Tech Field Day Coverage

Our delegate panel includes independent writers and thought leaders, and we collect their coverage of the event, Tech Field Day presentations, and sponsoring companies here.

Tackling Troublesome Tunnels With 128 Technology

Can you build a modern SD-WAN network without using tunnels? 128 Technology thinks that you can and they have the services to prove it. Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at their presentation from Networking Field Day 20 and how they’re building tunnel-free networks.

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Tackling Troublesome Tunnels with 128 Technology

My Time at Palo Alto Networks

Evan Mintzer attended Security Field Day earlier this year as a delegate. At the event, he got to hear from Palo Alto Networks. He wasn’t too familiar with the company prior to their presentation, only knowing they made application aware. Over the course of their presentation, he got to hear from a lot of people at the company, and discovered how they are working to change the IT security landscape.

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My time at Palo Alto Networks

Automation Anywhere: What Did the Bot Eat for Lunch?

Liselotte Foverskov heard from Automation Anywhere while a delegate at Tech Field Day last month. They are a competitor in the fast growing Robotic Process Automation market. They think that their platform will enable anyone to create helpful bots to automate routine tasks, allowing for employees to focus on more creative efforts. In light of a recent visit to the computer history museum, it was a thoughtful presentation.

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Automation Anywhere: what did the bot eat for lunch?

Introduction to Automation Anywhere

Marina Ferreira heard from Automation Anywhere at Tech Field Day last month. They showed off their Robotic Process Automation solutions at the event. It struck Marina that we often look at network automation in IT as a way to eliminate repetitive tasks, but not as a business process or workflow solution. By framing Automation Anywhere’s RPA in that light, she sees it as allowing employees to focus their time on value-add tasks, rather than simply avoiding repetition.

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Introduction to Automation Anywhere

Shivering With Microsegmen……..tation

One of the things that struck Tricia Howard about Security Field Day was the preponderance of companies with solutions using microsegmentation. This isn’t a new solution in networking, but it is pretty new for security. The emphasis with these approaches was isolation as quickly as possible, quarantining endpoints to prevent further spread. These concepts were wrapped with an emphasis on speed and ease of deployment, otherwise they don’t get used. For Tricia, the next step is to get these solutions into your deployments to test them out.

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Shivering with Microsegmen……..tation

Cisco Meraki MV – Making the Case for Intelligent Video Surveillance

Traditional video surveillance systems and IP networks go together like chunky peanut butter on a tuna fish sandwich. Jonathan Davis looks at the decisions Cisco Meraki made when it decided to build security cameras, fully aware of the classic problems. They weren’t content to increment on the existing solutions available on the market and add it to their dashboard. He got the full details at Meraki’s presentation during Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2019.

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Cisco Meraki MV - Making the Case for Intelligent Video Surveillance

Automate All the Things With Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere made a big splash with their presentation at Tech Field Day last month. The company showed off their solutions around Robotic Process Automation. For Adam Fisher, it was the first time he had heard from a company with that focus. Their bots allow for automation of a wide variety of tasks, and Adam was impressed that this wasn’t limited to specific verticals. He really appreciated that their goals wasn’t to replace humans, but rather to allow us to focus our efforts on more creative work that the bots can’t do.

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Automate all the things with Automation Anywhere

Sysdig Solves the Instrumentation Problem Using eBPF

Sysdig presented for the first time at Cloud Field Day this past spring. Joep Piscaer was one of the delegates at the event and got to hear about the company’s solutions at length. In this piece, he looks at how Sysdig solves the problem of getting packet-level telemetry from containersnwithout accessing the underlying network stack. They do this using kernel-native instrumentation via eBPF to capture system calls and other OS events from containers, without having to create additional containers in the process. For Joep, that’s a key consideration.

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Sysdig solves the instrumentation problem using eBPF

How Datrium ControlShift Uses VMware Cloud on AWS for Cloud-Native Disaster Recovery

In this post, Joep Piscaer digs into Datrium’s ControlShift cloud-native disaster recovery solution. He previously heard from Datrium on this in detail at Cloud Field Day this spring. What makes ControlShift stand out for DR is the ability to cold start a recovery from the cloud. He runs through various recovery destinations and scenarios in the piece. Overall, he found it a very well thought out product.

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How Datrium ControlShift uses VMware Cloud on AWS for cloud-native Disaster Recovery

Solving Data Problems – David Flynn – Ep 100

Paul Stringfellow got to hear from Hammerspace when they came out of stealth last year at Tech Field Day. In this episode of his Tech Interviews podcast, Paul spoke with Hammerspace CEO David Flynn. They discuss how the company takes a data-centric, rather than infrastructure-centric, approach to the classic problem of sharing data across multiple locations.

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Solving Data Problems – David Flynn – Ep 100

My Post #TFD19 Roundup

Tech Field Day is an event all about bringing together the disparate silos of enterprise IT in the same room and create meaningful conversations around technical presentations. So it was great at our event last month to have Jim Palmer, a wireless guy, as a delegate. What stood out to Jim was that the event allowed him to learn as much from his fellow delegates, who each have their own areas of expertise, as the presenters. We’re glad he got a lot of value out of the event, and we can’t wait to hear more of his thoughts on it.

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My Post #TFD19 Roundup

Viavi Enterprises, Performance Vision

Brian Gleason attended Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2019. Cisco Live is always a packed event, but we love the opportunity to provide focused technical presentations and create conversations in all the typical event cacophany. This year, Viavi was a presenter, and demonstrated how they track client-server transactions on the network to monitor end-user experience via passive data collection. According to Brian, it was one of the best presentations of the event.

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Viavi Enterprises, Performance Vision

Security for You, but Organized.

In this piece, Shaun Bender wrote about what Palo Alto Networks presented at Security Field Day earlier this year. This was on Shaun’s first Field Day experience. We love having new voices around the table, and we can’t wait to hear more from Shaun going forward.

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Security for you, but organized.

My Take: Ixia’s Visibility Portfolio

Ixia made a return to Field Day with their presentation at Tech Field Day earlier this year. We were lucky to have Wes Milliron around the delegate table for the event. In this piece, he looks at their overall visibility platform, and came away impressed at the scope and capabilities. While he admits their UI is due for a refresh, the underlying functionality provides the visibility you need to best take advantage of your security tools.

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My Take: Ixia’s Visibility Portfolio

Thinking About Veeam Cloud Tier

At Cloud Field Day last month, David Ball got to hear from Veeam. The company is no stranger to Field Day events, and it was great to have them back presenting to the delegates. Their presentation on Veeam Cloud tier answered a key question that David had been asking himself, how can smaller organizations buy what they need for backups, but still allow for on-demand flexibility. It’s a great piece looking at their solutions.

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Thinking About Veeam Cloud Tier

Ixia Helps You See All the Stuff You Need to See

Dan Frith heard from Ixia at Tech Field Day last month. While the company was acquired by KeySight a few years ago, they still bring a long legacy of network insight and visibility to the market. At the event, they talked a lot about Vision X, their modular network packet broker. This is designed to offer a flexible feature set today, that can be built out by developers over time. It aims to offer high performance, high density visibility. For Dan, getting that visibility across the stack is incredibly valuable for modern IT.

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Ixia Helps You See All The Stuff You Need To See

Patch! Patch! Patch!

Jasper Bongertz enjoyed the messaging around VMware’s presentation at Security Field Day. They reminded everyone about the importance of patching, something in an age of continuing exploits certainly resonates. They went over some of their hardening guidelines, what they’ve done with CPU schedulers to reduce the threat of speculative attacks, and more.

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Patch! Patch! Patch!

PathSolutions – Nova Forma De Troubleshooting

Rodrigo Rovere heard from PathSolutions at Networking Field Day earlier this year. The company has been around since 2007 and showed their TotalView solution at the event. This monitors all the interfaces of a network device and searches its 19 counters to show you a complete view of the health of your network. Rodrigo found it to be a great tool for mapping a network, although he wished it could be exported to use in other tools going forward.

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PathSolutions - Nova Forma de Troubleshooting

Automation, Anywhere You Want It

At Tech Field Day, Jim Palmer got a look into the fascinating world of Robotic Process Automation, thanks to the folks at Automation Anywhere. While this is the fastest growing enterprise software market, it was one that Jim hadn’t heard much about before. He was impressed by the company’s vision of having a “digital assistant” for every worker. They provide not just a platform to make this happen, but lead the industry with their education resources. For someone new to the space, that was an invaluable aspect for Jim.

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Automation, Anywhere You Want It

Next Gen Firewalls With a Side of Cloud Services

Prior to seeing Palo Alto Networks present at Security Field Day, Michael Davis saw them at their Ignite Conference. He was curious what the company would add to their presentation to make it stand out with that event so recently in the rear view. They showed off their Panorama next-generation firewall management solution. But the real meat of the presentation was on Prisma Public Cloud, the result of their recent Redlock acquisition. There were also demos of Cortex XDR and Demisto, designed to help combat alert fatigue. It was a lot of information to take in, but had a lot of interesting security implications.

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Next Gen Firewalls with a Side of Cloud Services