About · Toronto
Practitioners first. Advisors second.
The 808 is a Toronto advisory on cloud, AI and security. We run the tools before we write about them, and we advise on what we have seen work. A framework tells you what to think about. We go and look.
How we think
argue · then testTwo habits keep the research honest. We argue about a position before it ships. Then we test it against something real.
Open-minded discourse
A position is a draft until someone has tried to break it. Every recommendation is argued internally before a client sees it. If the evidence moves, so do we — we ask the same of your stack.
Real experimentation
We run the platforms, agents and vendor claims we write about, on real workloads, before our name goes on them. A press release is a lead, not a source.
House rules
what we hold ourselves toCite it or cut it
Every factual claim carries a source you can check. If we can't source it, it doesn't run. Credit goes to whoever did the work, by name, with a link.
Name the trade-off
Every recommendation costs something. We say what. Advice with no downside is a pitch.
Say what we don't cover
Our services page shows what is live and what is still being built. A gap stated plainly earns more trust than a list that only looks complete.
Our research lives in 808RG, an internal store where every position carries its source, a confidence rating and a review date. Licensed research stays internal. A position goes public only once it stands on sources we can link.
Leadership
the bylineAndrew John Baynes
Andrew leads The 808's research and advisory work. He has 15 years of experience in enterprise technology: cloud infrastructure, platform strategy and vendor evaluation for enterprise teams. That is where the recommendations come from — field work, not a vendor's talking points.
Tell us what you're running.
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