Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

The AI Code Explosion: Why Your Mocking Strategy is Breaking Down

The rise of AI-assisted coding has transformed how software is built. With tools generating entire features in seconds, the bottleneck is no longer writing code—it’s verifying it. Because AI can generate boilerplate and handle API integrations instantly, more service changes are being pushed into authentication logic, API calls, and configurations. Teams desperately need a way to verify these changes before merging, especially when the code touches external dependencies.

Escaping the Diderot effect: How to avoid tech-driven spending

Top Tips is a weekly column where we explore emerging trends in technology and share practical ways to stay ahead. This week, we're looking at how technology can nudge us into unnecessary spending—and how to avoid it. Have you ever bought one thing and then felt the need to buy several more to match it? If so, you've experienced what is known as the Diderot Effect. The term comes from the life of Denis Diderot, a famous French philosopher who spent much of his wealth in a matter of months.

ADO.NET SQL Connection Providers for SQL Server Compared

Selecting an ADO.NET provider may seem like a simple, one-time decision, but it can affect performance, compatibility, and long-term maintainability for years. The provider sits between your application and SQL Server and affects everything from connection management and authentication to support for new database features. Also, today, SQL Server 2025 delivers new cloud-optimized features and modern security and System.Data.SqlClient has become legacy software.
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How APM fits into the modern observability stack

Most engineering teams don't have a data problem. They have an interpretation problem. Prometheus is running, logs are shipping to the aggregator, dashboards are green-and then a latency spike hits and the root cause takes 45 minutes to isolate. The data was there but the answer wasn't. That gap is where application performance monitoring (APM) operates. This article explores what APM adds to a modern observability stack, why relying on standalone tools leaves critical blind spots, and how teams can unify infrastructure data with application context for a complete operational picture.

How to Build a Cost-Effective Log Retention Strategy

Nearly every home has that drawer or doom corner where you store all those items that you don’t need every day but that you still want to keep for those “just in case moments.” If you’re a document connoisseur, you may have financial documents that go back years because an accountant once warned you that an IRS audit would require seven years of back documentation. In short, you have a lot of documents that you may or may not need taking up a lot of room in your home.

Should platform, SRE, and security merge into one function?

Platform, SRE, and security are three distinct functions in modern engineering orgs, each shaped by a different problem. SRE was the operations function's answer to scale: how to keep systems reliable when the systems get big. Platform answered a different problem: how to let developers ship without becoming infrastructure experts. Security drew the line on what could safely reach production.