Is DevOps Overhyped or the Real Thing?

In the buzzword-filled wasteland of enterprise technology, DevOps has to rank somewhere near the top of the hard-to-define list, right up there with “cloud” and “big data” (or its subset, “dark data.”) Describing these things is like soldering Jell-O to a motherboard. DevOps is a different case than the others because, while it certainly has …

That Wasn’t a Sale, That was a Massive DevOps Screwup

What might have appeared to be a fire sale on the website for UK hardware retailer Screwfix early today was instead a massive and totally avoidable screwup. The glitch was an unforeseen error causing all of the items on its website to sell for £34.99 (about $58). All items sold for £34.99, even high-priced riding mowers that …

The Perfect Storm: Huge Opportunity or Enormous Risk?

The 2000 film “The Perfect Storm” was set on a portion of the North Atlantic Ocean known as the Grand Banks. It’s where the cold, southerly flowing Labrador Current meets the warm Gulf Stream. Warm water rises, cold water plunges and plankton flourishes in the oxygen- and nutrient-rich Grand Banks. The entire food chain propagates, …

Biggest Problem for Application Development: We’re Scared

I attended a recent panel discussion, titled “Constraints to Speed and Agility in Application Delivery,” at a financial services technology summit. I sat among Senior IT leads from sea to shining sea who expressed a range of concerns just as wide. Mike Versace of IDC Research moderated the panel and started with a question: “What …

Gene Kim and the DevOps Unicorn

A couple of weeks ago in a cramped IT office in Santa Clara, Calif., a hundred DevOps practitioners waited for Gene Kim to explain “How Do We Better Sell DevOps.” I had seen a couple of Gene’s presentations online, and we have covered his book, The Phoenix Project, on this blog, but I’d never had the …

Engage Your Customer Both On and OffLine

Travel…Everyone has their horror stories from lost luggage, delayed flights and reservation systems that seem to only stall when you travel and never inconvenience anyone else. Very seldom do we hear a story that entails a positive experience. This is one of those stories so be sure and bookmark this page and refer to it often. A …

How LinkedIn Increased Readership by 400%

A couple of months ago I wanted to increase referrals on our industry blog servicevirtualization.com. I had always automatically posted to my profile seeking LinkedIn referrals and got some clicks but my network was becoming saturated with service virtualization content since there is a post almost everyday. One day one of the sales guys wanted to so …