At AI Field Day, Qlik unveiled a wizard-based AI feature that simplifies the process of leveraging on-premises data for insightful analytics, integrating smoothly with Qlik’s cloud services. This enhancement to their analytics platform aims to democratize AI’s benefits, making advanced data analysis accessible to a broader range of users with varying expertise. Qlik’s initiative reflects a commitment to user-friendly, AI-powered analytics, facilitating deeper insights while streamlining the experience for its customers. Read more in this analyst note for The Futurum Group by Alastair Cooke.
Deciding When to Use Intel Xeon CPUs for AI Inference
At AI Field Day, Intel offered insights into strategic decision-making for AI inference, highlighting scenarios where Intel Xeon CPUs outshine traditional GPU solutions on both on-premises and cloud servers. By evaluating the specific requirements of AI inference workloads, Intel guides users to make informed choices that enhance value while optimizing their existing server infrastructure. This approach emphasizes efficiency and practicality in deploying AI capabilities, ensuring that organizations can navigate the complex landscape of hardware selection for their AI initiatives. Read more in this Futurum Research Analyst Note by Alastair Cooke.
Hammerspace Shows Storage Acceleration for AI Training
At AI Field Day, Hammerspace showcased its innovative storage acceleration solution, demonstrating how Hyperscale NAS can be leveraged to enhance the performance of current scale-out NAS systems, particularly in training large language models (LLM) efficiently. This storage boost not only improves speed but also optimizes resource allocation during the intensive LLM training process. Hammerspace’s advancement offers organizations the opportunity to amplify their AI training capabilities without the need to overhaul their existing storage infrastructure. Read more in this Futurum Research Analyst Note by Alastair Cooke.
VMware Private AI at AI Field Day
VMware’s presentation with Intel at AI Field Day centered on optimizing on-premises AI workloads, highlighting the capability of Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs with Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) to efficiently perform large language model (LLM) AI inference, traditionally a task for GPUs. Demonstrating that AI can be resource-effective on CPUs, the discussion covered the technical prerequisites for harnessing AMX in vSphere environments and the ongoing integration of these accelerators into popular AI frameworks. With CPUs increasingly capable of handling AI tasks through built-in matrix math acceleration, VMware showcases a sustainable, cost-effective approach, potentially reshaping the hardware strategies for mixed workload servers. Read more in this analyst note for The Futurum Group by Alastair Cooke.
Gemma and Building Your Own LLM AI
At AI Field Day 4, Intel invited the Google Cloud AI team to showcase their Gemma large language model (LLM), revealing insights into the advanced infrastructure used for building such models on Google Cloud. The presentation underlined Gemma’s efficiency with fewer parameters for inference, highlighting Google Cloud’s strength in analytics and AI, particularly in managing differing resource needs between model training and application inference phases. Google Cloud’s integration of AI in products was illustrated with Google Duet, an AI-based assistant that aids in software development, exemplifying the potential future where AI handles more coding tasks, freeing up developers for high-level problem-solving and design. Read more in this analyst note for The Futurum Group by Alastair Cooke.
Scale Computing Removes Problems at the Edge
“Scale Computing’s approach of removing the burden of routine tasks and fault remediation from customers is widely liked.” In this article presented by Scale Computing, Alastair Cooke discusses how Scale Computing is solving problems at the edge. Read his full thoughts on the Gestalt IT website, and watch Scale Computing’s full presentation from Edge Field Day on the Tech Field Day YouTube channel.
Thousands of Containers Without Kubernetes?
“If you need to manage container applications at your distributed edge, look at Avassa’s videos and the other presenters at Edge Field Day.” Alastair Cooke had great things to say about Avassa after attending their presentation at Edge Field Day in February. Read his full thoughts on his website, and watch Avassa’s presentation on the Tech Field Day Youtube Channel.
Unraveling the Key Themes of Edge Computing – a Roundtable Discussion
In this article Sulagna Saha summarizes the thoughts and impressions of delegates on the key themes that dominated the presentations at the recent Edge Field Day event. Check out her article at Gestalt IT, or watch the roundtable discussion here at TechFieldDay.com.
Edge Is Not Just Cloud or Datacenter
Even though most of the technologies and infrastructure elements are the same, the nature of edge comping is entirely different. This episode of On-Premise IT features Edge Field Day delegates Enrico Signoretti, Allyson Klein, and Alastair Cooke discussing these differences with Stephen Foskett. Check out the full podcast on Gestalt IT’s Youtube channel.
Deploying Applications Across Edge Locations With Mako Networks and Avassa
In this Roundtable discussion with Mako Networks and Avassa, we hear from co-founders from both companies about deploying applications at scale at the edge. Watch how the conversation unfolded between Stephen Foskett, Simon Gamble, Carl Moberg, Ben Young, and Alastair Cooke on Gestalt IT’s Youtube channel.
Mako Networks, I Haven’t Heard That Name in Years
In this article, Alastair Cooke gives his pre-presentation thoughts on Mako Networks. Read his current knowledge on past and present Mako Networks products on his website, and catch the full presentation on the Tech Field Day website this week!
The Scale Computing Edge
Alastair Cooke is thrilled to talk to Scale Computing about their “complete transformation from an HCI provider to small businesses into a provider of edge computing for massive companies,” at the first Edge Field Day this week! Read his thoughts on his website.
What Is Your Edge?
Alastair Cooke and Charles Uneze got to talking about Edge Compute in lieu of our upcoming Edge Field Day! In Alastair’s post, he covers his thought on near-edge, far-edge, IoT, and Edge Population. Be sure to check out his thoughts before tuning into February’s Edge Field Day!
VVols, Oh VVols, Wherefore Art Thou VVols?
The Pure Storage presentation at VMware Explore 2022 inspired Alastair Cooke to start thinking more about VVOLS. During this presentation, Alastair was wondering “is this event still a thing”, and soon realized that many storage vendors are actively using VVOLS and vSphere 7! He goes into details on VVOLS and VMFS, check out his thoughts here and how it will help your storage design.
Multi-Cloud Mobility – MinIO
In his latest blog, Alastair Cooke, a Field Day delegate, talks about the presentation from MinIO at this past Tech Field Day. Check out his thoughts here!
Faster Reaction Time With Hazelcast
Alastair Cooke writes about his time watching Hazelcast’s Cloud Field Day presentation as a delegate in this post. Specifically, he talks about how their products showcased help IT organizations speed up their operations. Read the whole piece for context.
You Can Save Money on Your Insurance, OK Your DR
VMware was one of our presenters at Tech Field Day back in December, and they caught the attention of Field Day delegate Alastair Cooke. Writing for his blog, Alastair takes a look at Disaster Recovery options including VMware’s Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) product. He says that, much like insurance, Disaster Recovery products can be expensive and might feel unnecessary until you really need it most. Check out his thoughts on VMware’s DRaaS on his blog or check out the Tech Field Day presentations on our website!
I Want Network Integration, I’m Not Getting It
At Cloud Field Day, Alastair Cooke was interested in hearing from AWS and VMware about how they are approaching network connectivity and integration between the two. He’s not a fan of point solutions that function or are managed differently; they add up to more problems. While the two showed a lot of interesting integrations, ultimately he’d like to see VMware on AWS networking fully integrated with the AWS VPC network as an equal to VPC. For now, there are a collection of workable solutions involving virtual interfaces, VPNs, and proprietary network bridging (HCX).
Hardware Offloads, Not Everything Is X86
Alastair Cooke takes a look at why x86 isn’t the only option anymore for organizations looking to solve computing problems. This trend has been going on for a while, with GPUs finding new roles handling highly parallelized workloads in ML and AI. But he also highlights how NGD Systems is putting ARM cores inside SSDs to provide computation storage. He’s also looking forward to hearing about the Pensando Distributed Services Card at Cloud Field Day, which appears to offer hardware offloading for software-defined edge services, aimed at telcos. We can’t wait to hear what he thinks of their presentation!
Cloud Field Day 7 – Who Will Be Presenting?
Alastair Cooke will be joining us virtually for Cloud Field Day later in April. Instead of the jetlag that comes from crossing an ocean to usually be at an event, he’ll instead be up early to join the other delegates for the presentations. Though a virtual event, he’s looking forward to the same in-depth technical presentations, the opportunity to ask direct questions to the presenters, and the great conversations with the other delegates. In this post, he runs down what he’s looking forward to from each of the presenters. This includes a mix of Field Day stalwarts like Aruba, VMware, and Solarwinds, with newer companies to the event series, like Stellus and Pensando. Be sure to mark your calendar to join the live stream to watch the event along with Alastair.