Simor

Data Infrastructure for Production AI

Practical writing on AI data engineering, feature stores, and the infrastructure choices that determine whether AI systems work in production.

Text-to-SQL tools in 2026: which ones actually work?
Text-to-SQL tools in 2026: which ones actually work?
10 Sep, 2026 | 05 Mins read

Text-to-SQL has been promised for a decade. Every year, a new tool claims to convert natural language to production-ready SQL. Every year, the demos look impressive and the production deployments disa

The AI Model Registry: Managing Model Versions, Lineage, and Governance
The AI Model Registry: Managing Model Versions, Lineage, and Governance
09 Sep, 2026 | 20 Mins read

When a model stops working correctly in production, the first question is always the same: what changed? Which version of the model is currently deployed? What training data was used? What evaluation

How a logistics company predicted delivery failures before they happened
How a logistics company predicted delivery failures before they happened
08 Sep, 2026 | 06 Mins read

A regional logistics company running three thousand deliveries per day across a six-state territory had a late-delivery rate of fourteen percent. The cost of a late delivery was not just the apology.

The invisible labor of maintaining AI systems in production
The invisible labor of maintaining AI systems in production
07 Sep, 2026 | 04 Mins read

Every AI demo is impressive. Every AI production system is a maintenance burden. The distance between those two statements is where most AI initiatives quietly fail. The demo shows a model producing

Designing a data mesh operating model: roles, responsibilities, and boundaries
Designing a data mesh operating model: roles, responsibilities, and boundaries
06 Sep, 2026 | 04 Mins read

Most data mesh initiatives fail not because the architecture is wrong, but because nobody can answer the question: who owns this data product? When ownership is ambiguous, quality drops, SLAs go unmet

Why enterprises are repatriating from managed AI services
Why enterprises are repatriating from managed AI services
05 Sep, 2026 | 04 Mins read

A quiet but significant trend has emerged over the past two quarters: enterprises are moving AI workloads off managed services and back onto infrastructure they control. The pattern is not universal,

Guardrails: The Theme Park Barrier
Guardrails: The Theme Park Barrier
04 Sep, 2026 | 09 Mins read

You walk through a theme park. The paths are clear, the attractions are visible, and the crowd flows in the intended direction. You do not notice the rope barriers unless you try to walk somewhere you

Data pipeline monitoring: Elementary vs Databand vs Lightup
Data pipeline monitoring: Elementary vs Databand vs Lightup
03 Sep, 2026 | 05 Mins read

A data pipeline fails silently. The DAG completes without errors, the tables are populated, but the numbers are wrong. A column that was never null now has 30% nulls. A join that produced 10,000 rows

The consolidation wave: 5 AI acquisitions that reshaped the market this quarter
The consolidation wave: 5 AI acquisitions that reshaped the market this quarter
02 Sep, 2026 | 04 Mins read

The acquisition wave in AI this quarter was not random. Five deals, each above the billion-dollar threshold, closed within weeks of each other, and they share a common logic: the companies being acqui