The CTO Advisor

The conversation around if cloud vs. private data center cost has come around yet again. Instead of producing another podcast on the topic, we decided to replay a conversation from December 2018 during AWS re:Invent with Bobby Allen, CTO of Cloudgenera. Keith and Bobby discuss the importance of collecting useful data to decide on workload placement. They then discuss the overall value of public cloud vs. private data center.

Episode 112 – The value of Managed SD-WAN

Episode 112 of The CTO Advisor podcast is sponsored by Velocloud by VMware. Jeff Bradbury, Senior Marketing Director at Hughes, Nick Coval, Product Director at Hughes and Craig Connors, Chief Architect at Velocloud joins the program. 1:30 Keith asks Jeff about Hughes credibility in SD-WAN 2:40 Keith asks Jeff about the value of a MSP for something as simple to manage as SD-WAN 5:40 Where are freed resources being placed 7:20 What initiated the partnership between Hughes and Velocloud by VMware 10:20 How does Hughes ensure I can get the most recent innovations from SD-WAN 12:15 What app ensuring application performance

Introduction to DevSecOps – The CTO Advisor Episode 111

Now that we all agree on the definition of DevOps /sarcasm let’s start the discussion around DevSecOps. What is DevSecOps? We are glad you asked. Because, we have Michael Fraser, co-founder of refactr.it. From a high-level it makes sense to take DevOps disciplines and apply them to security so that you get consistent configuration and operations across environments. What are some of the tools for DevSecOps, the operational advantages, and challenges associated with the model? Keith Townsend and Michael discuss the concept in the latest episode of the CTO Advisor Podcast.

(Replay) CTO Dose 63: Can Enterprise IT Adapt? Kelsey HighTower Interview

Google's Kelsey Hightower joins the podcast for a reality check for enterprise IT. Keith and Mark ask the question, "Can enterprises adapt" to the quickly changing technology landscape? Do organizations have the budget and aptitude for navigating the disruption. Kelsey gives a pretty blunt assessment. Kelsey claims debates around issues such as CI/CD are now over. Kelsey shares his vision of the relation containers, the cloud, and business value. 

Double Dose of Kubernetes From Kubecon 2019 – CTO Advisor 109

This is a double dose of the CTO Dose on the CTO Advisor podcast. Say that 3-times fast. Keith sits down in two separate interviews with leaders in the Kubernetes community. The first interview is with Kubernetes co-founder and VMware Principal Engineer Joe Beda. Keith and Joe discuss how VMware is approaching Kubernetes for an enterprise audience. The two touch on VMware’s Project Pacific and Tanzu. In the 2nd interview, Keith interviews Brian Lyles who was the Conference co-Chair for Kubecon 2019 San Diego. The conversation shifts focus to community and culture around Kubernetes in the opensource community and Kubernetes in the enterprise community. Overall, the episode is one of the longer ones we published but two very related conversations.

Joey D'Antoni (@jdanton), Principle Cloud Architect joins the program to talk all things Microsoft Multi-cloud including Azure Arc (not to be confused with Microsoft Arch, the mouse). Keith and Joey tough on other leaders in hybrid including VMware with vSphere everywhere/Tanzu as well as NetApp from a data capability.

I know, I know. I hate Kubernetes. Why am I talking about it so much? Because it’s a great technology to expose the challenges that most organizations face. Kubernetes was designed to host stateless processes. If Netflix needs a surge in video encoders or streamers, Kubernetes orchestrates the provisioning of thousands of container instances almost instantly. When demand has subsided, those instances disappear. Traditional enterprise applications aren’t designed to operate in that fashion. For example, application servers in legacy design keep some type of configuration state in the application server. If you’ve ever had to load balance across a set of application servers that wanted to “own” the application session, you’ll understand why you can’t simply containerize application server of a 3-tier monolithic app. So, what if you do have a bunch of stateless application components you’d like to containerize and adopt cloud-native operations to those systems? I sat down with Damani Corbin to talk about where I believe the gaps are in Kubernetes maturity and what Damani has seen in his travels as a Kubernetes expert helping companies deploy Kubernetes at scale. I hope you enjoy this fun and insightful conversation.

Preparing the Enterprise of Kubernetes

Introduction to Redis Labs – Episode 106 – Sponsored

Thanks to Redis Labs for sponsoring the CTO Dose during AWS re:Invent. Keith Townsend caught up with Redis Labs Chief Product Officer Alvin Richards. The duo talked about how Redis Labs adds value beyond being the primary sponsor for open source project behind the popular database. Richards shares some basics and history behind Redis and helps introduce watchers to the concept of a key-value store such as Redis and a column DB such as Cassandra. Richards makes an argument for why customers should consider engaging Redis Labs for their Redis support and functionality extensions.

Readout of Kubecon San Diego 2019 – With Alex Ellis of OpenFaaS