Tech Interviews

Buzzwords are a constant in IT, Cloud, HCI, Analytics, GDPR are often bandied about and serious discussions are had, however not everyone is sure what some of these buzzwords mean, what the technology consists of and importantly what positive impact does it have on an organisation?

Another contender to the buzzword Olympics is IoT or “The Internet of Things” what does that mean? What is a thing? And do I want things?

When I heard that a friend of the podcast had taken on a new role as an IoT Solutions Architect It seemed like a great opportunity to get some IoT education for not only me, but also the Tech Interviews audience.

So, on this week’s show I’m joined by Mark Carlton, now an IoT Solutions Architect at Arrow ECS and asked him to share what he’s discovered in his time in the role, how he sees IoT as a technology and how implementing it can deliver value to a business.

We start off by trying to define what we mean by IoT and how like many a new IT trend, it isn’t really that new with businesses having used sensors for many years as a way of collecting data. We explore why IoT is more than just sensors and how in reality IoT is a platform architected from sensors, gateways and importantly analytics.

We discuss the importance of focussing on business outcomes, the Why? How? And What? Of a project and not the technology.

We finish up by looking at security and compliance, both crucial elements of an IoT platform design and critical they are included right at the outset and finally Mark shares some advice on where to start and some sources of information to consider.

I hope this episode helps you better understand this emerging technology platform and how it could serve your business, I know it certainly has helped me.

Full Show Notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1yQ

GDPR has been a constant business conversation over the last 18 months or so, it's discussed in the press, on the news and social media, as well as a handful of episodes of this podcast. However, much of the conversation has focussed on what you should be considering and doing to take on the GDPR challenge, while very little has come from those who have already made great strides on their compliance journey.

With that in mind, a few weeks ago I read a fascinating series of blogs from software company Veeam, this series discussed the 5 principles they followed to build their compliance program.

As many of us are currently on our own compliance journey, I thought the opportunity to chat with someone who is already well down this path would be of real interest, so in this week's podcast I'm joined by Mike Resseler, Mike is a Director of Product Management but is also a key member of Veeam's global compliance team and has played a significant part in the way they have dealt with the challenges posed by GDPR.

In this week's show Mike shares with us Veeam's experience. We start at the beginning with the initial advice they took and research they did into what GDPR meant to them. We look at the importance of picking the right team, seeing compliance as a positive and how they dealt with those who felt GDPR didn't effect them.

We also look at the practicalities of building a compliance program as Mike shares the 5 principles Veeam developed to help them. We wrap up looking at the future, discussing continual improvement, training and the way that Veeam are making compliance integral to everything they do across their business.

I hope you enjoy the fantastic insight that Mike provides into the way a company builds a compliance programme and tackles regulation such as GDPR.

Full Show Notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1yK

Cyber Security, be it how we secure our perimeter, infrastructure, mobile devices or data, is a complex and ever-changing challenge. In the face of this complexity where do we start when it comes to building our organisations cyber security standards.

Well perhaps the answer may lie in standardised frameworks and accreditation's. If you think about it, one of the biggest challenges we have when it comes to security is knowing where to start, so having a standard to work towards makes perfect sense.

That is the subject of this weeks show with my guest and colleague Jason Fitzgerald, as we discuss the value of a UK based accreditation, Cyber Essentials.

Jason spends much of his time working with organisations to help them address their IT security concerns and one of the tools he uses extensively is a framework and accreditation produced by the National Cyber Security Centre here in the UK, Cyber Essentials.

During this episode we discuss why such a framework is valuable and can help a business improve its security posture.

We discuss, the confusion in many organisations when it comes to cyber security, the 5 key areas that Cyber Essentials covers, the importance of getting your security foundation right and some tips on where to start when it comes to building a cyber security framework.

Enjoy the show.

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

At the start of 2018 the technology industry was hit by two new threats unlike anything it had seen before. Spectre and Meltdown used vulnerabilities not in operating system code or poorly written applications, but ones at a much lower level than that.

This vulnerability was not only something of concern to today’s technology providers, but also to those looking at architecting the way technology will work in the future.

As we try to push technology further and have it deal with more data, more quickly than ever before. The technology industry is having to look at ways of keeping up and have our tech work in different ways beyond the limits of our current ways of working. One of these developments is storage class memory, or persistent memory, were our data can be housed and accessed at speeds many times greater than they are today.

However, this move brings new vulnerabilities in the way we operate, vulnerabilities like those exposed by Spectre and Meltdown and how did they look to exploit operational level vulnerabilities? and what does that mean for our desire to constantly push technology to use data in ever more creative and powerful ways?

That’s the topic of this week’s Tech Interviews podcast, as I’m joined by the always fascinating Alex McDonald to discuss exactly what Spectre and Meltdown are, how they Impact what we do today and how they may change the way we are developing our future technology.

Alex is part of the Standards Industry Association group at NetApp and represents them on boards such as SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association).

In this episode we discuss

* How Spectre and Meltdown work.

* How this has changed with way the

technology industry is approaching the

future.

*Risk mitigation

*The Future and how the tech industry

will get it right.

Full show notes can be found here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1yu

Recently I wrote a blog post in which I touched on the importance of availability, especially In a world were our reliance on technology is ever increasing, from the way we operate our business, to the way we live our lives and how digitally focussed businesses can no longer tolerate downtime, planned or unplanned, in the way they could even 5 years ago.

The crux of that article talked about how crucial availability is in our modern platforms. So how do we maintain availability and mitigate against the evils of downtime?

That’s simple, we build recovery and continuity plans to ensure that our system remain on, regardless of the events that go on around it, from planned maintenance to the very much unplanned disaster. But there’s the problem, these things aren’t simple are they?

With that In mind the recent product announcement from Veeam of their new Availability Orchestrator solution, caught my attention and is the topic of this weeks podcast, as serial guest Michael Cade, Global Technologist, at Veeam, joins me to provide an insight into Availability Orchestrator, what challenges it addresses, why Veeam thought it was important to develop and how it can help you deliver better availability to your critical systems.

So settle back and enjoy the show as we discuss "Availability of all of the things!"

You'll find full show notes here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1yp

As our IT systems become ever more complex, with more data, devices and ways of working, the demands on our systems and ensuring they are always operating efficiently grow. This in turn presents us and our IT teams with a whole new range of management challenges.

Systems management has always been a challenge for organisations, how do we keep on top of an ever-increasing amount of systems ? how do we ensure they remain secure and patched ? and how do we cope with our users and their multitude of devices and ensure we can effectively look after them?.

Like most of our technology, systems management is changing, but how? And what should we expect from future management solutions?

That's the subject of this weeks podcast, as I'm joined by returning guest Dave Sobel. Dave is Senior Director of Community at SolarWinds MSP.

As part of this role, Dave is also charged with looking at the future of systems management and what these platforms need to include in them to continue to be relevant and useful.

Dave provides some excellent insight into the way the management market is shifting and some of the technology trends that will change and improve the way we control our ever more complex yet crucial IT systems.

We discuss a wide range of topics including;

Why looking at the future is such an important part of the IT strategists role.

Why we need to rethink how we see a "computer" and how this is leading to a proliferation of different devices with the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT).

The part Artificial Intelligence is going to play in future systems management as we try to supplement our over stretched IT staff.

How increased automation will be crucial as part of systems management.

Finally, we look at the move to human centric rather than device centric management.

We wrap up looking at how smarter systems management is going to allow us to free our IT teams to provide increased value to the business, as well as looking at a couple of areas you can focus on today, to start to look at the way you manage your systems.

Hope you found the chat as interesting as I did.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

You'll find full show notes here:- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1yj

If there is one thing that we can say is a certainty in the technology industry it is the constant state of change, how technology works, how we want to use it, where we want to use it and what we expect from it is constantly changing and in reality is ever more demanding.

One of the things I like to do in my role is spend time looking at technology predictions and listen to ideas from those in the industry tasked with defining the strategic direction of their businesses, not to judge whether they are right or wrong (predicting things in this industry is so very difficult) but to pick out trends and areas that are of interest to the work I do and then at least be aware of it and keep a watching brief on how it develops.

Keeping a watching brief gave me the idea for this week’s podcast as I catch up with two guests who produce an annual technology predictions blog and back that up with episodes on their own successful podcast where they look in more detail at those predictions.

David Fearne and Richard Holmes work for Arrow ECS, a global technology supplier and one of the worlds largest companies. David is Technical Director, charged with looking after the relationship and developing strategy for over 100 different technology partners and suppliers. Richard is Business Development Director for Arrow’s Internet Of Things (IoT) business.

This week we look at their predictions from 2017, we discuss a wide range of areas, we look at data management and the concept of “data divorce” and why in a rapidly changing landscape how we look after our data will become increasingly important.

The second area we explore is data analytics and how do we build into our businesses the ability to make data driven decisions. We discuss the fact that all businesses make decisions based on data, however, how do we remove our human inefficiencies.

We wrap up looking at security and David’s assertion of a change in “security posture” and how it’s crucial that we rethink the way we look at security of our systems. We discuss why “assuming breach” is an important part of that change. We look at, as the security problem becomes ever more complex, how do we continue to address it, is the answer to employ ever more security specialists?

It’s a great chat with David and Richard and we could have discussed these trends for hours, luckily for you, it’s only 40 minutes!

Enjoy the Show.

You'll find full show notes here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1y4

One of the favourite parts of my role over the last few years has been my involvement in tech community, whether that's been working with advocacy groups like the NetApp A-Team, with local user groups like TechUG, presenting at a range of different community events or just answering questions in technical communities, all of these investments (and they are investments) have paid back, they've introduced me to great people, given me access to resources and expertise I would never have found normally and opened up great opportunities for travel and too develop some great friendships.

One of the challenges with tech community is however its size and if you are new to it or even a part of it, it can be overwhelming and hard to know where to start? How do you find the resources you need, find out which events you can attend or find out who the leaders are that you can engage with ?

Last year I was invited to get involved in a project called "Level Up", a project started by this week's guest on the podcast Yadin Porter de Leon, Yadin has been on the show before in his capacity at data protection company Druva, however that's not what we discuss this week as we chat about the Level Up project, why he started it, the project aims and how it can help you in your career.

In this week's episode we discuss why you may want to get involved in community and what benefits it can bring and how involvement in the wider community can benefit both you and your business providing you with opportunities to develop your skills.

We wrap up by asking Yadin about another project he is involved in which is the excellent Tech Village Podcast, again focused on career development and the technology business, a great show which I'd recommend anyone gets on their regular podcast list.

Enjoy the Show...

You can find full show notes here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1xM

Wanting to get the very best from your data and "extracting value" from it seems to be a constant conversation with technology and business leaders in pretty much any organisation, but what does getting value from it mean and how do we go about it?

A couple of weeks ago I read a very interesting article from this weeks guest where he introduced the concept of Data Amplification Ratio, the basic premise of this article was that one of the key ways to get more from your data is to ensure that the datasets you have can be presented to multiple different systems and services all of which can add their own particular value and extract their own unique information from the data presented to them.

I thought this article presented a really good insight in to the practicalities of getting the most from our data and wanted to get the author to share that insight for the Tech Interviews listeners.

That's exactly what we do as I'm joined this week by Matt Watts, Director Technology and Strategy at data management company NetApp.

On the show we explore Matt's article in more detail, we look at what we mean by data amplification, why it can be useful and how you go about "amping" your data.

We also discuss the importance of data mobility as well as what the future holds for "data amplification"

We even throw in some controversy by picking apart a tech industry favourite "data is the new oil" and discussing why maybe that's not as true as you think!

Fascinating insight, enjoy the show.

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

Thanks for listening.

As organisations we can see the benefit of cloud and almost all organisations are taking advantage of it, be it a software service such as Office365 or backup and DR, the efficiency and simplicity of deployment of these kinds of services make them an attractive option.

However, what we are not seeing, in general, is organisations moving 100% to a cloud-based IT infrastructure, this can be for many reasons, suitability, complexity and cost, for example.

But our desire to take advantage of cloud services is not going to diminish, especially as we look at how to get the best from our data with analytics, business intelligence and machine learning , often the only practical way to access these services is via cloud.

Recently I watched a video called “What it takes to get your data hybrid cloud ready” in which John Woodall, VP Engineering at Integrated Archive Systems, provided insights on how to prepare your data and infrastructure to operate effectively in a hybrid world.

John covered some great information which I thought would make an interesting Tech Interviews episode, so that’s exactly what I’ve done.

John joins me as we chat about what we mean by hybrid cloud and the importance that it plays in a modern businesses IT strategy and the challenges that come with building a hybrid model.

We talk about the joys of finances and the importance, before we head off on our cloud adventure, of fully appreciating exactly where we are right now.

John also shares some of the basics you need to get in place to not only ensure you get your strategy right, but that you can deploy something that is consistent, secure and extensible. We also get to talk about Lego and Minecraft!

Finally we discuss why you may want to consider hybrid, whether you are a traditional business or one “born in the cloud”.

John has a real enthusiasm for deploying technology and helping customers get the best from their investment and he shares that in this episode.

Enjoy the show.

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