Tech Interviews

Welcome to the first Tech Interviews Podcast of 2019, we already have a bunch of shows lined up and ready to go over the next few weeks, there’s a wide range of topics including Social Media and the IT Pro, Cloud Native Databases and Cyber Threat Hunting, all coming up soon. But how else do you start a new podcast year than by dusting off the crystal ball and looking ahead to some of the trends and developments that will affect your IT decision making, strategies and day to day work in tech. Our look ahead this year is focused on the world of data management as I’m joined by Dave Russell, VP, Enterprise Strategy at Veeam. Dave’s career of almost 30 years has been predominately focussed on data management, specifically backup and has included working at some of the world’s biggest data management companies as well as a stint as a respected analyst at Gartner. We discuss a wide range of topics and Dave gives some thoughtful insight into the trends he expects to see impact us during 2019. During the show, we

It's that most wonderful time of the year, yes, the last Tech Interviews of 2018. For this show, we focus on two of technologies biggest trends, ultra-high performance and the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning. First, we look at ultra-high performance as I chat with Glenn Dekhayser, Field CTO at Red8, about NetApp's new technology MAX Data and how it is changing the very nature of delivering extreme performance. Glenn provides some insight into what MAX Data is and how it drives the storage industry close to its ultimate goal, to ensure that storage performance is never the bottleneck of any solution. We also discuss not only how this solution delivers extreme performance but how it does so while greatly simplifying your infrastructure. In the second part of the show, it's the technology industries favourite topics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). John Woodall, VP of engineering at Integrated Archive Systems (IAS) joins me to talk about the industry in general an

If you spend any time listening to vendors in the technology market, you won't go very far before you hear about how they are embracing automation, ensuring their API's are there for all to use and sharing their expertise in community repositories like GitHub. But what does it all really mean? What is automation good for and what can it help you achieve? Does it offer more than just a way to simplify repetitive tasks? These are all questions I've had for a while and on this week's podcast I catch up with Jason Benedicic, an independent consultant, who amongst other things, specialises in automation, to help answer some of these basic questions about automation and why it's useful. In this week's show Jason provides some great insights into the world of automation, we discuss what we mean by automation, what makes a good candidate and why it's more than just coding repetitive tasks. Jason shares some thoughts on why automation is about more than innovation and how it can be a key part in managing and securi

The data industry is a really interesting place right now, for many organisations their data and the challenges of how they use it, secure it and derive value from it is right at the top of the CIO’s priority list. However, data is not the only area of the technology industry that is interesting, automation, AI, machine learning, IoT and of course the fascinating world of the hyperscalers. So, when you are an experienced technologist, well known in the industry and you are presented with a range of new opportunities, what is it that attracts you back to work in the data industry? That’s the question I put to this week’s guest, experienced tech industry “veteran” Greg Knieriemen. Greg has just left a highly successful stint at Hitachi and was presented with a range of interesting opportunities; however, it was one of those established storage vendors, NetApp that appealed the most to him, but why? What could the data industry continue to offer someone with an already wide experience of it? During this sho

Storage Ferraris in the cloud for $20 an hour - Lee Jiles - Ep80 by Tech Interviews

As we adopt an ever-increasing amount of cloud services into our businesses, are we part of a technology revolution or is it just the next evolutionary step in the way we do things? There is no doubt that cloud has revolutionized some businesses and that some would not exist without the incredible amount of services and innovation that the public cloud, in particular, can offer to us. However, that's not the case for everyone, for those whose businesses pre-date "The Cloud", we have legacy systems, "traditional" approaches to doing things and systems that are not architected like cloud applications. So, what does that mean to us as we adopt cloud services? Especially when it comes to those "boring" topics such as data protection of our cloud integrated systems? That's the topic I explore with this week's guest "Mr Backup" also known as W. Curtis Preston, Curtis is Chief Technical Architect at Druva and has worked in the data protection space for 25 years. In this show we discuss the evolution of hosting o

Stay cloudy VMware - Glenn Sizemore - Ep78 by Tech Interviews

Cloud is not new, I don’t think that’s news to anyone, many of us have deployed a cloud solution as cloud continues to play a major part in IT strategy for an ever-increasing amount of businesses. However, this move to cloud has not come without us learning an awful lot on the way, we’ve probably all heard of cloud deployments that have not gone as we expected. Many of the issues that have led to those poor cloud experiences have been driven by an "immaturity" to our approach. Is our approach to cloud beginning to change? have we got, or do we need to consider our cloud strategy a little differently? That’s the question we ask on this weeks podcast, an episode inspired by a fantastic article written by my guest Matt Watts, Director of Technology and Strategy, EMEA at NetApp, In the article Matt posed the question Are you Cloud First! or Cloud First? And the difference a simple bit of punctuation can make. During the show we discuss the article in depth, why Matt felt the need to write it, we look at mista

We’re at that time of year when the tech conference season, after a bit of a summer break, swings back into full gear, some we’ve already had, such as MSIgnite and some we have to come, over the next couple of months there’s a range of shows big and small dotted across the globe on a range of topics. One of the biggest and still one of the most influential tech shows of the year is VMworld, VMware’s showcase event, a long time cornerstone of the technology community for IT pro’s and vendors alike. VMworld attracts IT Pro’s and vendors from many disciplines’ server and storage vendors, through to automation and analytics companies all working closely with VMware’s platforms to deliver services across enterprise and organisations of all types. What can you expect to learn from a show like VMware? What’s the benefit for you? Well as we sit handily between VMworld US and Europe, I thought it would be a useful to explore VMworld a little more. Joining me to discuss this, is the co-host of the fantastic Virtual

In the last couple of weeks the world has shown us how the only predictable thing for many of us who deliver technology is the unpredictability of what we have to deal with, from the massive data breach at British Airways to the catastrophic impacts of hurricanes on both the western and eastern sides of the globe, these are incidents that we should to be prepared for, the question is, are we? If you don’t have a plan, or not sure if your plan has value? Then this episode of the podcast is for you as we look at business continuity planning, with my guest continuity planning consultant Steve Lambert of Biscon Planning. I chat with Steve on a range of topics, why do we need a plan at all? And how continuity planning goes beyond IT. We discuss the types of incidents you need to plan for and compare the differences between operational and enterprise risks. Steve takes us through some of the steps you need to consider when building a plan, from understanding risk appetite, to impact assessment. We also look at t

In the last of this series looking at the shift to public cloud we discuss getting the best from your cloud and the value of understanding the behaviour of your cloud infrastructure. On this show I’m joined by Sumo Logic’s Colin Fernandez as we look at public cloud, the value of what it delivers and how an understanding of its performance is crucial to not only help achieve desired outcomes, but to do so while meeting those ever-critical security and governance requirements. Colin is a self-proclaimed IT veteran with 32 years’ experience in the industry, starting out at ICL and arriving at Sumo Logic via the likes of IBM and VMware and that longevity in the industry puts Colin in a great position to comment on what he sees in today's market and how cloud has and is disrupting our use of technology. As always, cloud means we discuss a wide range of topics as we chat about new platform paradigms such as serverless and containers, we discuss the impact cloud has on security and compliance and why security has

This show was recorded pre the announcement on August 27th, 2018 of CloudHealth Technologies acquisition by VMware. This is the 3rd in our series looking at the move to public cloud, the challenges involved and some of the tips and technologies that can help you to overcome them. In this episode we look at perhaps the biggest challenge facing most organisations moving to public cloud, the issues of multi-cloud. To discuss this I'm joined by Joe Kinsella CTO and Founder of CloudHealth Tech, a company that have built a platform to pull together information from numerous environments, consolidate it into one place and allow you to make informed, proactive decisions to ensure you use your technology in the best way you can. During the episode we explore some wide-ranging topics, we look at why complexity is an issue, how multi-cloud was initially "stumbled upon" but is now becoming a chosen strategy. We ask why don't we expect cloud to be complex when much of what we do in our datacentres is very complicated?

As the desire to integrate public cloud into our organisations IT continues to grow, the need to ensure we maintain control and security of our key assets is a challenge but one that we need to overcome if we are going to use cloud as a fundamental part of our future IT infrastructure. The importance of security and reducing our vulnerabilities is not, of course, unique to using public cloud, it's a key part of any organisations IT and data strategy. However, the move to public cloud does introduce some different challenges with many of our services and data now sitting well outside the protective walls of our datacentre. This means that if our risks and vulnerabilities go unidentified and unmanaged it can open us up to the potential of major and wide-reaching security breaches. This weeks Tech Interviews is the second in our series looking at what organisations need to consider as they make the move to public cloud. In this episode we focus on risk, how to assess it, gain visibility into our systems regard

The move to public cloud is nothing new, many companies have moved or attempted to move key workloads into the big hyperscale providers, AWS, Azure, Google and IBM, but for some it has been a mixed success. We have probably all heard of cloud projects (or maybe even had projects) that have not gone to plan, this can be for a range of reasons, cost, technical difficulties, performance. There is a long list of reasons that cloud projects don’t go the way that’s expected. But at the heart of many of those projects is the presumption that cloud is both cheap and easy. It comes as quite the shock we we discover it isn’t! However, things may be about to change as a new wave of technology companies are emerging that are starting to address, what is, the highly complex world of public cloud platforms. This week is the first in a few shows where we look at the complexity of using public cloud and chat with some of the technology companies who trying to address some of these challenges by taking fresh approaches to

A couple of times a year I like to do a show that reviews the current state of the data market, the chance to take a check on the challenges facing both the makers and consumers of data technology, how they are been addressed, the technology changes and trends that decisions makers should consider and what the future holds for the industry. Earlier this year I spoke with industry analyst Chris Evans to look ahead to 2018. For this half year review, I was very fortunate to get some time with renowned industry analyst Howard Marks. With over 30 years’ experience as a consultant and writer on the storage industry he is very well placed to comment on the current state of the market and its direction. In this episode we discuss rate of change V amount of change, the impact of cloud and how SaaS is impacting traditional roles. We talk about the future of the storage admin and been in charge of data paranoia! We look ahead at the challenges of data management and storage class memory and the impact of producers

Compliance of data continues to trouble many business execs, whether IT focused or not, it is high on the agenda for most organisations. A few weeks ago I wrote an article called, Building a modern data platform "prevention" focused on how Microsoft Office365 could aide an organisation in preventing the loss of data using some excellent, if not well known tools, inside Office365. This got me to thinking, what else do Microsoft have in their portfolio that people don't know about? This episode of the podcast explores that exact topic, this is a show I've wanted to do for a while and finally have found the right person to help explore Microsoft's approach and what tools are quickly and easily available to help us deliver robust compliance. To help me i'm joined by Stefanie Jacobs, a Technology Solutions Professional at Microsoft, with 18 years' experience in compliance. Stefanie shares with fantastic enthusiasm the importance of compliance, Microsoft's approach and how their technology is enabling organisat

I recently attended a fascinating event with the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) and Microsoft. BIMA exist to drive innovation and excellence across the digital industry. One of the ways they do this is via community events and forum to help give their industry leaders an opportunity to share ideas with their peers. One of the other things communities like BIMA do well is engage with influential organisations who are shaping the way industries develop and BIMA have recently run a series of roadshows with Microsoft. So, when I was invited to the recent event in Liverpool, I was fascinated to understand what Microsoft were doing in the digital agency space and how their technology was shaping the way digitally focussed organisations are innovating and bringing new solutions to market. What I found however was the technology Microsoft discussed was the same as that they where sharing with all other types of businesses. Why was this message the same? While we may assume “digital” companies are ones

As the move to cloud continues we are starting to see a new development, with organisations no longer relying on a single cloud provider to deliver their key services, many now opting for multiple providers. This multi-cloud environment makes perfect sense, the whole point of adopting cloud is to provide you with the flexibility to consume your data, infrastructure, applications and services from the best provider at any given time, which would be very difficult to do if we only had a single provider. However, multi-cloud comes with a challenge, one rather well summed up at an event recently by the phrase "clouds are the new silo's". How to avoid cloud silo's is seemingly becoming a technology "holy grail" engaging many of the world's biggest tech vendors. Taking on this challenge is the subject of this week's podcast with my guest Lauren Malhoit of Juniper Networks and co-host of the excellent Tech Village Podcast. We open the discussion by trying to define what multi-cloud is and how it doesn't just me

A couple of weeks ago Veeam had their annual technical conference VeeamON at that event they shared among other things their new strategic messaging. That message is an interesting one and their shift from "backup" company to one focused on intelligent data management across multiple repositories is, in my opinion, exactly the right move to be making. With that in mind, I wanted to take a look at some of those messages as well as some of the other interesting announcements from the show and that is exactly what we do on this week's podcast, as I'm joined by recurring Tech Interviews guest, Michael Cade, Global Technologist at Veeam. We start by taking a look at Veeam's last 12 months and how they've started to deliver a wider range of capabilities around more traditional enterprise platforms. Michael shares some of the thinking behind Veeam's goal to deliver an availability platform to meet the demands of modern business data infrastructures and the importance of doing more than the ability to "back stu

I've spoken a bit recently about the world of Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) especially as the technology continues to mature, with both improved hardware stacks and software looking to take advantage of this hardware, it is becoming an ever more compelling prospect. How do these developments, an HCI version 2.0 if you like, manifest themselves? Recently I saw a good example in a series of blog posts and videos from friend of the show Ruairi McBride, which demonstrated really well both the practical deployment and look and feel of a modern HCI platform. The videos focussed on NetApp's new offering and covered the out of the box experience, how to physically cable together your HCI building blocks and how to take your build from delivery to deployment in really easy steps. With that in mind, I thought a chat with Ruairi about his experience with this particular HCI platform, how it goes together, how it is practically deployed and how it meets some of the demands of modern business would make an inte