Around the Storage Block podcast -

I stopped at a booth at HP Discover and got a very good update on simple Capacity on Demand program we have. This program makes it easy for customers to have extra capacity on hand that they can use and return as needed.

While at HP Discover, I got some time with Sam Routledge - Sam works for Softcat in the UK and he talked about their journey to provide managed services with HP 3PAR.

At HP Discover in Frankfurt, David Scott (SVP and GM of HP Storage) did a Q&A with bloggers. David was joined by Alistair Veitch from HP Lab

Nina Buik is the Chief Marketing Officer for the independent users group Connect and she joined me to talk about HP Discover. Nina gives some great advice to attendees.

This is an audio only version of a live webinar I did - on the webinar I was joined by SVP & GM of HP Storage David Scott and storage consultant and blogger Chris Evans. We discussed the state of storage and evolving requirements for the future.

About once a month, I'm doing something I call "Now for something completely different" - where I step away from storage and technology and have what I hope you think is an interesting discussion. This version is with my HP colleague Jim Haberkorn who has written a fiction novel called Einstein's Trunk.

Vish Mulchand is the Director of Product Management in HP Storage and joined me to talk about solid state storage technology. Vish has a session at SNW on the topic so this is a timely discussion.

In part 2 of my podcast with Juan Ramirez, Senior Director of IT for the Tampa Bay Rays, we talk about why they picked HP 3PAR to replace their previous SAN and how it's working out for them.

I was able to visit the Tampa Bay Rays recently and followed that up with a couple of podcasts with Sr. Director of IT Juan Ramirez. In part 1, Juan talks about how the Rays use technology in their business.

I had an interesting chat with Simon Watkins our LTFS Product Marketing Manager about how director James Cameron, famous for movies like Avatar and Titanic, used LTFS in filming a documentary for his DeepSea Challenge.

I was joined by product manager Joe Leung to talk about Application Information Optimizer (AIO). AIO moves inactive structured data from either production or legacy systems to lower cost on-premise or cloud storage environments. In the podcast, Joe helps me understand what problems it solves and the benefits AIO can drive by slimming down bloated databases.

Andrew Friedman is the EVP of Baseball Operations with the Tampa Bay Rays. I was honored to chat with him during a visit to the Rays - during our conversation Andrew talked about the success of the Rays against big budget teams like the Red Sox and Yankees and how IT is an important part of that.

Today is the day Microsoft officially launches Windows Server 2012. In this podcast, I talk about the announcement with HP's Brad Kirby. Brad is the Group Manager for Microsoft Product Partnerships.

Andre Carpenter is an HP consultant focused on VMware and at VMworld, I finally got a chance to talk him. Andre has started blogging and I thought it would be good to have a chat with him.

Before heading off to VMworld, I talked with Christian Jones from our thin client team and Dan Nordhues from our converged infrastructure team. Christian helped me understand our thin client portfolio and Dan discussed the latest reference archictures for VMware View and also vSphere and Citrix.