gremlin.group / blog
Blog.
Thoughts on cloud, Kubernetes, AI, and software development from the Gremlin Group team. Practical insights from real projects, not marketing fluff.
AI Meeting Notes and GDPR: What to Check Before You Hit Record AI note-takers save hours of minute-taking, but every recording is personal data. Here is a practical UK GDPR checklist for small businesses and charities before switching one on. Read post →
What Building Our Own App Taught Our Consultancy We normally build software for other people. Phonic is our first app, and owning every decision looks different from the other side of the table. How Phonic Works Out Who Is Speaking A transcript of a meeting is far more useful when it shows who said what. Here is how speaker identification works in plain English, how Phonic does it, and where it still gets things wrong. Introducing Phonic Phonic is our first app. It records dictation and meetings on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, transcribes them on the device, and keeps the files in your own iCloud Drive. Why Meeting Transcription Should Happen on Your Device Most transcription tools send meeting audio to someone else to process. For confidential conversations, it is worth knowing where that audio goes, who can reach it, and what the on-device alternative costs you. On-Device AI: When You Do Not Need the Cloud Most AI tools send your data to someone else to process. Some of the most useful jobs can now run on the laptop or phone you already own. Here is when that makes sense, and when it does not. Why Phonic Is Not a Subscription Phonic is free to download, and Phonic Pro is a one-off £2.99 in-app purchase. Here is exactly what that buys, what stays free, and the honest trade-offs of a one-off price for a small app. 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. 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. 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. 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. AI for People Who Do Not Work in Tech Most AI coverage is aimed at developers and businesses. But normal people are using it too, and nobody is really talking about that. 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. 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. The Rust Tools That Replaced My Defaults I swapped out ls, cat, find, ps, and dig for Rust alternatives. Most of them are genuinely better. Here is what I use and why. How Small Businesses Are Using AI Forget the Silicon Valley hype. Here is how real small businesses are using AI day to day, and what it actually costs. 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. Kubernetes in Plain English Pods, deployments, services, ingress. Here is what all of it actually means, without the jargon. Platform Engineering on a Budget You don't need a dedicated platform team to have proper CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and observability. Here's how small teams do it. 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. Building Internal Tools with AI Forget the hype. Here are the AI-powered internal tools that actually save businesses time and money, from document processing to automated reporting. What Your IT Person Is Actually Doing When your systems are running and your data is safe, someone is making that happen. Most of the work is invisible to the people who benefit from it. 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. What Charities Get Wrong About Technology Most charities we work with are either spending too much on the wrong things or avoiding technology entirely. There is a middle ground that actually helps. 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. 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. AI for Business: Practical Applications AI is everywhere right now, but what actually works for small and mid-sized businesses? We cut through the noise and share what delivers real value. Getting Started with Kubernetes Kubernetes doesn't have to be intimidating. Here's a practical guide to getting your first workloads running without the usual complexity. Getting Started on AWS AWS is brilliant once you know what you're doing. The problem is the first few months, when you don't. Here's how to set up properly from day one. 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.