On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Jason Carolan, CIO at Flexential. We’re talking about how the label of the day is for people and workloads is ‘hybrid’, and what it really means to be a digital-first company.

Flexential empowers the IT journey of the nation’s most complex businesses by offering tailored hybrid IT solutions delivered via the FlexAnywhere™ platform of integrated colocation, cloud, connectivity, data protection, managed and professional services, with three million square feet of data center space in 19 highly connected markets.

During our conversation, we discuss the challenges and opportunities related to adopting a digital-first approach, workload portability, and infrastructure management, We also talk about what it means to be a recovering CTO, and the satisfaction and growth in finding the right place — not necessarily the cool one — for workloads and for people.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Flexential’s focus on delivering infrastructure as a service across the United States.
• Why Flexential’s superpower lies in the expertise and skill sets of its 1000-person team.
• The concept of a “recovering CTO”.
• Why the conversation around digital transformation has shifted towards digital-first thinking.
• Why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for technology solutions and workload placement decisions.
• How the macro-economic environment is driving companies to take a digital-first look at the economics of their technology stack and how it drives the conversation around inventory and assessment of applications to get to the correct equation.
• The challenges and opportunities related to workload portability and infrastructure management.
• The crucial role of the network for bringing together different types of workloads.
• The idea of not throwing anything away, with data being a valuable asset that informs AI and contributes to building new products.
• The limitations and challenges of artificial intelligence and the concept of singularity.
• Predictions for the next 18 to 24 months.

ABOUT JASON CAROLAN

Jason drives next generation network-enabled technologies at Flexential. He and his cross-functional team translates market trends into strategic initiatives that inform the investment decisions across the company’s development, builds early stage products, and go to market strategies. Jason joined the company in 2011 and has held various technology and business leadership roles in product, operations and technical management, including CTO. Jason is a recognized thought leader and industry expert in distributed computing, network systems and cloud computing.

Jason has over 25 years of experience in leadership positions in IT, system architecture, software development, and technical sales and support across a variety of companies, including Sun Microsystems, where Jason was honored as a “Distinguished Engineer." During his tenure at Sun he helped architect and implement some of the most advanced systems and platforms in financial, e-commerce, IoT, and cloud services.

Jason also led a team at VMware to develop and implement some of the first cloud provider technologies. At the Mayo Clinic he heard a variety of roles, including IT support analyst, help desk manager, developer and Unix/Network administrator working closely with clinic and research staff.

Jason was a lead author of “Building N1 Grid Solutions,” one of the first books highlighting the combined use of virtualization and automation. He also has several patents in networking, data center resource management, virtualization, and security.

He is a member and contributor to the Wall Street Journal CIO Network and Forbes Technology Council. Guest lecturer and contributor - Galvanize Denver, CU-Boulder on Cloud and Open Source Licensing / Methedologies, and former member of University of Denver AMPLIFY committee for Business / Engineering eco-system development.

CONTACT JASON

Web. https://www.flexential.com/

Twitter. https://twitter.com/jtcarolan

LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtcarolan/