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March Madness and the Sweet 16... Cool ways to get more out of Orion
So I got a chance to catch up on some basketball this weekend and then this morning we were all chatting about the NCAA tournament and a friend of mine told me that her husband wasn't going to shave until the Jayhawks won the tournament. Several years ago I lived in Kansas City and helped to design and deploy the network…
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I Feel the Need for Speed—Evolving From a Loris to a Peregrine. How to Get Started With DevOps
In the IT industry, you’ll hear “I’ll sell you a DevOps; how much is it worth?” But the joke’s on you because you can’t sell (or buy) DevOps, as it is, in fact, an intangible entity. It’s a business process combining software development (Dev) and IT management processes (Ops) with the aim of helping teams understand what…
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IT—More Than a Fancy Calculator: Moving From Cost Center to Business Value
It’s time to stop seeing IT as just a black hole to throw money towards and instead, give back to the business. Often, the lack of proper measurement and standardization are the problem, so how do we address this? We’ve all tried to leverage more funds from the organization to undertake a project. Whether replacing aging…
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The Actuator - December 4th
Good morning! By the time you read this post, the first full day of Black Hat in London will be complete. I share this with you because I'm in London! I haven't been here in over three years, but it feels as if I never left. I'm heading to watch Arsenal play tomorrow night, come on you gunners! As always, here's a bunch of…
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Did Microsoft Kill Perpetual Licensing?
Continuing from my previous blog post, Meh, CapEx, I’m going to take a cynical look at how and why Microsoft has killed its perpetual licensing model. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not just Microsoft – other vendors have done the same. I think a lot of folks in IT can say they use at least one Microsoft product, so it’s…
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SolarWinds and Azure - A Love Story
“Everyone’s in the cloud,” they said, “and if you’re not there, your business will die.” That was, when, 2010? As it turned out, there are too many moving parts, too many applications weren’t ready, bandwidth was too expensive and too unreliable, and, oh, storing sensitive data elsewhere? Move along Sir, nothing to see…
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December Writing Challenge Week 1 Recap
The 2019 Writing Challenge got off to an amazing start and I’m grateful to everyone who contributed their time, energy, and talent both as the lead writers and commenters. The summary below offers up just a sample of the amazing and insightful ways in which IT pros break down difficult concepts and relate them—not just to…
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Who’s the Boss? 5 Things to Ask Yourself Before Making the Leap Into Management
We talk a lot about professional development these days—how to develop your speaking or writing skills to make you a better practitioner. But what if you’ve reached a certain point in your career and you feel it’s time for a change? Do you stay a technologist, or do you make the leap to management? It’s a conversation I’ve…
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Warning! A Robot Will Do Your Job Soon
Everyone take a deep breath and calm down. The likeliness of a robot taking over your job any time soon is very low. Yes, artificial intelligence (AI) is a growing trend, and machine learning has improved by leaps and bounds. However, the information technology career field is fairly safe, and if anything, AI/machine…
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Public Cloud: All Aboard the Hype Train
We’ve all heard it before. “The cloud is the future!” “We need to move to the cloud!” “The on-premises data center is dead.” If you believe the analysts and marketing departments, public cloud is the greatest thing to happen to the data center since virtualization. But, is it true? Could public cloud be the savior of the…