Tech Interviews

One of the biggest technology changes of the last 5-10 years for consumers as well as businesses has been the growth in the use of Wi-Fi. Today we almost feel it is our right to be connected to high performance, resilient and reliable wireless infrastructure so that we can remain online doing everything from updating social media to carrying out conference calls, the demand for wireless is endless.

Wi-Fi also presents us with new challenges, its complex nature, amount of devices and speed of growth are making managing and delivering reliable and enterprise-class wireless increasingly difficult, how then do we look to ensure the quality of our wireless networks to meet these business mission-critical demands?

That is the topic of this week's podcast as I chat with Roger Sands, CEO at Wyebot. Roger has 25 years' experience in the IT industry with the last 15 of those spent working in the Wi-Fi space, in that time he has seen a huge growth in demand and of course a massive growth in complexity and challenge of delivering Wi-Fi to our modern connectivity hungry world.

We chat about;

The trend to "mission-critical" Wi-Fi

Is Wi-Fi architecture "growing up"?

Wi-Fi complexity presenting new challenges

Little problems cause big issues

The security risk

Importance of Wi-Fi intelligence to augment our IT teams

The Wyebot approach

Why you need Wi-Fi assurance

One of the great values of doing this show is learning about something new and this chat with Roger was a great example of that, the critical nature of Wi-Fi was not something I'd considered and in my experience is still considered a nice to have benefit rather than core infrastructure, Roger shares some great insights into why that needs to change and how to do it and I hope you found it as useful as I did.

Thanks for listening.

For show notes :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1J3

There isn’t a day goes by that our IT security isn’t under threat, been tested or questioned, it is a continual headache for organisations of all types, from ransomware to targeted attacks the issues are constant and of the highest priority to most of us.

Sadly, there is no magic button that takes away all our security woes, building IT security is difficult, multi-faceted and multi-layered. Earlier this year I read a great series of articles from a friend of mine over on Solarwinds Orangematters community site, this series looked at the importance of taking multi-layered approach to security and building a Security In-Depth Strategy, since reading those articles I thought it would make a great podcast episode.

Well, this week here it is, as I’m joined by Becky Elliott an experienced IT professional who, based in the US, has worked in some of the most secure infrastructures you will see, as well some places security was a little more “loose”. Currently Becky is working as a freelance consultant and blogger and has been creating some great IT related content, so hopefully this episode adds to that fine body of work!

In this episode we explore the series that Becky produced, the inspiration for it and her experiences of each of the topics she covered;

• Why we need Security in depth

• Judging a company’s security posture by its patching!

• Security still an afterthought

• Importance of security buy-in

• When trust but verify isn’t enough

• The weakest security link might be you

• The story patching tells

• Logs, logs and more logs

• What security layers to consider

• User education

• Make security the path of least resistance

• Security is hard!

If you have ideas for the show or would like to be a guest you can email [email protected] and as always thanks for listening.

For show notes and links to Becky's articles : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1IY

IT loves an acronym and a trend, but eventually many of them do start to evolve, become more accessible and businesses start to deploy them and publicise the benefits, then another and another before finally the technology starts to become more commonplace and increasingly companies want to investigate the potential benefits to them.

Roll back 7 or 8 years, Cloud found itself in that position, but today Cloud is the norm and becoming standard practice in businesses of all types.

Over the last 12 months I've started to see this increasingly with another trendy tech acronym IoT.

On this week's Tech Interviews we ask why? And try to discover what is driving the uptake in IoT projects. To help me to do this I'm joined by Mark Carlton, Solutions Architect for IoT and Edge at Arrow ECS, he joins me to share his experiences of the last 18 months, and how he's seen the IoT space evolve.

On this week's show we discuss;

What is IoT

The importance of understanding business value

The importance of connectivity

Sensors are not the heart of IoT

The components of IoT

Cloud making IoT accessible

Example projects

What makes a good IoT project?

How to get started

I really enjoyed this chat and find the world of IoT both interesting and increasingly relevant and accessible, Mark provides excellent insight and shares some great experiences.

Next time we look at building a security-in-depth strategy, to make sure you catch that episode you can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts.

If you have an idea for the show or would like to be a guest then email [email protected]

Until next time, thanks for listening.

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

Whenever I speak with those tasked with deploying enterprise technology one of the most common challenges I find they have is finding a way to compare what they are doing with others in similar roles.

How do you best find and deploy new technology? How do you encourage open dialogue in your business to identify needs and opportunities? How do you learn more about what technology is available? And how do you ensure you are not seen as the IT department who always says no?

These are all real challenges and finding out how others deal with them is not easy, especially when you are already very busy delivering the IT you have.

In this week's podcast, recorded at the recent NetApp INSIGHT event in Las Vegas, I wanted to explore this topic with people who actually deliver IT for a living. Donny Lang, Sr. Systems Administrator at GDC, Christopher Olsen, Solutions Architect at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Matthew Underhill from Alfred H. Knight. All three had differing challenges, but all took very similar approaches to how they tackled the daily conundrum of delivering effective IT.

In this episode we cover;

* Using Cloud

* The primary aim of your IT

* Selling IT's capabilities

* Discovering problems

* Rules of "engagement"

* Dealing with the "smartest people in the room"

* How do you define a solution?

* Don't be afraid to ask why

* Trusted partners

* Importance of events

* Becoming data focussed

I thought this was a fantastic and frank conversation and each of the guests provided some valuable insight.

Next time we delve back into the world of IoT, if you want to catch it then subscribe to the show which is available in all good podcast stores!

If you'd like to be a guest or have an idea for a show then email [email protected]

Thanks for listening.

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

Increasingly automation is becoming a way of life in IT, tools that take repetitive or complex tasks and simplify them by automating much of the work they require are increasingly popular. They also have real value for many organisations, it frees up resources, improves the time of delivery and reduces risk of errors that often come when humans deliver repetitive tasks or ones they have to deliver quickly or under pressure.

One such tool is Veeam Availability Orchestrator (VAO) which provides the ability to automate the testing, documentation and invocation of a business recovery plan.

Last week at NetApp INSIGHT in Las Vegas, Veeam announced a new update to this product, version 3.0. As someone who has always been a fan of this tool and ones like it for managing such a complex process as DR, I thought it would make a good podcast, so I caught with Alec King a Vice President of Product Management at Veeam, to discuss the new release and also its first attempt to enhance a 3rd parties DR capability by integrating with NetApp's snapshot and SnapMirror technologies.

During my chat with Alec, we discuss.

What do we mean by availability?

Why availability is more than technology

The value of orchestration

Documenting your DR

Why automation can give DR confidence

Business DR is not a technology problem it needs everyone's input

NetApp integration and the value it brings

Improving each other's capabilities to deliver better outcomes

Why would I consider VAO?

I really like Veeam Availability Orchestrator as a product and as someone who has sat at the sharp end of a DR plan invocation a set of tools that automated much of the process and that had given me confidence in it previously would have made life a whole lot easier.

If you would like to be a guest or have topic suggestions for the show why not drop me an email to [email protected].

Thanks for listening.

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

A little while back I wrote a blog post inspired by a presentation by a friend of mine, Michael Cade, at Cloud Field Day 5 back in April ,where he talked about how Veeam were developing their workload and data portability strategy.

This really struck a chord with me as it closely mirrored a lot of the conversations I was having, across businesses of all types, as they looked to develop more data-centric strategies, that focussed on ensuring that their data was where they needed it when.

It appealed so much that I’ve wanted to get it into a podcast episode. This week myself and Michael finally managed to get our diaries together to do just that. For those of you who’ve not heard Michael on the show before, he’s a Global Technologist at Veeam and a well-known face in the IT community and always a great Tech Interviews guest.

On this week’s show we cover;

• The portability why

• Why cost isn’t the only driver of public cloud

• Portability and a data-centric strategy

• Portability use cases

• Putting our “backup data” to work

• Three Drivers of innovation

• The importance of licensing in innovation

• How to build a portability platform

Data portability, for me, is core to a modern data strategy ensuring that our data and how we use it is the focus of our technology plans and companies like Veeam are delivering technology that can help us to enable the kind of portability modern business demands.

If you’d like to follow up with Michael, the best way is via twitter @MichaelCade1 and you can find more on data portability, amongst other things, on his blog vzilla.co.uk.

Thanks for listening.

If you have an idea for the show or would like to appear, why not email me at [email protected]

For full show notes: https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1I9

When it comes to keeping up with the latest IT industry trends, the good, the bad, the things to keep an eye on, how do we even begin to get started when the industry is so large and diverse?

There are, however, lots of places we can go to find different opinions and views, vendor events, blogs, briefings or even Podcasts. One other avenue open to us are analysts.

Recently major analyst firm, Gartner, published one of their Magic Quadrant reports, this one focussed on the storage industry. As always these reports reflect really well on some and not always so well for others.

I was discussing this recently with a friend of mine from storage vendor NetApp, it was a really interesting chat and I thought it would make a great podcast.

So, this week, I'm joined by Greg Knieriemen, Chief Technologist at NetApp as we replay our discussion for the benefit of the Tech Interviews audience.

*What analysts do

*Types of analysts and their differing value

*Changing view of analysts from skepticism to appreciation

*The importance of an independent voice for the enterprise

*Gartner's primary storage magic quadrant report

*The maturity of flash storage

*Storage isn't just about disks

*Why NetApp did well in the report

*Where they didn't

*Moving beyond speeds and feeds

*Data focussed strategy not platform focussed

I always enjoying chatting with Greg, he has a long and varied experience in the IT sector and a great way of sharing that information. Analyst reports clearly have a place in the technology industry, although they should not be treated as the definitive source for your technology decisions, they certainly offer a lot of value and provide a good basis for those in IT to help the decision making process.

As always, thanks for listening.

full show notes are here:- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1I3

There is no question that our IT systems are critical to the operation of the modern enterprise, its ability to meet ever-changing demands and do this quickly means our IT stack continues to grow and evolve into an ever larger and more complex beast, which presents a constant challenge to Enterprise IT teams to ensure our systems continue to perform as needed, remain secure and available to deliver the outcomes our enterprises need.

When we used to have half a dozen servers, a small network and some storage, monitoring and managing these systems was relatively easy, we could have the management platform of our choice, providing our IT team with alerts and data and using their skills and experience they could quickly turn this into useful and actionable information.

However, today, when we have dozens of virtual machines, systems, complex networks that are not only in our datacentre but in multiple locations including of course the public cloud. The environments no longer generate a handful of metrics, they are generating hundreds if not thousands per day, how do we keep on top of them? pick out what is important and action it?

That is the topic of this weeks show as we explore AIOPS a term and approach that is becoming increasingly important to modern IT management with my guest Gadi Oren, VP of Technical Evangelism at LogicMonitor.

*How the size and complexity of our infrastructures are creating data overload.

*Looking for smaller needles in bigger haystacks!

*The impact of alert fatigue.

*More complexity doesn't mean more IT resources to deal with it.

*The Shift in the perception of what we expect from monitoring.

*The development of AIOPS.

*How AIOPS can do our "heavy lifting".

*How freeing our most valuable IT resources from the mundane, benefits them and the organisation.

*The benefits of smarter monitoring.

*Development of "opinionated" systems.

I hope you enjoyed this show and as always thanks for listening.

Full show notes with links are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1HY

Teams, Zoom, Slack, Webex, the list of platforms that are now commonplace in organisations and changing the way we work together and collaborate continue to grow. These applications are not only providing a conference platform for hosting meetings but are also replacing some of our traditional communications methods such as voice, video and increasingly becoming the standard message exchange application, slowly starting to replace email as a day to day tool.

As we adopt these tools, how many of us have considered the risk these platforms pose to the security of our data? How do we track the voice and video communications that these platforms provide to ensure that we are not leaking sensitive data? Do we understand how the platform is been used, are there patterns of usage that should concern us?

These are the questions we cover on this week's podcast as I'm joined by Devin Redmond, Co-Founder and CEO of Theta Lake. Devin has a long history in data compliance, governance and security and now with Theta Lake he is taking on the difficult challenge presented by modern collaboration tools.

What is the challenge?

What's wrong with current approaches?

How do you spot compliance risk in voice and video?

Why the speed of innovation in these modern platforms adds to the problem.

The importance of context.

The challenge of volume.

The importance of human interaction when it comes to tackling the problem.

Enabling these tools and their benefits in an effective and safe way.

This is a fascinating debate and not one I'd considered when using Teams, Slack and other collaboration tools, but Devin provides a lot of food for thought and already has me considering the usage of these platforms and how to better manage and control them.

Thanks for listening.

For full show notes and links :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1HT

The world of infrastructure is changing rapidly, the way we use and access data is driving significant change in the way we design data infrastructure to deliver at scale, with flexibility, openness and portability.

One such shift is the increasing adoption of open database technology, back in episode 88 I spoke with Patrick Callaghan of Cassandra on this topic. it was a popular episode and the use of such databases is continuing to grow.

With that in mind, I wanted to revisit the topic and take another look at what open source databases mean, what their place in the enterprise is and how to take those first steps to explore the value of open source database in your business.

To help me investigate this topic, I caught up with Peter Zaitsev founder and CEO of Percona, a company who specialises in open source databases. I chatted with Peter a couple of weeks ahead of their Percona Live event in Amsterdam, a 3 day event focussed on the open source database market and how to get the best from it.

In the show we discuss;

*Why an enterprise sees open source differently from a developer.

*How the debate about open source is mirrored by those around public cloud adoption.

*How multi location environments are driving a new model for database adoption.

*Why not all open source DB's are as open as you think.

*If open source provides such flexibility, choice and cost benefits what is stopping enterprise adoption?

*How to overcome resistance and see if open source database can work for you.

*Who are Percona and how do they help people adopt open source databases?

*The Cloud native autonomous database initiative what is it and why the capability to deploy public cloud like flexibility anywhere is important.

I think this technology area is really interesting and its development and adoption continues to grow, Peter provides us with some great insights into Percona's approach and his own experience of adoption of open source database, as well as some of the inhibitors he sees to its adoption.

Thanks for listening.

If you have any comments, an idea for or would like to appear on the show then drop me an email to [email protected].

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