10 posts tagged with "Business"

How Economic Growth Reshaped the Gender Equality Conversation

The Great Misdirection​

Have we been sold a false bill of goods when it comes to gender equality in the workplace? When women fought to enter the workforce en masse in the latter half of the 20th century, the vision wasn't simply to double household working hours. Yet somewhere along the way, what was once revolutionary became a requirement—the 40-hour workweek per household transformed into 80 hours just to maintain the same standard of living our parents achieved.

I found an interesting little field hidden in plain sight in Microsoft documentation. A clever chap recently said this to me: 'if you can figure out what problem the engineers were trying to solve then it makes it easier to understand why the product works the way it does'.

A Matter of Western Digital Privilege​

In a recent conversation about IPv6 adoption at a Western technology company, a familiar scene played out. Engineers and architects discussed IPv6 implementation as an optional future consideration rather than an immediate necessity. 'We don't really need it yet', was the prevailing sentiment. This perspective, common among Western organisations, reveals a profound blindspot born of privilege – one that unconsciously perpetuates digital inequality on a global scale.

Breaking the Technical Hierarchy Trap​

In the tech industry, there's an unspoken assumption that technical teams should be led by those with the deepest technical expertise. This conventional wisdom, while seemingly logical, may actually be holding organisations back from achieving their full potential. The practice of promoting technical experts into management positions creates a complex web of challenges that ripple throughout organisations, affecting everything from innovation to career development.

Note for US readers: CV, or Curriculum Vitae, is the standard term in the UK and many other countries for what Americans call a resume. While traditionally a CV might be longer and more detailed than a resume, the terms are often used interchangeably in today's international job market.

My Perspective​

Over two decades of experience implementing network and cloud infrastructure across financial services, retail, healthcare, and public sector organisations has shown me a clear pattern: the success of cloud initiatives correlates strongly with an organisation's readiness for cloud adoption. Yet surprisingly few organisations conduct thorough readiness assessments before embarking on their cloud journey.

Lessons from Personal Tech and Enterprise IT​

Notifications and alerts are ubiquitous in our always-on, hyper-connected world. But as I’ve learnt from personal experience and my work in enterprise IT, more alerts don’t necessarily mean better outcomes. In fact, over-alerting can be downright counterproductive.

Rethinking Infrastructure Support

In the world of IT operations, there’s a metric that network teams know all too well: Mean Time to Innocence (MTTI). It’s the average time it takes for a network team to prove they’re not responsible for an outage or performance issue. While this might sound amusing, it points to a deeper problem in how we structure and organise our infrastructure teams.

The Business Case Challenge

Traditional justifications for SD-WAN adoption have often focused on cost savings versus MPLS or enhanced network features. However, these arguments frequently fall short under scrutiny. The fundamental challenges that limited VPN adoption in enterprise networks – including performance consistency, reliability, and operational complexity – remain relevant despite improvements in internet infrastructure.

The Case for Application-Level Controls

Introduction​

The approach to securing outbound internet traffic often reflects an organisation’s security maturity more than its technical requirements. System-to-system communication, such as API calls to cloud services, presents fundamentally different challenges compared to user browsing. Understanding these differences is crucial for implementing effective security controls without unnecessary complexity or risk.