Somewhere between 40% and 60% of apps run on private cloud, you just never hear about it.

I’m thinking through the topic of ROI for infrastructure software again (obviously for our PaaS stuff). I get asked about this every year or two. Each time I look at it, I get more confused. This ask always come from sales, presumably because the buyers are asking it. But, I don’t think the ask is about the basic ROI calculations: the amount we paid for this tech is less than the amount of money we make using it.

An enterprise AI strategy probably means adding AI to your existing apps and workflows, not just standing up a stand-alone AI app. We experience generative AI as chatbots in the consumer space - and they’re great! - but this doesn’t seem like the best approach for business applications. Think about search. We don’t even notice it now, but at work, search is built into existing apps, it’s not usually a stand-alone app that tightly integrates with and links into existing apps.

Much like financial debt, technical debt is helpful when managed responsibly, but like real debt, tech debt can also stop growth and innovation in its tracks. My colleague Bryan Ross has a piece out on tech debt with five ways to address is. Here’s a summary of it. Think of technical debt as the accumulation of compromises on development quality to save time. Some examples of these choices are postponing unit tests, running outdated software, or focusing on end-user features at the expense of internal processes.

From the report “Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2023: Platform Engineering,” Paul Delory and Oleksandr Matvitskyy, Gartner, Oct 2022. The authors don’t take a strong position here (?), but I think their vision of platform engineering sits above the infrastructure layer. See the diagram above, for example. The platform engineering group doesn’t mess with that stuff. This seems right to me. Everyone loves a Gartner prediction: “By 2026, 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery.

I’ve tracked at least three different definitions of DevOps since the days of “agile infrastructure”: Using Puppet and Chef (and then Ansible and Chef) to replace Opsware and BladeLogic. Full stack engineers to setup EC2, load-balancers, and other Morlock shit. Full stack engineers are bad, but sort of the same thing. Also, you can’t have a DevOps “group” or title. But, you know, someone should do all that automation. Putting all the people on one team, having them focus on a product, and establishing a culture of caring and learning.

As a DevOpsDays sponsor you’re often given the chance to give a one minute pitch to the entire audience. Back stage at DevOps Rex, this week, I was talking with a first timer. One minute seems like such a small amount of time: how could you say anything consequential in 60 seconds? You’re presenting in front of the full audience, anywhere between 150 to 500 people. They probably also loath vendors, or, at least are bored by them.

There are two types of digital transformation. First, literally. You had an analog process (booking appointments at the barber shop with phone and paper, planning tanker refueling schedules with a white board), and now they’re replaced by pure software. These transformations are often about optimizing an existing business process, gaining huge cost and time efficiencies (bottom line revenue, profit) and resulting in higher customer productivity and satisfaction (top line revenue, “growth”).

Coffee is for coders. Whether you’re doing waterfall, DevOps, PRINCE, SAFe, PMBOK, ITIL, or whatever process and certification-scheme you like, chances are you’re not using your time wisely. I’d estimate that most of the immediate, short-term benefit organizations get from switching to cloud native is simply because they’re now actually, truly following a process which both focuses your efforts on creating customer value (useful software that helps customers out, making them keep paying or pay you more) and managing your time wisely.

Thus far, it seems like the large banks are fending off digital disruption, perhaps embracing some of it on their own. The Economist takes a look: “Peer-to-peer lending, for instance, has grown rapidly, but still amounted to just $19bn on America’s biggest platforms and £3.8bn in Britain last year” “last year JPMorgan Chase spent over $9.5bn on technology, including $3bn on new initiatives” From a similar piece in the NY Times: “The consulting firm McKinsey estimated in a report last month that digital disruption could put $90 billion, or 25 percent of bank profits, at risk over the next three years as services become more automated and more tellers are replaced by chatbots.