Alan Shimel

Alan Shimel

About the Author:

Alan Shimel is founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Techstrong Group, a Futurum company, and a member of Futurum's executive leadership team. A technology entrepreneur, media executive and industry commentator, Shimel has spent more than three decades building businesses, communities and media platforms serving enterprise technology professionals, including co-founding StillSecure, a network security company, and the DevOps Institute, a DevOps certification and training body. At Techstrong, he leads a portfolio of media brands including DevOps.com, Security Boulevard, Cloud Native Now, Techstrong AI, Techstrong IT, Digital CxO, Platform Engineering, Techstrong Semi and Techstrong TV, along with a growing portfolio of events, educational programs and digital communities. With more than 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, Shimel is a familiar voice in the space and was an early advocate of the DevOps movement, helping bring DevOps practices into mainstream enterprise technology. His work today spans cybersecurity, DevOps, cloud-native technologies, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and digital transformation, and he hosts popular programs including Techstrong Gang, Shimmy Says and Still Cyber, After All These Years. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Politics from St. John's University and a Juris Doctor from New York Law School.

Articles by Alan Shimel

After Wandering the Desert, I Found My Way Home to Outlook

July 23, 2026

Every email app promising to tame high-volume inboxes with AI eventually buckled under real load — memory bloat, crashes, daily force-quits. After exhausting the field, one operator found the surprising fix wasn’t a new tool at all, but the one he’d abandoned years earlier, now rebuilt for exactly this problem.

A Coffee Company Just Spooked the Entire Software Industry

July 15, 2026

Starbucks’ decision to build AI-assisted replacements for enterprise applications rattled software stocks. The larger warning is that AI may be overturning the economics that made “buy, don’t build” enterprise orthodoxy.

From the Bottom of the Ocean to Outer Space: How Far Will We Go for AI?

June 11, 2026

As China explores underwater AI data centers and SpaceX looks toward orbital compute, a much bigger story is emerging. The AI revolution may ultimately be defined not by the models we build, but by the unprecedented physical infrastructure required to power them—and by the question of whether infrastructure this consequential should serve a few companies or all mankind.

Cisco Wants to Be the OS for AI Infrastructure

June 2, 2026

For years, networking was treated as infrastructure plumbing. AI is changing that equation. As enterprises move beyond GPUs and models toward operating AI at scale, Cisco is betting the next strategic layer is the network itself.

The People Behind the Data Never Got a Cut

May 27, 2026

Futurum’s acquisition of ETR looks like a data play. Shimmy says it’s something more complicated — a bet that the future of technology research belongs to firms that can combine analyst expertise with direct market evidence, and a question about whether that combination actually works.

The AI Industrial Complex

May 25, 2026

The proposed 40,000-acre Stratos AI project in Utah highlights the rise of an “AI Industrial Complex,” where aligned corporate, political, and national security incentives drive massive infrastructure expansion with minimal public scrutiny.

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