ESG Blogs

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time in the Verizon 5G lab in Waltham MA. Verizon was hosting an analyst day to demonstrate how Verizon is going to use 5G to enable enterprises to deliver new capabilities and services or deliver differentiated experiences to customers.

The day got started with a presentation from Toby Redshaw, SVP of 5G and Innovation. Toby started the discussion by highlighting a familiar theme, that the speed of technology transitions is accelerating. He referenced the fourth industrial revolution occurring, which he noted as the “Real-time Enterprise,” but importantly noted that instead of this industrial revolution taking 50 to 60 years, this one would happen much faster, perhaps in the next five to six years. He noted the need for enterprises to operate in real time, which we have seen evidence of as organizations distribute compute to the edge. This also provides a solid entry point for a high bandwidth, ultra-low latency solution like 5G.

According to ESG research, 73% of security professionals say that cyber-risk management is more difficult at their organization today than it was 2 years ago. Why? Survey respondents point to things like the growing attack surface, the rising number of software vulnerabilities, and the increasing technical prowess of cyber-adversaries. 

I had the opportunity to attend Juniper’s analyst event at its Sunnyvale, California headquarters on September 10. Truth be told, Juniper has been fairly quiet on the security front for the last few years, so I was interested to get up to speed on the company’s direction. Juniper divested the Pulse Secure portion of its portfolio in 2014 and since that time has not always articulated a consistent vision around, or emphasis on, security. My impression after listening to CEO Rami Rahim and CTO Bikash Koley lay out Juniper’s corporate vision and how the Connected Security approach ties in, is that they do see security as a core component of the overall strategy, especially as it relates to expanding the company’s enterprise footprint. Admittedly, there weren’t a lot of specifics provided relative to security announcements, but I’m an optimist and believe there will be some meat put on the bone sooner rather than later.

Pure Storage turns 10 this year. It celebrated getting all grown up by moving its user Accelerate conference into a more regular venue than prior versions...although choosing a convention center that just happens to be in Dell’s backyard was no doubt deliberate!

ESG attended Canonical’s Analyst Day 2019 last week in New York, which featured its management team, including CEO Mark Shuttleworth, as well as customer speakers from BT and partner Atos for an audience of ~60 industry analysts and bankers. Major messages were focused on its vision for both open architecture and open applications, its financial independence, competitive position and growth in enterprise from a license, maintenance, and managed services perspective.

This week Pure // Accelerate came to my hometown of Austin, Tx. And for three days, the city was orange; filled with a customer base that is both passionate and enthusiastic.

I first came up with the SOAPA concept in late 2016. Here’s the blog I wrote in November of that year describing the architecture and its rationale. 

VMware held its flagship customer event, VMworld 2019, in San Francisco last week.

It was a big week for VMware, especially since it was coming on the heels of announcing two significant acquisitions of Pivotal and Carbon Black. Much of the news this year centered on the desire to embrace containers and manage hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Along those lines, the big announcements included:

VMworld was big – but that’s not really news. It has been big for a while – both from an event perspective, but also from a market impact perspective; after all, VMware is the chosen basis for many applications and users. But this year, the “choir” grew; this was partly the obvious growth of those paying attention, including the newly intended-to-be-acquired Pivotal and Carbon Black…but it was also because of a more cohesive and inclusive message. To use terms that VMware would approve of, the company used its virtually eponymous mega-gathering to ‘make its mark’ in the ‘age of any’ by running even-more-keenly towards a multi-cloud world. Heterogeneity was everywhere…as long as that heterogeneity runs on VMware, of course! Conversations about - and proposals for - hybrid-, multi- and even edge- cloud, were both well-constructed and explained…but also at times served to prudently obfuscate the fact that VMware sees itself as the [benevolent?] spider at the center of this expanding IT web.   

The theme of this year’s VMworld is “Make you Mark.” The kickoff keynote delivered a familiar narrative placing the IT leader in the place of a hero, a cross between “Morpheus and Hermione,” gifted with powers to change the world.