ESG Blogs

NetApp's annual Insight event wrapped recently. Right off the bat, I must record that I thought this was a lesson to many other vendors about how best to run a digital event. It was fast-paced, enjoyable and easy to watch. And that matters; the best content in the world is wasted if a vendor has poor and/or boring presentations...NetApp did a stellar job of embracing the new medium. Luckily, the content also did not disappoint. In the video below, Scott Sinclair and I discuss some of our key takeaways.

It bears repeating that events like Dell Technologies World cover way too much ground to ever cover everything in a brief post. So we won't try! Instead, my ESG colleagues and myself are talking the "bite-sized-chunks" approach, dipping into various topics in reports, blogs, and videos as appropriate. One of the biggest announcements at this year's digital event ("big" as in likely impact rather than elapsed time on the virtual "stage") was Apex - Dell's as-a-service umbrella commitment - and we've already chatted about that in another single-topic video. 

Like every other tech vendor, Dell's annual mega-event transitioned from a massive conference center to a massive digital extravaganza. We'll cover it in multiple manners and media over the coming days and weeks....after all Dell has heft in IT and there's a lot to comment upon. 

This should be obvious by now, but container-based apps are different from traditional applications. Yet too many IT vendors still treat container-based application environments with the same expectations and the same infrastructure design.

I wonder when people sleep at HYCU! I have been tracking the company for 2.5 years, and it's been innovating and introducing new solutions at a very nice clip, demonstrating focused execution.

I work in a data company. I’ve watched the container market evolve very similarly to the hypervisor market—a lot of experimentation at first, and eventually an exploding, massive commercial market.

Containers (namely Kubernetes) are still in the early phase, but we know that the experimentation phase has occurred much faster than it did with hypervisors. We also know who is going to win—Kubernetes. And, most importantly, we know that the leap from science project to production is happening now—again, much faster than VMware’s takeoff.

For the last decade, IT pros have mapped their career paths to server virtualization and have truly become heroes inside their organization. Now, they have the opportunity to accelerate their careers with containers as they map closer to modern application development. Tune in as Scott Sinclair and I share our observations on VMworld 2020 and what the future holds for IT professionals.

 The acceleration of digital workspaces has been fascinating to observe, as businesses have had to flip the switch to remote work. Businesses have found themselves exposed and underprepared, but platforms like VMware Workspace ONE are helping organizations enable remote work for employees with confidence. How organizations managed & maintained applications and devices was slowly rounding the curve 12+ months ago. Now, organizations are living the benefits real-time with the help of VMware. Please listen in as I share some observations from VMworld 2020 and keep tuned in as ESG focuses on user experiences and employee monitoring.

Anton Chuvakin knows his stuff, so I was excited to have him participate in ESG’s SOAPA video series. In part 2 of our video, Anton and I chat about:

1. Security data. I mention to Anton that many SOC teams are buried in large volumes of security telemetry and then ask if we are trying to collect, process, and analyze more data than we need. Anton responds that we have too much “dirty data” that really isn’t useful. Therefore, the challenge is understanding which telemetry is useful, how it’s useful, and which other data elements we need for data enrichment to improve the efficacy and efficiency of our analytics.

It’s hard to believe that almost exactly a year ago, on October 14, 2019, Commvault launched Metallic, which is now an award-winning solution. As a product guy, I know from experience how difficult but rewarding it is to get an award at VMworld for your solution. A one-year old solution with a best in show is very impressive. Well done Metallic team! More importantly: well executed!