The CTO Advisor

Data protection startup Druva is coming fresh off a $90M investment. Another data protection startup won Best of VMworld. What is it about this market that has investors and judges excited. What's more to data protection than backing data up to some tapless media. Hasn't products such as Datadomain provided all the innovation needed in this space? 

Is lift and shift a less expensive model than on-premises datacenter? What about sunk cost around licensing, hardware and facilities? Greg once said that only poor companies go to the cloud. Does that opinion still hold true? What about VMware Cloud on AWS? 

Every time I've walked into a private cloud environment, I've been disappointed that their definition of cloud didn't reconcile with mine. In this bonus CTO Advisor Podcast, I ask the question if I'm the one that's wrong? 

I and Mark sat down with VMware's Cloud CTO Kit Colbert. Much of the excitement around VMworld 2017 was the announcement of general availability of VMware Cloud on AWS. Kit addresses some use cases and answers the question, "Doesn't this just make developers lazy?" Mark asks the basic question of can users simply vMotion a workload between on-prem and cloud. Kit also discusses tooling and operations. 

Rubrik is the surprise unicorn that focuses on data protection. They've made many waves by challenging DellEMC Datadomain's dominance in disk-based backup. Rubrik Chief Technologist, Chris Wahl is a frequent speaker on the VMUG circuit. The Rubrik marketing team has quietly hired a all-star list of influencers to work in tech marketing. Mark challenges Chris on Rubrik's role in the cloud powered DC. In classic Chris-form, Chris makes a strong argument for Rubrik's approach to data protection. Keith also trys the push the limits of Rubrik's API with crazy use cases for cloud native applications using secondary data. 

Many VMware previews look at the conference from a pure VMware and technology event. This week's guest Alastair Cook shares insights from the vBrownBag community. vBrownBag is a nuts and bolts type of podcast. However, the podcast has consistently been an indicator of what technologies architects and engineers on the ground currently struggle to implement.

Intel Architect James Myers joins the podcast to discuss Intel Optane built on 3D xpoint memory. the promise of 3D xpoint is deliver perminent storage with performance closer to DRAM (system memory) while maintaining capacity closer to NAND (SSD) technology. Keith and Mark go over some use cases and ask challenging questions around market viability of the product. 

Keith and Mark are joined by Jeff Snover Chief Architect for Microsoft AzureStack. Jeff breaks down the value of AzureStack and helps make an argument for hybrid-cloud. Keith isn't a believer and hybrid-cloud and Jeff surprisingly agrees with Keith's core argument.  Of course, Jeff makes a solid argument for AzureStack and how Microsoft envisions AzureStack succeeding where solutions such as OpenStack and other solutions have failed to gain traction in the enterprise. 

Say what you'd like about Oracle's business practices. The CTO Advisor is likely to agree. Oracle can be heavy handed with it's customers. Technology and business value added by Oracle's solutions enables the approach to licensing and pricing. Keith and Mark dig into Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Oracle's Sr. VP of Product and Strategy Chuck Hollis. Chuck answers the question of the relevance of AI to Oracle and the enterprise. Chuck addresses what's real and not real and what the enterprise needs to do to prepare for AI. 

Keith and Mark have been considering doing an episode of The Sphere. Basically, The Sphere is a spoof on theCube. theCube is extremely professional and the team does a great job of separating the signal from the noise. Keith has even co-hosted a few episodes of theCube. The Sphere is the inverse, it's the unending noise from the community.  This first episode is a random conversation with Keith, Mark, Rawlison Rivera and Chris Colotti. We talk about a range of topics from the sharing economy, Uber and binge watching on Netflix.

On this week's podcast Keith and Mark are joined by Val Bercovici. Val is the former CTO of NetApp Solidfire. Val has been a thought leader in IT infrastructure for a very long time. Val left his role of CTO for AI startup Peritus.AI. We discuss the major factors in IT Infrastructure that prompted Val to make such a bold career move. We also discuss the impact of AI on IT infrastructure teams and the role of IT vendors moving forward. 

The theme at Dell EMC World 2017 was all about the realizing business value from the digital transformation. At the conference, Mark and I had a chance to sit down the flagship of Dell Technologies transformation story – Pivotal. Joining the conversation was not only Pivotal but a Pivotal Customer, Express Scripts.

Dell Communities announced major changes during DellEMC World 2017. How do these changes impact VMUG?

Review of Dockercon 2017

Cloud architect Jon Hildebrand joins to discuss DevOp from the group up.