Tech Interviews

As an IT Professional, one of the things I believe is crucial is continued learning and development. Over the last few months I’ve spent more time in the world of cloud infrastructure, both public and private and have started to want to understand more how to automate much of its delivery. This led me to the concept of Infrastructure as Code (IAC), the idea that we can deploy infrastructure in our cloud via templates, meaning that we retain a consistent repeatable deployment experience, allowing us to build infrastructure quickly and efficiently. One of the challenges in this space is how each cloud provider has its own method for deploying IAC, so what if you are using multiple cloud platforms do you need to learn a new methodology every time? Luckily this is not the case, with an increasing set of tools from 3rd party providers which offer a single consistent deployment across multiple providers, meaning you only need to learn one set of codes and templates which can then be quickly modified to work on di

The ever changing cyber security threat landscape is high on the IT agenda for enterprises as they attempt to deal with numerous threats and attacks. One area constantly under attack and a rapidly growing risk is user identities, numerous phishing scams, key loggers and social engineering are all attempts to compromise a user's identity and their security credentials. The risk posed by the theft of credentials and identity is significant, how then do we protect ourselves, how do we build a security stack that is capable of providing robust identity management, securing user credentials and stop us being victims of an identity-based attack? That is what we cover on this week's podcast with my two guests, who I came across after reading some excellent blogs on the topic from my first Guest Amy Stokes Waters who is joined by her colleague Shelley Hill, who both work for identity security company, Identity Experts and provide some brilliant insights into this complex area. In this week's show we cover; * What

As more of us move infrastructure to the cloud we come up against an age old IT problem, how do we know if we are getting the best from our cloud investment, we have deployed it following best practice, we have optimised its performance and increasingly have we secured our infrastructure in the way we need too? These queries are not new to cloud infrastructure, these are challenges we have whenever and wherever we deploy infrastructure and applications. However, one thing that cloud does allow us to do is to look at an extremely wide body of evidence, literally 1000’s of deployments of applications to determine their optimal configuration for performance and security. How do we get that kind of information and how do we use the metrics available to us to make sure we are following the best practice when utilising cloud services and infrastructure? Today we are starting to see a range of companies developing platforms to aggregate together this information and provide actionable insights that we can all use,

Earlier this year I got the chance to chat with Cumulus Networks as part of a series of articles I was working on with my friends at Gestalt IT. It was an interesting piece of research focussed on an area that was new to me, the idea of open networking, using a software driven approach to deliver infrastructure with the scale and flexibility that is required to meet the demands of many modern businesses. Cumulus introduce this idea as part of their Infrastructure with Purpose strategy an approach that tries to change the way we think about delivering infrastructure, since writing those articles I’ve been keen to have them on the show to introduce the concept to the Tech Interviews audience. This week, I get that chance as I’m joined by Cumulus’s Pete Lumbis to explore the idea of Infrastructure with Purpose, Pete is Senior Technical Marketing Manager at Cumulus, but don’t be put off, he’s a networking techie at heart maintaining his CCDE as well as having a long history In the networking field. During the s

Back in February, I saw a presentation from Hammerspace, a startup company in the field of data management. Their proposition was based on dealing with one of IT’s most challenging problems, that of successfully sharing data across multiple locations, be that datacentres, branch offices or cloud repositories. What appealed to me with their approach was how they not only thought of a new way of addressing the problem but also redefined how the problem should be looked at. On this week’s show, I’m joined by Hammerspace’s CEO, David Flynn, to explore their approach in more detail and get an update on how their solution has developed. David has a long and distinguished background in IT including been behind Fusion IO. During the show we discuss: * The importance of a datacentric view to solving the problem * How containers show the way to solving complex data management problems * How metadata drives their solution * How it works * Don't solve the data silo problem with another data silo! There are a couple

One of the biggest challenges that IT Pro’s face is trying to evaluate new technology and select the right solution for you. One of the tools available is the use of Proof of Concepts (POC), a POC is a short project to evaluate the suitability of potential solutions. POC’s can, when done properly, be a valuable tool in our assessment of potential solutions. But POC’s are not always a success, why is that the case? The main issue tends to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what a POC is, often this can be caused by the suppliers misusing the phrase POC when really they are delivering no more than a demonstration. A few weeks back I heard an episode of the excellent Virtually Speaking Podcast in which they discussed performance testing a significant part of which included a properly delivered POC. The incorrect use of the term and poor definitions of POC’s is something I see often and find frustrating. Inspired by the Virtually Speaking Podcast team I wanted to take the opportunity to do a Tech Interviews

Back in October 2018, I attended Microsoft's Future Decoded event in London, the presentation that stayed with me the most was from Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft's Chief Accessibility Officer. Jenny, who is herself deaf, spoke with great enthusiasm and passion about how the work Microsoft is doing with accessibility technology was changing people's lives. As a technology enthusiast, I love to see how technology impacts the world around us, however, nothing is more inspirational than seeing how technology can literally change lives allowing people the opportunity to achieve their potential by enabling them to do something that previously they couldn't. It's been a subject I've wanted to explore on the podcast ever since and this week I finally got the chance as I'm joined by Arran Smith, an accessibility consultant, to discuss how and why we need to make accessibility a core part of our technology strategy. Arran himself suffers from Dyslexia and discusses how rather than hold him back it has been his inspir

The Tech Conference is always an interesting source of information, a chance to learn about anything from strategy to technical details. I'm lucky enough to attend quite a few events throughout the year but one that I've never attended is Dell Technologies World. Dell with their wide portfolio, including VMware, can potentially impact and influence organisations of all types, with that in mind, Dell Technologies World is becoming an increasingly interesting event as their wide portfolio has the ability to meet many of our modern technology demands. On this week's show, we take a look at the main announcements from the Vegas event, what they mean for those buying enterprise IT and for Dell themselves. To help me pick through the event I'm joined by industry analyst and the host of the excellent Storage Unpacked podcast, Chris Evans. During this show we cover; * Who the event is aimed at * Dell Storage and data protection * Dell's cloud strategy including VMware Cloud on Azure * Edge to Core to Cloud Chris a

Security and compliance of systems is right at the top of the priority list for almost all organisations and as our data and the systems that hold it are ever more critical, the impact of the loss of these systems or the data that resides upon them is significant. As our systems become more complex and diversely spread managing and reducing their vulnerabilities is a real challenge. On this week's show we discuss how we take a modern approach to security, governance and vulnerability control with my guest Marco Rottigni, Chief Technical Security Officer, EMEA at Qualys. Our topics include; * Understanding transformation maturity * The shift of assessment to management * The value of a single source of information * Why we need a new approach * The criticality of visibility * Transparent automation Marco shares some fascinating thoughts on this topic bringing an interesting and fresh perspective. If you'd like to contact the show email podcast@techstringy.com Until next time, thanks for listening. For f

Your modern infrastructure is highly unlikely to be built on a single platform, in fact not only unlikely to be on a single platform but unlikely to be built in a single location, as increasingly we are developing hybrid infrastructure that can be spread across datacentres, remote locations and of course the public cloud. While this adds complexity to our technology stack, it also adds opportunities when technology vendors work together to bring value to each other’s offerings, improving end-user experience and business outcomes. That is the focus of this week’s show, recorded on the road at Arrow ECS as we discuss how NetApp HCI and Veeam integrate to work better together and what this means for modern infrastructure in our hybrid world. I’m joined by a team of people to discuss this week’s topic Alun Griffiths and Paul Stillitano from Arrow ECS, Kev Ridings from Veeam and Jason Fitzgerald, Technical Consultant from Gardner Systems, all with their own take on the changing infrastructure space and how it im

Software defining your storage – Andy Scholl -Ep94 by Tech Interviews

The technology world is constantly evolving, what we do with Tech, what it does for us, how we can use it to do things differently and more quickly, innovation is core to the technology industry. One of the fastest moving areas of innovation right now is the development of voice as a way for us to interact with our data and technology platforms, opening new ways for us to perform a wide variety of tasks, from asking your voice assistant to add to the shopping list to making technology accessible in a way its not been before, voice is an exciting, fast moving and fast-growing part of the tech industry. But how is voice going to change the way we operate as enterprises? Is voice starting to move from the consumer world to the business one? That's the subject of this week's Tech Interviews, as I'm joined by two guests, Geraint John and Will Bradley from Move Digital and importantly for this show, the hosts of the fantastic Voice for Voice podcast. In this week's episode, we explore the growing world of voice a

In the final part of our series on architecting for Public Cloud we take a slightly different tact to the previous parts which focussed on Cloud as a more primary goal. In this episode, we focus more on the tactical use of Cloud, when the wholesale move to Cloud isn’t the aim but more how we can use it in specific parts of our organisation to deliver better outcomes, improve our technology or serve our customers better. To do that I’m joined by NetApp Cloud Architect, Phoebe Goh. Phoebe is our first Australian guest and brings an interesting perspective to the show and provides the perfect way to wrap up our brief series, by bringing together themes from our last two shows as well as her own fresh ideas. In this episode we discuss: *The role of the Cloud Architect *How Cloud is not just about Tech *How non-Cloud companies are using Cloud to deliver outcomes *How NetApp are using Cloud in their business and technology *How Public Cloud in coming into the Datacentre *How simplification is key in Cloud

Cybersecurity is at the top of the list of priorities for organisations of all types, as our systems and data become ever more critical to how we operate on a daily basis, the risk posed by security threats, such as malware, data leakage and targeted attacks continues to grow and be even more complex. The challenge in improving our security posture and ensuring we limit the vulnerabilities of our IT systems is a big one and not solved easily by one technology solution or the pressing of the big red security button. It is complex and like all complex problems often the hardest step in addressing it is knowing where to start? Like most challenges in IT, the starting point is to understand where you are right now, what systems you have and where they are vulnerable. That is the focus of this week’s podcast as we discuss penetration testing. Pen tests are designed to identify your system vulnerabilities and help to mitigate the risks they pose to your organisation. To help me explore this topic I’m joined by Ph

Be Sure before you Azure – Sarah Lean – Ep90 by Tech Interviews

The adoption of public cloud continues to grow and remains high on the list of priorities of those tasked with delivering technology solutions to their business, be you someone making strategic decisions or the IT pro tasked with delivery of services, the move to public cloud brings with it a whole set of new challenges. How do I design my cloud infrastructure? How do I integrate it with what I have? How do I get my crucial on-prem assets into the public cloud? Are just some of the questions we ask and need answers to so we can ensure we successfully take advantage of public cloud to deliver better services and outcomes to our organisations, how then do we find those answers and how should we approach our cloud transition? Over the next three Tech Interviews episodes, in conversation with Cloud Architects and transition specialists we are going to explore just that. In this first episode we look at Cloud transition, as I’m joined by Eric Kraieski, Vice President of the Software Business Unit at Transitional

As the importance of our data continues to grow, so does our need to scale its use, be it for performance, resilience or reasons of data locality, the need to architect solutions and find technologies to support this demand for data at scale is increasingly important. If we look at the way cloud giants use their data, it's clear that "traditional" database methods are not going to be suitable and of course it's not just "cloud giants" who need their data at scale, today, enterprises of all types need to be able to present their data with the same scale, flexibility and resilience. One widely adopted way of doing this is using Apache Cassandra as a database technology. But why? and how does Cassandra differ from our traditional on-prem solutions such as SQL and Oracle? That is the topic of this week's Tech Interviews as Patrick Callaghan, Solutions Architect at Datastax joins me to provide an intro to Cassandra as a database technology, how it works and why it's becoming the database of choice in the modern

The ever-evolving cyber threat and how to protect ourselves against It continues to be at the top of the list of priorities for most IT Pros and execs. As technology and our data is more crucial than ever to our day to day operations, the threat of disruption to it and the impact that will have grows almost exponentially. As we head into February of 2019, what is the current state of the threat? How is it evolving? And how do we build a plan to handle it? That is the topic of this week's Tech Interviews, as I'm joined by Co-Founder and CPO of Infocyte Inc. Chris Gerritz to discuss the art of Cyber Threat Hunting and taking a more proactive approach to the cybersecurity challenge. In this chat with Chris, we take a look at what we mean by cyber threat hunting, the importance of a proactive approach to cyber threats and why we should "assume breach" when we build our cybersecurity defences. We also discuss current threats, emerging trends from commodity malware to identity theft, as well as avoiding been the

On Tuesday of this week (January 22nd, 2019) Veeam made a series of announcements around their technology stack, these announcements showed, in my opinion, the first elements of them really starting to deliver the technology to underpin their intelligent data management strategy that they first shared back in 2017. In this extra edition of Tech Interviews, I wanted to explore some of the key parts of these announcements and why I believe they are an important step in starting to shift Veeam from a backup company to one that can start to play a part in the orchestration and management of data within the modern enterprise. Michael Cade, Global Technologists at Veeam joins me to discuss the announcements and provide insight into what's driven some of the strategic shifts, as well as providing some detail into the technology updates that are underpinning these changes. During the show we discuss, Cloud storage integration, the expansion of Veeam's workload portability capability and finish up looking at some k

Social media, it’s a phrase that we constantly hear, the use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc. are commonplace, but does social media have a place in our day to day professional lives? Social media has great value, not just in terms of developing relationships, but also in how we are perceived, both as individuals and as businesses, regardless of whether your business is a technology one. How many of us, before we buy a product or service, visit a website or Facebook page before buying? Or take to Twitter for support on a product or service? And of course, how many of us, when making a new contact head off to LinkedIn to check them out? Social media tools are a core component of 21st-century communications, so the question is, why do so many IT pro’s and IT execs not take the time to invest in social media? On this week’s show, I’m joined by one of the people, that thanks to social media, I’ve gotten to know over the last few years, Richard Bliss. Richard is a social media strategist and wor