Today (8 June 2021), many high profile websites were unavailable for around an hour because they were all relying on a Content Delivery Network (CDN) called Fastly that became unavailable. Some headlines said that this was a cautionary tale about the fragility of the web. But is this true? What exactly happened? And what isContinueContinue reading “Is the web so fragile that one company can take it down?”
Category Archives: engineering
Agile development – what should an architect actually do?
Software architecture has traditionally been about creating standards and designs to achieve consistency across an application or system. These choices are often assumed to be well-considered decisions made by smart people known as ‘architects’ who can see all the requirements and how everything should work. They are not challenged by an individual developer, whose role is simply to code it all up.
But in today’s agile-enlightened world, we’re aware that it’s impossible to know all the requirements. And we recognise that it’s developers themselves who are best placed to make most design decisions.
So where does this leave architects? What should they actually do?
The ESB in an API-driven world
Being able to quickly exploit new channels and devices, partnerships and third-party development through integrations is a huge competitive advantage. Building and maintaining APIs for your key systems and processes is a good way to achieve this, but it’s not straightforward. How can an ESB help you? What is an ESB? An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is aContinueContinue reading “The ESB in an API-driven world”
Andy Worsley 