Tech Interviews

More effective data analytics is part of most organisations plans, we see the ability to extract useful information that helps us make better business decisions as a crucial part of digital transformation into a more data-driven enterprise. However, perhaps it is not as easy as it sounds, many enterprises have had cause to re-evaluate their shift after their analytics projects failed to deliver the value they had hoped for, but why?

This week’s podcast was inspired by a whitepaper I was sent, produced by Analytics company Aginity, the paper was entitled “Forget about AI and ML” which, while a provocative title, offered some interesting insights as it discusses how delivering an analytics project is about much more than technology and has much wider requirements from culture, to who we involve, to how we ensure we have the appropriate data to operate with. This is a topic that intrigues me, so joining me to discuss this in more detail is CEO of Aginity, Rick Hall, he has worked in the data analytics industry for 30 years now and has seen many analytics projects succeed as well as fail and in this episode, he shares some thoughts on how to get it right.

Join us as we discuss.

• How are we currently using AI?

• You’ve got to do the “dirty work first”

• What are the challenges we face with analytics?

• The “third phase” of analytics.

• Democratising analytics.

• How to make analytics work better.

• Empowering people.

• It’s not just a technology shift.

• What Aginity do.

• The power of collaborative analytics

• Top tips for driving better analytics.

Data Analytics is high on the agenda of most enterprises, but doing it right needs careful thought and planning, as well as making sure we empower the right people with the right tools. Rick did a great job here for articulating that and providing some tips on how to get this kind of project delivered right in your enterprise.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest, then why not email me at [email protected] and to catch the next episode, subscribe.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

For full show notes and links please visit : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Q5

As the world of technology and data continues to evolve, so must the solutions that we use to build our enterprise technology stacks, which of course means new versions of products and services from our leading vendors. At the end of February 2021 Cloud Data Management specialists Veeam released Version 11 of their highly successful availability suite. But what does that mean for those of us who deliver, manage and maintain enterprise infrastructure?

Because while the world we operate in continues to evolve are vendors listening to the challenges that their customers have? Understanding evolving trends and how they are likely to impact both them and their customers?

In this episode, I'm joined by Veeam Senior Global Technologists and regular Tech Interviews contributors, Michael Cade and Anthony Spiteri, as I put those questions to them as we explore some of the key announcements from Veeam's V11 launch. We discuss what was behind some of those design decisions and how are these developments helping to solve enterprise challenges.

We discuss.

The V11 Strategy

Continuous data protection and the critical workload.

Be right, not first.

Immutable backups made easy.

Making innovation available to all.

The power of the cloud for long term retention.

Helping to balance costs.

Improving instant recovery.

Protect it anywhere, recover it anywhere.

Getting more value from our backup data.

This was a jam-packed show and it is always great to catch up with the Veeam team, there is always a real enthusiasm from them for their technology and it's great to see that not only are customers listened to, but what they hear is then acted upon. Michael and Anthony, as always, offered great insight into this significant technology release.

For all the links as well as how to watch the Veeam V11 announcement visit the show notes page ​https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1PY

If you have an idea for a show email me at [email protected] and to catch the next episode, then subscribe in all good homes of podcast and YouTube.

Thanks for listening.

Networks are at the very heart of the way business operates in the modern world, with so much of what we do driven digitally the need for us to connect our devices with our applications and data is central to almost everything the enterprise does to function. For something so central to our operations it’s interesting how little we think about it, networks are like a utility, you turn on the tap water comes out, you flick a switch electricity flows, you hook up your device you expect to get connected and in many enterprises, we are as confident of our network as we are any other utility.

But should we be? How sure are we that our networks are as robust and resilient as the modern enterprise requires? Is that confidence misplaced?

That is something I’ve been considering recently after been sent the latest Network Field Report from network management specialists Auvik. Joining me on this week’s podcast is Steve Petryschuk a Network management expert at Auvik to discuss what they discovered in their survey, how they are seeing the enterprise network changing and what we can do as IT pro’s to ensure our network continues to meet the demands placed upon it.

Join us as we discuss.

• The background behind the report

• The changing role of the networking professional

• How has the enterprise view of networking changed?

• Why we need network knowledge?

• The problem of over-confidence!

• The increasing rate of change and are we tracking it?

• Embrace change

• Proactive management giving us time back

• The benefit of better insight

• Steps to improving your network posture

• The power of automation

Steve shared some great insights into what he is seeing in the modern enterprise network, some of the challenges as well as some of the strategic shifts we need to make to ensure we continue to meet the demands placed upon it.

The Auvik network report is well worth a look and you can request your copy here www.auvik.com/networkfield21.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to join me as a guest then why not email me at [email protected] and to make sure you catch our future episodes you can subscribe, you’ll find Tech Interviews in all good home of podcasts and on YouTube.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

For full show notes with all links : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1PS

The entire way we look at delivering IT in the enterprise is changing, the environment we operate in, the operational expectation of our business, how we interact with customers, the speed with which we can react to change are all demanding new ways of architecting and operating our IT systems. Of course, this has led to rapid innovations across enterprise technology from the adoption of the cloud, the way we deliver applications (Kubernetes for example) through to the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to a point where all of these are now common conversations around the technologist's table.

The innovations have led to new views of how we see operations as increasingly we adopt DevOps, SecOps, DataOps and of course AIOps. The risk of course with this kind of shift is hype, getting wrapped up with the excitement but finding our changes never really delivered value.

How do we avoid that trap and ensure if we are going to use more intelligence and analytics in our operations, we avoid the hype and deliver maximum benefit?

That is the topic of this week's show with my guest Casey Kindiger, CEO at Grokstream.

Join us as we discuss.

What is AIOPS?

Pavlov's Dog and IT Ops.

Rules-based approaches must change.

What is driving change?

Wasting quality data!

Can't we just throw machine learning at it?

It's a cultural shift.

Tips for doing AIOPS well.

Avoiding the traps.

About Grokstream.

There is no doubt that analytics and AI, if they are not already, are going to be a daily part of enterprise IT and Casey provided wide-ranging insight into, what for me, is a fascinating topic and I hope you got plenty from it.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to be a guest, email [email protected] and to catch the next episode why not subscribe.

Thanks for listening.

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

Compliance is a serious discussion point in most organisations, as the use of our information has become an increasingly everyday part of the way we operate our lives, ensuring organisations take care of it appropriately is critical to the privacy and security of our "digital selves". However much of the compliance technology organisations rely on is based on understanding our digital footprint, to ensure the person making the transaction is authorised to be doing it and that transaction is legal and correct.

That's great when the use of technology is commonplace, but what when it isn't, how do you examine a digital footprint when there isn't one?

On this week’s show, I am joined by Shubhradeep Nandi, co-founder at PiChain Labs a company looking at how they can use leading-edge technology trends to start to deal with the global problem of reducing fraudulent transactions in a world where technology is not always easily accessible and digital footprints are harder to identify.

We discuss.

Fintech and Regtech what do they mean?

How a "black box" attitude means we are missing the gaps in compliance.

The size of the problem.

How not actively engaging with compliance is a problem.

When regulation impacts a financial institution.

The problems of "hotfixes".

The problem of scale.

What happens when there is no digital record?

The three steps to making compliance sustainable.

Using leading-edge technology to solve the compliance problem.

Thanks to Shub for providing insight into what is a massive problem impacting us on a global scale and how by using technological advances we may be able to solve it.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest email [email protected] and to catch the next episode then please subscribe on YouTube or all good homes of podcasts.

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

It is 2021 and Tech Interviews is back with new shows looking at all aspects of enterprise IT. For this first show of the year, we do what all good podcasts like to do and take a look ahead to 2021 and what we expect to see in the technology space. The topic of our look ahead this week is the storage industry, as I catch up with some of my fellow delegates from a recent industry event we attended, Storage Field Day 21.

What of Storage Field Day 21? What did it have to offer? What were the key themes? And what did it tell us about current storage industry trends? That is the topic of this first show of the year as I join up with three of my fellow delegates to hear what they thought and their key “takeaways” from the event.

I am joined by Barry Coombs, Jason Collier and Max Mortillaro to discuss the key moments from another excellent Storage Field Day Event and hopefully apply some context to what we heard.

Thanks for listening.

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

2020 has been one heck of a year, for all kinds of reasons, many of them of course less than positive. The world has been turned on its head, with lots of the things we took for granted as our “normal” behaviour no longer allowed or drastically changed. 2020 has also put a strain on the global community in unprecedented ways, straining healthcare, education, and business.

The technology industry has been at the forefront of much of the global response, not just in business, but across all areas of life tools like Zoom and Teams moved from corporate apps to an everyday part of people’s lives, a way to do business, yes, but also a way to stay in touch, have get-togethers, quizzes and of course of ways of carrying on education from the youngest to those studying for advanced qualifications.

However, this move to a more technologically driven world, also highlighted real disparity while for many they have plentiful access to technology and are tech literate, for swathes of the population that is not true. It was this disparity that was noted by two of my close IT community friends, Michael Cade and Jason Benedicic, both are regular guests on the show, and both have very busy day jobs, but both saw examples of that technology gap and wondered what they could do about it. This led them to start to look at different ways of making technology available, what exists today, and what we may need to change to truly make technology accessible to more people than it is today.

It was this work that caught my eye and felt like a great topic for our last Tech Interviews of 2020, so that is exactly what we do as I’m joined by Michael and Jason to explore what we can do as individuals and industry to make technology available to all. It’s a great chat and with a fine collection of Christmas outfits for you to enjoy (if you watch the YouTube version).

What Jason and Michael have taken on is a great example of what we can do as a tech community, if we just think about the way we can use technology a little differently and look to solve problems.

As this is the last show of the year, I would just like to say thanks for all of the support of the show this year from both a fantastic collection of guests and to you the listener, because without listeners there wouldn’t be a show.

May you all have an enjoyable holiday season and let’s hope 2021 is a bit of an improvement on 2020!

Until next year, thanks for listening and watching.

Full show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1P0

Thanks to PowerTribe for the use of their version of Carol of the Bells in our festive theme tune.

As our technology stack continues to evolve and the demands on our IT systems grow, we need to become increasingly smarter with the way we deliver it. Increasingly we want all elements of our technology infrastructure to be software-driven, we want intelligence about performance so we can use it to drive and automate change.

However, one area that is often not considered is the area of networking. Networking is at the very heart of modern infrastructure but often we still see very traditional approaches to how it is designed and deployed. Why is that and how do we change it?

That is the topic of this week’s show as I catch up with Rich Martin, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer at intelligent network automation specialists Intential. Join us as we discuss.

• The networking bottleneck in IT automation.

• Why can’t we “spin-up” networking?

• How do we modernise when there a lack of strategy, skills and tools?

• The COVID effect.

• The problems with a traditional approach.

• The cloud networking quandary!

• Automation “sprawl”.

• Cloud networking, like a network but different!

• How networking is evolving.

• Building a network automation strategy.

• What Itential do.

• Building a network platform.

• Tips for your network modernisation approach

I find network automation an interesting part of the evolution of the way we deliver technology and one that is beginning to change. I think Itential is offering some strong solutions in helping enterprises to evolve their network automation capabilities and are well worth checking out.

If you have an idea for a show why not email [email protected]. If you want to be sure to catch our last show of 2020 then why not subscribe, you’ll find us in all good homes of podcasts or over on YouTube.

Until next time thanks listening.

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

As we have covered many times on this podcast, data is a core asset for modern enterprises, how we gather it and use it is amongst the hottest topics for enterprise IT decision-makers. Of course, along with that comes how we protect and secure that data, making sure we do not lose it for technical, commercial and regulatory reasons is vital. However, there is one area of data, that in my experience gets far less consideration and that is erasure.

There is always a lifecycle when it comes to data, it is created, it is used and then when it has served its production purpose there is the question of “what do we do with it now?”.

That is the subject of this weeks show as I’m joined by Paul Katzoff, CEO of WhiteCanyon Software a company specialising in the secure erasure of data. Paul brings a great perspective to understanding the challenge and the things you need to consider when you include erasure as part of your data strategy.

Join us as we discuss.

• While erasure is not new the challenge continues to evolve.

• How do I verify erasure?

• The issues in “physical destruction”.

• Compatibility and standards.

• The evolving challenge of data erasure.

• “Consumer” tech and enterprise data.

• Data erasure is not just a technology problem.

• Plan for your data’s lifecycle.

• How is the tech evolving?

• Tips for your data erasure strategy at scale

• Should I do it myself?

Paul’s experience in the industry offered me a fresh perspective on the challenges of data erasure and the importance of not forgetting that data is not all about collection, analytics and production use, we need to consider what happens when our need for data or the repositories that hold it ends.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest, then please drop me a line at [email protected]. To catch the next episode be sure to subscribe.

Thanks for listening.

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

Security is a constant challenge for organisations big or small whether it is the security of our systems, network or data the problem continues to get more complex. Our complexity doesn’t stop there as increasingly more enterprises look to embrace Internet of things (IoT) projects our challenge grows significantly.

But why, why does IoT present such a peculiar challenge? This is an interesting question and a major security challenge.

On this week’s show, I’m joined by AgilePQ CEO Paul Clayson as we discuss both the IoT problem as well as some of those approaches to addressing it, including the innovative and elegant approach Paul’s company is taking. An approach not only looking at solving the IoT issues of today but also is looking ahead to how they can use the same approach to help crack one of the security industries biggest conundrums, quantum computing.

Join us as we go all quantum and discuss.

• The IoT security challenge.

• The inadequacy of today’s approaches.

• Is the IoT security risk real?

• When just good enough is not good enough!

• Rethinking encryption for IoT.

• The importance of simplicity in security at scale

• The quantum computing problem.

• Quantum hacks are closer than you think!

• Tips for the top of your IoT security list.

I enjoyed this chat with Paul, it’s an area that is new to me but one that is hugely interesting not only for today's threat posed by IoT devices but the real threat, that maybe is closer than we think, posed by a quantum computing future.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then why not drop me a line at [email protected] and to make sure you catch the next episode then please subscribe.

Until next time thanks for listening.

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