As cloud adoption increases and multi and hybrid clouds become the norm, operations become more complex and monitoring performance becomes more difficult. In this Knowledge Short podcast, David Linthicum talks about how the concept and practice of Observability goes beyond traditional systems monitoring to help IT teams observe, gain insight into, and maybe even predict what’s happening in their cloud ecosystem to better manage increasing complexity.

Manufacturers continue to respond to an increasing demand for products amid a volatile supply chain, labor shortages, and a fluctuating global economy. Improving production processes in the factory can help, but it’s not the only answer. In this podcast, David Linthicum and Deloitte’s Stephen Laaper talk about how companies can use AI and other cognitive tools to harness the vast streams of data collected from manufacturing operations to automate and increase safety, productivity, and quality and build the smart factory of the future.

Every so often, a technology comes along that has the power to change how we view and perform in the world. One of those just might be wearable cognitive assistance (WCA) devices. In this episode, David talks with Carnegie Mellon University professor Mahadev Satyanarayanan and Deloitte’s Arpan Tiwari about how WCA, via leveraging the edge and AI to augment human capabilities, will transform the way we work and live, and open up worlds of knowledge and ability to anyone who wears a device.

Wearable Cognitive Assistance | Deloitte US

As cloud moves into its second decade, there are still growing pains. In this episode, David Linthicum and Mike Kavis discuss cloud’s most pressing issues and offer solutions. Leveraging cloud for innovation, multi-cloud complexity, a talent shortage, and slowing cloud migration are the top challenges. The solutions? Focusing on value delivery, aligning business needs with technology, changing organizational culture, and realizing that slowing down isn’t necessarily such a bad thing.

For companies that operate across geographies, IT architectures and regulatory requirements can make it difficult to access widely distributed data for analysis. Extended enterprise clouds (EEC) can help provide access to disparate data via augmenting the enterprise multi-cloud with third-party services such as vertical clouds, AI clouds, or data clouds—all with a common control plane. Building an EEC takes planning and a cultural change around data ownership, but it’s well worth the effort.

There’s little doubt that sustainability has become a global imperative. In this Knowledge Short, David Linthicum discusses the vital role cloud computing can play in sustainability initiatives. He makes the case that cloud computing is more sustainable because resource use is optimized, and cloud providers typically employ green operations practices. He also talks about other ways organizations can practice sustainability in their everyday operations.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion aren’t just words; they’re a key component of success for nearly any endeavor, cloud computing included. In this podcast, David Linthicum talks with Deloitte's Josh Walker, co-founder of Black Orlando Tech, about his efforts to bring diversity to the tech workforce. They also discuss ways companies can change their culture to hire more minorities by creating a culturally diverse, friendly workspace and ensuring that minorities feel more welcome.

As cloud matures, managing cloud costs has become a top priority for many organizations. That’s where the new discipline of FinOps, or financial operations, can help. The goal of FinOps is to help companies manage and maintain accountability for cloud usage and costs. In this Knowledge Short podcast, David Linthicum explains what FinOps is, how it can help companies control cloud costs better, and how culture change and automation play a key role in FinOps implementation.

Cloud-native design principles make cloud apps scalable, flexible, and more quickly deployable. Those principles can be applied to situations other than cloud, as well. Take edge computing, for instance. Edge can be thought of as a point-of-presence cloud, so applying cloud-native principles to the edge can make app performance, speed, and scalability cloud-like. And it can help solve the “edge war” of the future: the battle to reduce latency to its vanishing point.

Look around at any cloud conference, and you’ll see a lopsided ratio of men to women. Why aren’t there more women in tech, and in cloud computing specifically? In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Deloitte’s Lisa Noon and Appgate’s Tamara Prazak about how to get more women into cloud. In the end, it comes down to bridging the STEM gap for girls early on, recruiting more women, and making their working lives more flexible. Cultural change also plays a big role in closing the gap.