Asjad Athick is the author of Getting Started with Elastic Stack 8.0 we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.
Q: What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?
Asjad: Cyber security, cloud computing, machine learning, data analytics, and search.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Asjad: I enjoy helping people do cool things with their data. For the last 5 or so years, I’ve been knee-deep in Elastic technology for all kinds of use cases and solution areas and I’ve been incredibly impressed by what people can achieve when the technology is applied right. There’s a wealth of information and reference material online on the Elastic Stack, but a gap that was apparent to me was a guided experience to help folks get started on their journey. Getting Started with Elastic Stack 8.0 aims to do just this; give practitioners and architects an optimized get started experience for long-term success using the Elastic Stack.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Asjad: I looked at the titles available on the market, what they covered well and what the gaps were. I then structured the book to best compliment all available reference material to build relevant, useful, and value-adding content for readers to help them in their journey with the stack.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Asjad: Work/life balance was the main challenge when writing this book. Scheduling in focused sessions for writing and trying to maintain a routine each month to get chapters done helped overcome the issue.
Q. What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Asjad: The amount of data we generate as organizations is increasing exponentially, and most people these days seem to acknowledge the tremendous value and insight in these humongous repositories of data. The tech this book explores addresses this challenge head-on. It helps folks understand how they can collect, correlate and analyze this data in a way that is practical and scalable to drive value for their organization.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Asjad: This book is a first of its kind; it approaches the Elastic Stack as an end-to-end platform for all things data. There’s a heavy focus on building use cases and outcomes on the stack, leveraging all core components to work together. This book also digs deep into aspects like Machine Learning, SIEM, and Endpoint Security to help readers make the most of their Elastic Stack investment.
The book also uses hands-on exercises and story-based examples to help readers quickly understand, digest, and learn the content, accelerating their time to value with the stack.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?
Asjad: Readers should realize the tremendous value in the capabilities of the stack for big data analytics and the solutions this can enable.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Asjad: I recommend using this book as a tool to guide and structure your learning experience. The chapters are structured to help you jump in and out of sections you are interested in during your project. Be sure to supplement this with plenty of hands-on experience in the form of a personal project or even a proof of concept for something you want to deploy in production. Don’t be afraid to Google your way out of problems if you encounter any!
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Asjad: I do! It’s at https://asjadathick.medium.com/.
You can find Asjad’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
