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A Governance Framework for Digital Sovereignty

In an increasingly connected world where digital infrastructure forms the backbone of our economy and society, the topic of digital sovereignty is gaining more and more attention. For decision-makers in German-speaking countries, this goes far beyond merely selecting a cloud provider. It’s about strategic agency, resilience, and the ability to actively shape one’s digital future. This article explores how a robust governance methodology can help organizations not only understand digital sovereignty but also put it into practice—without sacrificing convenience or innovation.

Digital Sovereignty: Why Architecture Matters and How to Make Your Company Resilient

In an era where digital systems form the backbone of our economy and society, control over one’s digital future is increasingly becoming the focus of strategic decisions. For many technology decision-makers in German-speaking regions, this is not just a political or regulatory challenge, but a fundamental task with far-reaching implications for software architecture work.

Data Inventories in the EU Data Act: The Democratization of IoT Devices

EU Data Act: The Beginning of the End for Cloud Monoculture?

What has the EU ever done for us? …well, aside from free movement, no roaming charges, consumer protection, the single market, Erasmus, and more. But also: excessive bureaucracy, slow decisions, overregulation down to the much-mocked bottle cap – a favorite symbol for anyone blaming Europe for every innovation shortfall.

Think Locally: On-Premise LLMs as Drivers of Competitive Advantage

Consider this scenario: Your organisation has integrated AI tools into critical business processes, your legal team has carefully reviewed data processing agreements, and your IT department has configured systems to comply with GDPR requirements. Then, a foreign court issues an order that overrides all these protections, requiring your AI provider to indefinitely retain data that should be deleted—including potentially sensitive corporate information shared by your employees.

Digital Sovereignty as Self-Understanding

Software Analytics going crAIzy!

I’ve long been an advocate of treating software like data and analyzing it accordingly with tools like Python, pandas, Jupyter Notebook, Neo4j, and jQAssistant. In the era of AI and code transformation tools, seeing software as data gets more and more important when you want to improve your software system at a large scale. This blog post is a short interim report from me about my efforts taking software analysis to the next level.

The Sovereignty Trap: Between Tiananmen and Trump

We talk a big game about values and privacy, yet depend on AI that either denies historical atrocities or could cut us off tomorrow. Is this what Europe gets for dropping the ball on high tech infrastructure?

Updating OWASP’s Microservice Security Cheat Sheet: Practical Considerations & Recommendations

From Data Graveyards to Knowledge Landscapes

Europe is sitting on a wealth of public data—but much of its potential remains untapped. The challenges are well known: fragmented portals, incompatible interfaces, and growing reliance on non-European platforms that slow innovation. While new industrial data spaces are emerging—enabling secure and sovereign exchange of sensitive information—public and industrial data ecosystems remain largely siloed. This article explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) can help bridge that gap and accelerate Europe’s shift from Open Data to Open Knowledge—supporting digital sovereignty and delivering greater value to society.

Updating OWASP’s Microservice Security Cheat Sheet: Decision Dimensions for Authorization Patterns

Choosing the right patterns is critical, as it directly impacts the system’s security posture, performance, scalability, and maintainability.

Updating OWASP’s Microservice Security Cheat Sheet: Authorization Patterns

Updating OWASP’s Microservice Security Cheat Sheet: Identity Propagation Patterns

Without trustworthy identity propagation, even strong initial authentication can be undermined — weakening trust boundaries and ultimately impairing the system’s ability to make reliable authorization decisions.

AI — Behind the Buzzword Garbage

Tired of AI hype? Me too. But beneath the buzzwords lies real value for developers. Tools like Claude Code save me hours on routine tasks, freeing me to focus on what matters: understanding problems and building the right solutions. It’s not magic—it’s practical support that makes development faster without replacing our core skills.

Updating OWASP’s Microservice Security Cheat Sheet: Authentication Patterns

Updating OWASP’s Microservice Security Cheat Sheet: Core Concepts

In part two of my series, I begin the journey to rethink the OWASP Microservice Security Cheat Sheet. This post focuses on core concepts, laying the groundwork for practical, real-world microservice security.

What’s Wrong with the Current OWASP Microservice Security Cheat Sheet?

Modern microservice architectures require evolving security practices. Yet popular resources like the OWASP Microservice Security Cheat Sheet are starting to show their age and need a fresh look.

First Agile, Then Agentic

Why AI Won’t Help You

Context Engineering

Have you ever wondered how chatbots, copilots, or virtual assistants seem to know just the right things to say — or sometimes, spectacularly fail? The difference often comes down to one crucial skill: context engineering.

Technical and other Debt in IT Systems

This article explores the many hidden forms of technical debt that silently slow down IT teams—far beyond just messy code.

Common Approaches in the Field of Socio-Technical Architectures

Enabling Stakeholders as a Success Factor

Sociotechnical architectures consider both technical and human-organizational aspects and promote their effective collaboration. To ensure the successful design and implementation of these systems, it is crucial to actively involve stakeholders and address their interests. In this article, we explore why enabling stakeholders represents a key function in sociotechnical projects and how you can implement this approach effectively.

Internal Development Platforms

Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) help us accelerate software development. They represent the natural evolution of developments over the past decades. We’d like to show why this is the case with a historical overview and then examine current challenges.

Don’t Forget the People

When Architectural Changes Become a Change Project

How Much Thinking Can a Team Handle?

The term Cognitive Load has become a common reference point in recent discussions about team structures, roles, and task distribution in IT organizations. However, these discussions often fail to distinguish between the different purposes of IT organizations and frequently rely on an oversimplified concept of Cognitive Load.