Skip to main content

Architecture is the Keystone [Data Architecture 1/3]

By

We went through a very painful process, we lost time, the most expense resource on the planet.  We also lost some of our people, yet another extremely painful process.

But let me back-up a bit in the story.

When we started iSkoot there were three core tech challenges, creating a virtual audio driver, transporting the media in realtime to an IP-PBX and scaling the solution.  One of these things is not like the other.

Scaling the solution demanded that we pay attention to the architecture of the first two core-tech issues.  Architecture was the keystone to startups back then.  And when we said architecture we meant System & Software Architecture.

Today there has been a significant shift in the hi-tech world, systems and software have been replaced by data as the core value of a company and the keystone, that internally magic thing that binds all the elements into a whole.

At Blue dot we lived this shift.  Blue dot started in the age of System Architecture.  We utilized micro-services, dockers, pipelines, multiple types of databases and of course talented people.  Blue dot (then known as VATBox) successfully constructed a solution for VAT reclaim, first in class and as old school can be.  Because as we built our solution the world shifted.

We recognized that our data was the core asset.  So we started again, trying to retain as much as possible but in essence re-designing and rebuilding.  

This was a painful process, we lost time, the most expense resource on the planet.  We also lost some of our people, yet another extremely painful process.

So how can we minimize the pain?

How long does it take you to add a new feature?  Ok, now what does that look like over the life of a product or platform?  

Do you find that as the product evolves it is taking more and more time to add features?  Is it linear?  Each feature costs about the same as the previous?  

Or maybe just maybe you have a system where it is logarithmic, each feature is easier than the previous!

That is where you want to be, building value in such a way as to exponentially increase the total value of the company, runaway from the competition, each feature/element of the company should be progressively easier for you than the competition.

Is that your company?

Let me tell you why.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

V) How do we know we made a reasonable judgement?

By
V) How do we know we made a reasonable judgement? I was by my brother in NY, on my way to the airport, and I spotted a book by Umberto Eco on information and open systems.  I borrowed the book (and still have it -- sorry Jacob),  just on the whim that I would enjoy more Eco in my life.  I discovered much more, the book is Eco's earlier writing, semiotics mixed with art and science, and has had a profound affect on me.  Eco makes the argument that Shannon's description of information, a measure of the communicability of a message, provides for a measure of art. If it helps think about 'On Interpretation' by Susan Sontag, experience art without interpreting it.  There is no message not even one that we the viewer creates.   There is no meaning to be had, just an experience.  The flip side of this argument is that when there is interpretation there is meaning.  This view, proposed by Semiotics, states that when two closed systems meet and are ...
Post a Comment
Read more

0.0 Introduction to advanced concepts in AI and Machine Learning

By
Introduction to advanced concepts in AI and Machine Learning I created a set of short videos and blog posts to introduce some advanced ideas in AI and Machine Learning.  It is easier for me to think about them as I met them, chronologically in my life, but I may revisit the ideas later from a different perspective. I also noticed that one of things I am doing is utilising slightly off-centre tools to describe an idea.  So for example, I employ Kohonen Feature Maps to describe embeddings.  I think I gain a couple of things this way, first it is a different perspective than most people are used to.  In addition, well you will see :-) I recommend first opening the blog entry (as per the links below), then concurrently watching the linked video. Hope you enjoy these as much as I did putting them together, David Here are links: https://data-information-meaning.blogspot.com/2020/12/memorization-learning-and-classification.html https://data-information-meaning.blogspot.com/...
Post a Comment
Read more

III) Metrics

By
III) Metrics One of these things is not like the other -- but two of these things are distant from a third. I grew up with Brisk Torah, more specifically my father was a Talmid of Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik and dialectic thinking was part and parcel of our discussions.  Two things, two dinim, the rhythm in the flow between two things.  Dialectics not dichotomies.  The idea espoused by the Rambam in his description of Love and Awe, mutually exclusive, we travel between them. Why create duality?  Dialectics or dichotomies provide a powerful tool, but what is it that tool? What is the challenge? I think the Rabbinic language might be נתת דברך לשיעורים, 'your words are given to degrees', the idea being that without clear definitions we are left with vague language, something is more than something else, ok, but how much more? This I think is the reasoning for the first of the twenty one questions I was taught by my father's mother, 'is it bigger than a breadbox?',...
Post a Comment
Read more