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...A blog about technology, how original(not)!

Introduction (who am I?)

Hello, Tommy here. I work at vistaprint. I spend most of my time monitoring a website, writing internal tools, and doing things some would consider "Devops".

I'm not very qualified as a blogger, quite frankly my English skills are terrible.

My perspective is not very unique at this point. The industry is full of developer/sysadmin employees, and devops has become an industry movement. This movement has created in my opinion a 'trendy effect' to what some would consider little more than a buzz word.

DevOps the modern exorcist?

Many years ago the catholic church would perform exorcisms on people whom they deemed to be possessed by the devil. The people who would do these works, were not high up in the ranks of the church. However the work they did both mysterious, and possibly dangerous is at the same time totally enticing. This lead to the popularization of what we see now as an exorcist.

Currently DevOps is starting to take on the same popularity. The chance to tackle a problem such as proper monitoring, task automation, etc. really seems sexy to other developers. Having to work on the same website, or the same payments system every day, becomes tedious. However, coming into the office and tackling real infrastructure problems, at break neck speed is very desirable for traditional developers. People must understand, that DevOps personnel are not far superior than sysadmin/developer/qa, but simply tackling 3 jobs at the same time.

Technology today, and Service Oriented Arch.

Currently, the industry is making the transition from traditional monolithic infrastructures, to a more services based world. If you are working at an indie start-up, or a big company that really planned ahead, you are probably thinking that I am blogging in the past. We have all heard the success stories , however with each success there are 5 failures you didn't know about (90% of statistics made up), and some companies are starting to feel the pains of moving both culturally, and technologically to a service world. The obvious problem is that the traditional way of doing things cannot continue, but the movement of change can kill an organization just as fast.

So what makes you so qualified to talk on these topics?

Nothing really, most of this blog will be ranting about things I dislike, or pointing out not so interesting things about Computers. I'm not much of a business leader, and unfortunatly for the readers of this blog I am one of those sysadmin's whom thinks they can code. I hope some of you find my perspective useful, and feel free to leave comments at will.

Tagged In:
soa service oriented architecture devops culture