Sulagna Saha explores the socio-economic implications of automation, questioning whether advancements in technology can guarantee economic well-being for all. She discusses the potential benefits and challenges posed by increased automation in various sectors. This article was based on a delegate roundtable discussion at Cloud Field Day 21. For further insights, check out more articles by Sulagna Saha on Gestalt IT.
Company Acquisitions are a Necessary Evil in Enterprise Tech
The IT industry’s reliance on acquisitions is a necessary driver of innovation, though they often seem to get in the way of competition and progress. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, recorded during Cloud Field Day 21, features Ray Lucchesi, Jon Hildebrand, Ken Nalbone, and Stephen Foskett considering whether acquisitions in the IT industry are a necessary evil or a detriment to innovation. Acquisitions are often seen as a double-edged sword, with both positive and negative implications. On one hand, acquisitions can fuel innovation by providing smaller companies with the resources and market access they need to scale their ideas. On the other hand, they can stifle competition, lead to cultural clashes, and sometimes result in the disappearance of promising technologies or products.
The VCF Go-To-Market We Needed From Broadcom a Year Ago.
Ken Nalbone emphasizes the importance of Broadcom’s recent strategic initiatives concerning VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). He believes earlier action could have better aligned Broadcom with market demands and technological trends, optimizing their positioning in the competitive landscape. Read more in this LinkedIn Pulse article inspired by the VMware by Broadcom presentation at Cloud Field Day 21.
Platform9 Releases Private Cloud Director. Enables Virtual Machine Migration from VMware to OpenStack En-Masse.
Ken Nalbone reports on Platform9’s latest launch, the Private Cloud Director, which significantly enhances cloud infrastructure management by allowing seamless virtual machine migration from VMware environments to OpenStack. This new solution supports bulk operations, facilitating large-scale migrations efficiently and reducing the complexity typically associated with such processes. Private Cloud Director positions Platform9 as a key player in simplifying cloud transitions and expanding OpenStack adoption in diverse IT landscapes. Read more in this LinkedIn Pulse article inspired by the Platform9 presentation at Cloud Field Day 21.
Dell Brings Multicloud Storage to Cloud Field Day
Ken Nalbone’s LinkedIn article details Dell’s unveiling of their APEX Block Storage for Public Cloud at Cloud Field Day 19, a solution aimed at delivering cross-cloud consistent architecture, performance, and management to enterprise customers.
EKS Cost Optimization From Platform9
As Ken Nalbone writes, Platform9 has re-emerged at Cloud Field Day with significant updates to their product suite, emphasizing their commitment to democratizing cloud computing with a focus on private and edge clouds. Their new Elastic Machine Pool (EMP) solution caught the spotlight, tackling the persistent issue of Kubernetes cost optimization, contrasting typical FinOps strategies by targeting both cost-saving and compute optimization. Platform9’s proactive approach, exemplified by EMP’s ability to efficiently scale resources on AWS without disruptions, underscores a pragmatic recognition of the organizational challenges in application optimization and presents a tailored niche in the cloud management market.
SoftIron: Bringing Private Cloud in a Box to the Enterprise
Following their recent press release, SoftIron made an impression on Ken Nalbone at Cloud Field Day 19 with their proprietary on-prem private cloud stack, boasting end-to-end control over a solution that is both software and hardware inclusive, often referred to as secure providence. Contrary to solutions pieced together with components from various suppliers, SoftIron’s HyperCloud presents a cloud-native infrastructure designed for easy deployment, management, and scale on premises. Differentiated by custom design and competitive prices despite utilizing third-party chips like AMD’s, SoftIron’s approach addresses the need for a unified, consumption-driven private cloud offering, representing a burgeoning alternative in the space traditionally occupied by giants like VMware.
An Introduction to NeuroBlade
Opening Cloud Field Day 19, Elad Sity, CEO and Founder of NeuroBlade, highlighted the company’s mission to revolutionize big data analytics through hardware acceleration. Boasting a team of over 120 employees and substantial funding, NeuroBlade is pioneering the SQL Processing Unit (SPU), which promises significant performance boosts for data queries at reduced costs. With strategic partnerships and clients like Meta, NeuroBlade is poised to redefine the trajectory of data analytics efficiency, although the extent of their collaboration with major cloud providers remains a question for Ken Nalbone.
Cloud Field Day 18: After-Action Perspective From the Delegates
We loved Nathan Bennett’s group Cloud Field Day after-action report video and wrote up an article to go with it at Gestalt IT. The event offered a platform for tech companies to showcase their developments and gain feedback from our delegates. Juniper Networks presenting their AI integration into Apstra, while Mezmo impressed with its telemetry capabilities and user-friendly interface. Long-standing industry player, VMware, was noted for its adaptability in the multi-cloud environment, proving that the evolving tech landscape remains exciting and innovative. Get the delegate reaction to all the presentations in this video!
Cloud Field Day 18 – After Action Report
This “after-action report” is a YouTube video featuring a group of Cloud Field Day delegates discussing the presentations and content from our recent event. Organized by Nathan Bennett, these videos give an immediate and unvarnished look at the presentations.
VMware Is at CloudField Day. Will They Be Back Under Broadcom?
Ken Nalbone’s LinkedIn article recaps VMware’s appearance at Cloud Field Day 18. He discusses the company’s ambitious approach to modernizing applications and consistent infrastructure and its innovations like Tanzu Transformer, Tanzu Hub, Tanzu Guardrails, and Tanzu Insights. Nalbone also comments on potential changes under the impending Broadcom acquisition, highlighting the importance of executing VMware’s vision for multi-cloud environments.
Addressing Common Multi-Cloud Networking Challenges With Prosimo
Ken Nalbone discusses Prosimo’s attempt to simplify multi-cloud networking during its presentation at Cloud Field Day 18. With a focus on consistency and cost control, Prosimo’s ‘full stack cloud networking’ solution serves as an abstraction layer for networking operations across all of a customer’s environments. Using the journey of a global healthcare customer as a case study, Prosimo demonstrated how its solution can address common challenges such as account sprawl, lack of governance, and complex network requirements.
Juniper Apstra at Cloud Field Day 18
Ken Nalbone reflects on Juniper Apstra’s presentation at Cloud Field Day 18, where they aimed to make the data center as easy as the cloud. He debates the premise of treating data centers and clouds as distinct entities, suggesting that a well-architected and automated infrastructure effectively qualifies as a cloud. He concludes that the use of AI capabilities, supported by integrations such as VMware, Kubernetes, and Terraform, can help meet the adaptive, user-friendly expectations of the modern enterprise.
Addressing Common Multi-Cloud Networking Challenges With Prosimo
In this LinkedIn article, Ken Nalbone discusses the common challenges experienced in networking across multiple clouds. These challenges include dealing with varied network limitations in different cloud environments, inconsistencies across cloud’s networking construct, limited visibility and control, and managing costs. Prosimo’s AXI platform is highlighted as a potential solution, providing a unified layer across all cloud environments to streamline network connectivity, enhance security, reduce latency, and manage costs effectively.
WEKA Wows at Cloud Field Day 18
Ken Nalbone provides an in-depth overview of WEKA’s Data Platform, an all-in-one storage solution designed for high-performance workloads in a recent LinkedIn post. He discusses the platform’s multi-cloud capabilities, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, highlighting its auto-scaling and auto-healing features. Nalbone also praises its hybrid deployment potential, making it a single solution for on-premise and cloud storage needs.
Juniper Apstra at Cloud Field Day 18
In this LinkedIn article, Ken Nalbone reviews Juniper Network’s software product, Apstra, presented at Cloud Field Day 18. Apstra is designed to automate network operations and simplify the management of data center networks. The comprehensive analysis covers the product’s capabilities in intent-based networking and overall ease of use, potentially making it a valuable addition to any organization’s network management toolkit.
Looking Forward to Cloud Field Day 10
We’re excited for the upcoming Cloud Field Day and so is Ken Nalbone, who is joining us as a delegate for the event. In this blog, Ken looks forward to the event and provides his thoughts on the different presenting companies. Be sure to tune in from March 10-12, 2021, to catch the presentations and use #CFD10 on Twitter to join in on the discussion!
VMware Is Delivering Pipelines to the Cloud With CAS
Anyone who thinks that VMware is still all about vSphere hasn’t been paying attention over the last few years. From what Ken Nalbone saw at Tech Field Day, VMware understands that developers are driving much of the innovation in enterprise IT and is invested in helping operations and infrastructure teams deliver the experience that will drive innovation.
Ixia Brings Consistency to Visibility
In the every changing world of enterprise IT, there is something to be said for consistency. For customers who are seeking a reliable partner that will enable them to enjoy the same level of visibility of their network and applications regardless of the operating model, it is nice to know that IXIA has them covered. Ken Nalbone breaks down what the company presented at a recent Tech Field Day event in this post.
LucidLink’s Clearly Different Approach to Object Storage
We have seen a few products crop up over the years that attempt enable use of object storage in nontraditional ways. These solutions usually use a VM or appliance that acts as a gateway or cache. While this type of approach is useful for certain use cases, it is not necessarily optimal for all. It is particularly ill-suited for the mobile and geographically dispersed workforces previously mentioned. Recently at Cloud Field Day 6, we heard about a new approach to leveraging object storage in the enterprise from LucidLink.
