Lee Atchison
As seen in:
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Covers:
Cloud Computing, Application Modernization, Software Architecture
Doesn't Cover:
Software languages, coding
Lee Atchison is a software architect and author who helps companies architect and operate AI-powered SaaS at scale.
Articles by Lee Atchison
S2E2: Your Job, Rewritten by AI
You arrive at work Monday morning with your usual to-do list. Fifteen emails need responses, a client proposal needs drafting, and there’s data to analyze for the weekly report. By lunch, an AI tool has answered twelve of those emails, generated the first draft of your proposal, and summarized the data into charts. All of this before you’ve finished your second cup of coffee. You saved three hours. But you also can’t shake a quiet question: if the AI did most of your work, what exactly did you do?
Fortress in the Cloud
As modern applications grow more complex and valuable, their security becomes increasingly critical. Yet many organizations still operate with a flat security model—one breach and attackers gain access to everything. This approach is like building a house with a reinforced front door but paper-thin walls. How can you improve your application security to reduce your risk of attack? Use isolation zones.
Fortress in the Cloud
As modern applications grow more complex and valuable, their security becomes increasingly critical. Yet many organizations still operate with a flat security model—one breach and attackers gain access to everything. This approach is like building a house with a reinforced front door but paper-thin walls. How can you improve your application security to reduce your risk of attack? Use isolation zones.
Harness software intelligence to conquer complexity and drive innovation
In today’s fast-moving business world, companies that build and maintain high-end software applications face numerous challenges. As a senior leader in a technology organization, you are undoubtedly aware of the complexities involved in managing a mature, ever-evolving, and ever-growing codebase. Over years of continuous development and iterations, all applications grow in complexity, making them increasingly difficult for developers to understand, navigate, and maintain.
7 Essential Tips for Setting Up Effective Monitoring
As the world of software development continues to evolve at a rapid pace, organizations are increasingly turning to tools such as Kubernetes to deploy, scale, and manage their containerized applications. Kubernetes and containers have, in particular, revolutionized how we build and deploy applications, but with this power comes the responsibility of ensuring our systems' health, performance, and reliability. This is where effective monitoring comes into play.
Don’t Worry about AI Taking Over Your Job
As someone who has spent decades at the forefront of the tech industry, I've seen firsthand how emerging technologies can disrupt the status quo. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), it's natural to wonder about its potential impact on the job market, particularly for roles that rely on uniquely human skills. However, I believe that most human-centric jobs, including writers, actors, and lawyers, will not only survive but thrive in the age of AI.
Cloud Migration Fundamentals: Best Practices for Moving to the Cloud
It’s no secret that successful organizations are leveraging the cloud to transform their businesses. If you want to stay competitive in today’s industry, chances are you’re looking to do the same. However, you can’t simply flip a switch to start harnessing the power of cloud services—moving your workloads into the cloud requires a lot of careful planning and forethought. One of the top reasons cloud migrations fail is due to lack of planning.
AI Is Advancing, Yet Still Falls Short of Human Intelligence
In the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI), getting caught up in the hype is easy. After all, computer intelligence appears poised to surpass human intelligence in every domain. However, despite the remarkable progress AI has made in recent years, there are still areas where humans maintain a clear advantage.
You can’t afford not to be in the cloud
Consider the following story: “I went into my CEO’s office. Our CEO is a very driven, technical, hands-on CEO. All technical decisions have to go through him before the company goes forward with a plan. Today, the discussion was the cloud. The problem? The CEO said we couldn’t move our application to the cloud because it was too expensive. His evidence?
Open-Source AI: Unlocking the Power of Collaboration and Innovation
The world of artificial intelligence (AI) is undergoing a profound transformation, and at the heart of this change is the rise of open-source AI models. According to Stanford University's AI Index report for 2024, a remarkable 65.7% of the 149 foundation models released in 2023 were open-source, up from 44.4% in 2022 and 33.3% in 2021. This shift towards open-source AI is not just a passing trend; it's a movement that is redefining the very nature of AI development and deployment.
The Big Cloud Migration Misstep
In all the different ways we know in order to migrate an application to the cloud, the lift-and-shift strategy is often the first method organizations attempt. It’s a simple concept: take your existing applications and move them, as is, to the cloud. But simplicity can be deceptive. I’ve seen firsthand how this approach can lead to a host of issues, particularly when it comes to the underutilization of dynamic cloud resources.
Don’t stop your migration!
Are you planning an application migration? Perhaps you are moving your on-premise application to the cloud, or perhaps you are modernizing an older application to a more appropriate application architecture. Migrations such as these are commitments. Commitments of time. Commitments of resources. Commitments of mindset and corporate energy. They can involve long and evolved transitions. They involve lots of effort—an effort that does not directly, immediately correspond to a realized benefit.
software development Archives
Zero trust approaches to cybersecurity are all the age these days as cyberattacks continue to increase in volume and sophistication. The challenge is zero-trust isn’t something that can be achieved by buying a platform off-the-shelf. Cybersecurity teams need to integrate multiple platforms and technologies to ensure zero-trust policies are enforced from the endpoint to the.. The post Zero-Trust appeared first on Security Boulevard.
Is AWS Lambda a Replacement For Servers?
It’s so tempting to jump on the cloud bandwagon and think that the latest and greatest cloud services are the magic pill for all your tech troubles. But, just like any new tech, knowing when and where to use it is essential to making it work properly for you. Such is the situation with function-as-a-service (FaaS) offerings such as AWS Lambda and Azure Functions.
How to Avoid Cloud-Native Complexity
In an article earlier this year, I talked about the role of technical debt in cloud-native application complexity. However, there’s more to complexity than just technical debt. In fact, the heart of complexity comes from a simple concept: Choice. Every choice added to a software system doesn’t just add one more pathway—it often adds multiple potential paths. You see, the more choices you add to a system, the more complex that system becomes.
Are You Giving DNS the Respect it Deserves?
The backbone of all modern, cloud-native applications is DNS. It’s the silent orchestrator of the internet, making sure that when someone clicks a link, they get where they expected to go. Most of the time, DNS just works. In fact, it’s one of the most reliable protocols on the internet today, and its creation dates back to the very, very early days of the internet. Its impact is widespread, and it is a critical component of every business today.
Should Cloud-Native Applications Use a Monorepo?
When we look at a typical, modern, cloud-native application, what we see is a variety of distinct components: Services, databases, load balancers, interfaces and maybe even a mobile app or two. Each of these components has some source code and other configuration information associated with it, which is stored in a code repository, usually using a variation of the open source code management system Git.
Does using low code mean your application will become overly complex?
Low code has received a lot of press recently. There seems to be quite a debate about whether the use of low code makes the application development process better or if it interferes with the development process, resulting in inferior applications. I read an article recently that talked about how an inevitable outcome of using Low Code was application complexity. Further, this application complexity leads to increased difficulty with security issues. This article got me thinking.
application security Archives
AppViewX Unfurls Certificate Life Cycle Management Platform for Kubernetes AppViewX today launched an automated certificate life cycle management platform for Kubernetes environments ... | | application security, AppViewX, certificate management, cloud-native applications Principle of Shared Responsibility in Cloud-Native Applications Using the cloud means you can focus on your application and use a third party for most of your infrastructure.
Scheduled Maintenance? That’s Another Way of Saying Technical Debt
Recently, I wrote about maintenance windows and how they should not be used for modern, cloud-native applications. I talked about why maintenance windows are a bad idea and explained why your customers still consider maintenance windows as downtime. Customers want to access your web application on their schedule, not your schedule. No truly modern, cloud-native application should require downtime to perform a product upgrade or routine maintenance.
How to Build and Manage a Cloud Center of Excellence
Zero trust approaches to cybersecurity are all the age these days as cyberattacks continue to increase in volume and sophistication. The challenge is zero-trust isn’t something that can be achieved by buying a platform off-the-shelf. Cybersecurity teams need to integrate multiple platforms and technologies to ensure zero-trust policies are enforced from the endpoint to the.. The post Zero-Trust appeared first on Security Boulevard.
The Fatal Mistake Companies Make with Their Cloud Migration
Avoid falling into the trap of stopping your cloud migration too early, when the costs initially seem to outweigh the benefits. Migrating to the cloud is a commitment. It’s a commitment of time, resources, and corporate energy. Perhaps you are migrating an on-premises application to the cloud. Or maybe you’re moving a monolithic application to service-oriented or microservice architecture. Migrations are not easy to pull off, and can involve long transitions.
The Fatal Mistake Companies Make with Their Cloud Migration
Avoid falling into the trap of stopping your cloud migration too early, when the costs initially seem to outweigh the benefits. Migrating to the cloud is a commitment. It’s a commitment of time, resources, and corporate energy. Perhaps you are migrating an on-premises application to the cloud. Or maybe you’re moving a monolithic application to service-oriented or microservice architecture. Migrations are not easy to pull off, and can involve long transitions.
Why Maintenance Windows Don't Work for Cloud-Native Apps
Several years ago, I purchased a digital “smart” thermostat for my home. I wanted to be able to set the temperature remotely from my iPhone. I wanted to know how it was working while I was traveling. I set it up and connected it to the manufacturer’s cloud backend. It was working fine at first, but that would soon change. A couple of weeks later, I received an email from the manufacturer about an upcoming upgrade to its backend cloud service.
Five Best Practices for Managing Configurations in Cloud-Native Applications
Managing configuration information in a complex, cloud-native application can be daunting. There is seemingly configuration everywhere. There’s configuration describing the network interconnections in your system, including routing rules and port blocking. There’s configuration for your load balancers, determining where to send traffic destined for your service. There’s configuration for security permissions needed for databases, caches, servers, third-party applications, and other systems.
What’s the Difference Between an Agile Retrospective and an Incident Retrospective?
Blameless Chief Operating Officer Ken Gavranovic recently sat down with me to discuss the topic of conducting effective incident retrospectives. You can watch our engaging, informative discussion below, or read on for an overview of the greatest hits from our talk. Agile development and incident management are the backbones of any tech-driven development cycle. At the heart of these practices lies the art of retrospectives. But what sets apart an Agile retrospective from an incident one?
Social - Facebook Archives
Federating access and ensuring compliance across multi-cloud and hybrid environments is a challenge. This is especially true without proper visibility and processes in place to understand what’s being deployed and how to maintain least-privilege access. Credentials are the number-one attack vector in the cloud, and threat actors are increasingly using zero-day vulnerabilities to gain access.. The post Managing Security Posture and Entitlements in the Cloud appeared first on Security Boulevard.
cloud-native architecture Archives
Coder Embraces Microsoft Dev Containers for Application Development Coder's update to its Cloud Development Environment (CDE) now supports the Microsoft Dev Container specification ... | | application development, cloud-native applications, cloud-native architecture, Coder Can a Cloud Center of Excellence Help You Become Cloud Native? A cloud center of excellence (CCoE) can be an extremely valuable asset for an organization looking to build and migrate cloud-native applications ...
Stop Turning Success Into Failure With Microservices
Your application is a large application. You have lots of customers, and they make good use of your system. Your application has lots of capabilities and features. All seems well. Except it’s not. You have a major problem. Your application crashes a lot. This results in downtime and outages. You have dissatisfied customers who are unable to use your system. You lose money, and you lose customers. And you are losing employees. Your developers work hard to keep the application going.
Can a Cloud Center of Excellence Help You Become Cloud Native?
Cloud computing has changed the fundamental structure of the enterprise IT department. While the benefits of cloud computing are well understood, effectively integrating the fundamental changes required to support cloud-native architectures properly is not as universally well-known. Enter the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE). The CCoE is an organizational structure designed to drive acceptance and adaptability of cloud constructs into the enterprise IT processes.
Mission, Vision, Values: A Blueprint For Success
By Ken Gavranovic and Lee Atchison excerpted from their book BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0 Sam Goldwyn reportedly said that a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. But what about your company’s mission statement? How can you be sure that it has real worth for the organisation? Here is the clarity you need. Critical to your company achieving success is your mission statement. Some companies don’t have mission statements.
Cloud Isn't That Simple Anymore: Polycloud Vs. Sky Computing
Multi-cloud—a strategy for employing multiple cloud providers—is a common strategy used by cloud-native applications. Many applications make use of both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and another cloud provider, such as Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. The single cloud-focused application is becoming rarer. By far, the most common reason for using multi-cloud is quite simple: To choose the best service at the time the choice was made. Applications rarely just pop into existence.
cloud native computing Archives
In this webinar you’ll learn how easy it is to verify different security aspects in Kubernetes. The post Verifying the Security of Your Kubernetes Clusters appeared first on Cloud Native Now. [...] This program provides insights on the potential strategies and options available for legacy transformation, including updates on AWS Mainframe modernization and how customers are using these strategies and tools for successfully moving legacy workloads into the cloud.
Technical Debt Isn’t All Bad
Nobody wants technical debt. Technical debt conjures images of messy code, cumbersome workarounds, and a ticking time bomb of maintenance woes—especially when it comes to cloud-native applications. In a previous article, I discussed how cloud-native application development processes tend to encourage technical debt accumulation. DevOps and Agile programming practices favor short-term changes rather than long-term improvements.
Improve Software Application Availability in 5 Steps
As a software application scales, it invariably becomes more complex. And with that increase in complexity comes the increased risk of problems that could potentially impact the application’s availability. Take, for example, the case of a well-known monitoring company that suffered from serious availability problems while it was growing from a small to a midsize company. Its traffic was increasing dramatically, but its infrastructure couldn’t keep up.
AWS Community Hub Archives
In this webinar you’ll learn how easy it is to verify different security aspects in Kubernetes. The post Verifying the Security of Your Kubernetes Clusters appeared first on Cloud Native Now. [...] This program provides insights on the potential strategies and options available for legacy transformation, including updates on AWS Mainframe modernization and how customers are using these strategies and tools for successfully moving legacy workloads into the cloud.
Cloud-Native Costs Can Fool You
In the world of ever-present technology choices, there’s a familiar refrain that is repeated over and over again in enterprise IT team rooms: “Moving to the cloud will save us money!” This optimistic mantra is frequently countered by a more skeptical viewpoint: ”The cloud is too expensive!” These seemingly opposite points of view are actually, surprisingly, both true.
Measure What Matters in Business or Face the Consequences
No matter the size of your business, whether you are the CEO or other leader, you need to understand the value of measuring your company’s performance. It is nearly impossible to operate a successful business without this information. But what metrics should you be tracking? How do you keep track of all this data, and how do you analyze it over time to understand where you need to improve? The answer to this question is not simple.
Cloud or Local Data? Which is Right for Your Cloud-Native App?
Recently, I’ve written several articles on data architecture. Earlier this year, I wrote about how to structure your data for service-based applications, such as cloud-native applications. Last week, I wrote about data strategy and the importance of geography in data architecture. In this article, I will focus on a different type of data locality—that is, front-to-back data locality. An important question for all cloud-native applications is, where should the application data be located?
Where is Your Data?
I’ve written a series of articles on cloud-native data architecture, including creating your cloud-native data strategy, getting your data architecture right in cloud-native applications and five rules for getting data architecture right. In these articles, I’ve talked about how to create and adjust your data architecture to work effectively in a cloud-native application. But there is another topic important to cloud-native data architecture, and that is data geography.
What cloud-native means for your business
From manufacturing to transportation to retail, companies across virtually every industry are supporting their digital transformations by moving to a cloud-based infrastructure. The shift from on-premises software to cloud services has been revolutionary to the process of application development and deployment, especially software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. But using the cloud often isn’t enough.
5 Rules for Getting Your Data Architecture Right
Architecting modern applications is a tough job, and architecting a solid data model for modern applications is one of the toughest, yet most important, parts of modern application architecture. Failure to create a reasonable data architecture can cause your application to fail in many bad ways, including issues related to performance, data integrity, data sovereignty, data safety, and scalability. Poor data architecture can leave your application and your company in bad shape.
The Right Size for Cloud-Native Computing
In the world of cloud-native applications, one big question that keeps coming up is this: How should I divide my application into services? The question is a basic one. Should I take this module and put it all in one service, or is it best served by being split into multiple services? Certainly, there are many points of view here; some advocate for fewer larger services, some advocate for more smaller services. Smaller or Larger Services?
Creating Your Cloud-Native Data Strategy
Earlier this year, I wrote about how to ensure you build the right data architecture for a cloud-native application. That article focused on the isolation of data into your individual services so that each service owns its own data and the management of that data. Further, it talked about using only official APIs to access data that is owned and managed by other services. If you are currently involved in building a data strategy for a cloud-native application, please read that article.
Getting Data Architecture Right in Cloud-Native Apps
Designing modern applications is a challenging task, and developing a robust data model for these apps is one of the most difficult yet crucial aspects of modern, cloud-native application architectures. If you fail to create an appropriate data architecture, your application may encounter various problems, ranging from performance-related issues to data integrity, safety, sovereignty and scalability.
Make Sure You Understand How Cloud Costs Differ from Other Business Costs
Do you know what “color” your cloud money is? An odd question, perhaps, but an important one. Because the emergence of the cloud hasn’t only changed how we leverage software applications, it has also changed the type of money it takes businesses to operate those applications. To better understand this, a brief overview of corporate finances is needed.
Do Cloud-Native Architectures Make Apps More Reliable?
Why are we moving our applications to cloud-native architectures? Companies are undergoing massive migration transformations to move monolithic, on-premises applications to cloud-native architectures. Why are they doing this? What benefits are they hoping to get from using a cloud-native architecture? While there are many advantages, one of the significant customer-facing advantages is improved availability and reliability.
Cloud-Native Complexity and its Role in Technical Debt
Technical debt is the cost of doing additional work caused by choosing an easy, limited or sub-optimal solution now rather than using a better approach that would take longer or cost more money. The term technical debt refers to the work that is necessary to do sometime in the future to rewrite poorly written or incomplete code to remove deficiencies.
Využijte cloudově nativní architekturu
Od výroby přes dopravu až po prodej – společnosti téměř ve všech odvětvích podporují své digitální transformace orientací na cloudovou infrastrukturu. Plánujete ve firmě vstup do virtuální reality?
What is the color of your money?
Consider the following story: “I went into my CEO’s office. Our CEO is a very driven, technical, hands-on CEO. All technical decisions have to go through him before the company goes forward with a plan. Today, the discussion was about the cloud. The problem? The CEO said we couldn’t move our application to the cloud because it was too expensive. His evidence?
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