After presenting at Cloud Field Day, Eric Shanks has changed the way he views ServiceNow. At the event, the company showed how they can serve as an central management plane for business operations, unifying management and allowing automation between disparate services. In the end, Eric finds their true value as a platform themselves. “ServiceNow is more than just an ITSM tool these days. It’s a business tool.”
Gigamon Remakes Itself For Cloud
Justin Warren profiles what he saw from Gigamon at last month’s Cloud Field Day. He thinks the reason the company has returned to profitability is twofold. For one, more organizations have recognized the need for visibility and security, which Gigamon has consistently executed on with its solutions. Secondly, the company’s host-based agent approach to cloud monitoring gives organizations the visibility they can’t get simply from an API. As long as organizations don’t shift from packet monitoring to distributed application tracing, Justin sees Gigamon’s Visibility Layer as a compelling product.
Disclosure: #CFD2 Edition
While it’s easy to focus solely on the presenting companies during an event like Cloud Field Day, the delegates truly make it a special experience in IT. In this post, Justin Warren gives is usual disclosure of the food and activities he received during the event.
HPE Nimble Storage at Cloud Field Day – Enterprise Storage
HPE presented on their recently acquired Nimble Storage portfolio at Cloud Field Day. Theresa Miller like what she saw from their cloud-based SAN-like option for cloud storage. Fundamentally, she’s not sure this will be an option for many companies just starting their cloud journey, but rather thinks it has a ready market with many of the existing big cloud companies.
Are We Really Concerned with Public Cloud Vendor Lock-in?
Fear of public cloud lock-in is real for many companies. Eric Shanks looks at why this is, why this fear is historically overblown, and also what the advantages of keeping your options open actually are. He then reviews how three companies he saw at Cloud Field Day last month, Scality, Platform9, and Nirmata, address the lock-in question.
Cloud Field Day and ServiceNow
ServiceNow presented their orchestration and automation platform, which works across a variety of legacy and emerging business systems at Cloud Field Day last month. Adrian Bridgwater share his thoughts on their presentation. While he admits that selling a platform can be a difficult proposition, Adrian sees it as giving the tools to customers to “eradicate the bad business processes that existed in the pre-cloud era”.
Cloud Field Day 2 – “Going Forward” with Rubrik
Lino Telera says, “the ability to protect data across cloud systems and instant recovery SQL server represent the coolest parts” of Rubrik’s Cloud Field Day presentation. Lino goes on to discuss Rubrik’s history and purpose as well as elaborate on those topics. He also calls Rubrik a “protection platform for all seasons,” both in normalcy and in disaster. Lino is excited by what Rubrik is doing, but sees many improvements that could be made in the future.
Rubrik at Cloud Field Day – Backup your Cloud Today
Theresa Miller discusses meeting with the Rubrik team at Cloud Field Day. There, Rubrik presented on their cloud backup products, a topic Theresa sees as very important for any company making the transition to cloud. A solid long-run recovery and backup strategy is vital and is what Rubrik is aiming to provide with the Rubrik Cloud Cluster. Theresa seems optimistic about this product and looks forward to what Rubrik will offer in the future.
NetApp at a Crossroads
In light of their Cloud Field Day presentation, Eric Shanks knows that NetApp is at a crossroads as a company. Their traditional image as a storage vendor will have to shift as NetApp begins to adapt the cloud and move into more cloud focussed products. Eric says, however, that this will be particularly difficult for a company as large as NetApp to accomplish swiftly. After all, they cannot simply abandon all of their older products and revenue streams. But with new hires and determination, NetApp is looking to be a player in the cloud market and despite anything else, NetApp will be a very different company in the next few years.
NetApp and Rubrik, a David and Goliath situation? Part Three
In the final installment of his Cloud Field Day comparison between Rubrik and NetApp, Ben Kepes comes to the conclusion that both companies are in a good, but different, position to guarantee their future. Rubrik has none of the constraints around existing revenue streams, sales force motion or customer expectations that NetApp has, making it a much more agile player, while NetApp has deep relationships with the world’s largest enterprises giving it a leg up in the industry. Despite this, Ben ultimately decides that “if NetApp realizes both the opportunity and the threat, this battle is theirs to lose – they have the pedigree, the existing market share, the cash reserves and the brand recognition to pull one out of the bag and guarantee their future.”
ServiceNow and the challenge of going broad
After Cloud Field Day, Ben Kepes reviews ServiceNow, a company that has come along way from its San Diego Roots. Traditionally, ServiceNow has been seen as an IT helpdesk system vendor, but now, ServiceNow has begun pursuing its aims to become a vendor that offers tools to enable organizations to digitize their more general enterprise workflows. Ben believes that ServiceNow is in a position where they are large enough to invest resources in this project, but small enough to remain agile, a combination that sets them up for a bright future.
Accelerite’s Rovius Readies Your Hybrid Cloud
Writing about Accelerite’s Cloud Field Day presentation on their product, Rovius, Ethan Banks has very mixed feelings. He is a huge fan of how easy to use Rovius is and how easy Rovius makes it to consume a variety of clouds, but he is worried how it will function in complex failure scenarios. Ethan knows these issues are on Accelerite’s minds and hopes that they will prove themselves in the near future.
NetApp and Rubrik, a David and Goliath situation? Part Two
As part of his series comparing and contrasting NetApp and Rubrik, Ben Kepes talks about Rubrik’s meteoric rise to fame from backup vendor startup to data management powerhouse. Ben believes that Rubrik “has amassed cash, a stellar crew and, perhaps most importantly, a unique point in time when change is ramping up.” This has led Rubrik to a position where they can build something of real substance, and Ben looks forward to what they have in store.
Nirmata’s Cloudy Control-Plane Is The Catalyst For Container Calm
Ethan Banks saw a presentation from Nirmata recently at Cloud Field Day. Here, he recaps Nirmata’s product, customer base, and everything else you would like to know about the company. Ethan also says that Nirmata “is in the right place at the right time” with their orchestrator of orchestrator product, especially as ease of use and speed of application deployment become critical to businesses.
Personal Transformation
Inspired by his time at Cloud Field Day, Ethan Banks compares the journey of companies like Gigamon re-tooling themselves and their products for the cloud to the transition that individuals will have to make as well as cloud becomes more pervasive. He says that people need to learn the public cloud environment and start to swap out their hardware revenue for revenue made with the cloud instead.
Cloud Field Day 2– DevOps agility with Nirmata
Lino Telera discusses Nirmata’s Cloud Field Day presentation as well as his own tests of their product. Lino, as others have, calls Nirmata an “orchestrator of orchestrators” and mentions that Nirmata’s integration with Kubernetes is great for devops. He sees Nirmata’s product as easy to use with excellent support and is interested in where they will go in the future.
Cloud Field Day 2: Event Summary
Bryan Krausen recaps Cloud Field Day, giving a quick review of each company’s presentation and relaying his thoughts on the event as a whole. He enjoyed most of the presentations, but found that each of the three days of the event had a different theme, from startups to industry giants. Bryan is thankful to have had the opportunity to attend Cloud Field Day and looks forward to more Field Day events in the future.
ServiceNow at Cloud Field Day – Not just for IT Anymore
After Cloud Field Day, Theresa Miller sees ServiceNow moving beyond just the helpdesk and into platforms that “simplify and automate business processes in a way that empowers the business user.” She sees this as a good step for ServiceNow in opening themselves up to be more business centric and not just limiting themselves to a helpdesk focused platform. Theresa believes that ServiceNow’s toolset could be a great addition to any organization that would see value from business automation of their many tasks.
NetApp Still Figuring Out How To Cloud
Justin Warren reflects on NetApp’s Cloud Field Day presentation, writing that they are looking to reinvent themselves as the industry moves towards the cloud. NetApp acknowledges that their old business ventures are just not where growth is and are moving towards a more service oriented business with higher margins. What worries Justin, however, is that NetApp’s products are just not compelling anymore.
Understanding HPE Nimble Storage’s Cloud Volumes
Ethan Banks writes about HPE Nimble Storage’s Cloud Volumes, which they presented about at Cloud Field Day. Cloud Volumes are a cloud storage product focused on helping enterprises move their business applications to the cloud. Ethan sees the idea behind Cloud Volumes, but worries that it is a short-term product filling a gap that enterprises will eventually be able to bridge themselves, and therefore will not be particularly profitable for HPE.
