Gestalt IT Tech Field Day Roundtable

Now that businesses have deployed modern applications in the cloud they are starting to ask whether it might be more attractive to run these on-premises. This episode of the On-Premise IT podcast features Jason Benedicic, Camberley Bates, and Ian Sanderson discussing the pros and cons of cloud repatriation with Stephen Foskett. A recent blog post by 37 Signals got the Tech Field Day delegates talking about the reality of running modern applications in enterprise-owned clouds, whether in the datacenter or co-located. Certainly the hardware and software are available to move applications on-prem, and some workloads may be better served this way. Most of the necessary components to run modern web applications are available on-prem, from Kubernetes to Postgres to Kafka, but these can prove difficult to manage, which is one of the things as-a-service customers are paying for. Looking back to the debut of OpenStack, enterprises have wanted to run applications in-house but they found it too difficult to manage. Open

InfiniBand is the king of AI networking today. Ethernet is making a big leap to take some of that market share but it’s not going to dethrone the incumbent any time soon. In this episode, join Jody Lemoine, David Peñaloza, and Chris Grundemann along with Tom Hollingsworth as they debate the merits of using Ethernet in place of InfiniBand. They discuss the paradigm shift as well as the suitability of the protocols to the workloads as well as how Ultra Ethernet is similar to another shift in converged protocols - Fibre Channel over Ethernet. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Ethernet Won’t Replace InfiniBand for AI Networking in 2024

AI is going to accelerate development of malware everywhere from code to prompts for social engineering. But tools can be used for defense as well as offense. In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Girard Kavalines, Ziv Levy, and Matt Tyrer as they debate the impact that AI will have on malware development in 2024 and beyond. Hear how AI can drive automation on both sides of the security spectrum as well as how we can better prepare to face an onslaught of assisted attackers. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: AI Is Going To Make Malware Worse

Users are always going to blame the connectivity medium for issues and we just have to accept it. In this episode, Sam Clements, Shannon Cranko, and join Tom Hollingsworth to discuss why users are adamant that the wireless is the problem when it’s always something else. They discuss why IT professionals should focus less on blame shifting and more on creating an environment that provides resolution even if it’s not their problem. The episode wraps up with suggestions for professionals to create an environment better suited to meeting user expectations. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: It’s Always the Wi-Fi

Containerization of applications is only a small step forward from virtualization, but WebAssembly promises a real revolution. This episode of the On-Premise IT podcast, recorded live at KubeCon 2023 in Chicago, features Nigel Poulton, Ned Bellavance, Justin Warren, and Stephen Foskett discussing the prospects for WebAssembly. WebAssembly (WASM) is lauded for its potential to be faster, smaller, and more secure than its predecessors. But skepticism surrounds its long-term adoption and development trajectory, with debates centering on whether WASM can achieve the transformative status that containers once held. While WASM applications are technically more portable, smaller, and quicker to start, adoption remains at an early stage, appealing more to developers than operations professionals. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: WebAssembly Will Displace Containers For Web-Scale Applications

The concept of identity management has become increasingly complex and challenging due to the purely digital nature of modern identity. This episode of the On-Premise IT podcast, recorded on-premises at ISS in Cleveland, features Bob Kalka of IBM, Leon Adato of Kentik, and Stephen Foskett discussing the various ways identity management tweaks our neuroses. As organizations grapple with this issue, they face the daunting task of merging elements such as identity, passkeys, passwords, and AI in a way that is seamless and less nerve-wracking. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Identity Management is Tweaking our Neuroses

As ransomware continues to pose a significant threat to enterprises, C-level executives must collaborate and communicate with IT. This episode of the On-Premise IT podcast, brought to you by Commvault and recorded live in New York at their Shift event, features Thomas Bryant of Commvault along with Gina Rosenthal, Eric Wright, and Stephen Foskett. The discussion focused on the crucial need to bridge departmental gaps so IT and executive management can work together. The panel also emphasized the need for openness about risks, lessons from past attacks and the role of government mandates. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Cybersecurity is a C-Suite Problem

Changing or upgrading hardware and software is a scary proposition on the best of days. In this episode, join Tom Hollingsworth along with Keith Parsons, Mike Bolitho, and Lee Badman as they talk about moving from one vendor to another. There is a lot of planning that goes into the decision to upgrade or replace something. It’s even more frightening when you’re removing one vendor’s equipment for another. Learn what to look for and how to make the transition as easy as possible. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: You Are Afraid of the Vendor Switch

Tech is a field full of revolutions and Edge is something special. In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, Jim Czuprynski, Gina Rosenthal, and Brian Knudtson give their take on whether or not Edge is a fundamental shift in the status quo or mearly an evolution of other paradigm shifts like Cloud. The panel focuses on the way that Edge strategies are affecting the way we consume content and deploy applications as well as the impacts that Edge has on areas outside of technology. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Edge is the Third Great Tech Revolution

Software licensing is making networking much more complex and causing networking professionals to be very confused about the state of their discipline. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Nick Buraglio and Lindsay Hill as they discuss the way that software defined networking (SDN) has changed the feature set of network hardware. Also discussed is the shift in focus to developer assets as well as how to recognize revenue from incremental feature additions as well as deployment of resources to appropriate functions in a network software development company. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Licensing is Ruining Networking

Hyperscale-inspired technology is everywhere in enterprise IT, from Kubernetes to S3 to OCP, but these technologies may not be applicable. This episode of On-Premise IT features Cloud Field Day 18 delegates Allyson Klein, Eric Wright, and Nathan Bennett discussing the cloud gap with Stephen Foskett. Looking at AI, we see a very different deployment model in hyperscale cloud as opposed to enterprise cloud, with this gap in technology, implementation, and talent widening. One impact of the needs of hyperscalers is an increased focus on sustainability, specifically energy consumption. We should also consider how the hyperscale use case distorts the development of technology, which is obvious in CXL, GPUs, and networking technologies. Looking at Cloud Field Day, we see that many of these companies are attempting to bridge this gap, connecting hyperscale cloud technology to the enterprise. This is what makes the event so interesting! © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Mind the Gap Between Hyperscale and Enterprise

Backing up data at the edge is fraught with challenges concerning the importance of the data and the limitations of the hardware at your disposal. In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, Jody Lemoine, Ben Young, and Bart Heungens discuss how edge backup differs from traditional enterprise disaster recovery. They highlight the need to identify data retention requirements for edge systems as well as the pitfalls of using cloud solutions versus local options for disconnected devices or lackluster connectivity situations. The discussion wraps up with questions that operations teams should be asking to get in front of these challenges before disaster strikes. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: No One Talks About Edge Backup

As we've discussed all season on Utilizing Edge, innovation is coming from all directions, including hardware, software, and applications. This special crossover episode of the On-Premise IT and Utilizing Tech podcasts features Edge Field Day delegates Brian Knudtson, Ned Bellavance, and Jody Lemoine discussing their perspectives about edge innovation with Stephen Foskett. The primary drivers at the edge are integration, efficiency, and connectivity, as well as the unique needs of the applications there. Starting with hardware, customers are headed in two directions, with more enterprise availability features deployed in some locations and less-capable hardware in others, both in terms of compute and networking. At the software level, most edge infrastructure is hyper-converged, meaning that multiple layers of the stack are integrated in software and managed as one. Although intended as an application platform, Kubernetes is being deployed as a packaging abstraction and distribution solution at the edge. © G

Although modern-day storage products let us do more with less, and is more capable than ever before, they are also way more complex, and often unintelligible to the masses. Recorded at the recent Storage Field Day event, in this On-Premise IT podcast, Stephen Foskett asks the attending luminaries from the storage industry to define storage in simple terms. With innovation piling high, storage, in the recent years, has slipped away from the grasps of IT professionals, causing add-on stress and pressure. Storage, as a disciple, has grown so vast, that it is only possible to either be a generalist and acquire a broad understanding, or a specialist with narrow focus in one thing. Listen to the discussion to learn how storage professionals working at the heart of IT view and interpret storage. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: No One Understands Storage Anymore

The storage industry is increasingly focused on memory rather than traditional storage, and this reflects an architectural shift in the compute stack. This episode of On-Premise IT focuses on the new storage stack, which now includes memory, with Andy Banta, Jim Jones, Vuong Pham, and Stephen Foskett, all of whom are attending Storage Field Day 26 and SNIA's Storage Developer Conference. The difference between memory and storage was historically based on the technology at hand, but these lines are blurring. The latest systems can address storage and memory in very similar ways, and can apply advanced data management techniques to memory as well as storage. NVMe, NAND flash, CXL, and persistent memory technologies are blurring the lines, and the latest developments in software, as highlighted at SNIA's SDC, bring new capabilities. As memory becomes more like storage, what was once primary storage has a new job to perform further down in the hierarchy focused on data management, ransomware, and data protection.

As enterprises try to deploy infrastructure to support AI applications they generally discover that the demands of this application can disrupt their architecture plans. This episode of On-Premise IT, sponsored by Pure Storage, discusses the disruptive impact of AI on the enterprise with Justin Emerson, Allyson Klein, Keith Townsend, and Stephen Foskett. Heavy duty AI processing requires specialized hardware that more resembles High-Performance Computing (HPC) than conventional enterprise IT architecture. But as more enterprise applications leverage accelerators like GPUs and DPUs, and become more disaggregated, AI starts to make more sense. Power is one key consideration, since companies are more aware of sustainability and are impacted by limited power availability in the datacenter, and efficient external storage can be a real benefit here. This is still general-purpose infrastructure but it increasingly incorporates accelerators to improve power efficiency. One issue for general purpose infrastructure is

Snapshots are still not backups but the nature of data storage means care must be taken to determine data retention requirements. In this episode of the On-Premise IT Podcast, Brian Knudtson, Matt Tyrer, and Richard Kenyan discuss the nature of data protection and recovery point objectives. The rapid pace of cloud storage growth as well as the shift toward using microservices and serverless computing have added additional challenges to the definition of data that needs to be backed up. In addition, the terminology changes with major companies in the space have created confusion in features. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Once Again, Snapshots Are Not Backups

As we head into VMware Explore US 2023, we are forced to consider the company’s strategy once again. Wouldn’t it be better if VMware focused on the hypervisor and networking rather than continually exploring new products and markets? That’s the question posed by Stephen Foskett to Allyson Klein, Andy Banta, and Matt Tyrer in this episode of the On-Premise IT podcast. Focus isn’t a bad strategy, especially given the slow pace of development for cloud-native applications in the enterprise. And VMware’s involvement in edge computing is an enticing new market for their core technologies. But not everyone is convinced that this is the right move! © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: VMware Should Focus on the Hypervisor and Networking

Low Code and No Code automation solutions have been gaining significant popularity. Organizations are embracing them to kickstart or continue automation projects. But are they the right fit for every company? There are considerations to discuss and sizing issues that need to be addressed. You also need to understand the potential impact of having a team dedicated to a solution and not a methodology. In this episode, Carl Fugate, John Osmon, and Girard Kavelines discuss where Low Code and No Code make sense and where you should consider using a different tool. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Low Code and No Code Aren’t The Magic Solution

As tech giants struggle to adapt to changing business conditions, startups are quick to blaze new trails. This episode of On-Premise IT, hosted by Stephen Foskett and featuring Rose Ross, Tim Crawford, and Justin Warren, compares the tech world to an environment where small, innovative startups are advancing while larger, traditional companies fight to keep their market dominance. Companies can only flourish if they are able to understand the evolving needs of the industry, while startups can close the gap in markets they overlook. When it comes to IT products, CIOs are no longer the primary customer, necessitating a better understanding of who the target audience is and how to communicate effectively with them. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Startups are Tech Trailblazers for the Giants