[ Ai and llms ] 6 min read
The First Rule of The Foundry
I asked an AI to tidy up my blog repo and it accidentally organized itself into a nine-member development team. I'm releasing that team, free, on GitHub.
We help executive teams turn technology into a strategic advantage–driving growth, efficiency, and long-term scalability.
Latest posts
All posts →[ Infrastructure ] 21 min read
It's a Series of Buildings
Data centers are eighty years old and already 99% full. We need considerably more of them, and we're making a hash of deciding where they go.
[ Tech field day ] 6 min read
Commvault at TFDx RSAC 2026: Clean Recovery Is a Different Problem Than Fast Recovery
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth — Mike Tyson One organization Chris Bevil worked with had a genuinely good disaster recovery program. Tabletop exercises, tested runbooks, the whole thing. When …
[ Tech field day ] 7 min read
Object First at TFDx RSAC 2026: If You Can Turn It Off, It Wasn't Immutable
“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” — Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking-Glass (1871) I’ve lost count of how many storage conversations I’ve sat through where immutability …
[ Tech field day ] 6 min read
Veeam at TFDx RSAC 2026: Three Generations of Resilience (And You Need to Prepare for All of Them)
Rick Vanover, CTO of Veeam, opened his segment at Tech Field Day Extra RSAC 2026 with a statement that was either refreshingly honest or a very good bit of self-aware marketing: “Our audience has a very highly calibrated …
What we do
Strategic Technology Advisory
Independent guidance for CIOs, CTOs, and IT leaders on turning AI, automation, and infrastructure modernization into a strategy the business can actually execute.
Analyst Services
Landscape assessments, vendor evaluations, and market briefings, written for practitioners rather than procurement committees and without the analyst-firm retainer.
Custom Writing
Custom writing projects, from white papers to technical guides, by a long-time member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors with a deep portfolio of published and private work.
From the archive
Browse the archive →[ Networking ] 3 min read
Home CCIE Study Lab
So, a lot of people who are working towards their CCIE certifications end up building home labs for studying. The reasons are many and varied, but mine boiled down to two primary ones: (1) My study hours don’t always …
[ Leadership and career ] 3 min read
Things I Hate, Episode 1
Things I Hate, Episode 1 Brought to you by the Impediment-to-Sales Sales department It was not long ago that I was sitting across a conference room table from our [insert large software vendor of choice here] expecting …
[ Networking ] 5 min read
Software Defined, Cisco, and DevNet
It has been said that software is eating the world. In the world of networking, however, the food has been slow to digest. Network engineers can be a stodgy bunch, and change is not only slow to come but fast to be …
[ Networking ] 5 min read
Glue Networks Changes the Automation Game
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Clare Boothe Luce According to a recently published survey by Cisco Systems, Inc., IT organizations spend 67% of their budgets on operational expense, and consume 80% of their …