DataCentric - Episodes Tagged with “Information Technology”

Keeping your Data Center Cool with 2-Phase Immersion Cooling

NAND Research — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 15:00:00 -0500

Increasing datacenter density while managing HVAC and electrical costs is a hard problem, especially as processor and GPU vendors continue to push solutions that run hotter and consume more energy than ever before. This has pushed us into the age of liquid cooling. While Direct-2-Chip liquid cooling has become an acceptable alternative to the traditional air-cooled datacenter, cooling technology has evolved. The state-of-the-art is now 2-Phase Immersion Cooling, where servers are housed in an enclosure full of a dialelectric fluid that removes the heat, all without fans or heatsinks. It's a remarkable technology.

In this episode, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk to the Mears Group, a Quanta Services company, about its approach to 2-Phase Immersion Cooling which is just coming to market. Joining the podcast are Todd Richard, senior vice president at Mears, and Trent Edwards, executive vice president of Mears.

The group talk about what 2-Phase Immersion Cooling is, how it has benefits both within the datacenter at the edge, and what differentiates Mears.

Special Guest: Matt Kimball.

Taming Digital Transformation: A Conversation with Persistent Systems' Dominique Bastos

NAND Research — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 02:00:00 -0500

Digital Transformation is full of promise, and full of challenges. One of the biggest challenges is around cloud – when to use, and to what extent. This week’s podcast has hosts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell speaking with Dominique Bastos, Senior Vice President at Persistent Systems.

In this episode, Dominique talks about what she sees with enterprise customers undergoing digital transformation, and how to find an on-prem/off-prem balance that drives best results for the business.
Equally interesting is Dominique’s perspective as a woman’s journey through the tech ranks – from engineer to executive.

Tune in for what may be our most interesting podcast yet!

Dominique’s profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominiquebastos/
Persistent Systems: https://www.persistent.com/

Special Guests: Dominique Bastos and Matt Kimball.

Taming the MultiCloud Problem, with Nutanix's Lee Caswell

NAND Research — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 20:00:00 -0500

There aren't many solutions that can tame the multi-cloud management problem, but Nutanix is one of them.

In this episode, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell have a wide-ranging conversation with Nutanix's Lee Caswell about the challenges that face IT administrators and architects in 2023.

Special Guests: Lee Caswell and Matt Kimball.

HPE and Nutanix Expand the Potential of Greenlake & as-a-service offerings

NAND Research — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 09:00:00 -0500

Hosts Steve McDowell and Matt Kimball, principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, kick off the new year with a conversation with both Nutanix and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Joining the podcast is HPE's Mark Maguire and Nutanix's Aaron Delp.

Nutanix and HPE are at forefront of IT modernization & digital transformation, helping customers globally deliver business critical apps in more efficient and cost-effective way with certified solutions that come with freedom of choice (flexibility of deployment and choice of consumption model).

The guys talk about how to solve real world customer problems, where traditional infratructure is too costly, time consuming and complex; public cloud is not the panacea. Nutanix and HPE deliver a new way to operate and pay for infrastructure: delivering on the promise of the cloud, not the cost of the cloud, across key workloads and regulated industries:

Special Guests: Aaron Delp, Mark Maguire, and Matt Kimball.

Inside MySQL Heatwave: A Conversation with Oracle's Nipun Agarwal

NAND Research — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 15:00:00 -0400

MySQL is the most popular open source database in the world. Oracle's new MySQL Heatwave makes MySQL the only cloud service with a built-in, high performance, in-memory query accelerator—HeatWave.

In this episode, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, catch up with Oracle's Nipun Agarwal, Oracle's SVP of MySQL and Heatwave, at the recent Oracle OpenWorld event to about what it all means.

This is wide-ranging conversation about the history of MySQL, where it plays well, and how Oracle MySQL HeatWave brings added value to the MySQL ecosystem.

Special Guests: Matt Kimball and Nipun Agarwal.

Exploring Edge Computing, with Stratus's Jason Andersen.

NAND Research — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 15:00:00 -0400

It's all about Edge Computing as hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, welcome Jason Andersen, VP of Strategy and Product Management at Stratus.

Jason brings Matt & Steve up-to-speed on what’s happening in the world of edge computing in a wide-ranging conversation about standards (or the lack of), the evolution of edge architectures, the fragmented edge market, the colliding worlds of IT & OT, and how Stratus helps its customers navigate through this confusing world.

There is a whole lot packed into this hour-long discussion, but it's invaluable for anyone working in edge today.

00:00 Kick-it Off
01:25 Catching up with Strategy: Product updates, SGH Acquisition
03:57 Pivoting from Fault-Tolerance to the Edge
08:48 It’s all about Resilience!
11:00 How edge is evolving
13:00 Fragmentation at the edge
16:21 Containerization & Cloud-Native at the edge
20:48 Simplifying the edge control-plane while delivering QoS
23:20 Revisiting 2 Different Worlds as IT & OT Converge
30:10 Security at the Edge
37:22 General attitudes impacting edge deployments
41:14 Where’s Stratus focused in the near-term?
45:14 Importance of the overall solution stack
50:11 Wrapping-Up
50:26 Done

Special Guest: Jason Andersen.

Smart Buildings are a Big Data Problem, with Embue CTO Larry Genovesi

NAND Research — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 11:00:00 -0400

Buildings are becoming intelligent in ways that aren't always obvious, but that can make a huge difference to both tenants and property managers alike. Intelligent buildings are the epitome of the modern edge-to-cloud story, blending together process control, SaaS, and big data analytics to solve very practical problems.

Nobody knows this space better than this week's guest, CTO and co-founder of Embue, Larry Genovesi. Larry, who has a long 20+ year history with hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, has spent his career solving interesting but non-obvious problems.

Embue is Larry's latest venture, bringing bottom-line impacting intelligence into multi-tenent real-estate via its air ducts (quite literally). This episode talks about the real-world implications and challenges of solving practical problems at the edge.

00:00 Spiffy Theme Song & Intro
03:00 Who is Embue?

10:53 What's interesting about smart buildings and HVAC systems?
18:47 Edge is an operational problem, not a data problem.
26:00 Special considerations for making buildings smart.
28:22 Not your normal tech market: selling technology into the facilities management space.
31:14 Challenges of recruiting tech talent into a specialized engineering segment.
37:13 Intersection of Edge, SaaS, and IT: how do you create a new kind of environment?
40:41 What's next in this space, and for Embue?

45:59 Spiffy Outro Music.

Special Guest: Larry Genovesi.

Cyber-Security at the Edge

NAND Research — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 15:00:00 -0400

Nowhere is cybersecurity more critical than at an enterprise's edge, yet that's also an area with multiple owners and different approaches to the problem. It's a complicated environment.

Gary Cohen, senior editor at CFE Media, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to give us his perspective. CFE Media focuses heavily on tracking the trends influencing the edge.

This is a wide-ranging conversation that touches on IT vs OT, cybersecurity, and even a little baseball & Morrissey. Tune in!

00:00 Kick Off
01:02 Gary's history with the Chicago Cubs
05:00 Who is CFE Media?
07:00 The complexities of Edge: IT and OT
12:39 Cyber-Security at the Edge
20:23 Supply Chain Concerns
24:07 How does CFE Media engage with edge-focused audiences?
27:40 Cyber-Security Commonalities between IT & OT
29:25 A Conversation about Morrissey
31:08 Wrapping up.
32:44 The end.

Special Guest: Gary Cohen.

Modern Data Architecture: A Look at NoSQL & Couchbase

NAND Research — Mon, 16 May 2022 01:00:00 -0400

Data is more critical, more abundant, and less structured than at any point in history. The attributes and uses of data are shifting, stressing traditional relational database management tools that we've come to rely on. NoSQL promises one answer to modern data management.

Couchbase's VP of Product & Solution Marketing, Jeff Morris, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, to talk us through the technology, where its best deployed, and how Couchbase plays in the space.

00:00 Show Open

00:03 Matt's Foolishness
00:45 Let's Talk about NoSQL
01:20 Introduce CouchBase VP Solutions & Product Marketing, Jeff Morris
02:46 How has data management evolved over the past decade?
05:39 Is there a performance hit when moving away from traditional RDMS?

07:54 Optimal use-cases for NoSQL databases
15:45 CouchBase Mobile & Devices
19:53 Is NoSQL a 'big lift' for IT practitioners?
24:44 Capella: CouchBase-as-a-Service
30:33 SQL & NoSQL, a Peaceful Co-Existance?
32:24 Where is CouchBase Focused over the next 12-18 months?
34:37 Wrapping Up.
35:43 The End!

Special Guest: Jeff Morris.

The Changing Face of Cyber-Security

NAND Research — Thu, 05 May 2022 10:00:00 -0400

There is nothing more critical to IT administrators (and their bosses!) than cyber-security and data protection. Old methods of securing our infrastructure are no longer as effective as they once were. Instead, we're moving into an era of AI-based decisions about what data and traffic to let in, and keep out, of our networks.

Hillstone Networks is a strong innovator in this space. In this episode HIllstone's Tim Liu and Gary Wang join hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to help us understand the evolving nature of cyber-security.

00:00 Kick it off
00:20 Who is Hillstone?
01:06 Application-aware Security
02:37 Using AI and Machine Learning to enhance security
08:05 How has the treat landscape evolved over the past few years?
10:00 Protecting data in the cloud
13:30 Security Kubernetes & container-based workflows
13:58 Who are Hillstone's customers?
16:33 What's next for Hillstone & cyber-security in general?
23:00 Evolving threat landscape
24:54 Wrapping up
25:19 It's over!

Special Guests: Gary Wang and Tim Liu.

High Performance Storage, with Infinidat's Eric Herzog

NAND Research — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 18:00:00 -0400

There is (arguably) no faster mainstream storage available than Infinidat's just-launched InfiniBox SSA II array.

Infinidat CMO Eric Herzog joins host Steve McDowell, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, to walk us through just how Infinidat is able to increase throughput and IOPs by more than 50% in the new array, while also ensuring a compelling level of data protection and cyber-resilience. The guys also talk about the continuing evolution of storage, with a deep-dive into AIOps and how new workloads (such as cloud-native) impact storage architecture.

This is a great podcast for anyone interested in high-performance storage.

This podcast is sponsored by Infinidat.

Special Guest: Eric Herzog.

Links:

Infinidat Infinibox Enterprise Storage — The InfiniBox® enterprise storage system delivers faster than all-flash performance, multi-petabyte capacity, and 100% availability for a broad range of mixed application workloads. Infinite zero-impact snapshots, dependable active/active, synchronous & asynchronous replication, and flexible, software-defined quality of service come standard, with guaranteed reliability and data security.

The Data Center is Changing: Are You Ready?

NAND Research — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 15:00:00 -0400

The Data Center is changing, becoming more virtual, fungible, ephemeral... a whole load of adjectives that describe flexible infrastructure, whether delivered via the public cloud, an on-prem consumption-based model, or even a hyper-scale data center provider like Equinix, and its Equnix Metal offerings.

Matt & Steve are joined by an expert in this field, Zac Smith. Zac is the co-founder of Packet, and the current head of Edge and Metal Infrastructure at Equinix.

There isn't much talk about Equinix -- this conversation quickly focuses on how data center architecture is evolving, embracing various alternate consumption models. Cloud, hosted, consuption-based, and other emergent models are supplementing and, in many cases, replacing traditional on-prem infrastructure.

This is one you don't want to miss.

00:00 Fade In.
01:00 Introducing Zac Smith
02:00 Zac's different thinking about the data center world and the founding of Packet
05:37 Shifting, often generational, views of data center and workload management
07:15 It's all about the workload: why servers may not ever fully commodtize
09:35 Where do providers like Equinix fit in data center architecture?
16:09 The Rise of ARM-based processors in the data center
20:08 What IT customers are choosing the ARM path, and why?
24:05 Open compute initiatives, and the Linux Foundation's Open19 Project
31:30 The Sustainabilty Impact
35:55 Consumption-based infrastructure's place in data center architecture
39:08 Fade to black.

Special Guest: Zac Smith.

A Look Inside VAST Data's Growing Momentum

NAND Research — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 11:00:00 -0500

VAST Data's pursuit of solving some of the world's hardest data problems is resonating with customers, as VAST demonstrates with released momentum numbers.

On this episode of DataCentric, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell are joined by VAST CMO and co-founder Jeff Denworth. Jeff walks us through the VAST Data story, tells us why AI is particularly challenging, and hints at where VAST might go in the future.

00:31 What was missing in the storage industry that needed to be created in 2016?
03:36 What did VAST do differently to shake up traditional storage architectures?
06:52 Jeff talks about some of the early wins at VAST
10:44 Jeff goes into VAST's momentum story
12:25 What's the average VAST customer looks like?
13:10 The VAST Customer Experience, validated by Gartner Peer Insights
13:52 Decoupling the Software from the Hardware with Gemini
17:49 What's the future look like for VAST?
20:15 AI's Impact on enterprise data
25:56 Matt & Steve Wrap-up
28:34 We're done!

Special Guest: Jeff Denworth.

Going Cloud Native with NetApp Astra

NAND Research — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 17:00:00 -0500

Cloud Native is fast becoming the go-to model for deploying applications in the enterprise and is being used increasingly for production applications. This is happening both in the cloud and on-prem. But making containers production-ready requires more than just installing Kubernetes.

Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell spend time with NetApp's Eric Han, Vice President of product management for NetApp Astra, NetApp's cloud-native solution, to understand the complexities of deploying cloud-native technologies into a production IT workflow.

This is great convesation for anyone involved in IT or application architeture.

00:00 Theme Song
01:10 Geting to know Eric
03:15 Forget DevOps, what's the value of cloud-native for Production Workloads?
06:20 Data Management in Cloud Native
09:10 Mapping Kubernetes to related services like NetApp Astra and its competitors
15:40 What is NetApp Astra
19:41 NetApp is playing in both storage and cloud native: how should we thinkn about NetApp?
23:11 Eric asks himself: How easy is it, really?
25:23 Matt & Steve wrap-up, plus talk a little about NetApp's most recent earnings call.
29:37 We're done.

Special Guest: Eric Han.

Inside PCIe 6.0 with PCI SIG president Al Yanes + Inside AMD & Intel Earnings

NAND Research — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 11:00:00 -0500

The PCI SIG released the specification for PCIe 6.0 in January of this year. Long-time PCI SIG president, and IBM distinguished engineer, Al Yanes walks hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, both principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, through the specification, talking about what's new and different and the benefit that IT will ultimately enjoy.

Additionally, AMD and Intel each released strong earnings overall, and very strong delivery in their respective enterprise data center segments. Matt & Steve talk about what the earnings say about the current state of the processor market.

00:00 Kick it off
00:50 AMD & Intel Earnings Discussion
11:20 Al Yanes walks us through PCIe 6.0
23:00 Who is the PCI SIG, anyway? And how do they operate?
25:30 PCIe and Automotive
26:44 How will enterprise IT benefit from PCIe 6.0?
33:25 When will we see PCIe 6.0 in the data center?
34:20 Matt & Steve Wrap it up
35:48 We're done!

Special Guest: Al Yanes.

Trends to Watch in 2022

NAND Research — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 17:00:00 -0500

In this episode, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, kick off 2022 with a discussion on what to watch in the world of enterprise infrastructure during the upcoming year.

This is a wide-ranging conversation covering everything from AMD and ARM in the server market, alternative processor architectures, supply chain, PCIe 5.0, and even some of the goings-on at this month's Consumer Electronics Show.

00:00 Start the show!
01:40 The Server Market: AMD Server market share numbers, Intel's current situation, and the impact of supply chain disruptions
10:38 AMD and Intel introduce new client parts: how much of this bleeds over into the server space?
17:33 ARM in the Server Market: Is this just a hyperscaler phenomia? Will we see expansion in 2022?
27:50 Where does RISC-V Play?
30:40 Disrupting storage: VAST Data, PCIe 5, and does CXL-attached memory supplant Intel Optane?
36:19 Consumption-based infrastructure in 2022
38:24 Over-and-Out

Overcoming the Challenges of Multi-Cloud with HCI

NAND Research — Sun, 24 Oct 2021 11:00:00 -0400

Hybrid multi-cloud has become a standard part of nearly every enterprise's IT infrastructure, yet it often remains a disjointed element with complexities that are different from those faced in the traditional data center.

In this episode of DataCentric, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk to Nutanix's Rakesh Sreekanth and Lenovo's Ritu Jain about how HCI can be a great way to address these challenges.

Nutanix brings a unified range of solutions, spanning basic HCI all the way to full multi-cloud management solutions that tie together on-prem and cloud.

Lenovo is one of fastest growing companies in enterprise infrastructure, and delivers Nutanix solutions as part of its Lenovo ThinkAgile HX series. Together, these companies deliver complete HCI solutions for the modern enterprise.

Special Guests: Rakesh Sreekanth and Ritu Jain.

Application Transformation with Data-Driven DevOps

NAND Research — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 13:00:00 -0400

While DevOps offers IT organizations the tools required to deliver application transformation, it isn't until you start to incorporate an awareness of "Data" into a DevOps world that the real power to achieve digital transformation can be achieved.

Host Steve McDowell, senior technology analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, has a wide-ranging conversation with Delphix CEO and founder Jedidiah Yueh about the power of DevOps and why data is the "last automation frontier". They also talk about the intersection of DevOps, machine learning, and MLOps, as well as fostering a culture of innovation.

00:00 Roll the tape...
01:01 Jedidah Yueh's path from high-school teacher to Silicon Valley founder
03:30 Haven't we already solved all the hard DevOps problems?
04:47 DevOps as part of your cyber-security strategy
07:58 DevOps and Application Transformation
10:08 The Delphix Vision
12:06 Intersection of DevOps and MLOps
14:00 ML Models are Just Another Kind of Data
15:50 What's on the horizon in the world of data-driven DevOps?
17:20 Jed's book "Disrupt or Die" and how to foster a culture of innovation
20:20 Data is the last automation frontier
21:27 Wrapping up
21:44 .. the band plays us out

Special Guest: Jedidiah Yueh.

Data at the Edge with Western Digital

NAND Research — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 15:00:00 -0400

The AI-enabled edge has fast become a part of nearly every enterprise IT architecture, but the machines that we deploy at the edge don't always look like the equipment in the data center. Edge requires a different way of thinking about IT architecture.

Scott Hamilton, senior director of product marketing and management at Western Digital, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about deploying data solutions at the edge. Western Digital recently announced new edge-targeted enhancements to its Ultrastar line: the Western Digital Ultrastar Edge Server and the Western Digital Ultrastar Edge-MR.

The group talks about what makes edge different before getting into the new platforms from Western Digital.

00:00 The podcast begins.
01:06 Introductions with Scott
02:05 Before talking about the edge, a diversion into composable infrastructure
03:25 How is edge infrastructure different from traditional IT infrastructure?
06:20 The impact of AI at the edge
07:25 Western Digital's new Ultrastar Edge
08:17 The Ruggedized/Militarized Edge
11:10 Getting small at the edge
12:38 Are there verticals or workloads that dominate the edge?
14:00 How does WD view the future of edge computing?
15:50 Maneagabilty at the edge
18:00 Western Digital's differentiation at the edge
21:54 Matt & Steve digest the conversation, give their thoughts on both edge & Western Digital
23:30 Matt sings us out
23:44 The podcast ends.

This podcast is not sponsored.

Special Guest: Scott Hamilton.

Thinking about Cyber-Security

NAND Research — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:00 -0400

How should IT professionals think about cyber-security in a world where business-impacting ransomware and malware attacks have become a daily occurrence?

Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, senior technology analysts for Moor Insights & Strategy, have a wide-ranging conversation about the current state of cyber-security with Timothy Liu, Senior VP and CTO, as well as a co-founder of Hillstone Networks. HIllstone Networks has been a player in the IT security market since 2006.

The group hits a broad set of related topics, including:

Current trends in data protection: breach vs post-breach protection, ransomware, secured access services
How to think about security differently for cloud, edge, and core.
Using AI and advanced analytics to detect malware before the time of impact
What's on the horizon of security defence?

It's a great and timely discussion.

Special Guest: Tim Liu.

Arm in the Cloud: A Roundtable with Arm, Ampere, and Oracle Cloud

NAND Research — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 02:00:00 -0400

It's been a big year for Arm in server. Arm announced its Armv9 architecture and new Neoverse cores. Ampere Computing announced its processor roadmap while delivering Arm-based server technology into the market. Oracle Cloud has announced Ampere-based instances.

Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, senior technology analysts with Moor Insights & Strategy, go deep into all of this with a special roundtable with Arm, Ampere Computing, and Oracle

Joining the podcast are Leo Leung, Senior Director, Products and Strategy for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure; Jeff Wittich, Chief Product Officer for Ampere Computing; and Eddie Ramirez, Senior Director of Marketing and Ecosystem Development, Infrastructure Line of Business at Arm.

Special Guests: Eddie Rameriz, Jeff Wittich, and Leo Leung.

Digital Transformation in today's Cloud-Native Data-First World

NAND Research — Thu, 13 May 2021 14:00:00 -0400

Investment in Digital Transformation projects continues to accelerate. The move to cloud-native and data-first architectures bring new challenges and considerations for IT practitioners undertaking digital transformation projects.

Rajan Sethuraman, the CEO of LatentView Analytics, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about these challenges, as well as what IT organizations can do to help smooth the path to a successful digital transformation project.

It's a great conversation on the practical considerations involved in any digital transformation project.

Special Guest: Rajan Sethuraman.

Inside Arm Neoverse & Arm9 with Arm's Brian Jeff

NAND Research — Tue, 04 May 2021 14:00:00 -0400

Arm9 is Arm's first major architectural update in nearly a decade. Neoverse enables Arm's ecosystem of partners to bring the new Arm9 architecture into the data center.

This episode goes deep into the value that Arm9 and Neoverse bring to data center workloads, as hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk with Arm's Brian Jeff, Senior Director of Product Management for Arm's infrastructure business.

The group has a wide-ranging conversation about what's motivated some of the architectural enhancements delivered in Arm9, the shifting enterprise landscape, and where Neoverse fits into it all.

Special Guest: Brian Jeff.

Links:

Matt's Forbes Column on the Arm Neoverse Launch — Arm’s Neoverse microarchitecture focuses on supporting the needs of the datacenter, This includes everything from high throughput switching to low power radio access networks, from general-purpose computing to high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). Think of Neoverse as taking the underlying ArmV9 architecture and tailoring it for the datacenter through modifications and specific instructions.

The Impact of AI on Enterprise IT Architecture

NAND Research — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 12:00:00 -0400

AI and Machine Learning have become mainstream enterprise workloads. At the same time, these technologies force us to rethink IT architecture.

NVIDIA's Tony Paikeday and IBM Storage's Doug O'Flaherty join host Steve McDowell to talk about how to think about the unique placed on the infrastructure by machine learning workloads.

Tony is the director of product marketing for the NVIDIA DGX portfolio of AI supercomputers and NVIDIA accelerated data science platform.

Doug is the global ecosystem leader for IBM Storage.

This episode is sponsored by NVIDIA.

Special Guests: Doug O'Flaherty and Tony Paikeday.

Is the Enterprise Infrastructure Market Rebouding?

NAND Research — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 10:00:00 -0500

Earning's season for 4Q has come to a close, with Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), NetApp, and Pure Storage all annouceing over the past two weeks. This is enough to giving us an idea of how healthy the enterprise storage & server markets are as we leave 2020. The news is actually pretty good.

Hosts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell, both senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talk about it on this DataCentric.

Catching up on High Performance Computing, with Penguin Computing

NAND Research — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 15:00:00 -0500

As SuperComputing 2020 wraps up, it's a great time to catch up on everything happening in the HPC world.

Nobody knows HPC better than Penguin Computing. In this episode of the DataCentric podcast, hosts Matt and Steve are joined by Penguin Computing's Chief Strategy Officer Matt Jacobs, and Penguin's Senior Vice President, Strategic Solutions Group, Kevin Tubbs.

The gang talks about hardware abstraction in HPC, hardware complexity and specialization, software-defined architectures, containers, and much, much more.

Tune in and you'll leave just a little bit smarter about the world of High Peformance Computing.

Special Guests: Kevin Tubbs and Matt Jacobs.

Bringing Cloud-Native to IoT, with Arm's Mohamed Awad

NAND Research — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Cloud-native techniques provide a natural way for deliver functionality to the edge and IoT, delivering IT agility where it's needed the most. Arm's Project Cassini brings the IoT industry together with open, collaborative, standards-based initiative to deliver a cloud-native software experience across a secure Arm edge ecosystem.

Arm's Vice President of Marketing for IoT, Mohamed Awad, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about the power of standardized software at the IoT-enabled edge.

Special Guest: Mohamed Awad.

Accelerating the Kubernetes Container Experience

NAND Research — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 15:00:00 -0400

Containers have been embraced by IT organizations across the board. No longer strictly limited to dev ops and non-production environments, we're starting to see production enterprise applications being deployed into Kubernetes-managed containers. These deployments quickly expose the limitations of the technology.

Joining hosts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell (both analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy) is Diamanti's vice present of product, Brian Walden. Diamanti delivers innovative solutions that help bring both performance and simplicity to Kubernetes-managed workloads, whether on-prem, in the cloud, or spanning the two.

This informative conversation delves into some of the challenges of allowing containers to leverage the full power of the underlying hardware. The conversation quickly focuses in on how to overcome these limitations with the use of innovative I/O acceleration technologies, coupled with enhancements to the control & data planes for storage and networking. Combining these technologies and enhancements can help bring the full power of both on-prem and cloud-based resources to a Kubernetes environment.

Special Guest: Brian Waldon.

Inside the Server Market with Dell Technologies' Jonathan Seckler

NAND Research — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 23:00:00 -0400

Our old friend Jonathan Seckler, Dell Technologies Director of Server Marketing, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell (both senior analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy) to talk about the current state of the server market.

Jonathan brings us up to speed on the most recent server announcments from Dell, including the the massive storage-centric PowerEdge XE7100 and updates to Dell's OpenManage software.

Beyond hardware, the discussion very quickly evolves into the what's driving the future of enterprise infrastructure (hint: it's digital transformation). Jonathan takes us through the customer conversations and research that Dell Technologies has commissioned to better understand how IT infrastructure is changing.

It's a great conversation that will help clarify how IT organizations think about enterprise infrastructure, and also how the voice of IT practitioners influence the products that are brought to market.

Special Guest: Jonathan Seckler.

Understanding the Enterprise Infrastructure Market in 2H 2020

NAND Research — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 12:00:00 -0400

It's been a big couple of weeks of earnings from all of the major enterprise infrastructure market players, including NetApp, Pure Storage, Dell Technologies, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. IBM, Cisco, Lenovo and others all disclosed earlier last month.

On the software-defined side, there's Vmware, Nutanix, and a whole lot of Bain Capital.

High-end kit is up, mid-range everything (servers & storage) are soft, while as-a-service & software-defined all seem to be solid. Is the IT world shifting? What's it all mean?

Technology analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell (from Moor Insights & StrategY) delve into it all, on this edition of DataCentric.

00:00 - 18:00 The enterprise infrastructure market.
18:00 - 36:30 Software-defined Infrastructure. Vmwarwe. Nutanix. And a whole lot of Bain Capital.
36:30 - 43:26 Impacts of a more permenant work-from-home world.

DataCentric is a registered trademark of Bynum Iron Works.

VMWorld 2019 Wrap-Up

NAND Research — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 13:00:00 -0400

VMworld, which has become ground-zero for setting the direction for IT infrastructure, just wrapped up in San Francisco. Attended by over 21,000(!) people, it's become one the largest tech conferences in the world.

This year the dominant themes were all about Containers and Clouds, with product announcements touching every aspect of the edge-to-core-to-cloud world.

Tune in as Moor Insights & Strategy senior datacenter analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk how VMware has become the operating system for the enterprise, and what happened at VMworld all fits together.

Talking with Pure Storage CEO Charlie Giancarlo

NAND Research — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 16:00:00 -0400

What's the secret of Pure Storage's success? Having pushed the industry into the All-Flash era, they now find themselves growing 30%/year and landing alone as the only storage vendor showing growth in this quarter's round of earnings.

Pure Storage CEO Charlie Giancarlo joins the DataCentric podcast to talk about both what's behind Pure's current success, and how he envisions a future where "data" is a utility. Charlie gives us his insight on:

What fuels Pure's current success.
Where Pure is feeling challenged.
How to succeed with customers: "Pleasantly surprise them... they tend to like you when you give them their nights and weekends back"
The intersection of Flash and Cloud: "Customers should have the same experience in flash and cloud"
The impact of AI to the enterprise (and storage): "Any part of [an enterprise's] data may be valuable someday"
Pure's vision of the future: "Data should be a utility... delivered where its needed, how its needed"
Social Responsibility in the Tech Industry

Join in. On iTunes, or where ever you get your podcasts!

Special Guest: Charles "Charlie" Giancarolo.

April 11, 2019: Intel Throws a Party + Storage News + More!

NAND Research — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 15:00:00 -0400

In this episode of the DataCentric podcast, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell (both from Moor Insights & Strategy) go deep on Intel's DataCentric Innovation Day, where Intel formally launches its new Cascade Lake Xeons, while also opening the kimono on Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory. Optane promises to be disruptive to storage and how the industry thinks about in-memory compute. The OEMs community has been waiting for all of this, and there are a bunch of new products on the way.

What's all of this Intel news mean to AMD? Matt & Steve talk about it, along with some other recent news items from the storage world.

More critically, Matt contemplates trading in his Windows laptop for a Macbook, while Steve wonders if it's really OK to hope that his kid's team loses early in this weekend's tournamont (don't judge).

02:10 Intel’s DataCentric Innovation Day — Cascade Lake & Optane
09:25 Intel’s DataCentric Innovation Day — Optane Persistent Memory
24:20 Where Does AMD Fit in the New Cascade Lake/Optane World?
31:00 Excelero & Lenovo Data Systems
34:22 Pure Storage Acquires CompuVerde

36:00 Shoud Matt buy a Mac?
42:46 Twenty Years since Network Engines
46:17 IDC Converged Infrastructure Numbers are Out
48:42 Is it ok to root for you kid’s ball team to lose?

March 18 2019: Inside the latest Server & Storage Numbers + Recent DataCenter News

NAND Research — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 13:00:00 -0400

The latest server and storage market numbers are out, and there are some big winners. And some big losers. Matt & Steve go all "inside-baseball" and talk about what it all means. They also touch on recent news around NVIDIA's Mellanox acquisition, Intel's CXL consortium, and the momentum of the Chinese technology providers.

01:30 IDC Releases 4Q2018 Server Market Numbers
06:08 What's it mean for the HyperScalers?
10:10 What's happening with Huawei?
11:55 Lenovo Data Center team is on fire
14:14 Is there a real slow-down in the server market? Or are we waiting on new parts?
17:50 IDC Releases 4Q2018 Storage Market Numbers
21:30 Hitachi and Storage
23:30 Can you pick the storage market winner from Hardware sales numbers?
24:50 Where's Pure Storage?
26:20 How does Capacity-on-Demand factor into how we count storage & servers?
28:40 Units vs Revenue in the Storage Market
31:30 News: Intel CXL Consortium
35:00 News: NVIDIA buys Mellanox
37:40 Wrapping Up: Where are Steve & Matt spending the next few weeks?

March 7 2019: IBM Think! Plus earnings wrap-up for Lenovo and HPE

NAND Research — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 23:00:00 -0500

Steve McDowell and Matt Kimball, senior datacenter analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, leave their impressions from IBM's recent Think event, where IBM demonstrated impressive infrastructure while delivering a message focused on enterprise class problems. IBM has long been a trendsetter and early promoter of new architectures such as cloud, capacity on-demand, and solution deliver. They haven't stopped.

Lenovo announced earnings, where the company delivered double-digit growth in its enteprise business, with a surprising confession that it might have hit triple digits in North America. At the same time, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's earnings showed that (for HPE) the future is all about converged infrastructure, where its HCI business grew a whopping 70%. What's it all mean? Matt & Steve puzzle that out.

There's also news of ARM Holdings delivering a new enterprise-class server and edge core. Does that mean that Linus is wrong, and ARM has a future in server?

All that, plus the fellows inadvertantly learn that if you record outside on an unseasonably warm day in March, even with a directional microphone, that the birds will have their say.

Feb 8 2019: Data Center Trends for 2019

NAND Research — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 15:00:00 -0500

This year is shaping up to be a huge year for IT and enterprise datacenter architecture. Matt and Steve talk about what they see as the big trends in 2019 that are most impactful, as well as some anti-trends. It's an insightful 28 minutes!

00:46 News: CES, IBM Quantum Computing, & Huawei builds a server ARM part
03:20 Trend: ARM in the DataCenter? It certainly seems to be getting traction, but is it real?
05:46 Trend: Is Cloud Storage maturing in 2019?
09:16 Trend: Edge Computing, micro-datacenters in the wilderness
12:14 Trend: AI a mainstream enterprise workload? Probaby not. At least right now.
15:24 Trend: The continuing march toward insane densities, storage and compute.
18:15 Trend: AMD in the datacenter? We won't make a prediction, but watch these guys.
21:40 Trend: Lenovo is a serious datacenter player.
27:20 Wrapping up: Where are Matt & Steve heading over the next few weeks? IBM THINK, for one.

Dec 19 2018: 2018 Datacenter Trends

NAND Research — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 01:00:00 -0500

In this episode of the DataCentric podcast, hosts Matt and Steve from Moor Insights & Strategy discuss the trends that drove the past year in enterprise compute. They touch on the just-released market numbers for enterprise server and storage, talk about how the realities of cloud are impacting innovation in a hybrid-cloud world, Nutanix, Microsoft Azure, and more.

00:00 Introductions
01:20 3Q18 Server and Enterprise Storage Numbers
02:20 The Impact of China on the Enterprise Hardwarwe Market
06:20 The Rise of Hybrid Cloud and On-Prem Consumption Based Services
12:00 Is Nutanix the Disruptor-in-Waiting?
15:30 HCI, Converged, and Composable Infrastructure
23:50 Why aren't we talking more about Microsoft Azure?
28:00 Processors are heating up
31:00 Wrapping Up

Companies mentioned:

Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enteperprise, Inspur, Lenovo, Huawei, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Pure Storage, VMWare, Nutanix, Intel, Advanced Micro Devices

Dec 6 2018: Recapping Amazon re:Invent & HPE Discover

NAND Research — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 20:00:00 -0500

In this episode of the DataCentric podcast, hosts Matt and Steve discuss the large number of datacenter-impacting announcements at Amazon’s premier cloud event re:Invent, including news of Amazon deploying their custom-built ARM parts, bringing cloud on-prem, and more.

The team also recaps the highlights from HPE Discover in Madrid, where the focus was on edge computing, composable infrastructure and intelligent storage.

*Here are some links to explore, should you want to go deeper: *

We've done a lot of writing about this episode's topics. You can find a round-up of articles from Moor Insights & Strategy on Amazon re:Invent at the summary page here:
http://www.moorinsightsstrategy.com/moor-insights-strategy-analyst-coverage-at-amazon-com-aws-reinvent-2018/

Matt also recently published a piece with nice backstory on ARM in the enterprise for Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2018/10/17/arm-launches-neoverse-five-things-to-know/

Matt also talked about HPE Composable Infrastructure with the good folks over at datacentertechnology.com, while Steve talked to them about Amazon's new Glacier Deep Storage offering and it's potential impact on tape backup:

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hewlett-packard-enterprise/hpe-s-composable-infrastructure-no-longer-limited-synergy-hardware
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/amazon/aws-glacier-deep-archive-tape-killer

Steve recently published a white-paper describing HPE’s intelligent storage efforts gave an inteview about Amazon's new Glacier Deep Storage:
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/resources/storage/moor-insights-intelligent-storage.html