Articles by 'Ken Phelan'

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Uncategorized

As many of us return to work and the world feels like it’s returning to normal, it can be easy to forget that the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t completely behind us. Cases are surging in parts of the country, and for a growing number of people, their initial case of COVID was just the beginning of an ongoing ordeal known as long COVID, post-COVID, or long-haul COVID. This terrible affliction has stricken one of the Gotham family and we are rallying around Jason. Jason is Fara Smith’s twin broth... read more.

• July 26, 2021

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Security

In response to a growing number of serious cyber threats and incidents, President Biden has issued an Executive Order (EO) regarding improving the nation’s cybersecurity. I don’t personally read a lot of EOs, but I read this one, and if you’re part of the cyber industry, you probably should too. Given that you probably won’t, I’ll do some summarizing for you. There’s stuff about cooperation and standards, but I’d like to draw your attention to the EO’s requir... read more.

• May 24, 2021

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Infrastructure, Security, Staffing, Support

In the early days of the COVID-19 crisis we saw many very large organizations quickly sending employees to work from home. At Gotham we weren’t surprised. We had helped many of these organizations set up the technologies behind this capability. It cost them nothing in productivity to send their employees home. If your organization found itself challenged in that effort, this article is for you. In the midst of this storm, it’s hard to guess what the “new normal” might look like on t... read more.

• April 02, 2020

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Uncategorized

Game theorists like to look at game play as a way of modeling human behavior. One of their favorite games is called the prisoner’s dilemma. You’ve probably heard of it. In summary, it goes like this: You and a partner commit a crime. You’re not caught in the act, but the police bring you both downtown for questioning. The police put you in separate rooms and question you. At this point, the following outcomes are possible: Option 1 - You both keep quiet and each spend one year in jail... read more.

• February 12, 2020

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Infrastructure

Subscription-based pricing is all the rage and I think there are some gaps regarding expectations all around. Let’s start with the math and we’ll end on philosophy. Traditionally, you might buy a piece of software for say, $100K. You would generally pay about 20% a year in maintenance, $20K. If you were amortizing this expense over five years this would be like a $40K a year budget impact ($20K amortization plus $20K maintenance). Easy enough, if the subscription price of this software is less... read more.

• June 20, 2019

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Security

I’m fresh back from RSA this week, which means that in the last 10 days I’ve seen approximately one billion new cyber security applications. Many of them make claims regarding AI and its value to their platform. It’s my job to make some judgement about the reality of that claim. Here’s what’s going on in the back of my head when someone tells me about their great AI. First of all, when people talk about AI in this context, what they generally mean is machine learning. Machine... read more.

• March 20, 2019

By Ken Phelan, Posted in AppDev, Infrastructure, Security, Storage, Virtualization

Recently back from AWS:ReInvent, I’m still processing all the data. AWS is Amazon’s Web Services. Amazon is currently hosting 3 times more cloud services than their closest competitor (Azure), making them the 800 pound gorilla of cloud computing. AWS:ReInvent is the trade event they recently held in Las Vegas. Writing a blog helps me process, so here’s my blog about the show. Thanks for helping me process. First of all, ReInvent is huge. Content was being delivered in three different hote... read more.

• December 05, 2017

By Ken Phelan, Posted in

Come join the murderCome fly with blackWe’ll give you freedomFrom the human track “Come Join the Murder”, The Forest Rangers & The White Buffalo My youngest daughter is going to college next year and is interested in engineering. We’re doing college visits so she can check out possible schools and as an engineer myself this leads to a certain amount of introspection. Engineers have many options in terms of the type of companies they work for and the type of work they do. I&rsqu... read more.

• October 30, 2017

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

Commercial software developers work hard to create a product that offers significant value to their customers. They know that the value they deliver in terms of hard savings, increased efficiencies, or lower risk will ultimately drive the price of their software. Optimally, a licensing scheme should effectively capture some portion of the customer value as an equitable payment for that value delivered. I think that is only fair. If we follow this to its natural conclusion, we might conclude that the best l... read more.

• September 15, 2017

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Infrastructure, Security, Virtualization

2016 was a tough year for celebrities and not an altogether great year for IT. I’m going to break from my normal annual predictions format and cover two things as we start 2017. I’m going to talk about lessons we need to learn from 2016 and things we should look forward to in 2017. 2016’s Tough Love Weak IT = Weak Cyber. For a number of years, IT budgets have been shrinking on the whole while cyber budgets increase. This is not working. Cyber is too dependent on solid IT operations to be... read more.

• January 05, 2017