Director of Market Insights, GitHub

Within my current role I research the broader technology landscape, with a focus on immediate competitors combined with macro trends. My current research interests are primarily on the strategy and direction of the technology industry, and include:

• AI Coding Assistants (eg GitHub Copilot)
• Risk and Technology (eg macro trends around GenAI, board and CIO/CISO/CTO concerns, policy and legislation)
• DevOps platforms and associated areas (eg cloud native, platform engineering, ci/cd)
• Developer focused security tooling and trends (eg SCA, SAST, DAST, CNNAP, ASPM)
• Macro cloud trends (eg cloud native, cloud providers, surrounding ecosystem)

This work is used to inform stakeholders across GitHub.

My background is as an industry analyst (Gartner, RedMonk), and various roles across management, strategy and engineering before becoming an analyst.

These posts are in all in a personal capacity.

• How Do Software Vendors Communicate Big Releases?
• On IBM acquiring HashiCorp
• The HashiCorp BSL Move
• On Logos, References, Companies and Analysts

My historic research focus has been on modern application architectures (Kubernetes, Serverless, PaaS, Machine Learning in Production Applications, Low Code, application modernization), how to get to them, what are the organizational and process aspects, implementation patterns and so forth.

• Previously an analyst at Gartner (formal bio) covering all things Cloud Native, RedMonk, and a whole host of roles over the years (Engineering Director, Strategy, Program Management, Consultant) at Sun Microsystems, Oracle and various startups.

My historic Gartner publications are below. All of these are behind a paywall, but you can see a TOC for most documents.

• How to Select the Right Programming Languages With Your Software Engineering Teams
• Critical Capabilities for Full Life Cycle API Management (primary author, one of a cast of many)
• How Should We Manage The Recent Licensing Changes to Docker Desktop
• Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management 2021 (one of a cast of many)
• How Do I Manage Microsoft Silverlight's End of Support
• What Essential Patterns Should Microservices Follow for Successful Use in Production? (no TOC available)
• Vendor Rating: VMware (one of a cast of many)
• Leading Teams to Success With Microservices Architecture (co-author)
• Open-Source Software Governance Policy Template (co-author)
• How Do I Manage Migration From Internet Explorer 11? (no TOC available)
• Solution Scorecard for Amazon Web Services Cloud Application Platform Services (no TOC, AWS scores 91%)
• Solution Scorecard for Microsoft Azure Cloud Application Platform Services (no TOC, Azure scores 74%)
• Solution Scorecard for Google Cloud Platform Cloud Application Platform Services (no TOC, GCP scores 59%)
• There is a brief explanation of these reports on linkedin
• Solution Criteria For Cloud Application Platforms - This document is a set of 114 detailed criteria for evaluating cloud providers support for developing applications.
• How to Design Your Web Browser Strategy (no TOC available)
• Architecting Short-Term Tactical Business Applications (no TOC available)
• Solution Comparison for Low-Code Application Platforms (no TOC available)
• Assessing WebAssembly for Use in Modern Application Design
• Assessing Service Mesh for Use in Microservices Architectures
• Guidance Framework for Modernizing .NET Applications
• How to Build Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Into Production Applications
• How to Build Cloud-Native Applications Using Serverless

I am also the primary or co-author of in depth assesmesments of AWS, Google and Azure for application development (think Kubernetes, Serverless, PaaS etc).

You can find my old RedMonk work here. There are a few posts I call out:

• Strategic Technology: Outsourcing, Re-Shoring, Changing Cultures and Digital Literacy (2016)
• On the Myth of the 10X Engineer and the Reality of the Distinguished Engineer (2016)
• The Commodity Container Story (2017)
• Strategic Technology: Cloud Native Data Science (2017)
• The Welcome Return of Research Papers to Software Craft (2016)
• Security, Accountability and Compliance as Code (2015)

You can find me on twitter.