10 years ago, the buzzword and digitalisation project “Industry 4.0” first emerged with nothing less in mind than the intention of unleashing a fourth industrial revolution.1 Revolution as a term and metaphor is, of course, nonsense. Anyone with the slightest sense in the matter knows that digitalisation is rather like a marathon with many intermediate stages and does not come overnight to a company as a result of a management decree. Read more

There is an unwritten law in software development and IT operations. An anti-pattern1 for effective problem solving and complexity reduction. No one is crazy enough to adopt it. No customer on earth willing to pay for it. But they exist, the bright moments in the life cycle of a company, where this law can be applied. Here’s how it can be defined: If you have a task or problem and you know how to solve it, then throw away your code after completion and tear apart an installation again. Read more

Today’s quote is from Mike Kuketz’s Fediverse1: Those in control of data are also in control of society. Digitisation must take this into account and understand data protection as social value. Data protection and digitalisation are not incompatible though many people believe this. In my daily practice, I encounter people who try to play data protection and digitisation off against each other. This eristic dialectic2 is something you can only avoid and quickly put an end to. It is a false dilemma3 mostly used in the absence of expert knowledge and arguments. Read more

This picture is for all the people I have had discussions with in recent years about Digitisation in general or, more specifically, about the integration of tablets or notebooks within a corporate network. My recommendation then and now: Zero Trust! Isolate and segment potentially insecure, closed-source AD infrastructures! Keep smartphones, tablets or laptops out! This also applies to unknown, untrusted applications. " jumper laptops" are the better places for them. Put business applications on RDP/RDS terminal servers1 and create uniform, web-based, open interfaces that can be monitored and controlled. Nextcloud2 is suitable for accessing SMB files, Apache Guacamole3 for RDP access via HTTPS. Use RFC-standardised4 multi-factor authentications! Technologies like Keycloak5 or PrivacyIDEA6 make this possible throughout the enterprise. Read more

This picture shows my home office in the year 2007. At the bottom left, you can see my last productive bare-metal Microsoft installation. A WinXP, Office 2003 and Visual Studio .NET installation. In the middle above and below you can find my primary system of choice back in those days, an openSUSE Linux. At least till the release of the iPhone a year later in 2008. This was the initial spark for switching to macOS and iOS. Yes, I was a switcher! Read more

The third and last part of my little blog series is all about planning and implementation. Inevitably, we come into contact with project management and other underlying factors. I keep my promise from part one and finally show a blueprint for risk assessment. I hope you enjoy the read! As always, the following disclaimer applies: Everything without any claim to completeness and universal validitiy. Your mileage may vary! Don’t ask your IT Departement Where to go when it all comes down to workingplaces at home? To your IT Department? Read more