The recent AWS outage is not Amazon’s fault. It’s the fault of companies that built for high availability (HA) instead of disaster recovery (DR). HA means multiple availability zones (AZs) within a single region; DR means multi-region resilience. Only one AWS region—US-East-1—was affected. Those who went down have only themselves to blame.
Read more “The AWS Outage: Why This Was Not Amazon’s Fault, But Everyone Else’s”
Reducing cost is an addicting drug for its immediate dollar feedback to your pockets. You taste it once and start wanting to reduce more and more. You’ll lose features, performance, and customers, but rationalize it’s worth a certain tradeoff. Sometimes, it is a good idea. But when the spiral becomes the main focus, you are in a DANGER zone. I saw this happen 3 times, in a startup, in a medium business, and in a Fortune500. I share a story from my own experience to explain the danger and opportunity of reducing costs.
Read more “Cost Optimization can save or destroy a company”
Everyday we make important decisions. In hindsight, everyone knows the right choice, but how can we do that ahead of time? My intent is to explain priceless mistakes that destroy companies and people, and provide decisional guidance from my experience. False confidence is worse than ignorance.
Read more “The most important decisions and leadership”