Hello World!

A short introduction to us, BEAMOps, and what we do.

Jan 9, 2025 by Ellie Fairholm and Josep Lluis Giralt D'Lacoste

beamops

elixirlang


Hello and welcome to our BEAMOps blog!

We’re Ellie and Josep (or Pep), a couple that has been together for 7 years, and the faces behind BEAMOps. We met in Barcelona in 2017 and have been together ever since. This is us in our BEAMOps t-shirts on a flight back from the US in summer 2024.

Ellie and Josep smiling wearing BEAMOps t-shirts

We currently live in Bath in the UK and set up our software consultancy together in 2023. We also recently wrote a book: Engineering Elixir Applications, which was a real labour of love. So yes, we do everything together: we work, live and breathe as one. Whilst some might think that’s too much, for us it’s the perfect balance. We have different strengths and weaknesses and we bring out the best in each other.

But enough about us. Let’s talk about something more interesting. You’ll notice we called both our consultancy and the blog: BEAMOps. What is this weird BEAMOps word?

What is BEAMOps?

BEAMOps is a phrase that Josep came up with. It is an extension of the well-known DevOps paradigm, but with a focus on the development of BEAM applications. Why the BEAM? Well, BEAM technologies are fault tolerant and reliable by design—their concurrency, distribution, and message-passing capabilities make them ideal for creating reliable and scalable applications. As well as from fan-girling over BEAM technologies, BEAMOps is about creating a well-rounded working environment by including some of the concepts that are traditionally related to DevOps.

BEAMOps encourages the following principles:

  • Project Management
  • Ownership
  • Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)
  • Environment Integrity
  • Scalability
  • Kaizen Principle
  • Continuous Deployment

The idea is that if teams adopt these principles and use BEAM technologies, they will have reliable and performant applications, that are supported by happy and productive teams. That is why we named our consultancy BEAMOps Software Consultancy. Because we embody these principles in everything that we do. And we have to say that we are both productive and happy.

In future posts we’ll do a deep dive into each one of these principles, why they are important and how they can help everyone in the BEAM community.

But for now, thank you for reading and catch you in the next one. 💜