The Death of the Developer
Cloud, especially when understood as PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service)-approach changes a lot for developers, technologically and in regard to mindset. In fact, it changes so much, that we as developers need to reinvent ourselves – and actually need to bury our old incarnations. this new series will cover all of these aspects and starts by giving a high-level overview on the growing complexities and challenges, developers are confronted with.
When moving into a cloud environment, we could try to execute as we did in the past. This is embraced by lift & shift-approaches, that basically recreate environments existing in traditional datacenters in clouds.
Although this is a viable first step, it should actually be considered as the first step only, since opportunities and challenges in cloud-environments demand completely new approaches in regard to software, operations and integrations. If adjusted to these approaches, the total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) of a software will dramatically reduce while quality of service increases, and time-to-market will lower significantly.
To understand these correlations, we need to see the bigger picture first.
Digital Transformation in Medical Technology
Interview with Jörg Haist, Dentsply Sirona
With the merger of Dentsply and Sirona in 2016, the company has become the world’s largest manufacturer of dental products and technologies in the field of dentistry and dental technology. During the past 3 years, Dentsply Sirona managed the multiple transformation of merging over 16.000 employees in over 40 countries into one single company and realizing an unprecedented digitization journey centers around connecting practitioners, patients’ needs and equipment. Julia Hahn and Felix Evert dis- cussed with Jörg Haist, Vice President of Platform Management Equipment & Instruments, how Dentsply Sirona leveraged the opportunities of digital transformation in medical equipment.
Building the Clouds
– Google Cloud account with payment functionality enabled needs to be present
– A Project has to be created inside Google Cloud – our sample project is called cloud-report-project
– The Google Cloud SDK is to be installed on your local machine
If all of these steps are taken, we should have a Microservice we want to build. In this article, we use a Spring Boot based Microservice written in Java (you can find the source code at [1]), but you can of course use a language of your liking – Google Cloud Build actually does not care about a programming language, it refers to builders being supported on the platform.
How does Google Cloud Build work?
Before building anything, we should understand the basic idea behind Google Cloud Build, since it is different to the approaches AWS or Azure have. Essentially, Google Cloud Build does exactly, what the name supposes: It imports sources, builds them, creates container images, stores and – if requested to – deploys them inside of Google’s own cloud environment.
Kubernetes
The essential Ingredient for every Enterprise
Less than five years old, Kubernetes has already become the de facto container management system worldwide. In 2018 Forrester’s cloud predictions declared Kubernetes to be the victor in the “war for container orchestration dominance.” Since then its popularity has only continued to grow and CIOs across every sector now consider it tobe the gold standard for container management. In particular when it comes to supporting DevOps within their business.
This popularity is no surprise given the benefits of the technology. Kubernetes groups application containers into logical “packages” for simple, fast management and discovery. It also automates the deployment and scaling of containerised applications. Not quite a true platform in itself, Kubernetes can be combined with additional elements to provide the ease of use of Platform-as-a-Service for developers, with the adaptability of Infrastructure-as-a-Service to make it easier to move workloads across infrastructure providers. Modern enterprise use containers as an increasingly important aspect of their business. But there are still those implementing container technology without Kubernetes. CIOs should consider the following three key reasons to embrace the industry standard…
Rook more than Ceph
How to approach Cloud properly
The idea of relying onto Lift & Shift-approaches when considering the move into cloud environments is simple. And it is plain wrong and (financially) risky. And it will most likely be a disappointment in regard to scaling, availability and performance. Instead, one must think completely different of Cloud to actually gain an advantage. Let me explain and let me show you the pillars required for a successful cloud experience. Lift & Shift into a cloud environment Cloud is often understood as a way of thinking of an infrastructure: automated, operated by a cloud provider, easy to set up. While this is true and while it could definitely be the right decision to move to public or private cloud providers, it gives the wrong impression: if you move into a cloud environment only by executing Lift & Shift approaches, you might perhaps save some money on the infrastructural side and perhaps some time on the provisioning side – but you simply exchange one datacenter operator (yourself or your current one) by another, very generic, one (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Digital Ocean, etc., figure 1). In fact, quite often you do not even save money, since the overwhelming number of offerings and the reduced amount of customization can cause lacks of transparency and might even lead to higher operational costs, as the cloud environments are typically operated on an infrastructural level only, leaving management and operations in your hands. If you only execute a Lift & Shift approach, your software and middleware will not substantially benefit from what cloud actually has to offer: automated scaling, fail-over-functionalities, zero-downtime deployments, and so on. You might mimic these functionalities by bringing in more infrastructure – but at which costs? Or you would use proprietary offerings from these cloud providers. Which will tie you to them and trap you inside their ecosystem. This kind of vendor lock-in is to be considered a major risk for any enterprise and project and should therefore be avoided. So, there must be a better way… 
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Agility in the Cloud
Interview with Felix Evert
Cloud computing creates great possibilities which need to be used wisely. Agiliy is one way to use them well. I spoke with Felix Evert, Head of Enterprise and agile Consulting at the Cloudical Deutschland GmbH, about the opportunities an organization can realize taking the agile journey. continue reading
Training result: Gone with the wind?
What is the desired result of training? At least we expect attendees to learn something new they use in their job. As a consequence, the new knowledge must be transferred. this “occurs whenever the effects of prior learning” … in the learning area … “influence the performance of the later activity” … in the practical area. (Holding 1965/1991) But there often seem to be invisible hurdles on that track: less than 10 % of training is transferred into practice. this article identifies solution approaches for your training.
The 10/90 rule
Corporates spend billions of Euros training their employees every year. Some think the more expensive the training, the more significant the effect. And others feel if training at all, then it should be as cheap as possible because it does not effect anything anyway. Maybe they already know that less than 10 % of their expenditures result in transfer to the job. Or to put it another way: 90 % is flying out of the window – money as well as learnings. For any company training transfer matters a lot. And for every attendee training is essential but transfer plays a more significant role. It is the key to change. One single person. A team. A department. A whole organization. continue reading
Design Thinking
Interview with Torben Lohmüller
Dark Horse from Berlin are an innovation agency and offer workshops on New Work in their academy. Dark Horse was founded in 2009 by 30 graduates of the D-School at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam. Based on the experience of how important collaboration and working at eye level is, especially in interdisciplinary teams, they have taken new paths in collaboration from the very beginning. The experiences of the first years can be read in their book „Thank God it‘s Mon- day“, published in 2014. Dark Horse Innovation enables organizations to utilize the market potentials of the digital age. “We create user-centered products and services and transform structures, processes and minds to empower our clients to be more innovative.” Torben Lohmüller has only been a team member at Dark Horse for a relatively short time, but he is convinced of their approaches and is committed to teaching in the workshops offered. He talked to me about the changes in the world of work and New Work. 
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Digital Business
the blessing after the curse: a corporate culture of self-learning
Digital technology enables qualification anytime and anywhere. When employees decide for themselves where and when they want to learn, they are more motivated and take targeted action. But for this to happen, companies must create the conditions – and encourage and demand stamina.
Further training primarily serves to convey content. What is often neglected here is the transfer of the theory taught into everyday working life: a loss of knowledge occurs and in the end neither the employee has been able to derive an essential added value for his work from the training, nor the employer notices a long-term increase in productivity. The classic offline seminar can be as good as that, but there may also be a short-term increase in motivation. But does this have the necessary substance that all participants want?
To ensure that knowledge is not only passed on through frontal teaching, but can also be flexible and up-to-date, companies are increasingly opting for digital learning methods: Since the turn of the millennium, the eLearning industry has grown by over 900%1. The benefits of digital learning are well known. Nevertheless, many companies are sceptical about the new technologies and do not see any significant improvement in the performance of their employees, despite online seminars. What is missing is one thing above all else: awareness of the actual training objective.
Interview with Morganne Graves / Hybrid Thinking Academy
Tell us about the Hybrid Thinking Academy. The Hybrid Thinking Academy is a project which we’ve had “incubating” in our minds for a long time as a concept. We all come from different academic disciplines but we all work in the field of innovation and agile transformation. The first reason why we wanted to start the Hybrid Thinking Academy is because that we saw the way people are taught innovation tools and methods is not very empowering. By that I mean that people hire “copy paste” consultants. This is someone who comes in, introduces a standard tool (such as a “persona”), hands over a template and then leaves. What we often see is that when you return to the company many months later, people are still using exactly the same templates, even if they don’t make sense. Often they are not adapted to new projects, contexts or data sets. 
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The new way of life
New Work, the future of work and the new culture of the people
The world of work has been experiencing fundamental and structural change for some years now. New Work is the epitome of this transformation. But the triggers for this development are manifold. Globalization and demographic change, digitization and connectivity are among the causes for the change in the world of work. The question of how we deal with the New Work megatrend is becoming increasingly urgent.
A glance at the beginning of New Work
New Work is a collective term used to describe various, mostly alternative working models and forms. At the same time, however, the term also marks developments such as the transition to a knowledge society. The common denominator is the New Work concept of Frithjof Bergmann who developed the theoretical concept of the new work in the mid-seventies. 
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Digitalization, Disruption and New Work
Stop looking for the “silver bullet” to solve all your problems, because there isn’t one
In order to become more resilient to a rapidly-changing world and market pressures, companies often seek one simple “silver bullet” solution to their problems. But this simple solution doesn’t exist. this article explains the value-driven Hybrid thinking approach. Hybrid thinking proposes a radical new way to drive change, and focuses on empowering people in companies to turn challenges into opportunities The business of the future needs Hybrid Thinkers: interdisciplinary, self-organized, collaborative, creative and courageous people, who can combine different tools and fields of expertise. Noun: silver bullet (Fig. 1): 1. A bullet made of silver, supposedly the only weapon that could kill a werewolf. 2. A simple and seemingly magical solution to a complicated problem. I’ve heard the question so many times before: “How can we become an agile company?” People ask me because in their eyes, I am an expert. But then they don’t really want to hear my answer because what I say seems too complicated. Or rather, I can’t give a single straightforward answer. So, I’ll say it now: there is no single straightforward answer to the question of “how to be prepared for the future”. And the era of relying solely on expert knowledge to answer all our problems will soon be over. 
Project Delivery –
Mind– und Skill-Set für Digital Leadership
Der Prozess der digitalen Transformation beschäftigt derzeit den Industriestandort Deutschland; zahlreiche Programm- und Projektleiterinnenarbeiten intensiv daran, einzelne Produkte oder Anwendungen in neuen, digitalen Kontexten zu etablieren. Die Allgegenwärtigkeit des Begriffs wirkt auf viele Betrachter ermüdend. Letztlich ist sie aber ein Beleg für die Vielschichtigkeit von technischen, wirtschaftlichenundorganisatorischen Veränderungsprozessen, die Projektleiter und Mitarbeiterinnen als digitale Transformation erleben.
Um diese Komplexität wirksam zu gestalten, brauchen Projektleiter ein adäquates Skill-Set, das sie befähigt, den Transformationsprozess nicht nur technisch zu organisieren, sondern auch die Mitarbeiter dafür zu gewinnen. Anhand des Cloud Computing werden in diesem Beitrag sowohl das der Technologie innewohnende Veränderungspotenzial skizziert, alsauch die erforderlichen Kompetenzbereiche, die sich daraus für Projektleiterinnen ergeben.
Stay ahead of the pack
and capture the full potential of your cloud business
In today’s It ecosystem, the cloud has become synonymous with flexibility and efficiency. Though, all that glitters is not gold since applications with fixed usage patterns often continue to be deployed on-premises. This leads to hybrid cloud environments creating various data management challenges. This article describes available solutions to tackle risks such as scattered data silos, vendor lockins & lack of control scenarios. The famous quote of Henry Ford “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” describes pretty accurately what happens once you stop challenging current situations to improve them for the future: you become rigid and restricted in your think- ing with the result of being unable to adapt to new situations. In today’s business environment, data is considered as the base to help organizations succeed in their digital transformation by deriving valuable information leading eventually to a competitive advantage. The value of data has also been recognised by the Economist in May 2017, stating that data has replaced oil as the world’s most valu- able resource. Why is that? The use of smartphones and the internet have made data abundant, ubiquitous, and far more valuable since nowadays almost any activity cre- ates a digital trace no matter if you are just taking a picture, having a phone call or browsing through the internet. Also, with the development of new devices, sensors, and emering technologies, there is no doubt, that the amount of data is further growing. According to the IBM Marketing Cloud report, “10 Key Marketing Trends For 2017,” 90 % of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years from which the majority is unstructured. To become an understanding of this, figure 1 illustrates the number of transactions executed every 60 seconds for a variety of data related products within the ecosystem of the internet. Estimates suggest that by 2020 about 1.7 MB of new data will be created every second for every human on the planet leading to 44 zettabytes of data (or 44 trillion giga- bytes). The exploding volumes of data changes the nature of competition in the corporate world. If an organization is able to collect and process data properly, the product scope can be improved based on specific customer needs which attracts more customers, generating even more data and so on. The value of data can also be illustrated within the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) Pyramid referring back to the initial quote (figure 2). Typically, information is defined in terms of data, knowledge in terms of information, and wisdom in terms of knowledge hence. Data is considered as the initial base to gain wisdom. As a result, the key to success in the digital era is to maximize the value of data. That might mean improving the cus- tomer experience, making information more accessible to stakeholders, or identifying opportunities that lead to new markets and new customers. 
Interview mit Kim-Norman Sahm über Ceph
SAAS – Selling clouds
The current tendency is that customers want services and products faster, more secure, rigid, lighter, and of course, simple to run and maintain. One of the platforms that holds all those requirements is the digital one. And as we know, in order to start a digital business, you have to spend time with your product and IT team, making sure everybody understands the product that you are selling and the methodologies to follow. Also, you have to have money to build it and as we know, it is not a cheap initiative. Nowadays, It is incredibly hard to start or launch a digital business following that path given the current speed of innovation in the market. Without forgetting the maintenance part, licensing and upgrade. From there, it came a solution to all those problems: cloud computer services and Saas.
What is Cloud Computer Services?
C.C.S is the mixed of three different models of cloud computing that put all together creating what we know by the “clouds”. It enables businesses to use software located in the vendor´s cloud instead of having their own infrastructure and the mantaninance from it.
Benefits of Kubernetes
Kubernetes is a very used word in a software development world and therefore, I decided to write an article about it, clarifying all the doubts. Kubernetes is an open source orchestrator for deploying and managing microservices or containerized applications at scale. Kubernetes was originally developed by Google, based on their learnings from Borg and Omega Projects, which Google uses to deploy and scale their internal applications (e.g: GMail, YouTube etc).
The main aim of Kubernetes is to simplify the work of technical teams, by automating many processes of applications and services deployment that before were carried out manually. Kubernetes is portable in nature, meaning it can run on various public or private cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, OpenStack, or Apache Mesos. Kubernetes handles the work of scheduling containers onto a compute cluster and manages the workloads to ensure they run as the user intended.
