https://tkthetechie.io/blog Event-driven architecture, agentic AI, and engineering leadership from the field. en-us Wed, 09 Sep 2026 11:47:29 GMT https://tkthetechie.io/blog/standards-are-not-architecture-why-a2a-and-mcp-wont-save-your-agents-at-3am https://tkthetechie.io/blog/standards-are-not-architecture-why-a2a-and-mcp-wont-save-your-agents-at-3am Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML A2A hit v1.0 this year. MCP crossed a hundred million monthly downloads and moved into the Linux Foundation. And last quarter, I walked into a customer's war… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-interns-alerting-tool-outlasted-the-platform-it-monitored https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-interns-alerting-tool-outlasted-the-platform-it-monitored Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Leadership Three interns shipped a Slack alerting tool during their ten-week stint at Capital One in 2017. The microservices platform it monitored got refactored twice,… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-migration-tax-nobody-budgets-for-why-parallel-running-is-where-enterprise-moves-actually-fail https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-migration-tax-nobody-budgets-for-why-parallel-running-is-where-enterprise-moves-actually-fail Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Engineering It was 2:47 AM on a Tuesday in 2013, and I was staring at a dashboard showing two messaging systems processing the same trade flow — TIBCO Rendezvous on the… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-nobody-talks-about-why-your-ai-agents-will-fail-without-topic-hierarchies https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-nobody-talks-about-why-your-ai-agents-will-fail-without-topic-hierarchies Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML Last month at a customer workshop, an enterprise architect showed me their agentic AI design. Thirty-seven agents, each with clearly defined capabilities,… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-nobody-talks-about-why-your-ai-agents-cant-find-each-other https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-nobody-talks-about-why-your-ai-agents-cant-find-each-other Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML Three months ago, I watched a Fortune 500 airline's engineering team demo their shiny new AI agent system. They had a booking agent, a rebooking agent, a… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-astronaut-trap-why-your-ai-agent-demo-will-fail-in-production https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-astronaut-trap-why-your-ai-agent-demo-will-fail-in-production Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML Last month, I watched a Fortune 500 client's AI agent demo work flawlessly on stage — intelligent routing, natural language queries resolving against live… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-technical-hire-that-changed-how-i-build-teams https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-technical-hire-that-changed-how-i-build-teams Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Leadership Last year I interviewed a candidate who could whiteboard a perfect event-driven architecture in fifteen minutes. Clean topic hierarchies, proper fan-out… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-migration-tax-why-parallel-running-is-where-enterprise-cutovers-actually-fail https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-migration-tax-why-parallel-running-is-where-enterprise-cutovers-actually-fail Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Engineering In 2012, I stood in the Deutsche Bank trading floor operations center at 2 AM watching two messaging systems process the same trades simultaneously. We were… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-six-months-before-the-cutover-will-kill-you https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-six-months-before-the-cutover-will-kill-you Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Engineering In 2014, I stood in front of a room of Deutsche Bank's most senior trading technology leaders and told them we were ready to migrate from TIBCO Rendezvous to… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-technical-interview-question-i-stopped-asking-and-the-one-that-replaced-it https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-technical-interview-question-i-stopped-asking-and-the-one-that-replaced-it Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Leadership When I started scaling our pre-sales engineering team at Solace from 5 to 15 people, I made every hiring mistake in the book — and I made them confidently,… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-nobody-talks-about-why-your-ai-agent-demo-will-fail-in-production https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-nobody-talks-about-why-your-ai-agent-demo-will-fail-in-production Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML Last month, a Fortune 500 airline showed me their shiny new AI agent demo. It could rebook flights, check loyalty status, and even apologize in three… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-technical-decision-that-got-me-yelled-at-why-changing-languages-mid-project-was-still-right https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-technical-decision-that-got-me-yelled-at-why-changing-languages-mid-project-was-still-right Fri, 19 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Leadership Three months into a greenfield microservices build at Capital One, I walked into a room of Java developers and told them we were rewriting a core service in Go. https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-nobody-budgets-for-why-your-ai-agent-demo-wont-survive-production https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-nobody-budgets-for-why-your-ai-agent-demo-wont-survive-production Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML Last month, a Fortune 100 airline showed me their agentic AI proof of concept. It was impressive — a chatbot that could rebook flights, check loyalty status,… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-astronaut-trap-why-your-ai-agent-demo-works-but-your-ai-agent-system-wont https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-astronaut-trap-why-your-ai-agent-demo-works-but-your-ai-agent-system-wont Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML Last month, I watched a team demo an AI agent that could rebook flights, check loyalty status, and send apology emails — all orchestrated beautifully across… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-intern-code-that-outlived-the-architecture https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-intern-code-that-outlived-the-architecture Fri, 29 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Leadership Three interns shipped code at Capital One that outlasted the microservices platform it was built on. That fact taught me more about engineering leadership… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-astronaut-detector-how-i-screen-pre-sales-engineers-for-signal-over-noise https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-astronaut-detector-how-i-screen-pre-sales-engineers-for-signal-over-noise Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Leadership Last year I interviewed a candidate for a senior systems engineering role on my team. Brilliant resume — ten years at top-tier companies, deep Kubernetes… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-why-your-ai-agent-demo-works-but-your-ai-agent-system-wont https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-architecture-tax-why-your-ai-agent-demo-works-but-your-ai-agent-system-wont Fri, 24 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML Last month, I watched a team demo an AI agent that could rebook flights, check loyalty status, and send confirmation emails — all orchestrated beautifully… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-migration-tax-why-parallel-running-will-break-you-before-the-cutover-does https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-migration-tax-why-parallel-running-will-break-you-before-the-cutover-does Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT Engineering The night we cut over from TIBCO Rendezvous to Solace at Deutsche Bank, the actual flip took about forty minutes. Forty minutes for a system processing… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/autonomous-ai-agents-are-blind-without-an-event-mesh https://tkthetechie.io/blog/autonomous-ai-agents-are-blind-without-an-event-mesh Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML Five years ago, standing on stage at AWS re:Invent, I was still explaining to architects why they needed a topic hierarchy for their event-driven systems.… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/agentic-ais-unspoken-prerequisite-the-event-mesh https://tkthetechie.io/blog/agentic-ais-unspoken-prerequisite-the-event-mesh Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML At AWS re:Invent, I've watched the narrative around event-driven architecture (EDA) transform dramatically. Five years ago, I was often explaining fundamental… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/agentic-ai-is-dead-without-an-event-driven-nervous-system https://tkthetechie.io/blog/agentic-ai-is-dead-without-an-event-driven-nervous-system Fri, 20 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT EDA Agentic AI isn't magic; it's just really complex distributed computing with a smarter scheduler. And like any distributed system, if you don't nail the… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/ai-coding-isnt-a-shortcut-its-my-vp-superpower-for-staying-hands-on https://tkthetechie.io/blog/ai-coding-isnt-a-shortcut-its-my-vp-superpower-for-staying-hands-on Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI/ML A client once challenged me about Solace’s capabilities for real-time video streaming over IoT. They were skeptical. Their engineers were skeptical. Rather… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/from-event-streams-to-agent-mesh-orchestrating-ai-with-event-driven-architecture https://tkthetechie.io/blog/from-event-streams-to-agent-mesh-orchestrating-ai-with-event-driven-architecture Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT Agentic AI The world of enterprise technology is perpetually in motion, but rarely do we encounter shifts as profound as the one ushered in by Agentic AI. For nearly two… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/agentic-ai-and-the-event-mesh-orchestrating-the-autonomous-enterprise https://tkthetechie.io/blog/agentic-ai-and-the-event-mesh-orchestrating-the-autonomous-enterprise Fri, 27 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT Agentic AI The promise of Artificial Intelligence isn't just about smarter chatbots or better data analytics; it's about fundamentally reshaping how technology delivers… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/orchestrating-intelligence-how-event-driven-architecture-powers-the-agentic-ai-revolution https://tkthetechie.io/blog/orchestrating-intelligence-how-event-driven-architecture-powers-the-agentic-ai-revolution Fri, 20 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT Agentic AI The promise of Artificial Intelligence has captivated us for decades, but the recent explosion of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the emergence of autonomous… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-mesh-vs-kafka-a-pragmatists-view-from-the-fintech-trenches https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-mesh-vs-kafka-a-pragmatists-view-from-the-fintech-trenches Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT EDA The debate between Kafka and other messaging solutions isn't new, but in the fast-paced, high-stakes world of financial technology, the nuances matter… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-hands-on-imperative-why-technical-leaders-must-still-code-to-drive-innovation-from-fintech-to-ai https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-hands-on-imperative-why-technical-leaders-must-still-code-to-drive-innovation-from-fintech-to-ai Fri, 06 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT Leadership The stereotype of the executive leader, detached from the day-to-day grind, making decisions from an ivory tower, is one I've always challenged. For nearly… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/beyond-the-boardroom-my-hands-on-approach-to-architecting-next-gen-event-driven-ai https://tkthetechie.io/blog/beyond-the-boardroom-my-hands-on-approach-to-architecting-next-gen-event-driven-ai Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI & EDA In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, the term “leader” often conjures images of strategic planning, team management, and perhaps a healthy distance… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/escaping-the-request-reply-trap-why-real-time-finance-needs-event-driven-architecture https://tkthetechie.io/blog/escaping-the-request-reply-trap-why-real-time-finance-needs-event-driven-architecture Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT FinTech Arch After nearly two decades navigating the intricate world of fintech and systems architecture, I've witnessed firsthand the evolution – and sometimes the… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/surviving-the-big-rewrite-strategic-insights-from-migrating-tibco-to-solace-at-a-global-bank https://tkthetechie.io/blog/surviving-the-big-rewrite-strategic-insights-from-migrating-tibco-to-solace-at-a-global-bank Fri, 16 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT Messaging Every engineering leader eventually faces it: the 'Big Rewrite'. It's that daunting, often multi-year undertaking to replace mission-critical legacy… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/beyond-the-log-why-solace-pubsub-excels-for-mission-critical-event-architectures https://tkthetechie.io/blog/beyond-the-log-why-solace-pubsub-excels-for-mission-critical-event-architectures Fri, 09 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT Messaging In today's fast-paced digital economy, real-time event-driven architectures (EDA) are no longer a luxury – they're a necessity. From instant financial… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-event-driven-nervous-system-why-agentic-ai-needs-eda-to-thrive https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-event-driven-nervous-system-why-agentic-ai-needs-eda-to-thrive Tue, 06 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI As we stand on the cusp of the Agentic AI revolution, the conversations often revolve around the incredible potential of autonomous, goal-driven systems. But… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/how-i-scaled-an-engineering-team-3x https://tkthetechie.io/blog/how-i-scaled-an-engineering-team-3x Fri, 02 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT Other When I took over leadership of the Systems Engineering team at Solace, we were at an inflection point. The company was pivoting from a hardware-centric… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/broker-based-messaging-vs-brokerless-capital-markets https://tkthetechie.io/blog/broker-based-messaging-vs-brokerless-capital-markets Fri, 26 Sep 2025 12:00:00 GMT Architecture A comprehensive analysis of why broker-based architectures like Solace offer superior long-term value over brokerless solutions for mission-critical financial applications. https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-driven-3d-javascript https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-driven-3d-javascript Mon, 29 Jan 2024 12:00:00 GMT Dev JavaScript is an enormously versatile language with a rich library of frameworks and tools to build everything from static websites (such as this site) to 3D… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/graphql-with-solace-pubsub https://tkthetechie.io/blog/graphql-with-solace-pubsub Fri, 18 Aug 2023 12:00:00 GMT Dev GraphQL is technology that is extremely popular for quickly building out fast and expansive APIs. The benefit of GraphQL as oppposed to traditional API… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/migrating-from-wordpress-to-a-svelte-powered-markdown-blog https://tkthetechie.io/blog/migrating-from-wordpress-to-a-svelte-powered-markdown-blog Wed, 14 Jun 2023 12:00:00 GMT Dev I recently migrated my personal website - TKTheTechie.io - from a wordpress powered site to a static svelte markdown powered site. In this post, I will… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/dapr-with-solace-pubsub https://tkthetechie.io/blog/dapr-with-solace-pubsub Thu, 29 Dec 2022 12:00:00 GMT Dev I’m proud to announce a new way to integrate the Solace PubSub+ Event Broker – using the open standard based AMQP 1.0 APIs. With this integration, you are… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-driven-zinc-search-logging https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-driven-zinc-search-logging Tue, 23 Aug 2022 12:00:00 GMT Dev In this post, I will demonstrate how you can easily and natively integrate logging into your event driven architecture using the up and coming Elastic Search… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-importance-of-message-settlement-for-event-driven-architectures https://tkthetechie.io/blog/the-importance-of-message-settlement-for-event-driven-architectures Thu, 04 Aug 2022 12:00:00 GMT Dev There is no doubt that Event Driven Architecture (EDA) is going mainstream. Every industry – whether it be consumer goods, retailers, banking, aviation or… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/build-a-proximity-detection-system-with-a-raspberry-pi-solace-pubsub-and-javascript https://tkthetechie.io/blog/build-a-proximity-detection-system-with-a-raspberry-pi-solace-pubsub-and-javascript Thu, 31 Mar 2022 12:00:00 GMT Dev Have you ever wanted to tinker around with a Raspberry Pi and IoT but felt that it was too daunting? We’ve developed a set of instructions for you to build a… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/why-the-pyth-network-needs-an-event-mesh https://tkthetechie.io/blog/why-the-pyth-network-needs-an-event-mesh Thu, 24 Mar 2022 12:00:00 GMT Crypto Pyth is an innovative market data distribution protocol that aims to decentralize market data distribution and thereby make it accessible to the masses. https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-driven-machine-learning https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-driven-machine-learning Mon, 28 Feb 2022 12:00:00 GMT Dev Machine Learning, as defined by Wikipedia, “is the study of computer algorithms that can improve automatically through experience and by the use of data. It… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/solace-pubsub-queue-redelivery-delayer https://tkthetechie.io/blog/solace-pubsub-queue-redelivery-delayer Tue, 01 Feb 2022 12:00:00 GMT Dev In this post, I’d like to give a high-level overview of an open source project I developed, its internal design and then dive into how I took advantage of an… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-driven-elixir https://tkthetechie.io/blog/event-driven-elixir Mon, 17 Jan 2022 12:00:00 GMT Dev Elixir is a fascinating programming language that is built on top of Erlang and puts a modern twist on a very robust programming language. One of the many… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/rainbow-wallet-bringing-ethereum-to-the-masses https://tkthetechie.io/blog/rainbow-wallet-bringing-ethereum-to-the-masses Wed, 12 Jan 2022 12:00:00 GMT Crypto, Personal As a crypto currency enthusiast – I am constantly amazed around the advances in the field. Whether it be new tokens that are launched, NFTs, or even how it is… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/a-scalable-websocket-fanout-solution-for-your-high-performance-kafka-deployment https://tkthetechie.io/blog/a-scalable-websocket-fanout-solution-for-your-high-performance-kafka-deployment Sun, 21 Feb 2021 12:00:00 GMT Dev In this post, I will show how you can take advantage of a high performance Kafka deployment, the Kafka Connect framework and Solace PubSub+ to build out a… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/using-graphql-to-query-the-state-of-your-event-mesh https://tkthetechie.io/blog/using-graphql-to-query-the-state-of-your-event-mesh Sun, 21 Feb 2021 12:00:00 GMT Dev In this blog post, I will explain how you can leverage the power of GraphQL’s extensible API model to better understand the architecture and state of your… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/how-to-use-rust-webassembly-javascript-and-pubsub-to-run-native-apps-in-your-browser https://tkthetechie.io/blog/how-to-use-rust-webassembly-javascript-and-pubsub-to-run-native-apps-in-your-browser Thu, 15 Oct 2020 12:00:00 GMT Dev As the popularity of JavaScript has improved over the years, desktop applications have increasingly started moving away from thick-clients using languages… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/linking-vuex-state-machines-across-your-vue-client-applications-with-solace-pubsub https://tkthetechie.io/blog/linking-vuex-state-machines-across-your-vue-client-applications-with-solace-pubsub Thu, 30 Apr 2020 12:00:00 GMT Dev Vue.js is a JavaScript framework developed by Evan You that’s making significant inroads as the framework of choice for modern single-page applications. One… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/creating-an-openfin-event-mesh-across-the-hybrid-cloud https://tkthetechie.io/blog/creating-an-openfin-event-mesh-across-the-hybrid-cloud Thu, 02 May 2019 12:00:00 GMT Dev In financial services, there is an old adage “the trend is your friend.” These days, the trend in every financial services firm is from the datacenter to the… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/handling-openfin-inbound-events-from-the-hybrid-cloud https://tkthetechie.io/blog/handling-openfin-inbound-events-from-the-hybrid-cloud Thu, 02 May 2019 12:00:00 GMT Dev Fully integrating OpenFin applications with remote services requires a plan for how to best interact with those services. Most financial services firms have… https://tkthetechie.io/blog/openfin-apps-need-more-than-just-rest https://tkthetechie.io/blog/openfin-apps-need-more-than-just-rest Thu, 02 May 2019 12:00:00 GMT Dev If you’re an OpenFin developer, you probably prefer to use REST for remote API calls whenever possible. This works great for query-response type requests, but…