Technology:Unpacked

This is the fourth and final podcast of four recorded at Hitachi NEXT 2018 in San Diego.  Previous episodes are listed below.  This conversation between Chris and Shawn Rosemarin, SVP and CTO of Global Field and Industry at Hitachi Vantara discusses how customer’s approach to managing their data has changed and how Hitachi will continue to evolve the Vantara brand during the next 12 months and beyond.  This discussion is interesting as it covers areas areas like acquisitions and the number of services Hitachi Vantara now offers.  Ultimately, as Shawn says, the goal is to help customers manage and grow their businesses.

Shawn’s personal blog can be found at https://shawnrosemarin.com/.

Elapsed Time: 00:21:28

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:01:30 – How are customers acting differently to manage their data?

* 00:02:30 – Bridging the gap between hardware solutions and data management/

* 00:04:00 – HCP, previously HCAP, from Archivas acquisition/

* 00:05:45 – Finding ways to derive more value from content, like video.

* 00:08:30 – Data lakes became data swamps.

* 00:09:45 – Acquisition strategy, REAN Cloud announced in July 2018

* 00:12:30 – Avoiding data silos

* 00:13:00 – What does multi-cloud mean if the clouds aren’t joined up?

* 00:17:00 – What’s ahead for the next 12 months with Hitachi?

* 00:18:30 – It’s Pen-tah-ho!

* 00:19:00 – More services likely to appear from Hitachi Vantara

* 00:21:00 – Wrap Up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* #70 – Pentaho Data Aggregation with Arik Pelkey

* #68 – Intelligent Object Storage with Scott Baker

* #67 – Hitachi Vantara One Year On with John Magee

Shawn’s Bio

As part of the Executive Sales Leadership Team, Shawn holds direct accountability for all strategy and key talent across both Pre-Sales and Hitachi Vantara’s Industry Solutions Group.

Prior to this role, Shawn was a Chief Technologist within the Americas Field CTO team at VMware and held various roles in Technology and Sales leadership.

Shawn’s passion is working closely with customers to help them transform digitally with everything from private/hybrid cloud to end-user computing transformation and emerging IoT Solutions.

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode 0X78.

This is the fourth and final podcast of four recorded at Hitachi NEXT 2018 in San Diego.  Previous episodes are listed below.  This conversation between Chris and Shawn Rosemarin, SVP and CTO of Global Field and Industry at Hitachi Vantara discusses how customer’s approach to managing their data has changed and how Hitachi will continue to evolve the Vantara brand during the next 12 months and beyond.  This discussion is interesting as it covers areas areas like acquisitions and the number of services Hitachi Vantara now offers.  Ultimately, as Shawn says, the goal is to help customers manage and grow their businesses.

Shawn’s personal blog can be found at https://shawnrosemarin.com/.

Elapsed Time: 00:21:28

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:01:30 – How are customers acting differently to manage their data?

* 00:02:30 – Bridging the gap between hardware solutions and data management/

* 00:04:00 – HCP, previously HCAP, from Archivas acquisition/

* 00:05:45 – Finding ways to derive more value from content, like video.

* 00:08:30 – Data lakes became data swamps.

* 00:09:45 – Acquisition strategy, REAN Cloud announced in July 2018

* 00:12:30 – Avoiding data silos

* 00:13:00 – What does multi-cloud mean if the clouds aren’t joined up?

* 00:17:00 – What’s ahead for the next 12 months with Hitachi?

* 00:18:30 – It’s Pen-tah-ho!

* 00:19:00 – More services likely to appear from Hitachi Vantara

* 00:21:00 – Wrap Up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* #70 – Pentaho Data Aggregation with Arik Pelkey

* #68 – Intelligent Object Storage with Scott Baker

* #67 – Hitachi Vantara One Year On with John Magee

Shawn’s Bio

As part of the Executive Sales Leadership Team, Shawn holds direct accountability for all strategy and key talent across both Pre-Sales and Hitachi Vantara’s Industry Solutions Group.

Prior to this role, Shawn was a Chief Technologist within the Americas Field CTO team at VMware and held various roles in Technology and Sales leadership.

Shawn’s passion is working closely with customers to help them transform digitally with everything from private/hybrid cloud to end-user computing transformation and emerging IoT Solutions.

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode 0X78.

This is the second of two podcasts recorded live at IP EXPO 2018 in London.  You can find the first here.  In this episode, Chris and Martin speak to Scale Computing, StorMagic, Nasuni and Nephos Technologies.  The guests are:

* Aad Dekkers, Marketing Director, EMEA at Scale Computing

* John Glendenning, SVP Sales and Business Development at StorMagic

* Andy Hardy, Vice President, EMEA at Nasuni

* Michael Queenan, Co-founder at Nephos Technologies

Both Scale Computing and StorMagic offer products that work in the hyper-converged area and fit well with Edge computing requirements.  Nasuni is a global scale-out file system backed by the public cloud.  Nephos Technologies is an independent consultancy helping companies design and implement data frameworks.  As usual, the conversations were fast paced, although limited to 10 minutes each.  Thanks to all who took their time to speak with us over the course of the day and to TouchdownPR for organising.

Elapsed Time: 00:44:45

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:00:30 – Aad Dekkers from Scale Computing

* 00:01:30 – Virtualisation based on KVM and SCRIBE

* 00:03:15 – Hyper-converged since 2012

* 00:05:30 – Solutions today fit well with edge computing requirements

* 00:07:45 – Disclaimer – Chris has a Scale cluster in the lab!

* 00:09:30 – Single nodes are also supported for specific edge cases

* 00:11:30 – John Glendenning from StorMagic

* 00:12:30 – SvSAN highly applicable for edge-type solutions

* 00:15:00 – How do you deploy and service remote locations like wind farms?

* 00:16:00 – Higher level functions (e.g. replication) are done with partners

* 00:17:45 – Is there a trial version available?

* 00:18:30 – What about not being tied to the hypervisor?

* 00:20:00 – The ice cream has arrived!

* 00:23:00 – Andy Hardy from Nasuni

* 00:25:00 – Global scale-out NAS backed by the public cloud

* 00:26:45 – Current focus is archive

* 00:28:00 – Offering differentiated pricing for archive data without moving the content

* 00:33:15 – Is that my wife?  No, it’s the timer!

* 00:34:00 – Michael Queenan, Nephew Technologies

* 00:34:45 – Is this hardware replacement or true data strategy?

* 00:37:00 – How does Nephos stay independent?

* 00:38:15 – Michael’s family are forced to listen to the podcast!

* 00:40:00 – Nephos – ancient Greek for cloud

* 00:41:00 – What are the biggest problems to solve today?

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* #69 – IP EXPO 2018 – Cloudian, E8 Storage, StorCentric and Zerto

* Cloud as a Tier of Storage

* Scale Computing Debuts HC3 in Google Cloud Platform

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode B62W.

This is the second of two podcasts recorded live at IP EXPO 2018 in London.  You can find the first here.  In this episode, Chris and Martin speak to Scale Computing, StorMagic, Nasuni and Nephos Technologies.  The guests are:

* Aad Dekkers, Marketing Director, EMEA at Scale Computing

* John Glendenning, SVP Sales and Business Development at StorMagic

* Andy Hardy, Vice President, EMEA at Nasuni

* Michael Queenan, Co-founder at Nephos Technologies

Both Scale Computing and StorMagic offer products that work in the hyper-converged area and fit well with Edge computing requirements.  Nasuni is a global scale-out file system backed by the public cloud.  Nephos Technologies is an independent consultancy helping companies design and implement data frameworks.  As usual, the conversations were fast paced, although limited to 10 minutes each.  Thanks to all who took their time to speak with us over the course of the day and to TouchdownPR for organising.

Elapsed Time: 00:44:45

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:00:30 – Aad Dekkers from Scale Computing

* 00:01:30 – Virtualisation based on KVM and SCRIBE

* 00:03:15 – Hyper-converged since 2012

* 00:05:30 – Solutions today fit well with edge computing requirements

* 00:07:45 – Disclaimer – Chris has a Scale cluster in the lab!

* 00:09:30 – Single nodes are also supported for specific edge cases

* 00:11:30 – John Glendenning from StorMagic

* 00:12:30 – SvSAN highly applicable for edge-type solutions

* 00:15:00 – How do you deploy and service remote locations like wind farms?

* 00:16:00 – Higher level functions (e.g. replication) are done with partners

* 00:17:45 – Is there a trial version available?

* 00:18:30 – What about not being tied to the hypervisor?

* 00:20:00 – The ice cream has arrived!

* 00:23:00 – Andy Hardy from Nasuni

* 00:25:00 – Global scale-out NAS backed by the public cloud

* 00:26:45 – Current focus is archive

* 00:28:00 – Offering differentiated pricing for archive data without moving the content

* 00:33:15 – Is that my wife?  No, it’s the timer!

* 00:34:00 – Michael Queenan, Nephew Technologies

* 00:34:45 – Is this hardware replacement or true data strategy?

* 00:37:00 – How does Nephos stay independent?

* 00:38:15 – Michael’s family are forced to listen to the podcast!

* 00:40:00 – Nephos – ancient Greek for cloud

* 00:41:00 – What are the biggest problems to solve today?

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* #69 – IP EXPO 2018 – Cloudian, E8 Storage, StorCentric and Zerto

* Cloud as a Tier of Storage

* Scale Computing Debuts HC3 in Google Cloud Platform

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode B62W.

In this third podcast recorded live at Hitachi NEXT 2018, Chris talks to Arik Pelkey, Senior Director, Analytics Portfolio Product Marketing at Hitachi Vantara.  Arik is responsible for the Pentaho platform, an acquisition made originally by Hitachi Data Systems in 2015.  Pentaho is a data integration, visualisation and analytics platform used by data engineers to create data pipelines for AI models used by data scientists.

The conversation between Chris and Arik focuses on how Hitachi Vantara engages with customers to build out complex data analytics solutions.  Arik wraps up the conversation with a summary of the new Pentaho features announced at the show, including support for Tensaflow, Jupyter Notebook and Python.

Elapsed Time: 00:17:28

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:00:40 – What is Pentaho?

* 00:02:30 – Analysing 80 new data types a month

* 00:03:00 – How does customer engagement work with Big Data?

* 00:05:00 – How much consulting is involved in selling solutions?

* 00:07:00 – Who builds out and owns the data architecture?

* 00:12:00 – How many new job titles and roles have developed?

* 00:14:00 – What’s new in Pentaho

* 00:17:00 – Wrap up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* #68 – Intelligent Object Storage with Scott Baker

* #67 – Hitachi Vantara One Year On with John Magee

* #60 – New Data Economy with Derek Dicker

Arik’s Bio

Arik runs product marketing for Hitachi Vantara’s analytics portfolio where he helps clients solve big data integration, analytics and IoT problems. Arik is a frequent speaker on becoming a digital enterprise, IoT and predictive analytics and has a strong passion for helping customers modernize information architectures to turn new and emerging data sources into insights and business outcomes.

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode 0J6F.

In this third podcast recorded live at Hitachi NEXT 2018, Chris talks to Arik Pelkey, Senior Director, Analytics Portfolio Product Marketing at Hitachi Vantara.  Arik is responsible for the Pentaho platform, an acquisition made originally by Hitachi Data Systems in 2015.  Pentaho is a data integration, visualisation and analytics platform used by data engineers to create data pipelines for AI models used by data scientists.

The conversation between Chris and Arik focuses on how Hitachi Vantara engages with customers to build out complex data analytics solutions.  Arik wraps up the conversation with a summary of the new Pentaho features announced at the show, including support for Tensaflow, Jupyter Notebook and Python.

Elapsed Time: 00:17:28

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:00:40 – What is Pentaho?

* 00:02:30 – Analysing 80 new data types a month

* 00:03:00 – How does customer engagement work with Big Data?

* 00:05:00 – How much consulting is involved in selling solutions?

* 00:07:00 – Who builds out and owns the data architecture?

* 00:12:00 – How many new job titles and roles have developed?

* 00:14:00 – What’s new in Pentaho

* 00:17:00 – Wrap up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* #68 – Intelligent Object Storage with Scott Baker

* #67 – Hitachi Vantara One Year On with John Magee

* #60 – New Data Economy with Derek Dicker

Arik’s Bio

Arik runs product marketing for Hitachi Vantara’s analytics portfolio where he helps clients solve big data integration, analytics and IoT problems. Arik is a frequent speaker on becoming a digital enterprise, IoT and predictive analytics and has a strong passion for helping customers modernize information architectures to turn new and emerging data sources into insights and business outcomes.

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode 0J6F.

This is one of two podcasts, recorded live at IP EXPO 2018 in London.  The format is slightly different from what we’ve done in the past, in that we have four short 10-minute interviews with storage vendors.  Each talks about their company, products and industry problem being solved.

The four guests are:

* Steve Blow, Technology Evangelist with Zerto

* Neil Stobart, VP Global Systems Engineering at Cloudian

* Julie Herd, Director of Technical Marketing at E8 Storage

* Read Fenner, VP Global Sales for Nexsan and Drobo & Mark Walker, Channel Sales Director (Nexsan) from StorCentric

These interviews are recorded live, so there’s no editing and obviously with such a busy show floor, there is background noise.  Let us know if you think this format of production is something we should do more, and if there are any specific companies to interview.

Elapsed Time: 00:44:15

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:00:30 – Zerto with Steve Blow

* 00:01:00 – What is an evangelist?

* 00:02:00 – Repositioning as an IT Resilience platform

* 00:02:35 – What is the market focus for Zerto?

* 00:03:40 – What are the new problems being solved?

* 00:04:50 – Planning on making backup sexy again

* 00:06:00 – What is Zerto’s cloud story?

* 00:07:30 – Didn’t we have CDP before?

* 00:08:30 – Why attend IP Expo?

* 00:10:00 – Can people trial Zerto?

* 00:11:00 – Cloudian with Neil Stobart

* 00:12:00 – Why us an on-premises object storage platform?

* 00:13:00 – What does an object store offer over file system?

* 00:16:20 – Using Cassandra for platform scalability

* 00:18:00 – What separates Cloudian from other vendors?

* 00:22:30 – E8 Storage with Julie Herd

* 00:22:50 – What problems does E8 Storage address?

* 00:25:00 – What makes E8 different?

* 00:26:00 – Why can’t traditional storage deliver?

* 00:27:30 – Why do customers need to move to NVMe?

* 00:29:30 – What next? New form factors and SmartNICs

* 00:31:00 – What about beer?

* 00:32:55 – StoreCentric with Read and Mark

* 00:33:00 – Nexsan and Drobo together

* 00:34:30 – Where did Nexsan fit in the enterprise?

* 00:37:00 – Where are the Nexsan and Drobo synergies?

* 00:39:00 – Core and Edge strategy

* 00:41:00 – How does StorCentric evolve past the two brands?

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* Disaggregated Storage Part II with Zivan Ori from E8 Storage

* Cloudian Acquires Infinity Storage

* Storage Field Day 7 – Initial Thoughts

* Hybrid Cloud and Data Mobility

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode 7SMM.

 

This is one of two podcasts, recorded live at IP EXPO 2018 in London.  The format is slightly different from what we’ve done in the past, in that we have four short 10-minute interviews with storage vendors.  Each talks about their company, products and industry problem being solved.

The four guests are:

* Steve Blow, Technology Evangelist with Zerto

* Neil Stobart, VP Global Systems Engineering at Cloudian

* Julie Herd, Director of Technical Marketing at E8 Storage

* Read Fenner, VP Global Sales for Nexsan and Drobo & Mark Walker, Channel Sales Director (Nexsan) from StorCentric

These interviews are recorded live, so there’s no editing and obviously with such a busy show floor, there is background noise.  Let us know if you think this format of production is something we should do more, and if there are any specific companies to interview.

Elapsed Time: 00:44:15

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:00:30 – Zerto with Steve Blow

* 00:01:00 – What is an evangelist?

* 00:02:00 – Repositioning as an IT Resilience platform

* 00:02:35 – What is the market focus for Zerto?

* 00:03:40 – What are the new problems being solved?

* 00:04:50 – Planning on making backup sexy again

* 00:06:00 – What is Zerto’s cloud story?

* 00:07:30 – Didn’t we have CDP before?

* 00:08:30 – Why attend IP Expo?

* 00:10:00 – Can people trial Zerto?

* 00:11:00 – Cloudian with Neil Stobart

* 00:12:00 – Why us an on-premises object storage platform?

* 00:13:00 – What does an object store offer over file system?

* 00:16:20 – Using Cassandra for platform scalability

* 00:18:00 – What separates Cloudian from other vendors?

* 00:22:30 – E8 Storage with Julie Herd

* 00:22:50 – What problems does E8 Storage address?

* 00:25:00 – What makes E8 different?

* 00:26:00 – Why can’t traditional storage deliver?

* 00:27:30 – Why do customers need to move to NVMe?

* 00:29:30 – What next? New form factors and SmartNICs

* 00:31:00 – What about beer?

* 00:32:55 – StoreCentric with Read and Mark

* 00:33:00 – Nexsan and Drobo together

* 00:34:30 – Where did Nexsan fit in the enterprise?

* 00:37:00 – Where are the Nexsan and Drobo synergies?

* 00:39:00 – Core and Edge strategy

* 00:41:00 – How does StorCentric evolve past the two brands?

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* Disaggregated Storage Part II with Zivan Ori from E8 Storage

* Cloudian Acquires Infinity Storage

* Storage Field Day 7 – Initial Thoughts

* Hybrid Cloud and Data Mobility

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode 7SMM.

This is the second in a series of podcasts recorded at Hitachi NEXT 2018.  In this episode, Chris talks to Scott Baker, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Content and Data Intelligence at Hitachi Vantara.  The topic of conversation is how intelligent processing can be applied to content stored in Hitachi’s object storage platform, HCP.  HCI, Hitachi Content Intelligence allows data to be pre-processed in memory before storing on the HCP archive.

Why is pre-processing so important?  Customers, including Rabobank (mentioned in the podcast) are using the technology to ensure compliance around GDPR and other regulations are being adhered to.  Scott mentions POPI (Protection of Personal Information Act) in South Africa and the California Consumer Privacy Act as other examples of regulations requiring increasingly stricter rules on the processing of personal information.  The conversation wraps up with a discussion of how Hitachi object storage can support public cloud, as customers move towards adopting hybrid and multi-cloud strategies.

This podcast was recorded outside due to the level of background noise in the conference halls.  As a result, there is a little wind noise on the recording, although thankfully, no helicopters!  For more information on Hitachi Content Intelligence, visit the Hitachi Community website for HCI.

Elapsed Time: 00:14:25

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intro

* 00:01:00 – Applying intelligence to object storage

* 00:02:00 – Hitachi Content Intelligence

* 00:04:00 – Exactly how is enrichment of data done?

* 00:06:00 – How widespread is object data ETL?

* 00:07:30 – How is Hitachi data management affected by GDPR?

* 00:10:30 – What is Hitachi’s object storage public cloud strategy?

* 00:12:00 – Data mobility – the big issue for cloud adoption

* 00:13:00 – Wrap Up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* Soundbytes: Talking Object Storage with Jeff Lundberg

* #65 – Challenges in Managing Unstructured Data with Shirish Phatak

* Object Storage Capabilities Series

* Delivering File Protocols on Object Stores

* Nine Critical Features for Object Stores

Scott’s Bio

If it involves a 1 and a 0, public speaking, coaching/mentoring, Scuba Diving, pre-’82 American Muscle Cars, or 80’s hair bands, then it feeds my passions and interests. I’ve worked in IT for longer than I want to admit and have held Software Engineering Director, Enterprise-level Software Applications Developer, Database Designer and Administrator, and Project Manager positions in a wide variety of highly technical markets. Not all of my professional life has been behind a compiler/designer – I’ve had the pleasure of holding field facing roles in technical marketing and specialized field engineering roles.

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode 4O02.

This is the second in a series of podcasts recorded at Hitachi NEXT 2018.  In this episode, Chris talks to Scott Baker, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Content and Data Intelligence at Hitachi Vantara.  The topic of conversation is how intelligent processing can be applied to content stored in Hitachi’s object storage platform, HCP.  HCI, Hitachi Content Intelligence allows data to be pre-processed in memory before storing on the HCP archive.

Why is pre-processing so important?  Customers, including Rabobank (mentioned in the podcast) are using the technology to ensure compliance around GDPR and other regulations are being adhered to.  Scott mentions POPI (Protection of Personal Information Act) in South Africa and the California Consumer Privacy Act as other examples of regulations requiring increasingly stricter rules on the processing of personal information.  The conversation wraps up with a discussion of how Hitachi object storage can support public cloud, as customers move towards adopting hybrid and multi-cloud strategies.

This podcast was recorded outside due to the level of background noise in the conference halls.  As a result, there is a little wind noise on the recording, although thankfully, no helicopters!  For more information on Hitachi Content Intelligence, visit the Hitachi Community website for HCI.

Elapsed Time: 00:14:25

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intro

* 00:01:00 – Applying intelligence to object storage

* 00:02:00 – Hitachi Content Intelligence

* 00:04:00 – Exactly how is enrichment of data done?

* 00:06:00 – How widespread is object data ETL?

* 00:07:30 – How is Hitachi data management affected by GDPR?

* 00:10:30 – What is Hitachi’s object storage public cloud strategy?

* 00:12:00 – Data mobility – the big issue for cloud adoption

* 00:13:00 – Wrap Up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* Soundbytes: Talking Object Storage with Jeff Lundberg

* #65 – Challenges in Managing Unstructured Data with Shirish Phatak

* Object Storage Capabilities Series

* Delivering File Protocols on Object Stores

* Nine Critical Features for Object Stores

Scott’s Bio

If it involves a 1 and a 0, public speaking, coaching/mentoring, Scuba Diving, pre-’82 American Muscle Cars, or 80’s hair bands, then it feeds my passions and interests. I’ve worked in IT for longer than I want to admit and have held Software Engineering Director, Enterprise-level Software Applications Developer, Database Designer and Administrator, and Project Manager positions in a wide variety of highly technical markets. Not all of my professional life has been behind a compiler/designer – I’ve had the pleasure of holding field facing roles in technical marketing and specialized field engineering roles.

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast Episode 4O02.