opsZero is reaching a decade in age. While I have grown it I have made a lot of mistakes which I want to address systematically. Second, opsZero is going to be standardized allowing us to grow in a consistent manner and as a single brand. Lastly, with the geopolitical situation access to compute is going to become more important and we will be returning to a world moving away from the Cloud and focused on cost and efficiency.

While we will have to address the situation of opsZero, the Iran War has created a new World Order in which the East dominates and power will wholesale move out of the West. One of the pillars of this new world will be India. As the value of the dollar shrinks the only outcome for a lot of Western companies is to move their bases to India.

Failures​

opsZero's focus has been scattered in terms of technology and business. We have moved the business into areas that are just not our core competency. Here are a list of our failures:

• Partnerships. We have focused too much on partnerships and they haven’t yielded much. Most of the partners we have worked with have gone bankrupt or have been dismantled. I met some interesting people but overall not useful in terms of revenue generation. I would even state that the AWS Partnership is a failure. These companies have gone full blown into AI putting an immense amount of CapEx with the expectation that it will replace humans. Ironically, this is destroying the human relationships that power these businesses in the first place.
• Ventures. Multiple brands, multiple APIs, different services, etc. while fun are a waste of time. It is diffusing the energy of the company on too many things and makes it difficult to communicate to the team what we are working on. It makes more sense to have a single brand of opsZero and add additional levers to that brand.
• Sales. Because of the different brands it has become hard to sell as each brand requires a different set of expertise. The gist of it is that we are a DevOps Agency with a focus on Cloud + AI. That is the core of the company and it is on top of that we add additional capabilities. However, my sales has been honestly not this. It has been going all over the place. There is no core focus that everything else is built around.
• Resale. We decided to do reselling which is a painful business that is not worth the time. It is low margin, the APIs are annoying, the taxes confusing and so on. The time and energy I focused on it the last two years were largely pointless. I should have focused on other things like growing revenue without the need of an AWS. Reselling isn’t glamorous and is monotonous.

Standardization​

Because of the failures listed above we will be changing the business. For the next stage of our growth we are going to focus on a few things and deemphasize many others.

1. One Brand. Everything will be under the opsZero brand. No ifs and buts. I will no longer be dealing with multiple brands. It is just a pain to deal with and we already have the opsZero brand being strong anyways so it doesn't make sense to manage multiple brands.
2. Product First. We will incrementally release new product under opsZero. Since we are limiting the focus to just opsZero.com it will make it easier to develop.
3. Aggressive Direct Sales. We will build our own sales team that will be aggressive in nature looking to grow the company.
4. Limited Resell. We will only do resell if it makes sense, it is not the core part of our business. We will only do resale for companies we provide DevOps services.
5. Limited Partnerships. We are going to do direct sales and focus our energies on that. We will only do partnerships if there is value. Going direct to customer is better than having an in between. What this means is growing the company internally. To focus on increasing the size of the company.

Verticals​

opsZero has been chasing every niche and this hasn't been fruitful. This has us chasing enterprises, SMBs, startups, etc., etc. This has proven to be ineffective. Each industry has a different tempo, requirements and style. Each is different from the other and we haven't created a tempo of outreach. Chasing after healthcare companies is difficult versus chasing after enterprise, etc.

So we will focus on just three verticals that are under served and where we can drive a lot of value:

1. Startups. I do believe that the startup ecosystem will move to India and the USA market will dry up as capital costs increase due to the Iran War. So new startups will largely die off, but for the time being this is still a primary area we need to go after.
2. SMB. There are a lot of SMBs in second tier cities that don't have expertise that need DevOps. We can gain significant leverage in these areas.
3. SLED. City and local governments will need support as their taxes crash when the US economy tanks. They will need to be more efficient. SLED is complex but it will allow us to become sticky overtime.

Solutions​

We are diversifying from the Cloud to be more Hybrid Cloud. Especially, with the Iranian attacks on the AWS UAE data centers the age of centralization is over. As the American Empire crumbles the centralization of power into American companies like AWS also starts to reduce. So decentralization becomes the norm again.

• DevOps. The basis of our go to market. We do all DevOps with OpenTofu/Terraform as the basis.
• Kubernetes. Kubernetes is our bread and butter. We will focus on making this the core of our value. Moving Windows, Linux, etc. workloads to Kubernetes is a primary goal.
• Identity. Setup and manage identity solutions.
• Compliance. Focusing on HIPAA, SOC2, PCI-DSS, etc.
• Datasets. Build and host core datasets for companies that want to use these for their own specific use cases.
• DBA. Database and performance tuning to lower the cost of compute for companies.
• AI. Low cost AI compute solutions such as running workloads on Macs, etc.
• Savings. Resale business, but we will likely limit to just the Cloud.

One of the goals with the products side is to focus on build out using open source.

New World Order​

With the Iran War we will see a rather fast destruction of the American Empire. Wealth and power will move to the East specifically India and China. Incidentally, I also think this means multinationals will move East as well. With a drop in the dollar and a lack of growth opportunities in the US a period of stagflation will take over the country and a debt crisis will essentially cut the dollar's value by 50%. Low growth and high inflation means hiring people in the US becomes an economic burden resulting in wholesale migration of jobs East.

Multinationals are not inherently tied to a location. They move as needed to different jurisdictions based on their focus on profitability. This is nothing new and has been a constant throughout history. This disadvantages SMBs and startups that don’t have these relationships or ability to build businesses in India. Migration of these roles to India is the area that we will target.

However, as multinationals and other companies didn’t die when the British Empire collapsed there is a way to get through to the other side of the American Collapse. We need to understand that we are moving to a:

• Low Energy. As Middle East War rages the amount of energy drops by 25% for the foreseeable future. Low energy will also affect other things such as chips and food. Overall, energy becomes exceedingly expensive.
• Resource Poor. With energy going up the amount of resources such as capital that is available to people and businesses will reduce. This means there will likely be less capital intensive businesses that will become the norm.

To address this situation we must force ourselves towards two specific goals.

• Low cost. We will focus on being the low cost provider. Our goal is to drive costs further down.
• Standardization. Standardize all parts of the business and continuously reduce costs for ourselves and our customers.

Hindurastra​

Lastly, the goal of our business is to strengthen and turn India into a Hindurastra. As the American Empire dies, Sanatana Dharma will be a dominant force in the world. India will have a difficult time for the next few years, but once the 30s come along there will be a rapid acceleration of energy and focus with India becoming one of the major forces alongside China.

When this happens Indians will notice that Hindu Dharma is the driving force of the world. With Buddhism in China or Yoga in America. This will lead to a recognition of India's spiritual contribution to the world and a return to our roots. The timeframe around the 2040s is when India will become a spiritual power again.

So our goal until then is to grow internally using Sanatana Dharma as our core.

AI is a disruptive force. I was skeptical about its impact but now seeing the rapid developments by Anthropic I can say I am now a convert. While in 2025 AI was in development stage at this point we are in an accelerated implementation stage.

There are some significant changes I see happening:

• More work will be expected out of fewer people. Companies like Tata, Infosys and other outsourcing firms will likely require more output per person as AI can fulfill a lot of the simple tasks. Specialists will likely be turned into AI tools. The people doing the tasks will become reviewers, not writers.
• As people and companies build their own tooling specific to their company’s use case the need for data becomes more important. Data becomes a way of building tools.
• Services as a business model will be impacted. If companies can put together their own custom solutions targeting their needs with AI tools guiding them then the need for services becomes niche. Companies will hire consultants for specific cases not for general purpose.
• AI will make everyone entrepreneurs. The cost of building something is going way, way down. While there will be slop, we are going to rapidly be able to create new things. The cycle of creative destruction will speed up. New products can be created and launched rapidly. We are back to the MVP world where even Microsoft is shipping junk product to iterate quickly. Yes, there will be slop but this is a matter of normality for most startups. So slop in of itself is not that problematic.

What does it mean for us?

We are going to transition to becoming an AI first product company. We will be focusing less and less on services and will be completely focused on products that have AI at the core. The products will be based around being inputs for AI to make additional decisions around.

The goal is for us to launch a product quickly, set up the processes for improvement, and sell and market with a few workers. This will require a mindset shift in the way we work. Currently, we have a services mindset where delivering high quality work to customers is expected instead we need to change to a mindset of velocity.

Some things we need to do:

• Launch fast. We need to launch new initiatives quickly. The market will tell us based on if people buy our products or not.
• Less permissions needed. Everyone should be able to build and deploy new features without asking for permissions. We will have a few criteria but everyone should be able to launch as needed.
• Vibe code, deploy and test. Build quickly using vibe coding. Use AI tools to launch new offerings.

It is easy to ruminate on the past and future of a business but it is hard to see where you are in the present. Data forces you to understand the present. Once you have figured out the present and always clearing out anything in the past or future then you can clear your mind to the capabilities you have and remove anything that does not provide value.

The data fueled present is much like meditation for an individual. It forces a company to also be in th present.

To get started in my reading I am focusing my energies on a few sections:

• Biographies. Read biographies of saints and yogis.
• Meditation. Learn the foundations of meditation.
• Cooking. Learn how to cook well.

This also includes a general study of the Hanuman Chalisa, Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita. The goal is to deepen the study of these three texts.

However, to understand the texts is to study the saints who lived the yogic life. The stories are easier to remember than prescriptions so that is the focus of my energies. Once the stories are internalized then I can then understand the Bhakti and Prayer. The Sadhana portion is there to remove the blemishes and figure out how to lead a more yogic life.

The goal is to build devotion. It is not at this point to decern Brahman or get into pure meditation. It is to purify myself and to get into a belief of Isvara without doubt.

I am updating my routine where I am changing Pray to be Contemplation. I realize that my work time is important to, well, work on Sakha and Samaja related tasks. What I constituted as the Pray time was also meditation, svadyaya, reading classics, and learning Hindi. So I am changing the Pray time to Contemplation time. This allows me to use this time a bit more broadly to improve each of the limbs that I have including studying cooking, exercise and other sadhana adjacent things.

As I contemplate sevaka and samaja, I realized that the sevaka exists to promote Sanatana Dharma. I want people trained within the framework to use it to promote Santana Dharma. Having a separate samaja pillar doesn't make sense with that. So samaja will be merged back into sevaka under yama. The goal is to outgrow the ego, and promotion of Sanatana Dharma is the way to accomplish that task.

Sevaka exists to build good character, to lead society. A sevaka is also a representation of society. So society should not be something separate from that world view.

Lastly, this simplifies what had before the focus. There should be two focuses sevaka and sakha. The sakha is the business units to help society. The sevaka is a part building and influencing society.

I made the practice of the sevaka unnecessarily complex. A fault of my own ignorance and misunderstanding and lack of depth of knowledge. To simplify I am going back to the eight limbs of Patanjali as the core practice. When I started a year ago I wanted to incorporate the four yogas into a single practice but now realize that the eight limbs already combine the four. Maharishi Patanjali already figured it out, I being some guy don't need to replace this system with my own when I haven't even fully figured out His.

So I am simplifying the sevaka path to just be the practice of the astanga while incorporating the Vedanta philosophy. This simplifies the entire sevaka path to just be the Patanjali path which makes it much much easier to communicate as well as knowing what aspects of the path I need to improve.

• All yoga is now under sevaka.

Constantly thinking about work doesn’t focus my brain it scatters it and makes it difficult to focus. So I’ve split my days into three two hour chunks. Scientifically the brain can only work son intensely for a short burst of time. An hour and half seems to be about he max but I given myself a buffer of 15 mins on both sides to get going.

A problem I have faced is a guilt for not studying the shastras on a daily basis. A guilt for not studying that doesn’t lead to any positive outcome other than stress. Sometimes I want to study something else other than shastras. So I am reframing my Work schedule to learn, work and study with a focused intensity.

This means the most important spiritual tasks are my meditations. The true culmination of Bhakti and Karma Yoga. While I do want to study the shastras I will read them in focused intense manner similar to the other tasks that I have in mind. I think this will mean I can focus on finishing a complete text instead of just reading a couple of pages a day. I keep forgetting what I read if I just read a couple of pages a day.

So my work is going to be focused intensely on specific tasks:

• Study intensely a book or topic
• Memorize shastras
• Work on business tasks

I wrote previously that I wanted to cultivate devotion as pure meditation was not providing me with the Brava that I wanted. Further, just sitting in meditation all the time was leading me to get a bit antsy. Meditation creates focus, but if Bhagavan isn’t in focus, then the carnal pleasures become the objects of focus. So I decided that I want to focus more time on devotion as part of my day that takes on various forms not just meditation. What I came to realize is a few things:

1. Meditation time should be considered Devotion time. Whether I am on the meditation cushion or not I need to develop a love of Bhagavan. By focusing only on meditation I am limiting myself to potentially other forms of Bhakti. Further, 10-20 minutes of deep meditation is much better than 30 minutes of spacy meditation. I am focusing more on quality as opposed to length.
2. This devotion time I can use for other things. I need to get into the shastras more deeply and this time spent throughout the day is time I can use for this focus. Further, I can use it as a time for prayer, sastra reading, meditation, and hatha yoga study, and reading of some classics.

In order to simplify my life even more I have divided my day into two buckets: Devotion and Work. Yes, I include time for exercise, family and cleaning. But for the most part the day is simply broken into 2 hour work chunks and 30 minute devotion chunks. This radically simplifies what I need to think about at any given time. This also gives me ample time throughout the day for devotion and thinking about Bhagavan to center myself.

I still hope to meditate about 30 minutes a day, but it also gives me 2.5 hours to dedicate to studying other things.

Lastly, the Devotion time should be focused on improving one of the 8 Limbs. This is a significantly important point. By improving the 8 Limbs I am focusing on progressing spiritually not just arbitrarily reading things.

While I am reading a great many texts at the moment the end goal for all of this is to get to liberation. All this reading isn't for fun, there is an end goal in mind. There are better things to read than how to discipline yourself.

As I read these texts I am overcompensating by reading more than I need to with the assumption that I incorporate the best ideas into my Sadhana, move on from the texts that didn't provide much, and then largely focus on the sastas and the texts that were exceptional.

So if the texts in svadhyaya seem like a lot, it's because I am trying to read a lot of texts to find the best ones.

To prioritize my read texts in the following order according to the teacher:

1. Swami Dayananda Saraswati
2. Swami Chinmayananda
3. Swami Vivekananda
4. Swami Sivananda
5. Others

This order is based on the cummulative knowledge of the teachers and in many ways the teacher's ability to communicate to me through the language they use. While I do like reading Swami Sivananda, the language is a bit more dated than the jokes that Swami Dayananda Saraswati uses. In this way the texts just feel more alive and relevant to me.

I am no trying to say that the other teachers aren't good, but I am trying to prioritize my ability to understand the texts and incorporate the ideas into my Sadhana quickly.