Welcome to another episode of Modern Digital Business, the podcast that helps you navigate the ever-changing landscape of modernizing your applications and digital business. In this episode, we continue our exploration of modern operations with our special guest, Beth Long. Today's discussion is all about operational ownership and how it plays a crucial role in the success of modern organizations. We dive into the importance of service ownership, the measurement of SLAs, and the need for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals. Join us as we unravel the complexities of modern ops with Beth Long in this enlightening episode of Modern Digital Business. Let's dive in!



Today on Modern Digital Business

Thank you for tuning in to Modern Digital Business. We typically release new episodes on Thursdays. We also occasionally release short-topic episodes on Tuesdays, which we call Tech Tapas Tuesdays.

If you enjoy what you hear, will you please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or directly on our website at mdb.fm/reviews?

If you'd like to suggest a topic for an episode or you are interested in being a guest, please contact me directly by sending me a message at mdb.fm/contact.

And if you’d like to record a quick question or comment, click the microphone icon in the lower right-hand corner of our website. Your recording might be featured on a future episode!

To ensure you get every new episode when they become available, please subscribe from your favorite podcast player. If you want to learn more from me, then check out one of my books, courses, or articles by going to leeatchison.com.

Thank you for listening, and welcome to the modern world of the modern digital business!

Useful Links

• STOSA - Single Team Oriented Service Architecture
• Architecting for Scale, 2nd Edition, O’Reilly Media

Lee Atchison is a software architect, author, public speaker, and recognized thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. His most recent book, Architecting for Scale (O’Reilly Media), is an essential resource for technical teams looking to maintain high availability and manage risk in their cloud environments. Lee has been widely quoted in multiple technology publications, including InfoWorld, Diginomica, IT Brief, Programmable Web, CIO Review, and DZone, and has been a featured speaker at events across the globe.

Take a look at Lee's many...

Cloud native architectures have revolutionized the way businesses operate their applications and services in the cloud. This shift provides immense benefits, such as increased agility, scalability, and cost savings. However, moving to a cloud native architecture also poses unique challenges that must be addressed. What are some of the critical challenges facing cloud native architectures? Stay tuned as I present the top four challenges facing all cloud native software architects.



Today on Modern Digital Business

Thank you for tuning in to Modern Digital Business. We typically release new episodes on Thursdays. We also occasionally release short-topic episodes on Tuesdays, which we call Tech Tapas Tuesdays.

If you enjoy what you hear, will you please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or directly on our website at mdb.fm/reviews?

If you'd like to suggest a topic for an episode or you are interested in being a guest, please contact me directly by sending me a message at mdb.fm/contact.

And if you’d like to record a quick question or comment, click the microphone icon in the lower right-hand corner of our website. Your recording might be featured on a future episode!

To ensure you get every new episode when they become available, please subscribe from your favorite podcast player. If you want to learn more from me, then check out one of my books, courses, or articles by going to leeatchison.com.

Thank you for listening, and welcome to the modern world of the modern digital business!

Useful Links

• Atchison Academy - Online courses by Lee Atchison
• Architecting for Scale, 2nd Edition, O’Reilly Media

Lee Atchison is a software architect, author, public speaker, and recognized thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. His most recent book, Architecting for Scale (O’Reilly Media), is an essential resource for technical teams looking to maintain high availability and manage risk in their cloud environments. Lee has been widely quoted in multiple technology publications, including InfoWorld, Diginomica, IT Brief, Programmable Web,...

Welcome back to another episode of Modern Digital Business! In today's episode, we delve deeper into the world of modern operations with our special guest, Beth Long. We explore the essential role of service level agreements (SLAs) in managing complex, multi-service modern applications.

As we unravel the differences between DevOps and SREs (Site Reliability Engineers), Beth sheds light on the origins and practices behind these two distinct approaches. We also discuss the significance of SLIs (Service Level Indicators), SLOs (Service Level Objectives), and SLAs in ensuring the stability and reliability of large-scale web operations.

Join us as we navigate the complexities of modern operations and gain valuable insights and recommendations from Beth, a seasoned SRE engineer and Operations manager. Stay tuned for an enlightening conversation on SLAs in our quest to modernize your applications and thrive in the digital business revolution. Let's dive in!



Today on Modern Digital Business

Thank you for tuning in to Modern Digital Business. We typically release new episodes on Thursdays. We also occasionally release short-topic episodes on Tuesdays, which we call Tech Tapas Tuesdays.

If you enjoy what you hear, will you please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or directly on our website at mdb.fm/reviews?

If you'd like to suggest a topic for an episode or you are interested in being a guest, please contact me directly by sending me a message at mdb.fm/contact.

And if you’d like to record a quick question or comment, click the microphone icon in the lower right-hand corner of our website. Your recording might be featured on a future episode!

To ensure you get every new episode when they become available, please subscribe from your favorite podcast player. If you want to learn more from me, then check out one of my books, courses, or articles by going to leeatchison.com.

Thank you for listening, and welcome to the modern world of the modern digital business!

Useful Links

• STOSA - Single Team Oriented Service Architecture
• Lee Atchison Website and Content
• Architecting for Scale, 2nd Edition, O’Reilly Media

Lee Atchison is a software architect, author, public speaker, and recognized thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. His most recent book, Architecting for Scale (O’Reilly Media), is an essential resource for technical teams...

This episode was well received last Halloween when it debuted. In case you missed it, how about a dose of ScaryOps? Here are my 3 scariest mistakes that companies make in the cloud.

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First, there was DevOps. Then, ModernOps and CloudOps. Now, there is ScaryOps.

Welcome to the special Halloween Edition of the Modern Digital Business podcast. In this episode, the 3 Scariest Mistakes Companies Make in the Cloud.

It's time to turn our attention to scary things…scary movies, scary TV shows, scary home decorations, scary costumes.

But when it comes to working with customers and clients on their cloud projects, sometimes I get quite scared…and not in a good way.

Working with customers and clients on their cloud projects, what they do can be down right scary. 

I get scared when I hear stories about how a company is preparing to migrate to the cloud incorrectly, or when someone shares a misguided plan about how their organization is going to use the cloud once it is fully migrated. I sometimes hear stories that downright chill me to the bone.

Don’t make yourself the central character in one of these horror tales. Instead, avoid these scariest mistakes that companies make in the cloud.

Here is the countdown of the three scariest mistakes you can make in your cloud migration.

Today on Modern Digital Business.

Lee Atchison is a software architect, author, public speaker, and recognized thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. His most recent book, Architecting for Scale (O’Reilly Media), is an essential resource for technical teams looking to maintain high availability and manage risk in their cloud environments. Lee has been widely quoted in multiple technology publications, including InfoWorld, Diginomica, IT Brief, Programmable Web, CIO Review, and DZone, and has been a featured speaker at events across the globe.

Take a look at Lee's many books, courses, and articles by going to leeatchison.com.

Check out Architecting for Scale. Currently in it's second edition, this book, written by Lee Atchison, and published by O'Reilly Media, will help you build high scale, highly available web applications, or modernize your existing applications. Check it out! Available in paperback or on Kindle from Amazon.com or other retailers.

Subscribe here to catch each new episode as it becomes available.

Want more from Lee?

 In today's episode, "Don't Give Special Access," we tackle a crucial question: how can we grant developers and operations engineers the necessary access to our applications without compromising customer data or violating business processes?

The Importance of Limiting Access: "Security best practices specify that engineers, both developers and IT operations, personnel, should have as little access as possible to the production application and its infrastructure."

Permission Escalation: "Permission escalation is a process of giving an on call engineer temporary increased system access during an emergency. This increased access typically comes with increased scrutiny."

Preventing Malicious Activities: "All of this ensures that a rogue engineer can't perform malicious activities on the site, including access customer private data inappropriately and cause damage to the system or the business."

"Balancing Security and Access: Giving engineers unrestricted access to everything... is just not safe and is just not good business practice."

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Today on Modern Digital Business

Thank you for tuning in to Modern Digital Business. We typically release new episodes on Thursdays. We also occasionally release short-topic episodes on Tuesdays, which we call Tech Tapas Tuesdays.

If you enjoy what you hear, will you please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or directly on our website at mdb.fm/reviews?

If you'd like to suggest a topic for an episode or you are interested in being a guest, please contact me directly by sending me a message at mdb.fm/contact.

And if you’d like to record a quick question or comment, click the microphone icon in the lower right-hand corner of our website. Your recording might be featured on a future episode!

To ensure you get every new episode when they become available, please subscribe from your favorite podcast player. If you want to learn more from me, then check out one of my books, courses, or articles by going to leeatchison.com.

Thank you for listening, and welcome to the modern world of the modern digital business!

Useful Links

• Architecting for Scale, 2nd Edition, O’Reilly Media

Lee Atchison is a software architect, author, public speaker, and recognized thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. His most recent book, Architecting for Scale (O’Reilly Media), is an essential resource for technical teams looking to maintain high availability and manage...

Welcome to another episode of Modern Digital Business, where we dive into the world of cloud architecture and explore the essential skills required to thrive in this dynamic field. In today's episode, we will uncover the five key skills that all cloud architects must possess to effectively build and operate applications in the cloud.

Cloud architecture goes beyond traditional software architecture, requiring a deep understanding of the unique capabilities and benefits offered by cloud computing. As businesses increasingly migrate their operations to the cloud, it is crucial for cloud architects to have the expertise to leverage the power of public cloud offerings and create scalable, highly available, and secure applications.

Certifications have become a benchmark for true cloud architects, providing tangible proof of their ability to architect and build cloud applications. We'll explore the certifications offered by major cloud vendors and how they have become a "right of passage" in this field.

Moreover, we'll unveil the vital role that cloud architects play in bridging the gap between development and operations, and how their expertise in operational responsibilities is crucial for success in the cloud.

Security has long been a concern for cloud computing, but we will discover how cloud vendors have addressed these concerns and provided robust security features to ensure the safety of applications in the public cloud.

Join us as we delve into the world of cloud architecture, uncovering the skills required to build modern, cloud-native applications using microservices, containers, and Kubernetes. We'll also explore the importance of automation in cloud-based applications and how it streamlines operations, making them scalable and efficient.

Get ready to expand your knowledge and gain valuable insights into the skills every cloud architect needs. Tune in to this episode of Modern Digital Business, because in the world of cloud architecture, staying ahead is the key to success.

Today on Modern Digital Business

Thank you for tuning in to Modern Digital Business. We typically release new episodes on Thursdays. We also occasionally release short-topic episodes on Tuesdays, which we call Tech Tapas Tuesdays.

If you enjoy what you hear, will you please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or directly on our website at mdb.fm/reviews?

If you'd like to suggest a topic for an episode or you are interested in being a guest, please contact me directly by sending me a message at mdb.fm/contact.

And if you’d like to record a quick question or comment, click the microphone icon in the lower right-hand corner of our website. Your recording might be featured on a future episode!

To ensure you get every new episode when they become available, please subscribe from your favorite podcast player. If you want to learn more from me, then check out one of my books, courses, or articles by going to

On this episode of Modern Digital Business, host Lee Atchison continues his conversation with guest Beth Long about Stosa, or single team-oriented service architecture. In this episode, they delve into the makeup of healthy Stosa organizations and provide actionable insights and recommendations for business technology leaders and small business innovators in the digital business revolution.

They discuss the importance of defining service boundaries and how data is considered part of the service in the Stosa model. They emphasize the need for services to own their data and for data sharing to occur through documented APIs. They also highlight the challenges of scaling and separating services when a central database is still used by many service companies.

They explore the mindset shift from development teams to product teams and how reorganizing responsibilities based on business requirements can help determine the needed skill sets. They stress the value of allowing individual teams to make decisions, even if they may seem suboptimal globally, and the importance of assessing whether teams have the necessary tools to fulfill their business responsibilities.

Lee & Beth emphasize the need to strike a balance between optimization at the organizational level and individual service level and draw parallels to microeconomics and macroeconomics. They view having different technology choices among teams as an opportunity for solution dynamics and influence.

They also tackle how to prepare a small organization for future growth and division, providing insights on thinking of oneself as a big company and building applications with multiple services and connections in mind from the start.

Topics covered in this audio session:

- Introduction to STOSA (single team-oriented service architecture)

- Makeup of healthy STOSA organizations

- Defining service boundaries in separation service models

- Data as part of the service in STOSA and Goldilocks models

- Ownership and sharing of data through documented APIs

- Challenges with central databases in scaling and separating services

- Importance of smaller, younger companies setting up data systems early on

- The right skill set within an organization

- Change in mindset from development teams to product teams

- Reorganizing responsibilities based on business requirements

- Autonomy and hiring decisions for teams

Today on Modern Digital Business

Thank you for tuning in to Modern Digital Business. We typically release new episodes on Thursdays. We also occasionally release short-topic episodes on Tuesdays, which we call Tech Tapas Tuesdays.

If you enjoy what you hear, will you please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or directly on our website at mdb.fm/reviews?

If you'd like to suggest a topic for an episode or you are interested in being a guest, please contact me directly by sending me a message at mdb.fm/contact.

And if you’d like to record a quick question or comment, click the microphone icon in the lower right-hand corner of

On this episode of Modern Digital Business, we dive into the world of ModernOps and talk STOSA (Single Team Oriented Service Architecture) with Beth Long.

This is part 1 of a two part discussion with Beth Long, an operations manager for New Relic, and Jeli.io. She is passionate about the concept of STOSA, which was first introduced in Lee Atchison's highly popular book, Architecting for Scale.

Lee and Beth switch roles for a bit, with Beth interviewing Lee on these and related topics.

"Stosa: Stosa or single team oriented service Architecture is an important guiding principle for organizations that have development teams that own and manage applications that are composed of multiple services."

— Lee Atchison 00:00:00

Accountability and Ownership in Service-Based Architectures: "Each service needs to have a team that owns that service 100%, all aspects of that service. And it's a one to end relationship...but each of those services has exactly one team owner...that ownership has to be well understood throughout the organization, well known, well documented..."

— Lee Atchison 00:03:30

The Impact of Clear Visibility on Company Culture: "And that kind of culture tends to arise when there's confusion and frustration. And that's a byproduct of not knowing where the problems are and not understanding. And so when you have that clear visibility, you can reduce that tendency because now you know what's happening and where and why, and you can actually get traction on the problem."

— Beth Long 00:12:33

The Challenges of Meeting SLAs in Cloud Services: "If I had a requirement that I couldn't meet with my dependencies requirements, it was my responsibility to get creative, to find a solution. Whether that was caching running instances to attach later or whatever it was, it was my responsibility to solve that problem. I could do that by getting creative. I could do that by negotiating with my partners to have better or different SLAs available to me."

— Lee Atchison 00:13:16

Ownership and Boundaries: "If an organization has a microservices architecture and the boundaries have become fuzzy over time, they should be cautious when dividing up ownership and making it a single team. There are rules of thumb that they can think about to avoid complications."

— Beth Long 00:17:36

"Shared Tooling and Service Responsibility: Even though those teams own services that are shared in terms of their usage, but they still own a service and they're still responsible for that service and they're still responsible."

— Beth Long 00:23:02

Management Attitudes Towards Internal Customers: "There's this kind of this attitude that if we're doing work for our internal customers, like, we should be doing as little of that as possible. And that always frustrated me because I thought, no, this is the inner workings of a body."

— Beth Long