I'm joined by Ahead's Tim Carr. Tim is an Automation and Orchestration Architect with Ahead. In this podcast we talk about Tim's real world experiences helping customers implement automation and orchestration to support Cloud efforts. How many customers are embracing hybrid-cloud? What are Tim's thoughts on Microsoft's Azure Stack? Where does VMware vRealize fit in the discussion or Cisco UCS? We even talk OpenStack and a little private cloud pricing.

Wide ranging conversation with Pivotnine managing director Justin Warren. I wanted to catch Just fresh off his conversation with Speaking In Tech's Greg Knieriemen. In Justin and Greg's conversation they talk through the challenges and attributes of leveraging Gartner to make multi-million dollar decisions. We go deeper into the conversation in using management and technology consultants in making decisions. We also address some of the common pitfalls of commonly experienced in these large scale purchases.

The Data Center is changing as a result of challenges to traditional businesses. As a result, a new crop of IT vendor has arisen. Traditional solution providers need to adjust while maintaining their customer base. It’s the classic innovator’s dilemma. In this extended CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) sits down with TechField Day Founder Stephen Foskett (@SFoskett) and Justin Warren (@JPWarren) of PivotNine. The trio discusses the mix of presentations at the last Virtualization Field Day event.

Friends don't let friends take unnecessary risks on Cloud service providers. In the search for the best combination of technology and service an organization can waste a good amount of time trying out various cloud services. In this week's podcast I talk with Switches EVP of Evangelism, Mark Thiele. Mark gives an overview of the difference between Cloud Exchanges and Cloud Brokers and provides the high-level benefits of a cloud exchange. Mark describes how Switch's ability to offer high-speed/low latency connectivity virtually on demand provides value over traditional Co-Location providers.

I'm joined by Jason Collier, Co-Founder of Scale Computing. I've written

 about Scale in the past. Scale has a niche in the hyper-converged market.

The company is focused on use cases surrounding either large enterprise

applications or general compute for small medium businesses. Scale

considers themselves the Toyota Camry of hyper-converged. Listening to

Jason, you soon find that the culture of Scale is unlike any other

hyper-converged vendor.

It's been well over a year after I quit my great job at PwC to pursue a different course. No big deal as people quit their jobs all the time. The exception my case was that I didn't have another job lined up. The Geek Whisperers did a great job of getting my side of the story. But, I'm married. What was my wife's response and thoughts.

Intel Developer Advocate, Matthew Brender discusses the value of data center telemetry data. Intel is hoping it's open source project snap leads the way in providing data needed to place workloads in a clustered environment. Matthew discusses concepts from containers to Mesosphere.

I'm joined by CloudPhysics CTO Irfan Ahmad and VP or Product Management

Chris Schin. Irfan explains the value of leveraging big data from vCenter

metadata in ensuring applications have the resources needed and data center

managers are able run their DC's efficiently.

On the line today we have Lazarus Vekiarides from Cloud-based storage startup ClearSky Data. Clearsky has an interesting approach to replacing traditional storage arrays. ClearSky hopes to convince enterprise customers to display their traditional Tier-1 storage arrays with a hosted solution.  In discussing the solution with Laz, some interesting multi-data center use cases are uncovered.

I'm joined by Greg Ferro in a recap of HPE Discover 2015