The chef server is hosted alongside our production platform - due to various issues maintaining it in our physical offices isn't viable - so we need to be able to use 'knife' from locations that are considered 'public' to our production network. Plus we have remote workers (like me!) who need access to manage the infrastructure using chef.

It's not an ideal situation, but young and growing start-ups work with what we can get. At least the roof doesn't leak! (My last start-up employer was based out of a spare room in a heating company, and the roof leaked every time it rained - and in Edinburgh it rains a lot!)