Tech Interviews

One of the few COVID-19 benefits has been the shift of many major technology vendors to taking their key events online, we've already seen Microsoft, NetApp, HPE, Cisco and many more move their big in-person conferences to an online version and while they may not replace all elements of those in-person events, what it has done is opened up the opportunity to attend events that you may not normally be able with the bonus of much of the content been left available for many weeks after the event so you can consume what you need at your own pace.

June saw Veeam's popular VeeamON event move online for 2020 with nearly 30,000 registrations it seems to have proved a huge success, so on this week's show, we look at how was it running such a big event online? What were the key messages and announcements from the conference that would be relevant for Veeam partners, customers and the wider data management industry? With a focus on "Elevating your cloud data-strategy" we also ask what that means and how Veeam is hoping to enable their customers to do just that.

Joining me to discuss it is regular contributor to the show is Veeam Senior Global Technologist, Michael Cade as we cover.

What was the online experience like?

The challenges of scale and online anxiety!

The benefit of on-line events live and on-demand.

Even in a changing world we need to manage our data

Key announcements Backup for AWS, 365 and Teams, Availability orchestration

More key announcements Availability suite V11, CDP, Capacity Tier, Instant Recovery for NAS and Databases.

The importance of a data focussed conversation.

Portability and flexibility.

Are Veeam a cloud data management company?

Veeam as with several online events I have attended did a really good job of making the session an experience and as businesses learn from each other these online events will only get better. From a content perspective, Michael shared the importance of some of those key messages as Veeam continues to innovate and evolve to meet the ever-changing demands that enterprises are placing on their data.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then please email me at [email protected]

If you'd like to watch the YouTube version of the show you can find it here : https://youtu.be/rIj7wmfpmnI

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

There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it has been something we have not witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges, delivering remote IT at scale, stretched VPN's, flexibility, support, security, the list is long. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of "normal", but this also presents an opportunity to us, the chance to take what we have learned over this period and take that knowledge and experience to help plan what we do next, so that next time we need to react quickly to change we can do it better.

To help with that I've put together a short series of shows and in this third part we pick up on something we discussed in the initial episode the "journey to cloud" and how do we make that easier?

On this week's episode, I'm joined by Microsoft Cloud Advocate Sarah Lean to discuss Microsoft's Cloud Adoption Framework, a hugely valuable set of resources that you can take advantage of regardless of where you are in your cloud project.

We discuss.

What the framework is and why it exists.

How it can help educate users and dispel some of the myths of the public cloud.

The importance of knowing where you currently are before you start deploying more cloud.

You don't know what you don't know.

Where people slip up!

Don't get lost in the tech remember the business case.

Nuggets of wisdom.

Other types of Microsoft help.

As Sarah discusses in the show, the Cloud Adoption Framework is not the only way to move to the cloud, but what it does provide is a good set of reference documents that you can use to help you with your cloud projects regardless of whether you want to follow the document closely or just use it to see if there is something you've forgotten it doesn't matter it's just another useful tool in your cloud project "armoury".

If you have an idea for the show or would like to appear as a guest you can contact me via [email protected] and to catch futures episodes please subscribe.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

For show notes with links :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Mg

The move to the cloud is hardly a new topic, for many the value of services like Microsoft 365 have proved their worth over the opening months of 2020, having key services running in the public cloud has delivered the flexibility, scale and accessibility that it promised. Beyond that we are also starting to see ever increasing tactical use of public cloud, integration into backup and archive tools, storage, cloud-based security appliances, the list continues to grow. But what about those big enterprise core applications like SAP, the systems that are running every element of a business, are we starting to move them as well?

I ask that question because of an announcement that caught my attention this week (w/c June 15th 2020) from NetApp proudly declaring they are the first to offer SAP HANA certified storage via their Cloud Volumes Service (CVS) inside of Google Cloud Platform (GCP). What I wanted to know was why? NetApp has no doubt put a lot of time, effort and money into gaining this certification, but is there an opportunity for this and are companies moving platforms as potentially complex at SAP HANA into the cloud at all?

'm happy to admit that I don't know a lot about SAP and their products but luckily I have a friend who does and he was happy to join me on this weeks show to share some of his experience. Andre Schmitz is a Senior Consultant for Datacenter Infrastructure in Germany for Bechtle and has been delivering major enterprise systems like SAP HANA for 17 years so was well placed to give me his view on the market.

We cover.

What is SAP HANA?

Why are people struggling to shift to it?

Complexity and the cloud.

Is there a shift for enterprise applications to the cloud?

Are NetApp's enterprise storage services a useful addition?

Are they going to help with a shift to the cloud?

The importance of enterprise-class storage features in the cloud.

Moving to the cloud, here are some things to consider.

This was Andre's podcast debut and he did a great job at sharing a wide range of experience, some insight into the challenges of having systems like SAP HANA running in the cloud and some thoughts on whether NetApp (or anyone else) offering these kinds of enterprise-class features has real value.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to be a guest on a future show why not email me at [email protected].

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1M8

There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it has been something we have witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges, delivering remote IT at scale, stretched VPN’s, scale, flexibility, support, security, the list is long. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of “normal”, but this also presents an opportunity to us, the chance to take what we have learned over this period and take that knowledge and experience to help plan what we do next, so that next time we need to react quickly to change we can do it better.

To help with the “what next” planning is a short series of shows looking at that topic, in this second part we look at the world from a user point of view and explore how we need to rethink our end-user experience.

Joining me to discuss this is Tony Main of Italian end-user device company Praim as we explore how the world has changed and what have Praim and their customers learnt that can help the rest of us?

Tony provides some thoughtful insights and shares some ideas that should get you thinking as we discuss.

• How Remote working has changed.

• Supporting our users when we’ve broken the rules.

• Going back?

• Did you realise enterprise tech was too tricky?

• How to make enterprise IT just work.

• Changing support models.

• We need to simplify.

• What Praim have learnt.

• Managing devices like they were on the LAN.

• Flexibility is key.

• How the “nice to haves” have become the necessities.

• Focus on the user and the data.

While end-user computing devices and “thin clients” may not seem the sexiest of topics, to ensure we have the right technology foundations in the future and are giving our users a workable, reliable and secure user experience is crucial and Tony shares some valuable insight in some of the areas we need to consider.

Thanks for listening.

For full show notes and contact information visit :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Lw

There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it has been something we have not witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges, delivering remote IT at scale, stretched VPN's, scale, flexibility, support, security, the list is long. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of "normal", but this also presents an opportunity to us, the chance to take what we have learned over this period and use it to better plan what we do next, so that next time we need to react quickly to change we can do it better.

To help with the what next conversation is a short series of shows looking at what next, we start with the public cloud, which is first on the list of most "what next" discussions.

To help me to explore this first topic is first time guest to the show, but long time industry friend, Grant Caley, he is Chief Technologist for NetApp in the UK and Ireland and brings with him 20 years of experience in helping enterprises change the way they operate and of course, in most cases, this now means how they use the cloud.

We dsicuss.

What is a "journey to the cloud"?

COVID-19 accelerating the demand.

Do not throw away your datacenter good practice.

Cost, cost, cost.

Data is often the biggest problem in the datacentre, that does not change in the cloud.

What you lose moving to the cloud.

What should the areas of focus be?

Be flexible.

The NetApp cloud story.

Building bridges.

Grant provides some great insight and raises a range of crucial points when it comes to cloud, cost, security and the importance of treating your cloud infrastructure as you would your datacentre.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest why not contact me via email [email protected] or via twitter @techstringy.

Next time we talk about how to rethink the way we work from different locations, to catch that show why not subscribe.

full show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Lf

Over the last few weeks the use of collaboration tools has grown exponentially as they have become critical to enterprises of all types to enable their staff to continue to work together and to keep business moving in these most challenging of times. Many of them have moved from business tools to household names, now everyone knows what a Zoom meeting is and of course, we are all familiar with the phrase "living in Microsoft Teams".

While Teams itself is an excellent collaboration tool, easy for users to work with and to work together on, its backend complexity can be a challenge, especially as much of that complexity is hidden from not only users but administrators too which leads to increased risks that can impact your sensitive data assets.

That problem has inspired this week's show, my guest is Stephen Nesbitt of Varonis, Steve has been with them for about a year, but before that had worked for Microsoft with a particular focus on SharePoint. Recently I recorded a video with Steve highlighting some of the challenges and risks that deploying Teams can present and I thought it would be great to get that information shared on the podcast too, so here it is!

We cover.

What is teams and why does it exist?

Teams simplicity is part of the problem!

The Teams security conundrum.

What creating a Team really does?

Teams "sprawl".

How do you keep an eye on Teams usage?

Native tools and their limitations.

What Varonis can add to Teams to secure your "sensitive data".

Teams is not "full of holes" but you need to know where the risk lies.

Teams can both enable "transformation" and limit it – just putting it in the cloud is not enough!

Over the last couple of months, I've spoken with many organisations who have rolled out Teams and have all been unaware of some of the challenges it poses, I'm hoping this podcast and Steve's eagerness to help to educate those using Teams will help all of us mitigate the risks that it presents so we can use this extremely powerful product without putting our data assets at risk.

If you'd like to contact me, either with an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest you can contact me on twitter @techstringy or email the show at [email protected].

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1L8

Data is essential in modern business, how we store, protect, ensure it's available and portable and of course that it is compliant and meets our business and regulatory needs.

To provide the kind of insight and control we need of our data in the modern enterprise requires us to think beyond how we store it, we need to be more platform focussed, ensuring that in whichever repositories we place our data they give us greater insight and control of its usage.

However, to deliver things like compliance traditionally has needed multiple products, a storage location, a separate compliance tool and professional services to integrate it all together. But what if your storage could do this natively as new data was written to it?

With that in mind, I was intrigued to see NetApp announce their Cloud Compliance tool an integrated compliance solution that would offer immediate native reporting to data written into their cloud storage repositories (Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Azure NetApp Files and Cloud Volumes Service)What does it do? And how can we use this kind of native, cloud based data compliance tool to deliver benefit to our enterprise?

Joining me on this week's podcast are Amit Ashbel and Chilik Hochberg, both security industry veterans with around 20 years' experience prior to NetApp and now are part of a team bringing that experience to the company.

In this episode we discuss.

What we mean by data compliance?

Changing how we see our data and its value.

Data storage is not enough we need to think “platform”.

Why whatever data we have we need to consider how we are handling it.

The impact of a lack of visibility.

Importance of native compliance.

The NetApp solution.

The importance of making it easy to use.

I think this is hugely important topic and positive first step to building more intelligence natively into our data repositories and I'll be interested to see how Amit, Chil and the team develop this further.

If you have a topic you'd like us to cover or would like to be a guest email me at [email protected] or find me on twitter @techstringy.

Thanks for listening.

Full shownotes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1KY

In our increasingly data focussed world the desire to gain more insight from our data to help us to make better decisions continues to grow. This has lead to a real upsurge in the need to not only find better ways to analyse data, but also approaches that make the ability to analyse it more widespread and get tools into the hands of those inside of an enterprise who need it to help them make better decisions for their companies and customers alike.

How do we go about building this kind of data analytics strategy? That's the question for this week's podcast, the second in our series looking at how we use data. This week I'm joined by Catherine Wilks, Data and Analytics Practice Lead at data specialist Slalom.

Join us as we cover.

*What do we mean by visualisation?

*How to avoid making stepping into work seem like stepping back in time?

*Are we adopting Analytics and why we should be?

*How starting small can still bring big benefits.

*Why it's OK to not always find something new.

*How data analytics can attract talent.

*5 Steps to building an analytics strategy.

*The importance of a "Data Culture"

Data visualisation is a fascinating area and one that is only going to become more prevalent inside of every enterprise as we all strive to find ways to get more value from our data assets. Catherine shares some fantastic tips and insight into starting the process of building your data visualisation strategy.

If you have an idea for or would like to appear as a guest on the show, then drop me an email at [email protected]

To make sure you catch our next episode you can subscribe in all the usual places.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

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

Data, data everywhere, that seems to be the standard refrain in most businesses, we are collecting more data from more sources than ever, yet in many cases we don’t have a clear and bespoke strategy for dealing with it, how we use, store and secure data tends to be embedded in other strategies and policies. Many enterprises talk about the importance of their data and how they see it as a crucial asset, so is now the time to have a bespoke and specific data strategy?

If it is, why is it? What should it include? How do we go about building one? that is the focus of this weeks show as I’m joined by returning guest Matt Watts, CTO EMEA at NetApp. Matt has been at NetApp for 15 years and during that time he has always had a great enthusiasm for understanding technology trends and that is exactly the same here as we discuss the importance of a data strategy and why now is the time for enterprises to develop theirs.

In this episode we discuss.

• Are we still too fixated on “boxes”?

• Before we talk tech, what is the strategy?

• What is driving the change in how we view data and its use?

• Closing the void between business decision makers and IT

• DataOPS

• Stop having our data strategy dictated by the storage we have bought!

• Data platforms not storage

• The importance of communication

• Tips for building a plan

• If you are going to disrupt anyway take a step back and think

As always Matt provides some fascinating insight into the development of a data strategy, why in his view it is important and why its crucial that we are taking all angles of our enterprise needs into consideration when making decisions around our data platform.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then contact me at [email protected] Until next time, thanks for listening.

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

One of the questions that I always find interesting in the technology industry is whether the technology that industry watchers and analysts talk about and fill column inches with are the things that enterprises are deploying on a wide scale. I often feel that analysts and large tech vendors have a vision of the world that is shaped by the companies on the West coast of the USA and the very largest enterprises, there is nothing wrong at all with listening to the needs and challenges those companies face, but not all enterprises are those types of organisations and does that view of the world translate to everybody else?

On this weeks show we explore exactly that question but a bit differently as this time I’m the guest! as I share with you a podcast I recorded recently with two industry friends and fellow podcasters Chris Evans and Martin Glassborow on their excellent Storage Unpacked podcast.

Between us we have a wide and varied debate about what kind and how technology is used, evaluated, and bought by enterprises of all types, I hope you enjoy our chat as we discuss.

• Hype V Reality

• Are enterprises innovating or still trying to keep the lights on?

• Technology may evolve but is it still delivered “traditionally”?

• What is digital transformation?

• Focus on data and outcomes

• Technology for business benefit, not technologies sake

• The challenge of investigating long-term technological shifts

• Day two deployments, what happens after you have deployed?

• Are technology business decisions still to “techie” lead?

• Vendors, account management is important

• Does your technology solution solve a problem that exists?

As you can see, we discuss many varied topics, Chris and Martin bring a lot of experience of the IT industry and share some interesting thoughts and hopefully I contribute a little too!

The show will be taking a break for a few weeks over the Easter holiday here in the UK but we will be back with some brand new (not COVID-19 related!) shows including a series on data analytics, an intro to Kubernetes and native data compliance to make sure you catch those shows then please feel free to subscribe. If you would like to be a guest or have an idea for the show then drop an email to [email protected]

Until next time, stay safe and healthy, thanks for listening.