Tag Archives: links

Intuit developers’ experience using kubernetes

It’s not quite at the level we would like. For example, if services have a hiccup or a Kubernetes pod goes down, developers still need the level of knowledge to look at the logging and understand what happened. But they don’t need to understand how to manage clusters or namespaces, they don’t have to deal with auto-scaling.

Some good stuff in there. There's also a looming paradox: we don't want developers to know about Infraestructure, but they need to.

Original source: Q&A: Intuit's Developer Experience with Kubernetes

Analysis of Koch buying Infor

While Infor is widely considered to be the third largest ERP vendor, with a 5 percent to 6 percent share of the ERP market (according to Gartner and IDC, respectively), the company is not a serious challenger to ERP heavyweights Oracle and SAP, which reported fiscal 2019 revenues of $39.5 billion and €27.5 billion (about $30.1 billion), respectively. Infor reported $3.2 billion in revenue for fiscal 2019, which was just 3.0 percent higher than the prior year, according to Infor’s fiscal 2019 results (the company was not required to disclose financials, but did so anyway, ostensibly to build goodwill among prospective investors who value clarity in corporate governance). Over a decade ago, the company touted in excess of 70,000 customers. Today, that number is 68,000, despite continued acquisitions.

And:

Koch Industries has invested more than $26 billion in technology-related investments over the past six years

Original source: Why Koch Is Buying the Rest of Infor

Media tools, not social media

Here’s the thing though as part of the unlearning process I’m currently going through. As a starting point, the social tools are everything, but social nowadays. I, for instance, stopped calling these tools social media a few years back and instead decided to stick around with just media tools.

Because that’s what we’ve decided to convert them to over time. A series of manipulative online tools that allow us to toot our own horn about how good and well crafted our own selling and marketing messages are. We have decided to stop listening altogether. Instead, we’ve now become the product we’d want to sell to others, and, as a result, decided to stop conversing with those who we once called our own social networks or community spaces where conversations were the new currency.

Original source: Unlearning

Warm handoffs from the community

“Any of the tasks that DevRel should be doing need to be directly tracked back to the corporate goals,” Thengvall said.

She argues every DevRel person should be leveraging customer resource management software (CRM) to track all that she previously dubbed “warm hand-offs.”

Thengvall says a CRM helps support a mix of measurability and owning your community — instead of risking them just getting dumped into the newsletter list. These “DevRel qualified leads” are owned by the developer advocate, who then makes introductions. Does someone have a great use case? Introduce them to marketing to produce a blog post. Somebody giving really solid feedback? Intro them to the product team as a beta tester. Someone really enthusiastic about your product and great at coding? An intro to HR may be in order.

Original source: Measuring the Value of Developer Relations

Reading 5 hours a day, and other tips on reading more

Stephen King had advised people to read something like five hours a day. My friend said, “You know, that’s baloney. Who can do that?” But then, years later, he found himself in Maine on vacation. He was waiting in line outside a movie theater with his girlfriend, and who should be waiting in front of him? Stephen King! His nose was in a book the whole time in line. When they got into the theater, Stephen King was still reading as the lights dimmed. When the lights came up, he pulled his book open right away. He even read as he was leaving. Now, I have not confirmed this story with Stephen King. But I think the message this story imparts is an important one. Basically, you can read a lot more. There are minutes hidden in all the corners of the day, and they add up to a lot of minutes.

Original source: 8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books

Being friends with someone makes it hard to write op-ed’s about them.

I write about tech executives, and (no joke) refuse to meet with them. Mostly because I’m an introvert and don’t enjoy meeting new people. But also because intimacy is a function of contact. Often when I meet someone, I like them as a person, feel empathy for them, and find it harder to be objective about their actions.

Original source: IOWAt the fu*k?

Smaller procurement cycles help eliminate waterfall badness in government IT

Big contracts don’t set the government up for success. Agencies invest millions of dollars without the ability to test the vendor and the technology. Multiyear contracts allow few options for agile pivoting, in case something doesn’t work out and the mission needs to change directions.

Smaller procurements are more flexible and agile, and they also allow for increased competition, which leads to better solutions that are more impactful for government agencies. In addition, when contracts are narrow at a smaller scale, it diminishes the risk of a vendor protesting, which stops the entire project and pulls you into court. Thoughtfully planning smaller procurements can save the protest headache that will suck time and money away from your mission into a wearying process with a side effect of unsavory headlines.

Original source: To Modernize, Push for Smaller Procurements

IBM’s financials for the past 8 years

Also, commentary on product strategy missteps, good ideas that didn’t turn out to be viable, and, thus, out to be the wrong focus.

Most IBM doubters also skip of the structural problems inherited from the previous “decade,” but Charles outlines it well:

Rometty didn’t inherit a great hand. Her predecessor Sam Palmasaino hollowed IBM out and turned it into a financial engineering company as opposed to an engineering engineering company. Palmasaino focused the company on an EPS roadmap instead of a product roadmap.

‪Focusing on “an EPS roadmap instead of a product roadmap.” That’s good. While “regular” enterprises try desperately to become tech companies, large tech companies face often struggle to stay tech company. Strategy is becomes even more important for both.‬

Original source: IBM’s Lost Decade

The history of Microsoft Azure.

In a famous internal Microsoft memo dated October 28, 2005, Ozzie articulated his vision for building a disruptive platform that would replicate the design of Microsoft Windows OS, .NET application services and Microsoft Office Suite on the Internet. Little was known that this idea would eventually translate into Azure IaaS, Azure PaaS and Office 365.

Original source: A Look Back At Ten Years Of Microsoft Azure

Should I do microservices?

One common architectural driver discussed when comparing a modular monolith with a microservices architecture is level of complexity. Grzybek finds the modular monolith less complex than that of a distributed system. High complexity reduces maintainability, readability and observability. It also requires a more experienced team, an advanced infrastructure, and a specific organizational culture. If simplicity is a key architectural driver, he therefore strongly recommends a team to first consider a monolith

The hot new trend is to apply Betteridge's law to the question of microservices. Beats me, man.

Original source: Modular Monolithic Architecture, Microservices and Architectural Drivers

Simulate your business in a digital twin

A computerized system that produces reliable reference or a digital twin, and is able to introduce variety of changes and compare the results to the reference, while also depicts the potential impact of uncertainty and lack of accurate data, deserves to be called a decision-support-system (DSS). Such a system will reduce significantly the risk in taking top-level decisions and will also reduce procrastination that is usually found whenever ‘hard decisions’ are evaluated. This would help significantly to put the company ahead of the competition.

It's be cool. Instead of thinking it was impossible, maybe it's better to assume it is, and work on making it.

Original source: Decision Support Systems (DSS)

That latte paid for your black coffee

You can eat out and get an excellent meal at a fair price – if you don’t order any beverage except tap water. Restaurants earn their highest profit margin on drinks and often supply good food as a bait to bring in customers who will drink while they eat. Sodas usually sell at a markup of about 15%, wine goes up “two and a half to three times” the wholesale price, and beer often sells at a price increase of 500%. Some consumers don’t mind paying such high premiums. Others do mind but do it anyway. Such buyers subsidize good meals for the “nondrinking gourmand.” The idea of “cross-subsidies” is apparent in movie theaters where the food is bad and pricey. You pay a high markup for the popcorn and snack food because the theater isn’t making much profit on the movie. If you don’t eat at the theater, the movie itself offers good economic value. You can also experience this kind of benefit at Starbucks, but only if you order black coffee. Fans who pay inflated prices for fancy, foamy coffee, sugar and milk mixtures subsidize the plain cup of coffee.

Original source: getAbstract of An Economist Gets Lunch Free Summary