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.
CloudFieldDay 17: Protecting SaaS Data With HYCU
Read Lino Telera’s impression of HYCU, a cloud backup solution intended to address the challenges of data protection for Software, Database, and Platform as a Service. The company provides visibility to handle data sprawl from the SaaS explosion across several providers such as Atlassian, Google Services, and Office365. HYCU’s solutions offer low-code syntax to customize workflow to match client needs, including customizable security policies, SIEM features, and ransomware protection measures.
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CloudFieldDay 17: Protecting SaaS Data With HYCU
DR as a Service With JetStream Software
Organizations seeking an economical and easy way for data protection and efficient disaster recovery (DR) could turn to disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). JetStream aims to provide organizations with extended data protection for both the private and public cloud to enable them to migrate to DRaaS solutions from legacy DR solutions and avoid costs that come with on-prem DR infrastructure. Thanks to its Continuous Data Protection (CDP) service, JetStream can offer minimal downtime, low recovery point objectives (RPO), and recovery time objectives (RTO). JetStream achieves this by leveraging cloud object storage that is economically viable and has both on-demand and reserved instances where compute/storage can be paid for as needed, instead of having to predict capacity. Read about the solution at Gestalt IT or catch the demo on the website.
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DR as a Service With JetStream Software
Day Two Cloud 198: Modern Cloud Design Themes From CFD 17
Day Two Cloud’s Ned Bellavance, Ethan Banks, and Michael Levan highlight some key design themes at Cloud Field Day 17, hosted by Tech Field Day. These themes include platform engineering, data protection, disaster recovery, and the co-existence of old and new technologies in modern IT. Kubernetes’ growing status as the default platform choice was mentioned. Backup and disaster recovery solutions by HYCU, Zerto, and others bridge the gap between on-prem and cloud environments. Listen to this episode to learn more!
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Day Two Cloud 198: Modern Cloud Design Themes From CFD 17
Multi-Cloud Security Requires Multi-Cloud Observability With Forward Networks
Network observability, which includes real-time contextual data for in-depth analysis towards securing resilient networks in today’s rapidly evolving digital world, is crucial for businesses. However, lack of a unified visibility solution across various cloud platforms makes observability harder to achieve in multi-cloud environments. Forward Networks took a proactive approach and deployed cloud digital twin observability into major cloud platforms, extending their cutting-edge digital twin technology to increase multi-cloud observability and security. The company’s solutions offer deep observability and enhance security through tools like Path, Posture, and Blast Radius. This article by Chris Grundemann, sponsored by Forward Networks, provides more insight following their appearance at Cloud Field Day 16.
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Multi-Cloud Security Requires Multi-Cloud Observability With Forward Networks
Cisco Wireless and a Common Management Strategy With Meraki Dashboard
The Meraki Dashboard provides Cisco with high levels of observability into its clients’ networks, giving the company access to data from 12 million online Meraki devices. Designed to be as automated as possible, the platform can perform sophisticated comparisons and assist in making predictive analyses while allowing the company to troubleshoot numerous networking issues easily. With its new business unit, Cisco Wireless, Cisco is focused on having a common management strategy, allowing it to deliver a more comprehensive and seamless experience across the Meraki and Catalyst wireless platforms. Read about the transition of the Meraki Dashboard through the years at Gestalt IT or watch the demo on the website.
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Cisco Wireless and a Common Management Strategy With Meraki Dashboard
The Algorithm Made Me Do It: Cloud Field Day 17 Wrap-Up – Chaos Lever [EP61]
Ned Bellavance attended Cloud Field Day 17 in Boston and discussed the event with Chris Hayner on the Chaos Lever podcast. HYCU focuses on cloud backup and recovery and built a cloud-native backend and provide native backup solutions for AWS, Azure, and GCP with a marketplace and a development kit for SAS vendors to create backup solutions. RackN showcased their software platform, Digital Rebar, which simplifies working with on-premises hardware and bare metal servers and automates provisioning and configuration tasks for private clouds. Couchbase, a database-as-a-service company, utilizes native cloud constructs and offers secure private and public connection endpoints for database tenants. The event also emphasized the significance of VMware, the reality of multi-cloud environments, and the emerging trends of platform engineering and internal developer portals.
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The Algorithm Made Me Do It: Cloud Field Day 17 Wrap-Up - Chaos Lever [EP61]
Mako Networks – a World-Class PCI-Certified Network-As-A-Service Ecosystem
Mako Networks presented its own hardware and software as a service for retail edge at the recent Edge Field Day event, and this sponsored article by Ben Young dives deep into this concept. The company has made strides in the distributed retail enterprise business in North America and Europe, thanks to its all-in-one ecosystem. Mako technology is PCI-certified, making it a no-brainer choice for organizations that require ready compliance at the network layer, centralized management, and bulk configuration functionality.
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Mako Networks – a World-Class PCI-Certified Network-As-A-Service Ecosystem
Overcoming the Uncomfortable Aspects of Network Identity Management With Arista Networks’ CloudVision AGNI
Arista Networks presented its AI-driven NAC solution CloudVision AGNI at Mobility Field Day, hoping to achieve its potential for zero-trust security. AGNI expands Arista’s flagship CloudVision solution with features such as secure onboarding, dynamic access control, and AI-driven policy enforcement, among others. Built from scratch in the cloud, the solution embodies modern cloud-first principles, and it has a modern microservices architecture that delivers elastic scalability from tens to thousands of devices in a few clicks, self-service style onboarding for wireless with single sign-on (SSO), and reduced average deployment time from weeks to hours. Read more in this article by Sulagna Saha, and watch the entire presentation on the Tech Field Day website!
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Cisco Does the “AFC Side Step” With the CW9166D1
In this post, Troy Martin discusses the new Cisco CW9166D1 access point shown at Mobility Field Day. A redesign of the CW9166i front end, the CW9166D1 features an integrated directional antenna and some new tricks related to AFC. The integrated antenna enables directional focused antennas to be implemented without additional hardware costs. The CW9166D1 is capable of running in dual 5GHz mode and waiting to enable the 6GHz radio once client support reaches critical mass.
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Cisco Does the “AFC Side Step” With the CW9166D1
Edge Computing Architecture Fundamentals
At Edge Field Day 1, companies such as Scale Computing, Mako Networks, Avassa, Zededa, and Opengear presented their solutions for deploying applications to the edge. There has been no universal agreement on what the term “edge” means, but delegates concluded that organizations should consider deploying applications in a location where they can achieve peak optimization. The presenters focused on networking, out-of-band access, compute/storage, provisioning, observability, and orchestration, aspects, but stressed that there is no uniform approach given that the edge varies by context. Read on for Gina Rosenthal’s thoughts on EFD1 and edge computing!
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Edge Computing Architecture Fundamentals
Elevating the Zoom Experience With Juniper Networks’ Marvis
Juniper Networks has updated its AI assistant, Marvis, to include Zoom data and ChatGPT to improve its ability to respond to complex networking queries. Marvis combines AI, ML, and data science to expedite operations and optimize user experience. The AI-powered predictive observability offered by Marvis allows users to solve technical errors efficiently, as AI algorithms are trained on billions of datasets, enabling them to magnify nuances long before a problem becomes an anomaly that affects the user experience. Read about it at Gestalt IT or watch the demo on the website.
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Elevating the Zoom Experience With Juniper Networks’ Marvis
It’s Been a Year, Where Is Open Locate Now?
HPE Aruba Networking’s Open Locate offers a significant opportunity to leverage the potential of location services across industries and establish business insights. The tech uses remote GPS anchor points to improve the accuracy of location data, which will enable its use in critical areas such as worker safety, inventory management and asset tracking. However, the use and sharing of the data need to take into account privacy matters and consider carefully how to extract and transform the data to provide meaningful business value. Troy Martin, who attended Aruba Atmosphere in 2022 and 2023, considers the impact of Open Locate after a year.
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It’s Been a Year, Where Is Open Locate Now?
“So I Put the Directional Antenna IN the AP.”
Cisco’s Mobility Field Day 9 saw the unveiling of its 9166D1 directional antenna, which can substitute for traditional external antennas in almost any indoor application. The antenna design proves the company’s RF design skills, with additional features such as easier connectivity for Cat 6A patch cables. Fred Niehaus, TME at Cisco, highlighted the company’s 9166D1 as a simple, feasible solution for 6GHz and Wi-Fi 6 antennae, which eliminates the need for external antennae in most indoor applications and can be an affordable resource to resolve issues of connectivity, capacity and coverage. Read on for Field Day delegate John Kilpatrick’s thoughts on Cisco’s new access point design.
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“So I Put the Directional Antenna IN the AP.”
Cloud Field Day 17 Recap
Michael Levan gives an overview of Cloud Field Day 17, which included several innovative platforms useful for cloud computing and modernization. Platforms like HYCU, Morpheus Data, and RackN offer self-service and integration to aid in orchestration and provide better support. Zerto is a comprehensive VMware-based platform with backups based on detection and real-time alerting; Couchbase offers a vendor-agnostic NoSQL solution for cost optimization, and JetStream Software is an essential Disaster Recovery tool.
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JetStream Software at Cloud Field Day 17
In this article, Eric Wright reacts to the JetStream Software presentation from Cloud Field Day 17. JetStream Software showcased its disaster recovery (DR) solution for VMware, delivering a DBaaS platform that ensures extremely low recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO). The architecture of the platform depends on JetStream Management Server appliance, IO filters, DR Replication Virtual Appliance, and object storage. Continuous failover facilitates near-zero RTO, whereas runbooks initiate recovery sequences scheduled on a manual, automated, or timely basis while allowing control to switch recovery site protection to an alternate site to minimize operational costs.
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JetStream Software at Cloud Field Day 17
Couchbase at Cloud Field Day 17
In this article, Eric Wright reacts to the Couchbase presentation from Cloud Field Day 17. Couchbase Capella is a promising database-as-a-service (DBaaS) platform for developers majorly focused on NoSQL. The platform targets performance and scalability needs while providing a flexible, unified and multi-tenant environment for all data services. Couchbase Capella is a cloud database platform for modern applications and showcases exceptional performance and functionality in a simple, fast, and affordable manner.
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Couchbase at Cloud Field Day 17
Zerto at Cloud Field Day 17
In this article, Eric Wright reacts to the Zerto presentation from Cloud Field Day 17. Zerto has launched version 10 of their platform which introduces several new features following their focus on ransomware resilience solutions. The product offers real-time discovery capabilities, a visualization tool named Zerto Analytics, a REST API documented with Swagger for interoperability, and a Vault to protect and store the company’s objects from ransomware threats, among many other functions. Zerto 10 is ideal for enterprises with significant VMware estates, as it tackles orchestration and automation to deliver self-service and manage hybrid clouds and modernize applications.
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Cloud NAC?
John Kilpatrick is skeptical of cloud NAC or “RADIUS in the cloud” solutions presented by Juniper and Arista at Mobility Field Day 9. These solutions aim to simplify RADIUS authentication, which has traditionally been complex. Kilpatrick wonders why anyone would adopt cloud NAC, as it involves placing a low-level resource farther from the user and reducing the control of platform dependencies, while also complicating learning and retaining one’s environment’s complexity.
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Fortinet Takes on Even Bigger Challenges With FortiAIOps V2.0
The world has moved on from training humans to code to teaching computers to do it themselves. Fortinet’s FortiAIOps v2.0 is a fine specimen of that. Powered by more advanced AI, the new version of FortiAIOps offers broad monitoring capabilities, deep analytics, and sophisticated troubleshooting tools. Read about it on Gestalt IT or watch the demo on the website.
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Fortinet Takes on Even Bigger Challenges With FortiAIOps V2.0
Excitement in the Air With Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2023
Tech Field Day Extra returns to Cisco Live US 2023, featuring presentations from Cisco as well as Opengear and BackBox, streaming live on June 6 and 7. Tuesday begins with Opengear, followed by Cisco Enterprise, ThousandEyes, and Security. Wednesday features a presentation from BackBox and more presentations Cisco focused on IoT, Cloud and Compute, and Secure Policy. Check out the live stream on LinkedIn and the Tech Field Day website!
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Excitement in the Air With Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2023