The rise of low-code and no-code development platforms is reshaping how we think about building applications. These platforms are marketed for their ease of use, emphasizing that even those without coding expertise can quickly create applications. This approach to app development is increasingly popular because it democratizes the process, making it accessible to a broader audience.
One key advantage of low-code platforms is their ability to empower people with little to no programming knowledge. They can now bring new projects to life or develop fresh ideas independently. Traditionally, creating an application involved relaying ideas to a programmer or coder, who would then try to translate these concepts into a functional product. This process could be time-consuming and often result in a product that might not fully align with the original vision.
However, with low-code and no-code platforms, this dynamic has changed. Individuals can now take control of the development process, building and adjusting their applications as they see fit. This hands-on approach allows for a more accurate realization of one's vision and fosters innovation by removing technical barriers.
The simplicity of these platforms lies in their user-friendly interfaces, which often involve drag-and-drop functionalities and easy-to-navigate design elements. This means that making an app doesn't require writing lines of code. Instead, it's about visually constructing the application, piece by piece, like building a model using a kit.
As these platforms evolve, they're becoming even more intuitive, making app development not just accessible but also an enjoyable experience. This shift is significant in an increasingly digital world, where the ability to quickly develop and deploy applications can be a game-changer for businesses and individuals alike.
In summary, low-code and no-code platforms are not just a trend; they represent a fundamental shift in the digital landscape. They're opening doors for creative minds to develop their digital solutions without the bottleneck of needing advanced coding skills, thereby accelerating innovation and personal empowerment in the digital realm.
Welcome to today's podcast! I am thrilled to have a special guest, Dan Hafner, an expert in app development without traditional coding. Dan started with no coding skills but established a successful app development business. He specializes in helping coaches, content creators, and entrepreneurs transform their ideas into practical, stylish, and scalable apps.
Dan Hafner's journey from a novice to a guru in the no-code app development space is truly inspiring, and his insights are invaluable for anyone looking to enter this rapidly evolving field.
Episode # 125
What Listeners Will Learn:
In today's podcast, you'll gain insights into several key areas:
Challenges for Non-Programmers Using Low-Code Platforms
Getting Started for Beginners with app development using low-code platforms
Common Platforms for Beginners to start building the apps
Tips for Building SaaS Applications
Managed services have become a linchpin in the strategy of companies looking to harness technology for growth, efficiency, and innovation.
We delve into the transformative world of managed services and their role in business strategy.
The shift from in-house tech management to outsourcing to specialized tech companies represents a strategic reorientation for many businesses. This critical decision allows companies to focus on their core competencies, entrusting the technological complexities to expert service providers. Yet, challenges arise, especially for tech-centric businesses that prioritize maintaining control over their IT infrastructures.
We explore this delicate balance between managing in-house technology and reaping the benefits of outsourced services.
This blog post and accompanying podcast are tailored for business leaders contemplating the shift to managed services and MSPs aiming to align their services with client success. Stay tuned as we navigate the dynamic and evolving landscape of managed services and AI applications in business.
Episode # 122
What Listeners Will Learn:
In today's podcast, you'll gain insights into several key areas:
The journey started from the cloud to arriving on the multi-cloud. Nowadays, every IT department in an organization is heading towards the multi-cloud era. Let’s first get our heads clear,
As we are hearing, these two terms are sometimes interchangeable.
So multi-cloud is where an organization uses the cloud services from two or more cloud providers, such as the Oracle Cloud, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
A hybrid cloud is where the organization uses on-premises services, or “private cloud,” and a few from any of the cloud providers – public clouds, such as the Oracle Cloud, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Distributed cloud: organizations want to have their own decision and choice for the cloud resources that they want to have. It could be multiple public clouds, or even an Oracle cloud@customer, an AWS outpost, etc. The point is that services will be like a public cloud and managed, and governed by the public cloud vendor.
Now the first question that comes to mind is, why multi-cloud? A few areas to think of…
The multi-cloud strategy brings several benefits to organizations, however, implementing a multi-cloud also brings challenges, few to mention:
Every day, we are reading reports on cyberattacks and massive data breaches worldwide, resulting in substantial financial losses, disruption, and downtime. The most important thing to notice is that every day cybercriminals adopt new attacks to avoid traditional security measures and bring new approaches to achieve the target. There is a concept of having layered security, with this approach of layered security enables you to have a system for an Internet security strategy that ensures an attacker who tries to penetrate one layer of defence will be stopped by a subsequent layer. Let's get first the definition clear about layered security.
According to, Techopedia, the layered security is:
“Layered security refers to security systems that use multiple components to protect operations on multiple levels or layers. This term can also be related to the term defence-in-depth, which is based on a slightly different idea where multiple strategies and resources are used to slow, blog, delay, or hinder a threat until it can be completely neutralized”
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Guidance, NIST has defined a layered security model that has 17 control families
This session was recorded back in October 2021, and it is now being published.
An inspirational talk with the guest speaker on a topic, a SaaS product targeted to help detect and stop ransomware.
The cloud adoption framework of several cloud vendors helps cloud architects, IT professionals, and decision-makers have a set of protocols, best practices, and tools for the journey to the cloud. Each cloud vendor has divided the adoption framework into different phases, and in this session, I will walk you through the high-level stages of each cloud adoption framework.
The first session on this topic is covered in session number 99 with the title “Cloud Adoption Framework“. In this session, I will cover the Cloud Adoption framework of Oracle, Google Cloud, AWS, IBM Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.
Cloud Adoption Framework is a set of best practices, tools, and guides that most public cloud vendors publish. The idea behind these cloud adoption frameworks is to assist organizations to embrace public cloud securely, efficiently and faster. The cloud adoption framework comprises each phase of cloud acceptance, from planning to living in the cloud. It provides a very well-tested checklist and steps to choose the right path for cloud migration and the right tools to help reduce potential security, governance, and budget problems.
The good thing about the cloud adoption framework is that it covers technological, people, processes and business aspects. Therefore, it helps to align business strategies with the culture, business and technology inspirations to achieve the business benefits.
The cloud adoption framework is your guide to making the most of your cloud investment. Most organizations are adopting the cloud as per the IDG’s 2020 Cloud Computing study reveals that 92% of the organizations are somewhat in the cloud.
Organizations must adapt to the cloud with proper planning and strategy in place. However, I observe that even if they have the strategy, they have just started consuming the cloud with the migration of simple applications and don’t have any proper framework or rules to follow. Another challenge I am seeing is that organizations don’t have clear visibility to their digital estate. When you start planning about cloud migration or adoption, the first question that comes to mind is to discover or assess the current IT state, which sometimes becomes painful to complete. Sometimes, what is being observed is that relevant stakeholders don’t know where to start and the requirements or initial checklist they need to follow to migrate to the cloud.
According to Gartner, if we map to the trends impacting cloud adoption, there are four critical areas.
There is no doubt that each organization is unique with the operating model, products, services, organizational infrastructure and technology. Now adopting the cloud also depends on the business functions, services and applications are used in the organization; it will be unique to every organization. However, as we are seeing, most organizations are moving to the cloud, so we can say there is a pattern emerging. These frameworks are the results of these patterns concluded from a large number of cloud migrations journeys. Take an example of the work done by the Open Data Center Alliance Cloud Adoption Framework
Another paper was presented during the 2017 international conference on information systems and computer science with the name “Unified Cloud Computing Adoption Framework.” which describes the process in six steps framework, current situation definition, requirements definition, providers analysis, providers assessment, decision, and migration.
Another interesting and the most I like Enterprise Cloud Adoption Framework developed and shared by the MITRE and targeted areas to address are Political leadership, Organizational, Economic, Technical and Security (POETS) factors.
Cloud migration is challenging, cumbersome, and risky for traditional organizations relying on in-house custom-built systems to support achieving revenue from years on years. Today I will be discussing a wide variety of challenges organizations are facing while planning for cloud migration. These typical challenges are talks of every board room and the agenda of the meetings. However, there is no doubt that workloads migration to the cloud is helping organizations to reduce operating costs and build integrated, automated IT infrastructure.
You have a daunting task in hand to migrate to the cloud and do it securely and efficiently. If it is not fully optimized and performed correctly, your dream of digital transformation in an organization can hit roadblocks/pitfalls.
Now I will share some of the common challenges which I see the cloud migrations; these are based on observation, reading a wide array of articles, and discussion with fellow IT friends/colleagues in the extended & broader community of IT professionals. What I will be doing is to mention all the typical challenges, and then I will also try to share the perspective of how you can overcome or what could be the strategy to address them. These could be starting from which workloads to be moved to what should be the order of migration to how we will have reliability and performance of business-critical services on the cloud. How I will implement required levels of security controls and regulatory compliance to who is my cloud vendor and this cloud migration must not disrupt my existing IT services, so on…
Gartner, in an article published, has beautifully categorized into six ways of cloud migrations challenge
It is 2nd part of the session on CIS Benchmarks and controls for Cloud. The Center for Internet Security is a nonprofit organization with the mission to 'identify, develop, validate, promote, and sustain best practice solutions for cyber defense.’ Experts and IT professionals from different governments, institutes, and businesses across the globe are participating and finalizing the controls based on the consensus decision-making model.
Now let us link this to why it is essential for every one of us and every organization. I have got a chance to read the article on data breaches affecting millions of users and some of the biggest breaches in recent times published by CSOonline with the title “The 15 biggest data breaches of the 21st century.”
The CIS Controls consists of a recommended best practices to secure systems and devices, and CIS Benchmarks are rules for hardening specific operating systems, middleware, software applications, and network devices. The CIS Controls and the CIS Benchmarks are developed using a consensus-based approach by communities of experts.
CIS controls have been mapped to many other standards and regulatory frameworks, for example. the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), the ISO 27000, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and many others.
The decision must consider an organization’s requirements, evaluation criteria, and architecture principles.
In CIS 8 the number of controls is reduced to 18 from 20 in CIS 7. CIS 8 contains 153 Safeguards, which were called sub-controls in CS7 and they were 171 sub-controls
In Part 1 (Session no 95)
In Part 2 (Session no 96)
The Center for Internet Security is a nonprofit organization with the mission to 'identify, develop, validate, promote, and sustain best practice solutions for cyber defense.’ Experts and IT professionals from different governments, institutes, and businesses across the globe are participating and finalizing the controls based on the consensus decision-making model.
Now let us link this to why it is essential for every one of us and every organization. I have got a chance to read the article on data breaches affecting millions of users and some of the biggest breaches in recent times published by CSOonline with the title “The 15 biggest data breaches of the 21st century.”
The CIS Controls consists of a recommended best practices to secure systems and devices, and CIS Benchmarks are rules for hardening specific operating systems, middleware, software applications, and network devices. The CIS Controls and the CIS Benchmarks are developed using a consensus-based approach by communities of experts.
CIS controls have been mapped to many other standards and regulatory frameworks, for example. the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), the ISO 27000, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and many others.
The decision must consider an organization’s requirements, evaluation criteria, and architecture principles.
In CIS 8 the number of controls is reduced to 18 from 20 in CIS 7. CIS 8 contains 153 Safeguards, which were called sub-controls in CS7 and they were 171 sub-controls
A cloud migration strategy is a plan which any organization develops to move its systems and applications from on-premises architecture to the cloud.
Not all applications and systems benefit from running on the cloud; that’s why you must indorse the most efficient way to work on it and migrate applications. Therefore, a systematic, documented strategy is essential.
Any strategy needs to start from some barefoot, and then it builds on it. Similarly, the vital first step to creating a migration strategy is getting to know what you have? What are the collections of applications, systems, etc.? Once you have documented existing applications, you need to refer to the most common migration strategies. Gartner is calling 5R; some vendors mentioned as 6Rs or 7Rs. (These strategies are: refactor, replatform, repurchase, rehost, relocate, retain, and retire)
Your organization will fall in these options, and you need to choose based on the workload discovery/assessment.
The decision must consider an organization's requirements, evaluation criteria, and architecture principles.
Implementing cloud or migration to cloud is challenging. Organizations that have built thousands of applications over the past two to three decades require re-architecting to run efficiently, securely, and resiliently in the cloud.
Your next steps are to perform a cloud migration assessment based on your cloud strategy and business objectives. It will help identify the right migration pattern and cloud architecture required to go for the workload. Today we will talk about three vital areas
You could have different business goals to introduce digital products and services to market faster. You want to reduce your technical debt or replace on-premises infrastructure due to the end of life. All these reasons are leading you to migrate to the cloud. However, you need to decide and call which application/system is the right candidate for cloud migration. You need to have a clear understanding of the target application's only requirements and dependencies.
On the other hand, digital transformation forces you to make quick decisions, like Microsoft CEO's famous quote.
“We’ve seen two years of digital transformation in two months.” By Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
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