Back in 1994, Peter Deutsch and his colleagues at Sun Microsystems identified what they described as the "eight fallacies of distributed computing" — flawed assumptions that often get made when teams move from monolithic to distributed software architectures. In recent years, software architecture experts and regular writing partners Neal Ford and Mark Richards have identified a further three new fallacies of distributed computing: versioning is easy; compensating updates always work; and observability is optional.

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Neal and Mark join host Prem Chandrasekaran to talk through these three new fallacies, before digging deeper into other important issues in software architecture, including modular monoliths and governing architectural characteristics. Listen for a fresh perspective on software architecture and to explore key ideas shaping the discipline in 2025.

Learn more about the second edition of Neal and Mark's Fundamentals of Software Architecture: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-software/9781098175504/

What if your AI agents could think more like IT operations staff — and less like tools?

In this episode, we catch up with Zichuan Xiong, to explore the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — a powerful new way to give AI agents deeper awareness of the tools, information and history they need to work effectively in the operations space. Unlike traditional APIs that just trigger functions, MCP adds a semantic layer of context that helps AI understand what to do, why it matters and how to do it better.

Whether you’re deep in site reliability engineering (SRE) or just curious about the next leap in AIOps, this episode unpacks how MCP could be the missing layer between today’s tools and tomorrow’s autonomous systems.

If you want to find out more, check out this piece by Zichuan at al, https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/machine-learning-and-ai/mcp-critical-ai-driven-sre

Google I/O 2025 took place in May. It's always a great opportunity to find out how Google is trying to shape the industry agenda, but this year the predominance of Gemini meant the event was a chance to get a better look at how Google will play its hand in the AI market in the months to come.

To dissect the headlines from this year's Google I/O and explore what we can learn about Google's strategic focus — and how the company is thinking about AI — host Ken Mugrage is joined by Andy Yates on the Technology Podcast. As Head of Ecosystems Development at Thoughtworks, Andy plays an important role in helping the organization and its clients undertstand, analyze and engage with the major platforms and vendors.

This edition of Google I/O, he explains, was significant and particularly useful for helping us understand how the world is going to be consuming AI products and services as the technology becomes more and more embedded in the mainstream.

Read more of Andy's perspective on Google I/O 2025 on the Thoughtworks blog: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/technology-strategy/google-io-2025-key-takeaways