Technology
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Buyer Beware
This is a follow-up to my post on fixed-price contracts written some time ago. It was a surprisingly popular post, and I received some interesting feedback and many new ideas. Now procurement matters. Most enterprises buy far more than they build, and that isn’t going to change soon. Getting a decent bang for the buck… Continue reading
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Leaving the Cloud
There’s much talk now about how the cloud is passé, and just an expensive way to send people into space really. A blog post by David Heinemeier Hansson posted some time ago about how he thinks the cloud is largely new coats of paint on old stuff and thus wants to leave it behind at… Continue reading
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Backing up is for Dumbos
Sunanda recently lost some photos that she’d clicked on her holiday, and I asked what I thought was the obvious: “where did you back them up”? A freezing glare followed. “Why”, she asked me “should I have to back it up?”. Putting my foot firmly in my mouth, I persisted “its dumb to not back… Continue reading
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The Great Privacy Elephant
Privacy is all the rage now, and it struck me just recently that privacy protection has, in fact, changed worryingly without being noticed. Recently RBI insisted that all copies of all financial transaction data be stored inside the country, for reasons of “unfettered supervisory access“. Part of the justification for this extra-draconian measure is to… Continue reading
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Rethinking Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery has been on the minds of companies ever since the early days of commercially available computing. Today’s world of DR revolves around four acronyms – BIA (business impact analysis), RPO (recovery point objective), RTO (recovery time objective) and BCP (business continuity plan). The acronyms appear in a disaster recovery plan in roughly in… Continue reading
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The VoIP horse that has long since bolted
In June 2018, DoT announced with some fanfare that VoIP calls would now be “untethered”. Is this time for a celebration? The truth is, VoIP calling became mainstream a long time ago. The original restrictions were designed to make life difficult in a world where phones were dumb and PCs smart; the world moved on… Continue reading
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Secure on the Cloud: a Keynote
Some time ago, I gave a keynote at a CloudSec 2016 Conference in Mumbai. I was pleased to learn recently that the organizers put it on Youtube. I’ve presented this point of view before – with slides; this was my first attempt to break away from the oppression of Powerpoint and be slidefree. Continue reading
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Dodging Battle
Security is obviously on everyone’s mind these days with the media gleefully broadcasting with unfailing regularity yet another marquee name falling victim to a breach. Much energy goes into discussing the latest attacks and protections and responses, peppered with generous doses of doomsday scenarios. The talk is all of battle, of fighting off the evil… Continue reading
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History Channel
Analytics, we are repeatedly told, will enable us to have these wonderful insights that will change our business and transform society, probably abolish world hunger at the same time. And the only reason they’re not doing so is because we have not been able to implement it well. All true, but to my mind a… Continue reading
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Layer Cake
The three-tier architecture has dominated application deployment for decades. Presentation Layer, Logic Layer, Data Layer – every application designer is fed this bag of chips again and again, till every other chip is forgotten. Most companies have rigid policies that ensure that this holy trinity of layers is hammered into every policy document and SOP.… Continue reading
About Me
This blog is about my ramblings on technology and management, gathered from years of trying to do many wonderful and fascinating things with technology. Most importantly I find the interactions of humans with computers fascinating – how the to extract use from computers in their various forms, from washing machines to large language models.
Analytics Architecture Cloud Culture Development Disaster Recovery e-Commerce Management Musings Obituary Outsourcing Politics Privacy procurement Regulation Security Social Technology VoIP
Brave For Free 