Cloud architect and co-founder of Gremlin Group. Spends most of his time designing AWS infrastructure and writing about cloud architecture, cost optimisation, and DevOps.

Posts by Michael

CloudBusiness

What Your SLA Actually Guarantees

99.9% uptime sounds impressive until you realise it allows nearly nine hours of downtime per year. Here is how to read an SLA, what the numbers actually mean, and whether your business needs the availability level it is paying for.

23 March 2026
Software DevelopmentBusiness

What Technical Debt Actually Costs

Your developers keep asking for time to refactor. Here is what technical debt really is, why it accumulates, and what it costs the business when it gets ignored.

22 March 2026
CloudBusiness

Disaster Recovery Is Not the Same as Backups

Having backups is not the same as being able to recover. Disaster recovery is the plan for getting the business operational again when something serious goes wrong, and most businesses do not have one.

21 March 2026
DevOpsBusiness

What Monitoring and Observability Actually Mean

Your systems are running. But do you actually know they are healthy? Monitoring and observability are the difference between finding out from a dashboard and finding out from a customer.

20 March 2026
DevOpsBusiness

Terraform, Infrastructure as Code, and CI/CD: What Your Dev Team Is Talking About

Your developers keep mentioning Terraform, infrastructure as code, and CI/CD pipelines. Here is what those things actually are, why they matter to the business, and what goes wrong without them.

19 March 2026
AIBusiness

AI Beyond the Hype: A Practical Conversation

Three of us sat down and talked about where AI is actually useful, where it is not, and what we have learned from using it every day.

18 March 2026
Software DevelopmentBusiness

How Software Actually Gets Built

One of us talks to clients, the other writes the code. Here is what the process looks like from both sides, and what matters at each stage.

12 March 2026
KubernetesBusiness

Kubernetes in Plain English

Pods, deployments, services, ingress. Here is what all of it actually means, without the jargon.

10 March 2026
SecuritySmall Business

Small Business Guide to Not Getting Hacked

You do not need a security team to protect your business. These practical basics cover 90% of the risk and cost almost nothing to put in place.

7 March 2026
CloudAWS

What Happens During a Cloud Migration

Cloud migration sounds simple in theory. Here is what it actually looks like week by week, from discovery and planning through to go-live and handover.

3 March 2026
KubernetesDocker

Docker to Kubernetes: When to Make the Jump

Running Docker Compose and wondering if you need Kubernetes? Here is an honest framework for deciding when to make the jump and when to stay where you are.

26 February 2026
AWSCloud

Why Your AWS Bill Is Too High

Most businesses are overpaying for AWS. Here is where the money goes, what you can do about it, and the quick wins that cut costs without cutting corners.

19 February 2026
Company

Why We Started Gremlin

The short version: we got tired of watching businesses get sold platforms they did not need. So we started a consultancy that gives honest advice instead.

10 January 2026