Tech Interviews

In the last of this series looking at the shift to public cloud we discuss getting the best from your cloud and the value of understanding the behaviour of your cloud infrastructure.

On this show I’m joined by Sumo Logic’s Colin Fernandez as we look at public cloud, the value of what it delivers and how an understanding of its performance is crucial to not only help achieve desired outcomes, but to do so while meeting those ever-critical security and governance requirements.

Colin is a self-proclaimed IT veteran with 32 years’ experience in the industry, starting out at ICL and arriving at Sumo Logic via the likes of IBM and VMware and that longevity in the industry puts Colin in a great position to comment on what he sees in today's market and how cloud has and is disrupting our use of technology.

As always, cloud means we discuss a wide range of topics as we chat about new platform paradigms such as serverless and containers, we discuss the impact cloud has on security and compliance and why security has to be a major part of the cloud design cycle.

We wrap up with a chat about Sumo Logic’s platform and how their data and analytics engine is helping their customers to achieve their desired business outcomes.

Enjoy the show.

Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1AM

This show was recorded pre the announcement on August 27th, 2018 of CloudHealth Technologies acquisition by VMware.

This is the 3rd in our series looking at the move to public cloud, the challenges involved and some of the tips and technologies that can help you to overcome them. In this episode we look at perhaps the biggest challenge facing most organisations moving to public cloud, the issues of multi-cloud.

To discuss this I'm joined by Joe Kinsella CTO and Founder of CloudHealth Tech, a company that have built a platform to pull together information from numerous environments, consolidate it into one place and allow you to make informed, proactive decisions to ensure you use your technology in the best way you can.

During the episode we explore some wide-ranging topics, we look at why complexity is an issue, how multi-cloud was initially "stumbled upon" but is now becoming a chosen strategy. We ask why don't we expect cloud to be complex when much of what we do in our datacentres is very complicated? Joe also confesses that 3-4 years ago he was predicting the death of the on-prem DC and why he has revaluated that with hybrid becoming the deployment reality.

We wrap up discussing the CloudHealth Tech platform, what it does and how it helps to manage a multi-cloud environment by pulling together clouds, on-prem and automation platforms, connecting all the information to provide the business insights needed for proactive decision making. Finally, we look at the maturity of cloud management and how it needs to move beyond cost control and embrace security and governance as the evolution of multi-cloud management.

Joe gives some great insight and CloudHealth Technologies deliver a very powerful platform, so powerful that VMware saw fit to acquire them.

Enjoy the show.

For show notes visit :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1AH

As the desire to integrate public cloud into our organisations IT continues to grow, the need to ensure we maintain control and security of our key assets is a challenge but one that we need to overcome if we are going to use cloud as a fundamental part of our future IT infrastructure.

The importance of security and reducing our vulnerabilities is not, of course, unique to using public cloud, it's a key part of any organisations IT and data strategy. However, the move to public cloud does introduce some different challenges with many of our services and data now sitting well outside the protective walls of our datacentre. This means that if our risks and vulnerabilities go unidentified and unmanaged it can open us up to the potential of major and wide-reaching security breaches.

This weeks Tech Interviews is the second in our series looking at what organisations need to consider as they make the move to public cloud. In this episode we focus on risk, how to assess it, gain visibility into our systems regardless of location and how to mitigate the risks that our modern infrastructure may come across.

To help discuss the topic of risk management in the cloud, I'm joined by Darron Gibbard. Darron is the Managing Director for EMEA North and Chief Technology Security Officer for Qualys with 25 years' experience in the enterprise security, risk and compliance industry, he is well placed too discuss the challenges of public cloud.

We discuss the vulnerabilities that a move to cloud can create, the importance of visibility and how cloud, when managed correctly, is no riskier than any other part of our enterprise IT.

We also get some tips from Darron on building a risk based approach to cloud, Qualys's 5 principles of security and transparent orchestration.

Darron provides some great information on managing risk in the public cloud.

Enjoy the show.

Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1At

The move to public cloud is nothing new, many companies have moved or attempted to move key workloads into the big hyperscale providers, AWS, Azure, Google and IBM, but for some it has been a mixed success.

We have probably all heard of cloud projects (or maybe even had projects) that have not gone to plan, this can be for a range of reasons, cost, technical difficulties, performance. There is a long list of reasons that cloud projects don’t go the way that’s expected. But at the heart of many of those projects is the presumption that cloud is both cheap and easy. It comes as quite the shock we we discover it isn’t!

However, things may be about to change as a new wave of technology companies are emerging that are starting to address, what is, the highly complex world of public cloud platforms.

This week is the first in a few shows where we look at the complexity of using public cloud and chat with some of the technology companies who trying to address some of these challenges by taking fresh approaches to the problem and aiming to make the cloud experience better, both technically and commercially.

In this first show I’m joined by Andrew Hillier, co-founder and CTO of Densify. Densify have taken a fascinating approach to the problem, built on Andrews long and strong analytics background.

Densify uses a robust analytics platform to build a full understanding of the workloads that have moved to the cloud, develop a performance profile then automatically modify those applications to fully take advantage of the cloud platform they are running on, ensuring they are optimised for the right services and right commercial cost models.

If that sounds interesting then dive in as we discuss a wide range of topics including why public cloud is complicated, why it should never be about the money alone, the limitations of first generation approaches to optimisation and how one of the biggest reasons cloud project fails Is people buy the wrong cloud stuff!

Andrew provides some valuable insights and shares what is a pretty smart approach to the problem.

For full show notes :-

A couple of times a year I like to do a show that reviews the current state of the data market, the chance to take a check on the challenges facing both the makers and consumers of data technology, how they are been addressed, the technology changes and trends that decisions makers should consider and what the future holds for the industry.

Earlier this year I spoke with industry analyst Chris Evans to look ahead to 2018. For this half year review, I was very fortunate to get some time with renowned industry analyst Howard Marks.

With over 30 years’ experience as a consultant and writer on the storage industry he is very well placed to comment on the current state of the market and its direction.

In this episode we discuss rate of change V amount of change, the impact of cloud and how SaaS is impacting traditional roles.

We talk about the future of the storage admin and been in charge of data paranoia!

We look ahead at the challenges of data management and storage class memory and the impact of producers and consumers of technology.

Howard shares some fantastic insights and left me with a lot of food for thought. I am sure he will you too.

Thanks for listening.

for full show notes :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1zZ

Compliance of data continues to trouble many business execs, whether IT focused or not, it is high on the agenda for most organisations.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article called, Building a modern data platform "prevention" focused on how Microsoft Office365 could aide an organisation in preventing the loss of data using some excellent, if not well known tools, inside Office365.

This got me to thinking, what else do Microsoft have in their portfolio that people don't know about?

This episode of the podcast explores that exact topic, this is a show I've wanted to do for a while and finally have found the right person to help explore Microsoft's approach and what tools are quickly and easily available to help us deliver robust compliance.

To help me i'm joined by Stefanie Jacobs, a Technology Solutions Professional at Microsoft, with 18 years' experience in compliance. Stefanie shares with fantastic enthusiasm the importance of compliance, Microsoft's approach and how their technology is enabling organisations to make compliance a key part of their business strategy.

In this episode we explore all the compliance areas you'd ever want, including the dreaded "fear of the delete button".

Stefanie is a great guest, with a real enthusiasm for compliance and how Microsoft can help you deliver your strategy.

So settle back and enjoy the show.

Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1zU

I recently attended a fascinating event with the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) and Microsoft. BIMA exist to drive innovation and excellence across the digital industry. One of the ways they do this is via community events and forum to help give their industry leaders an opportunity to share ideas with their peers.

One of the other things communities like BIMA do well is engage with influential organisations who are shaping the way industries develop and BIMA have recently run a series of roadshows with Microsoft. So, when I was invited to the recent event in Liverpool, I was fascinated to understand what Microsoft were doing in the digital agency space and how their technology was shaping the way digitally focussed organisations are innovating and bringing new solutions to market.

What I found however was the technology Microsoft discussed was the same as that they where sharing with all other types of businesses. Why was this message the same? While we may assume “digital” companies are ones focussed on marketing and media creation, but the reality is most organisations are rapidly becoming digital businesses and starting to transform our organisations with technologies that only a few years ago were unavailable to most.

The event covered some fascinating topics and on this weeks podcast we share some of that with you. To help me to do that I am joined by one of the organisers of the BIMA event, Andy Kent CEO of Angel Solutions and the chair of BIMA Liverpool.

In this week show we take a look at BIMA and the work they do and the importance of community.

We discuss how Microsoft have become technology "cool kids" and how a shift in their attitude has encouraged people to try more Microsoft solutions.

We take a look at some of Andy's show highlights and the tech he is seeing having the most transformative effect.

Finally we look at how technological advances have also advanced customer expectations as allowing them to ask brand new questions of their data.

Andy shares with great enthusiasm both the technology and the value of tech community.

Enjoy the show. You'll find full show notes here; http://techstringy.com/2018/06/27/microsoft-the-digital-transformation-cool-kids-andy-kent-ep68/

As the move to cloud continues we are starting to see a new development, with organisations no longer relying on a single cloud provider to deliver their key services, many now opting for multiple providers.

This multi-cloud environment makes perfect sense, the whole point of adopting cloud is to provide you with the flexibility to consume your data, infrastructure, applications and services from the best provider at any given time, which would be very difficult to do if we only had a single provider.

However, multi-cloud comes with a challenge, one rather well summed up at an event recently by the phrase "clouds are the new silo's".

How to avoid cloud silo's is seemingly becoming a technology "holy grail" engaging many of the world's biggest tech vendors.

Taking on this challenge is the subject of this week's podcast with my guest Lauren Malhoit of Juniper Networks and co-host of the excellent Tech Village Podcast.

We open the discussion by trying to define what multi-cloud is and how it doesn't just mean Azure and AWS, but can equally apply to multiples of your own datacenters and infrastructure.

Lauren shares her view on the importance of automation and ask, why bother? Do we really need a multi-cloud infrastructure?

We wrap up looking at the importance of being multi-vendor, multi-platform and open and how that openness cannot come with a cost of complexity and how a multi-cloud world shouldn't be seen as a threat, but as an opportunity for career growth and development.

I hope you enjoy what I thought was a fascinating conversation about an increasingly pressing challenge.

Thanks for listening.

A couple of weeks ago Veeam had their annual technical conference VeeamON at that event they shared among other things their new strategic messaging.

That message is an interesting one and their shift from "backup" company to one focused on intelligent data management across multiple repositories is, in my opinion, exactly the right move to be making.

With that in mind, I wanted to take a look at some of those messages as well as some of the other interesting announcements from the show and that is exactly what we do on this week's podcast, as I'm joined by recurring Tech Interviews guest, Michael Cade, Global Technologist at Veeam.

We start by taking a look at Veeam's last 12 months and how they've started to deliver a wider range of capabilities around more traditional enterprise platforms.

Michael shares some of the thinking behind Veeam's goal to deliver an availability platform to meet the demands of modern business data infrastructures and the importance of doing more than the ability to "back stuff up"

We discuss the development of Veeam's 5 pillars of intelligent data management, a key strategic announcement from the show. We discuss the importance of automation in our future data strategies.

We finish up by investigating the value of data labs and how crucial the ability to get more value from your backup data is becoming. Finally, we take a look at some of the things we can expect from Veeam in the upcoming months.

Enjoy the show.

Full show notes are here :-

I've spoken a bit recently about the world of Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) especially as the technology continues to mature, with both improved hardware stacks and software looking to take advantage of this hardware, it is becoming an ever more compelling prospect.

How do these developments, an HCI version 2.0 if you like, manifest themselves? Recently I saw a good example in a series of blog posts and videos from friend of the show Ruairi McBride, which demonstrated really well both the practical deployment and look and feel of a modern HCI platform.

The videos focussed on NetApp's new offering and covered the out of the box experience, how to physically cable together your HCI building blocks and how to take your build from delivery to deployment in really easy steps.

With that in mind, I thought a chat with Ruairi about his experience with this particular HCI platform, how it goes together, how it is practically deployed and how it meets some of the demands of modern business would make an interesting podcast.

So here it is!

We discuss what HCI is and why it's simplicity of deployment is useful, we also look at the pro's and cons of the HCI approach.

We look at the benefit of a single vendor approach within our infrastructure and how the modern business technology landscape and desire for a more "cloud like" experience within our on-premises datacentres is driving interest in HCI.

We wrap up by looking at why as a business you'd consider HCI, what problems will it solve for you and what are the use cases that are a strong HCI fit and of course, it's important to remember that HCI isn't the answer to every question!

Ruairi shares some great info and experience - so settle back and enjoy the show.

Full show notes are here :-https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1z2