Author Archives : Ian

Introduction to Machine Learning Poster


I have been lucky enough to sit in on a few Machine Learning sessions recently and have built out the poster below which hopefully will provide others with a simple cheat sheet around this increasingly popular area.  The PDF is available at https://mythoughtlabpublic.blob.core.windows.net/public/ML%20Poster.pdf

Read More »

My Reading List


So one of the best ways I find not just to increase my knowledge but to round out my skill set is still the humble book, sadly many of them these days are on my trusty Kindle as space is limited but the odd one does make its way to my physical bookshelf too! Textbooks in particular I really prefer…

Read More »

Future Gazing


It is that time of year again when we naturally start looking ahead to the future, and as this has turned out to be one of my larger posts I thought I’d give you a summary – saves you reading the other 1200 odd words if you think I am talking rubbish 🙂 Hybrid cloud is finally starting to come…

Read More »

What’s the fuss about Containers?


One thing Docker (valued at $1 billion in April 2015 based on funding) has certainly done is generated a lot of excitement around containers – Microsoft is now developing them for the next Windows Server release – and I felt it might be interesting to start exploring them in some more detail. My efforts proved there is a wealth of…

Read More »

Is Cloud Infrastructure’s Uber?


The world of technology, as I have oft mentioned, is cool because it is constantly changing. Great technology for me challenges the status quo rather than enforces current behaviours. In the IT world Cloud is an example of a great technology which is driving whole new ecosystems and rocking the foundations of Infrastructure as we know it. I have been…

Read More »

Agile & Infra it can be done!


Over the last year or so I have had the privilege (that’s what I keep telling myself!) of being the architect on a project within Infrastructure that has required some application development. As is the fashion it has been operated as an Agile project. I remember going out to dinner 6 months in with peers from a range of organisations…

Read More »

A process is for life, not just an audit…


BAU – a wonderfully innocuous 3 letters and such a reassuring acronym “Business as Usual”. “How risky is this change?” – “BAU”; “How complex is it to add capacity” – “BAU”. BAU lies at the heart of our daily working lives, yet how much time do we afford to reviewing those BAU processes? Are we sure that BAU tasks are…

Read More »

Not all feedback cycles are good…


Proponents of DevOps talk of how they are breaking down the walls between development and operations, often they will talk about feedback loops – especially if they are Agile advocates. Feedback loops – we used to call it “talking” and as companies get larger and become Enterprises talking becomes harder as silos form. Restarting the conversation between the silos is…

Read More »

Is it me…..


…or do I need a new Blog title? One to think on perhaps!. Anyway, as I have noted before it is a fascinating time to be IT as cloud related technologies drive further and further into traditional IT. There have been another couple of stories over the last few weeks of established Enterprises embracing and moving to the public cloud…

Read More »

Is it me….


…or is now a really cool time to be working in Infrastructure? We have “Cloud”, “SDN, “NFV”, OpenStack (and its myriad of components) and Docker to name a few of the plethora of generally meaningless words and acronyms. You know when a technology is really hot – it’s when it’s the random item shoehorned into practically every vendor presentation (or…

Read More »