Writing
Notes on infrastructure and the GCC market
Short, opinion-led pieces. Shared first on LinkedIn, kept here as a permanent record.
Infrastructure & Security Simplified
DR doesn't fail in the design
Most DR I have seen was designed well. That was never the problem.
You turned on MFA. The stolen session didn't care.
There's a comfortable belief doing the rounds in boardrooms: we have multi-factor authentication, so identity is handled. It's a good control and worth…
We've got backup, so we're covered for DR
Two different problems, sold as if they were one.
"Is it secure?"
Is it secure?
PCI DSS misconception
Does your datacentre have PCI DSS certification?
GCC Market Reality
The worst deal to lose is the one you were never going to win
Nobody enjoys the admin. Mapping the decision process, finding the real approver, working out who actually holds the budget — it feels like paperwork that…
The brief is not the solution
The solution you ship rarely resembles the one you were asked for.
The deadline was always there
We need the proposal today. And the SAMA compliance questionnaire, completed. We submit tomorrow.
Residency is the first question, not the last
In a lot of markets, you design the architecture and check compliance at the end. Here, that order gets you in trouble.
The spec sheet doesn't close
In the UK, the spec sheet does a lot of the selling. Score highest against the requirements matrix, come in compliant on price, and you're usually in the…
Cutting Through the Noise
An AI agent isn't a chatbot. It's an account.
Most of the noise about AI agents is about what they can do. The more useful question, and the one fewer people are asking, is what they're allowed to do.
Cloud-first isn't cloud-only
We're moving everything to cloud." Said as if it's self-evidently the right answer for everything. It isn't.
"AI-powered"
AI-powered." It's on every security datasheet now. Which is roughly the problem.
Personal
The legacy system was me all along
Is it just me, or has anyone else all but forgotten how to write by hand?
The map is local
I spent years in the European market assuming I understood how business worked. Then I moved to the GCC and realised I understood how business worked *in…
The city that won't sit still
Dubai does not do "good enough for now.