Phishing in Your Own Pond
“Danger, Will Robinson!” As security professionals, it is our duty to minimize risk, which encompasses protecting many things. Among these things are users. We install Web proxies, URL filtering software, anti-virus software, DLP tools, and a wide array of technology to help users avoid or mitigate these risks. We create education programs teaching users how …
Not So Fast: Continuous Integration at Go Daddy
I first learned of Jenkins when leading the IT Linux and MySQL organization, which is primarily responsible for the production environments of many Linux-based products and infrastructure at Go Daddy. We hired a Linux administrator who, after learning we were not using Jenkins, put together a presentation to demonstrate the value it could provide. We …
Roundtable on STEM Education in Action
On Monday, April 23, 2012, I participated in a roundtable discussion at Explorer Middle School with local leaders from both the private and public sectors about initiatives that inspire Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) in today’s K-12 students. I was honored to be invited to participate in the event because I firmly believe that …
ITSM Training… it’s Not About ITIL
Although service management practices are not new to Go Daddy, ITIL became a well-known term back in 2008 when we implemented an enterprise ticketing system. Since then, we have made significant progress in our service management process maturity because of our continual improvement plan, which is based on annual assessments and prioritized improvement initiatives. After …
Giving Back to Open-Source
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Go Daddy has reaped huge benefits from open-source software. We have thousands of servers running Linux (mostly CentOS), MySQL, Apache, OpenSSL, and lots of other free software. These systems handle about 10 billion DNS requests per day and power the fastest growing SSL Certification Authority in the world. For years, …
Achieving Optimum Service
We challenge everyone at Go Daddy to get involved with customer service on a regular basis. For some teams, this is tied to goals and bonuses. During one of my customer service shadows, I listened to a Customer Service Rep handle a call where the customer reported that his site was slow. I remember empathizing …
The Work Behind the Curtain
In our most recent Super Bowl commercial, we featured a QR Code® in the corner of the screen—a first for any Super Bowl advertiser. If you happened to scan that code, you may have noticed that you were taken to x.co/gdcloud. X.CO is Go Daddy’s URL shortener. It’s a service that I developed and currently …
The (Continuing) Evolution of DevOps at Go Daddy
We first learned of the concept of DevOps when a contingent of our group attended OSCon in 2010. At the time, the concept was still fairly emergent and we were in the midst of getting our arms around ITSM and governance via ITIL and COBIT, respectively. The following year, several members of our department attended …
Write Your Own Code Profiler in PHP
I often find myself saying, “Yes, you can do that in PHP.” When I was challenged with writing a code profiler in PHP, I thought I would choke on those words. However, I discovered that it’s both possible and incredibly useful to write your own code profiler in PHP. So, I’d like to share my …
Why Citrix Giving CloudStack to the Apache Foundation is Great for the Cloud
Great News! When we heard the news of today’s announcement by Citrix, that they will be contributing their CloudStack cloud orchestration software to the Apache Software Foundation, we were impressed, excited, and inspired. We were impressed by Citrix’s wisdom to see that this move could significantly further the adoption of their already successful CloudStack and …