.

Normally I wouldn’t disclaim this since I think you, dear readers, are wise enough to know that it always applies, but: these views are my own, not my employer, VMware Tanzu by Broadcom. Also, we covered the below on this week’s Software Defined Talk. If you prefer to listen a podcast, it’ll be out on Friday morning, 7:30am Amsterdam time: subscribe! Private CloudYesterday at my work’s big conference, Explore, there was a lot of conversation about private cloud.

SpringOneYesterday we put on Spring One. There’s still sessions going on, which you can watch live if you register for free. Here’s some highlights. We went over one of the most valuable products the Tanzu team has put out this year: the Spring Application Advisor. You set this up in your pipeline and it continuously scans for Spring and Java components that need to be updated. Using OpenRewrite recipes, it then creates the code you’d need to apply to not only update those components, but also update your own code and configuration.

From Iceland.This week’s Software Defined Talk podcastWe talk about the open source “rug pull” du jour in this week’s Software Defined Podcast: “This week, we discuss CockroachDB's relicensing, the ongoing debate about remote work, and platform engineering. Plus, some thoughts on the use of speakerphones in public.” We both steer us towards a conclusion something like: yup, the open source vendor can change the license and start charging whenever they want, that’s the new reality.

Are you at a large organization doing platform engineering? Have you been building and/or using a platform? How are you introducing product management in your operations group? I want to test a theory that’s come up in my conversations a lot this summer: introducing product management into ops and infrastructure organizations is too difficult. It won’t work. There are teams here and there that can do it, and they show up at conferences.

Figuring out what kind of podcast you’re doingGarbage Chairs of AmsterdamOne of my co-workers is started a podcast and had some questions. Here’s my answers. As with most “how do I do this?” sessions, it focuses a lot on gear which I scoot away from in my answers, you know, following the cliche that the tools matter less than what you do with them. Also, the tools are tedious, but easy to learn.

Just fun finds and links today. Wastebook“FWD: RE: radioactive fungus email from grandma” Here. “I don’t know about you, but I think a campaign setting ruled by evil angels and their witch-wives, populated by giants (perhaps not 3,500 metres tall) who eat one another and human beings, and who have sex with animals to produce many weird varieties of beastman, is one that somebody could do a lot with.” Here.

Creating ROI models for platform engineering is difficult. Here’s three examples of approaches I’ve come across recently. You’re trying to convince your organization to put an app platform in place (probably either buying one or building one on-top of Kubernetes), to shift your ops team to platform engineering (just after HR finally changed titles from “Systems Analyst II” to “DevOps Engineer”!), or, if you’re like me, sell people a platform.

Just links and wastebook today. Relative to your interestsSpring Boot 3.3 Boosts Performance, Security, and Observability - All these years later, Spring is still in wide use and still evolving. ‘You are a helpful mail assistant,’ and other Apple Intelligence instructions - Not that many, but interesting. Gartner Predicts 30% of Generative AI Projects Will Be Abandoned After Proof of Concept By End of 2025 - ”At least 30% of generative AI (GenAI) projects will be abandoned after proof of concept by the end of 2025, due to poor data quality, inadequate risk controls, escalating costs or unclear business value, according to Gartner, Inc.