DataCentric Podcast

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.

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 Guest: Dominique Bastos.

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 Guest: Lee Caswell .

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 and Mark Maguire.

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 Guest: Nipun Agarwal.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Deploying IT services into the "messy middle" between on-prem and cloud can be challenging. This episode finds hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talking to Todd Brannon, Cisco's Senior Director of Product Marketing for Cloud Platforms, about the challenges of managing IT resources in a multi-cloud world. The guys talk about the challenges of managing a mixed cloud/on-prem, the adoption (or lack of adoption!) of autonmous infrastructure, 00:00 Podcast Opens 02:44 Introducing Cisco's Todd Brannon 04:58 What are the biggest cloud-related challenges facing IT today? 07:30 Solving the common needs of enterprise IT 12:25 Cisco Intersight Services for Cloud 22:51 Autonomous Infrastructure 26:05 We've talked a lot about software -- what's happening in the hardware space? 34:35 Cloud is one thing -- what's happening at the Edge? 39:50 Roll Credits! Special Guest: Todd Brannon.

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.

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.

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.

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

The cloudification of IT is happening. There is a trend in IT towards simplifying the IT experience, both technologies and IT services. Nowhere is this more evident than in how IT organizations deliver services, such as database services, to the broader enterprise. On this edition of DataCentric, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talk to HPE and Nutanix about how these two companies have partnered to help IT shops simplify both their own, and their user's, experience. Joining Steve and Matt are Kate Davis, Global Marketing Manager for HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, and Maggie Smith, senior solution manager for Nutanix database solutions. The Nutanix Cloud Platform complements the public cloud-like billing and standby capacity of HPE GreenLake, with fully integrated compute, storage and virtualization building blocks that provide turnkey, instant operations. Special Guests: Kate Davis and Maggie Smith.

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.

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.

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.

Dell Technologies entered the as-a-service market with full-force earlier this year when it unveiled its APEX portfolio of offerings. Adam Glick, senior director of product marketing for Dell Technologies APEX, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, to talk about the trends and drivers that makes as-a-service attractive to IT shops of every size. Adam also helps us navigate Dell's APEX offerings, taking us through what's being offered, as well as some of the thinking behind the various services. For Dell, APEX is all out delivering the desired outcomes to IT practitioners, without having to worry so much about the technology. Whether you're intestered in Dell APEX, or just want to get a better handle on what as-a-service means to IT, this episode has you covered. Topics 00:00 Opening 02:30 What's motivating the increasing adoption of as-a-service? 04:09 Delivering a 'cloud-like' experience, where outcomes out-weigh technology. 07:10 What is Dell APEX? 07:55 Dell is Delivering Software and Services on a scale not seen from Dell before 15:38 APEX and Equinix 18:15 Is there strong vertical pull for APEX? 19:45 How does Edge fit into this model? 25:53 Partner-centric engagement 28:34 AI/ML and APEX 31:56 What's Dell's Long-Term Vision in this space? 37:37 What does As-a-Service really mean to IT? 40:00 Over-and-Out! Special Guest: Adam Glick.

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.

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.

It's an as-a-service world as Dell goes big with Project APEX. APEX delivers storage and HCI as-a-service, plus delivers some custom solutions. Ampere Computing, the ARM-based server player, continues its journey as it unveils its next generation Altra CPUs for the cloud world -- with a few cloud partners up on the stage (including Azure). Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talk about what it all means.

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.

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.

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.

AMD continues its impressive run at conquering the server market as it introduces its latest generation EPYC processor, "Milan". Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, both senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talk about what AMD's launch means to the server industry. The guys also find time to talk about the latest infrastructure market numbers. On the latest DataCentric podcast.

Professional Services teams can bring tremendous value to an IT organization. A professional services engagement brings a trusted advisor into your organization, one who can bring targeted expertise to help increase both the momentum and success rates for digital transformation and IT modernization projects. Joining hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, tare a couple of seasoned professional services experts. Tom Schroeder, vice president of professional services at Pure Storage, and Don McCullough, the senior product marketing manager for professional services at Pure Storage. The Pure teams goes into detail of its "evaluate, activate, innovate" philosophy to help move digital transformation and IT modernization programs forward. This includes everything from strategy workshops, through project planning and scoping, all the way through projects such as legacy data migration. Professional services isn't just about bringing more hands to help accelerate an IT projects. It's really about helping IT organizations understand where they're heading and why. Don't miss this eye-opening conversation. Special Guests: Don McCullough and Tom Schroeder.

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.

Commvault is having a great run in the white-hot data management and data protection space. It's most recent quarter set records for the quarter-century old organization. Credit for its revitalization and success falls directly in the lap of its CEO, Sanjay Mirchandani, who took the reins in early 2019. On this edition of the DataPodcast podcast, Steve McDowell of Moor Insights & Strategy goes one-on-one with Sanjay to get his unique perspective on the data management and data protection market, and how Commvault's strategy aligns with that vision. In a wide-ranging conversation, Sanjay and Steve talk about the new realities of a hybrid/multi-cloud world, re-thinking business continuity in the wake of COVID-19, why storage is critical to data protection, and how Commvault is thinking about the future . Special Guest: Sanjay Mirchandani.

Pure Storage, one of the original pioneers of all-flash storage, has released a slew of updates to the software behind both its FlashArray and FlashBlade products. In this episode of DataCentric, the gang goes into what's happening in storage today, before talking about how Pure's latest announcements move the ball foward, for Pure Storage and, more importantly, its customers. Host Steve McDowell talks with Pure Storage vice presidents Amy Fowler and Scott Baker about what's happening in enterprise storage, and what's changing with Pure's latest release. Amy is Pure's vice president for strategy and solutions in Pure Storage's FlashBlade business, while Scott is the vice president of product marketing for Pure's FlashArray Portfolio. There's big news for both FlashBlade and FlashArray. The participants talk about why FlashBlade is a "Unified Fast File & Object" (UFFO) solution, and what makes it different from more traditional storage technologies. We talk about where FlashBlade fits, and why. FlashArray has also received a bevy of updates, and Scott talks to us about where FlashArray plays best, where QLC makes sense, NVMe-over-fabric (including Pure's new support for NVMe-over-FC), and how Pure is thinking about the future of storage. Special Guests: Amy Fowler and Scott Baker.

Both Intel and AMD released earnings last week, with Intel's Data Center Group sliding a little bit, while AMD's server fortunes rise. What's it mean for the enterprise server market overall? And how is 2021 starting to shape up? Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk about it on this episode of DataCentric.

It's a new year (2021!), which can only mean one thing: Predictions! Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, both senior analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, turn their datacentric focus to the future of the data center and the trends that will be most impactful in 2021. 00:00 Let's start 03:01 Arm-based processors in the cloud: where's it going? Does it impact Arm server adoption? Will there be Arm-based general purpose servers? 14:15 Forget about Arm, what about AMD? Will they hit 15% server share in 2021? 18:15 Intel has had a monopoly in the nascent 3D XPOINT (Intel Optane) business, despite co-inventing the technology with Micron. Does that change in 2021? 20:50 Nutanix gained new private equity backing in 2020, changing CEOs, and positioning itself for.... something... in 2021. One of our hosts think its an HPE acquistion. 25:31 How impactful will the various OEM's as-a-service offerings be in 2021? Let the boys tell you. 30:20 A contrary prediction about the future of Nvidia's quest to absorb Arm 35:37 In-person conferences will come roaring back. Or not. That's it! Tune in wherever you find podcasts.

Digital Transformation is always front and center of every IT organization, but at no point has digital transformation been more critical than now, as we navigate uncertainty on a global scale. To help us understand how IT organizations are treating digital transformation projects as we exit 2020 and enter a new year, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell (senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy) welcome an expert in digital transformation. Bipin Sahni is the chief strategy officer for Persistant Systems, a global system integrator and solution provider who helps enterprises of all sizes navigate the waters of digital transformation. This is a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation touching on everything from IT in the time in the time of COVID, data migration, stack modernization, hybrid-cloud and as-a-service adoption, and the emergence of AI in the enterprise. Special Guest: Bipin Sahni.

You can't escape the Edge, but what does it really mean for IT? This is a world where there are limited standards and no "one true way" to deliver solutions, so IT practitioners look to middleware and common tooling to help mangage the complexity. What's working? What isn't? And is there a turf war brewing between IT and OT teams within the enterprise? This episode finds hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talking to Jim White, the CTO of IOTech Systems, about the trends and technologies that are influencing the evolution of the IoT-driven edge. The guys also talk about some of the pitfalls and challenges faced by IT teams as they take on this challenging new area. Special Guest: Jim White.

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.

It's KubeCon week, which means that we're all thinking about containers! Containers require a different way of thinking about persistent data, which deeply influences how data protection operates in a cloud-native world. It's really all about intelligent data management. And nobody understands intelligent data management quite like CommVault. CommVault's Global VP of Sales Engineering Don Foster joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about the intersection of data protection and container orchestration. The guys touch on everything from how data protection for containers is differerent from more traditional architectures, to how you integrate containers into an end-to-end DP strategy, to cloud-native backup-as-a-service. It's a great conversation for anyone charged with protecting data in an increasingly container-driven environment. Special Guest: Don Foster.

Flash storage continues to evolve, with that evolution triggering changes in how we think about and deliver enterprise storage. Andy Walls, IBM Fellow and IBM's CTO for its flash storage products, takes us through the big impactors affecting the flash storage industry, We hit on everything: QLC, NVMe-over-fabric, Server-Class Memory, and much more. 00:00 Introductions 02:07 The role of QLC flash in enterprise storage & overcoming its inherent limitations 12:55 Where does Server Class Memory fit? 17:44 NVMe-over-Fabric changes the interconnect game 21:21 Disaggregated storage: are the days of traditional block storage arrays numbered? 23:55 How is Storage for Mainfames different?, Steve asks from a position of ignorance 26:28 Impactful emerging technologies: CXL bus, Computational Storage, 32:00 Does storage need to change to support Quantum Computing? Special Guest: Andy Walls.

The events of the past year have taught us a valuable lesson: unexpected change is going to happen, and that change requires IT organizations to quickly respond. Data centers built on a solid foundation of fast, flexible, secure, and resilient infrastructure are the ones poised to adapt and keep the business moving forward. In this episode, Moor Insights & Strategy technology analyst Steve McDowell is joined by a group of storage infrastructure experts to talk about the fundamentals of a flexible cyber-resilient infrastructure. AJ Casamento and Brian Larsen join from Broadcom, while Brian Sherman comes to us from IBM's Storage division. The group talks about cyber-resilient architectures, autonomous infrastructure, and building a fast and flexible storage architecture to support it all. Fibre Channel Gen 7, NVMe-over-FC, Intelligent Storage Systems, tiered storage, disaster recovery... it seems like the group hit on most of the topics that an IT practitioner needs to be aware of as we all look forward to a disruptive future. This episode is sponsored by Broadcom. Special Guests: AJ Casamento, Brian Larsen, and Brian Sherman.

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.

It's all about cloud-native and containers as IBM announces a slew of new features and offerings at its annual IBM Tech U event. The announcements included: Spectrum Protect Plus enhancements for containers in production. Spectrum Scale container-native storage access for Red Hat OpenShift. Spectrum Discover now has deeper integration with Red Hat Openshift Container Storage & IBMB Cloud Digest Storage File Access Vmware vSphere 7 support for end-to-end NVMe Increased capacity for SCM in the FlashSystem 7200 & 9200 series IBM also announced a longer-term vision for container-native data management. There's a lot to digest, and IBM's Eric Herzog and Sam Werner join host Steve McDowell to talk through what was announced, and how IBM sees the challenges in today's hybrid-multicloud world. Special Guests: Eric Herzog and Sam Werner.

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.

The hyper-scale market is often a leading indicator of broader enterprise data center trends. This is true of software to manage scalability, autonomous management, security, disaggregated storage, and AI/ML. Jay Shenoy, vice president of technology for Hyve, joins hosts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell (each a senior technology analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy) to talk about what he's seeing in this space. This wide-ranging conversation touches on seemingly everything: an overview of the hyperscale market; the software-defined data center; autonomous infrastructure; disaggregated storage and the increasing adoption of NVMe-over-fabric; the rise of ARM and accelerators; and even the impact of AI/ML in both training and inferernence use cases. It's another great conversation on the rapid evolution of the enterprise data center. Special Guest: Jayarama (Jay) Shenoy.

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.

Securing the supply chain for enterprise infrastructure is a key element to any comprehensive cyber-security strategy. As cyber-security month kicks off, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announces a new "country of origin" server program that takes things to the next level. John Grosso, who leads the HPE's Global Operations Engineering organization, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk through cyber-security, the criticality of securing the supply chain, and how HPE is stepping up its secure server program with a new "county of origin" program, where servers are assembled and validated in the United States. This one is a fascinating exploration of an area most of us don't think about on a daily basis. Listen in. Special Guest: John Grosso.

What is it about HCI that enterprise IT likes so much? On this episode David Wang, HPE's director of storage marketing, drops in to talk to hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell about why HCI is compelling, and how the different flavors of HCI address a range of needs in the enterprise, whether on the edge or in the core. HPE is in an interesting place with HCI. The company has two in-house HCI solutions, dHCI and SimpliVity, and is a major mover of both Nutanix and Vmware VSAN software. How does HPE position them? And what's the right answer for your IT shop? Join us in a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation about HCI's place in the enterprise, and where HPE's dHCI and other solutions fit. A special thank you to Sonal Dave' for helping out with the logistics and, of course, David Wang for joining us! Special Guest: David Wang.

Supercomputing has left the lab and is fast becoming a mainstream enterprise IT capability, whether we're talking about a dedicated compute cluster, or HPC-as-a-service. These capabilities are driving everything from COVID-19 modelling to video-analytics at the retail edge to deliver "frictionless retail". There's nobody better to talk to us about this market than Penguin Computing. Penguin's SVP of Strategic Solutions Kevin Tubbs joins DataCentric hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about what matters when thinking about technical computing in the enterprise. Special Guest: Kevin Tubbs.

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.

The server market is rapidly changing. It's less about the speeds and feeds of your hardware, and much more about the capabilities required to support critical workloads. From software-defined to edge, Dell Technologies director of server marketing join Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell in a wide-ranging discussion on the shifting landscape of servers. The group seems to touch on every from the on-going "generational shift" of IT buyers, the cloudification of IT, edge computing, open standards, the impact of COVID-19 on IT, and much, much more. Special Guest: Jonathan Seckler.