GitOps: The Definitive Guide to Modern Cloud Automation In the world of cloud-native development, GitOps has become the new gold standard for managing infrastructure and application delivery. It unifies Git, CI/CD, and automation into a single, coherent operating model — one that’s declarative, auditable, and self-healing. This article will take you from first principles to practical implementation, covering everything you need to know about GitOps — from YAML files and GitHub Actions to how it replaces traditional CI/CD tools like Jenkins. ...

Understanding Redis: The In-Memory Data Platform for Modern Apps By a developer / solution architect perspective 1. Introduction In today’s world of high-scale web applications, low-latency microservices and real-time analytics, the demands on data stores are steadily increasing. Traditional relational databases often struggle when you need ultra-fast lookups, high throughput and flexible data structures. This is where systems like Redis shine. Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value store that goes beyond simple caching: it offers rich data structures, persistence options, clustering, replication, and a wide variety of use-cases that make it a very attractive component for building modern architectures. According to various sources: ...

The Evolution of Modern Technology: From the Server Room to the Age of Intelligence Technology doesn’t just evolve — it reshapes how we think, build, and live. In just a few decades, we’ve moved from clunky mainframes and static web pages to cloud-native microservices and generative AI systems capable of reasoning, coding, and conversation. This article takes a journey through the key technological milestones that shaped the modern IT landscape — from the birth of the Internet to the era of Artificial Intelligence — and explores how each revolution laid the foundation for the next. ...

The Evolution of Modern Technology: From the Server Room to the Age of Intelligence Technology doesn’t just evolve — it reshapes how we think, build, and live. In just a few decades, we’ve moved from clunky mainframes and static web pages to cloud-native microservices and generative AI systems capable of reasoning, coding, and conversation. This article takes a journey through the key technological milestones that shaped the modern IT landscape — from the birth of the Internet to the era of Artificial Intelligence — and explores how each revolution laid the foundation for the next. ...

Understanding DataStore Solutions: Choosing the Right Database for the Right Context Data is the backbone of modern IT systems. Whether we’re building transactional systems, analytics platforms, or AI pipelines, how we store, retrieve, and manage data determines scalability, performance, and reliability. However, not all data is equal — and neither are databases. Over the past 40 years, the industry has evolved from relational databases (RDBMS) to a vast ecosystem of specialised solutions: key-value stores, column-family systems, document databases, graph stores, and time-series databases. ...

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Its Role in Modern AI Systems Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly moved from research labs to enterprise production environments. Large Language Models (LLMs) — the engines behind chatbots, assistants, and generative systems — are now used to automate knowledge work, improve productivity, and enhance decision-making. However, there’s a persistent architectural problem: how do we connect models safely, efficiently, and consistently to real-world systems, tools, and data? ...

The Core Pillars of IT in a Large Enterprise In today’s digital-first world, technology is the backbone of every large organisation. But running enterprise IT isn’t just about keeping systems online — it’s about managing complexity, ensuring resilience, and aligning technology with business strategy. To succeed, an enterprise needs to focus on several key areas that collectively form the foundation of a robust IT ecosystem. These are the six core pillars of IT in a large enterprise. ...

CORS on webMethods API Gateway: How to configure, test, and troubleshoot CORS is one of those things that’s invisible when it’s right and maddening when it’s wrong. If you’re exposing APIs through IBM’s webMethods API Gateway and serving a browser-based frontend, this guide will show you how to set up CORS correctly, verify it with curl, and fix common issues fast. TL;DR Enable the CORS policy on your API (or as a Global Policy) in API Gateway. Explicitly allow the frontend Origin, HTTP methods, and custom headers your app uses. Let the gateway handle preflight (OPTIONS) requests and don’t require authentication for them. Test with curl using -H “Origin: …” and use -X OPTIONS for preflight checks. Watch out for credentials + “*” mismatch, missing allowed headers, or upstream proxies blocking OPTIONS. What CORS is (and isn’t) What it is: A browser-enforced security model that restricts cross-origin HTTP calls made by frontend code (e.g., https://app.example.com calling https://api.example.com). What it isn’t: A server-to-server restriction. curl, Postman, and backend services aren’t blocked by CORS. Simple vs preflight: Simple requests: GET/HEAD/POST with limited headers may not trigger a preflight. Preflight: For other methods (PUT/PATCH/DELETE), custom headers (Authorization, X-API-Key, etc.), or content types, the browser sends an OPTIONS request first to check what’s allowed. Key headers ...

Identity and Federation: A Practical Guide for Developers Identity and federation sit at the heart of modern authentication and Single Sign-On (SSO). Whether you’re integrating with an enterprise IdP, adding social login, or securing APIs, understanding how identities flow across systems will save you time and prevent subtle security bugs. This article gives you a clear mental model, practical implementation tips, and code examples you can adapt today. Why identity and federation matter Users want one login across apps (SSO). Organizations need central policy, governance, and audit. Developers want to avoid storing passwords and reinventing auth. Security depends on well-understood trust boundaries and token handling. Identity federation lets one domain (the Identity Provider, or IdP) authenticate a user, then assert that identity to another domain (the Service Provider/Relying Party) using standard protocols and signed tokens. ...

Kafka Protocol, AsyncAPI, and Event‑Driven Architecture: A Practical Guide If you’re building reactive, loosely-coupled systems, you’ll encounter three recurring themes: event-driven architecture (EDA), Apache Kafka, and AsyncAPI. This article ties them together. We’ll start with EDA fundamentals, peek under Kafka’s hood (protocol, delivery semantics, consumer groups), and show how AsyncAPI helps you design and govern your event contracts—backed by code examples you can run. Why Event‑Driven Architecture? Event-driven architecture is an approach where services communicate by publishing and consuming events (facts about things that happened), instead of making synchronous calls. ...