Tech Interviews

Data is the lifeblood of today's enterprise. Making sure we secure it properly is critical to modern business. We cannot afford data to leave our control in any way that puts our sensitive and important information at risk. In a world of increased data focussed regulations where data, privacy and trust are so critical in our business relationships, the impact of a data breach can be significant. How do we address this challenge? How do we empower our use of data and keep it secure and under our control? That is the subject of this Tech Interviews Episode with my guest Justin Bortnick of Digital Guardian. Justin is a long-time data security practitioner and uses that experience to help simplify the often-complex issues that come with data security. I take this opportunity to learn from Justin's experience and build an understanding of modern data loss prevention techniques and how technology from industry leaders like Digital Guardian can help you to effectively enable your data security strategy. Join us in this fascinating discussion as we bust some DLP myths by covering. • Learn the basics • Get buy-in • Your first goal – know where your data is • Context is crucial to accurate DLP • Crawl before you run • What are your data loss drivers? • This is not just a technical problem • The Digital Guardian approach • The one thing you should be doing Data loss prevention is a priority for any business serious about its data and Justin's enthusiasm for the subject and the level of insight he provided was hugely valuable for me and I trust there were for you too. If you have any questions, then please email podacast@techstringy.com and to catch the next episode then please subscribe. For now, thanks for joining me. Full show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Sq

In our last show, we talked about the idea of cyber fit and cyber protection and how, as our demands and the threats to our data change, so must our approach to security and protection. We continue that theme this week as we look at the changing world in which we operate and how that is driving the need to think not only about protection but also resilience, digital resilience. Joining me this week is Edwin Weijdema a global technologist at Veeam. This idea of resilience is key when it comes to security, while much of the security discussion is focussed on prevention, and rightly so, it is important to realise that even the best-laid plans cannot always stop a cyber security incident. When that happens, what is the plan? The way we operate as businesses, our reliance on technology in all walks of life, as well as the ever-evolving cyber threat, have all changed the way we need to look at our security plans and it's crucial that we also know not only how to protect ourselves, but handle it when the worst happens. Join us as Edwin shares with us his experiences and ideas around. • The evolving world • How the cyber threat has grown • Cyber Security Still an IT problem • Building digital resilience • The security triangle People, Process, Technology • Protection without recovery is nothing • Veeam the Risk Management Company I always enjoy discussing this stuff with Edwin, he has great enthusiasm and experience for the topic and a passion for helping others to develop cyber resilience. You can find more from Edwin by following him on Twitter @Viperian or LinkedIn. I hope you found that as useful as I always do when I chat with Edwin. To make sure you catch the next show, why not subscribe. But for now, thanks for joining me. For full show notes including links : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Sc

Cyber Security continues to be top of the list of IT challenges most enterprises face. While our businesses continue to evolve in how we use technology, how we work, and how we consume data, so the threat continues to evolve. In the face of this challenge we need to think carefully about how we deliver our security strategy, these modern threats need a modern approach. Earlier this year, I was asked to present at an event hosted by Acronis, this event focussed on taking a new approach to security. The contents of that day stuck with me and I wanted to share with you some of the information from that event. To help me to do that is one of my co-presenters Acronis's Candid Wuest. Join us as we discuss. • What is Cyber Fit and Cyber Protection? • No single technology will protect you from everything • The holistic approach • Enjoy the SAPAS • Security is complex, but its management shouldn't be • Having a security business continuity plan • Some tips for getting cyber fit • A little more about the Acronis approach • The value of learning from vendors This is such a crucial topic in the enterprise and as we mentioned in summary, taking the opportunity to learn from leading vendors, can be extremely useful as you help build your cyber defences. More details and follow up information can be found in the show notes : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1S7 Until next time, thanks for listening.

Tech Interviews has come out of semi-retirement for a short series of shows looking at another range of Enterprise IT topics. First up, is an old familiar subject of the evolving world of storage, specifically object storage. Why is object storage increasingly becoming part of the everyday enterprise data platform conversation? Is it better suited to modern ways of working, that need data portability at scale? Does it fit better with our modern application development processes, such as containers? To find out I am joined on this episode by field CTO and co-founder of Scality Brad King. Join us as we discuss • What is object Storage • Why object and not just block and file? • Is it time for more object in the enterprise? • The value of metadata • The object use cases • About Scality • Artesca bringing object to the smaller use case The case for object storage as a primary platform for your data continues to grow and there are some use cases it meets extremely well. Although it may not be right every time If you are looking at new approaches to data in your business, it may well be time to explore what object storage can bring. For full show notes https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1RY Thanks for listening.

The demands on business IT continue to evolve rapidly, we need our technology to respond to change, to be deployed quickly, provide scale and flexibility. This is changing the way applications are developing with approaches such as low/no-code and serverless becoming increasingly common. On this week's Tech Interviews we look at these new development approaches and ask what does low-code and serverless mean for you and your enterprise? Joining me to discuss this is Mike Williams, founder, and CTO at BuildLab. We discuss. Trends driving change. What is low code and serverless? Don't get hung up on how, focus on the what It isn't for everyone How do you define the right route for you? What makes a good project? This is not a silver bullet BuildLab, building more with less. I found this a really useful introduction to a technology and approach that is becoming more commonplace. I like Mike's approach, using these technologies to allow the focus to be on outcomes while appreciating that this doesn't work for everyone. I hope you enjoyed that, if you have an idea for a show or would like to be a guest email me at podcast@techstringy.com. Until next time, thanks for listening. Full show notes with links can be found here: https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1R6

When you talk to any business today and ask them about their top strategic IT goals using artificial intelligence and machine learning to help the business be “better” is often right at the top. It is not a surprise, is it? But not all in the AI garden is necessarily rosy, there are still many, including some high-profile, incidents of major AI/ML projects going bad, with millions of $’s spent for little or no return. Why is that? What does it mean for AI in the enterprise now and in the future? That is what we explore on this week’s podcast as I am joined by Slater Victoroff CTO at indico. He shares thoughts on the current state of intelligence in the enterprise, sharing thoughts on how to avoid project failure, the importance of quality data, how to avoid the data “charlatan” as well as providing some top tips on getting your AI investment right. Join us as we chat about. • AI is not the answer to everything, but it is great at some things. • AI adoption is immature. • Not an android more a bionic arm. • The embarrassing failures. • Get the basics right. • You cannot solve problems you cannot scope. • Clever Hans. • Tips to getting your AI investment right. • Avoid data charlatans. • What do indico do? • Empowering the right people with the right tools. Data analytics, intelligence and machine learning are a core part of most businesses short, medium and long term plans and used right it is a powerful technology that can deliver huge value. However, doing it right takes thought, planning, time and effort. Hopefully, Slater has provided you with some great tips. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest, then please email me at podcast@techstringy.com and to catch the next episode then please subscribe. Until next time thanks for listening. Full show notes are here https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1QT

The last 12 months or so have seen the biggest shift in working practices in many generations, the restrictions imposed around the world because of COVID has forced us all to look at the way we operate as both businesses and people. A key part of our ability to survive the last 12 months was, of course, technology, collaboration tools particularly have had a significant role to play, allowing us to easily communicate with each other and our customers, to share information and data, to meet up in daily online meetings to ensure we still had some level of “face to face” communications. Without those tools, the challenges of day-to-day operations would have been much harder. Collaboration technology of course is not something that businesses just consume, there are vendors who build the tools that have allowed so many of us to adapt during this time of massive change. What has the last 12 months looked like for them? What have they learned? What does that mean for us and the future of work moving forward? Joining me this week is Michael Peachey is Vice President, User Experience, at collaboration giants RingCentral and I get the chance to find out from him what the global collaboration picture has looked like over the last 12 months, the changes they’ve seen and what they envision for the future of work. We discuss. • The 12-month experiment. • What RingCentral have learned as a business. • Accelerating change. • Surprises! • Online fatigue. • Cultural changes. • Replicating the “human experience”. • What happens when half the world goes back to the office and the other doesn’t? • Check out RingCentral. I enjoyed this chat with Michael, the future of work is not set in stone for either businesses or those building the tools we are going to rely on, but what is clear, is there is real enthusiasm and innovation not just about how the technology should work, but how the human experience should be improved and that can only be a good thing. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest drop a line to podcast@techstringy.com. To catch the next episode then subscribe on all good homes of podcasts or YouTube. Until next time, thanks for listening. For full show notes visit https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1QM

"Transformation" is a phrase we hear a lot, in fact, it almost feels like everyone in the world has some kind of transformation project going on. In reality, over the last 12 months or so, we all have, we have changed the way we operate as businesses and as people. But what does it mean to go through a transformation as a business? What is transformation? How do we do it well? That's the question I ask this week with my guest Chris Gherardini. Chris is founder of Turnkey Technologies a US-based consultancy business, focussed on helping companies deliver business transformation projects. Chris started Turnkey 27 years ago after cutting his technology teeth in an accountancy practice, so comes to this conversation with a lot of experience. Join us as we discuss. The four pillars of transformation. What drives change? Seeing transformation as an opportunity. Things to avoid in your approach. The importance of vision. It is a cultural thing. Top tips for getting transformation right. We are all constantly facing change and any tips on how to do it well are always welcomed, so I hope you found as much useful information in what Chris said as I did. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear email podcast@techstringy.com and to catch the next episode, please subscribe. Until next time thanks for listening. For full show notes https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1QH

Data is everywhere and part of every strategic business conversation how do we use it better? How do get more value from it? How do we truly make it a business asset? The answers to those questions are driving a whole new way of thinking in the way we deliver IT services to a business. New workflows, new development architectures and exploiting technology shifts to try to break the shackles that traditional infrastructure often enforces on how we can use data to meet our business needs. This has led to a steady evolution, virtualisation, cloud and architectures such as serverless which allows us to run our code and services independent of any underlying platform. What if we could achieve that same flexibility for our data? If your business could use its data without restriction what would that allow you to do? That was the thesis of a blog post that I read recently from David Flynn the CEO of my guest Doug Fallstrom’s company Hammerspace and is the topic for this weeks show. Join us as we discuss. • Why we need to be data-centric. • Getting additional value from our data. • Users don’t care where the data is and why should they? • Talk to the non-storage people in your business to know how they use data. • Tips for shifting to a data focussed approach. • The Hammerspace Tech. • The power of the “as a service” model. For today’s enterprise taking a data-centric approach to the way, we build our IT platforms is critical if you want to be a data-driven business. Approaches such as those discussed by Doug, coupled with technical innovations to enable your data strategy is going to be central to your success. For full show notes visit here https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Qx Finally, If you have an idea for a show or would like to be a guest, then email podcast@techstringy.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.

The IT landscape is changing extremely quickly as we embrace new ways of working, new technologies, adopt the cloud and have ever more distributed workforces, all demanding increased access to our services and data. These changes are being embraced by modern business as they see technology as a way of driving improved outcomes and new opportunities. However, one thing that often does not change in our business is networking, not only the technology behind it but more importantly the processes we have in place to operationally support our enterprises rapidly changing demands. What then, do we need to change, why and how? That’s what I chat about with this week’s guest Andrew Wertkin, Andrew is the Chief Strategy Officer at BlueCat a company specialising in the management, control and automation of DNS, DHCP and IP address management or DDI (an acronym of acronyms), join us as we look at how the network has changed, how not changing our operational approach is inhibiting us and how to plan for better network management. It’s a fascinating chat as we discuss. • What is DDI • DNS, DHCP, IP Management modern critical services • Without control and governance, you can’t enable change • IT cannot be a blocker • That’s not transforming it’s just upgrading • If you don’t expect your IT to change you’re not paying attention • If you’re not planning you will have problems • Getting your DDI right Andrew offers a range of great insight that I trust you found as useful as I did. For more information and links to some of the things we spoke about visit https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Qd for show notes. If you have an idea for a show or would like to join me as a guest email podcast@techstringy.com. To catch the next episode then subscribe in any of the usual ways. Thanks for listening.

More effective data analytics is part of most organisations plans, we see the ability to extract useful information that helps us make better business decisions as a crucial part of digital transformation into a more data-driven enterprise. However, perhaps it is not as easy as it sounds, many enterprises have had cause to re-evaluate their shift after their analytics projects failed to deliver the value they had hoped for, but why? This week’s podcast was inspired by a whitepaper I was sent, produced by Analytics company Aginity, the paper was entitled “Forget about AI and ML” which, while a provocative title, offered some interesting insights as it discusses how delivering an analytics project is about much more than technology and has much wider requirements from culture, to who we involve, to how we ensure we have the appropriate data to operate with. This is a topic that intrigues me, so joining me to discuss this in more detail is CEO of Aginity, Rick Hall, he has worked in the data analytics industry for 30 years now and has seen many analytics projects succeed as well as fail and in this episode, he shares some thoughts on how to get it right. Join us as we discuss. • How are we currently using AI? • You’ve got to do the “dirty work first” • What are the challenges we face with analytics? • The “third phase” of analytics. • Democratising analytics. • How to make analytics work better. • Empowering people. • It’s not just a technology shift. • What Aginity do. • The power of collaborative analytics • Top tips for driving better analytics. Data Analytics is high on the agenda of most enterprises, but doing it right needs careful thought and planning, as well as making sure we empower the right people with the right tools. Rick did a great job here for articulating that and providing some tips on how to get this kind of project delivered right in your enterprise. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest, then why not email me at podcast@techstringy.com and to catch the next episode, subscribe. Until next time, thanks for listening. For full show notes and links please visit : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Q5

As the world of technology and data continues to evolve, so must the solutions that we use to build our enterprise technology stacks, which of course means new versions of products and services from our leading vendors. At the end of February 2021 Cloud Data Management specialists Veeam released Version 11 of their highly successful availability suite. But what does that mean for those of us who deliver, manage and maintain enterprise infrastructure? Because while the world we operate in continues to evolve are vendors listening to the challenges that their customers have? Understanding evolving trends and how they are likely to impact both them and their customers? In this episode, I'm joined by Veeam Senior Global Technologists and regular Tech Interviews contributors, Michael Cade and Anthony Spiteri, as I put those questions to them as we explore some of the key announcements from Veeam's V11 launch. We discuss what was behind some of those design decisions and how are these developments helping to solve enterprise challenges. We discuss. The V11 Strategy Continuous data protection and the critical workload. Be right, not first. Immutable backups made easy. Making innovation available to all. The power of the cloud for long term retention. Helping to balance costs. Improving instant recovery. Protect it anywhere, recover it anywhere. Getting more value from our backup data. This was a jam-packed show and it is always great to catch up with the Veeam team, there is always a real enthusiasm from them for their technology and it's great to see that not only are customers listened to, but what they hear is then acted upon. Michael and Anthony, as always, offered great insight into this significant technology release. For all the links as well as how to watch the Veeam V11 announcement visit the show notes page ​https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1PY If you have an idea for a show email me at podcast@techstringy.com and to catch the next episode, then subscribe in all good homes of podcast and YouTube. Thanks for listening.

Networks are at the very heart of the way business operates in the modern world, with so much of what we do driven digitally the need for us to connect our devices with our applications and data is central to almost everything the enterprise does to function. For something so central to our operations it’s interesting how little we think about it, networks are like a utility, you turn on the tap water comes out, you flick a switch electricity flows, you hook up your device you expect to get connected and in many enterprises, we are as confident of our network as we are any other utility. But should we be? How sure are we that our networks are as robust and resilient as the modern enterprise requires? Is that confidence misplaced? That is something I’ve been considering recently after been sent the latest Network Field Report from network management specialists Auvik. Joining me on this week’s podcast is Steve Petryschuk a Network management expert at Auvik to discuss what they discovered in their survey, how they are seeing the enterprise network changing and what we can do as IT pro’s to ensure our network continues to meet the demands placed upon it. Join us as we discuss. • The background behind the report • The changing role of the networking professional • How has the enterprise view of networking changed? • Why we need network knowledge? • The problem of over-confidence! • The increasing rate of change and are we tracking it? • Embrace change • Proactive management giving us time back • The benefit of better insight • Steps to improving your network posture • The power of automation Steve shared some great insights into what he is seeing in the modern enterprise network, some of the challenges as well as some of the strategic shifts we need to make to ensure we continue to meet the demands placed upon it. The Auvik network report is well worth a look and you can request your copy here www.auvik.com/networkfield21. If you have an idea for a show or would like to join me as a guest then why not email me at podcast@techstringy.com and to make sure you catch our future episodes you can subscribe, you’ll find Tech Interviews in all good home of podcasts and on YouTube. Until next time, thanks for listening. For full show notes with all links : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1PS

The entire way we look at delivering IT in the enterprise is changing, the environment we operate in, the operational expectation of our business, how we interact with customers, the speed with which we can react to change are all demanding new ways of architecting and operating our IT systems. Of course, this has led to rapid innovations across enterprise technology from the adoption of the cloud, the way we deliver applications (Kubernetes for example) through to the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to a point where all of these are now common conversations around the technologist's table. The innovations have led to new views of how we see operations as increasingly we adopt DevOps, SecOps, DataOps and of course AIOps. The risk of course with this kind of shift is hype, getting wrapped up with the excitement but finding our changes never really delivered value. How do we avoid that trap and ensure if we are going to use more intelligence and analytics in our operations, we avoid the hype and deliver maximum benefit? That is the topic of this week's show with my guest Casey Kindiger, CEO at Grokstream. Join us as we discuss. What is AIOPS? Pavlov's Dog and IT Ops. Rules-based approaches must change. What is driving change? Wasting quality data! Can't we just throw machine learning at it? It's a cultural shift. Tips for doing AIOPS well. Avoiding the traps. About Grokstream. There is no doubt that analytics and AI, if they are not already, are going to be a daily part of enterprise IT and Casey provided wide-ranging insight into, what for me, is a fascinating topic and I hope you got plenty from it. If you have an idea for a show or would like to be a guest, email podcast@techstringy.com and to catch the next episode why not subscribe. Thanks for listening. Full show notes are here: https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1PK

Compliance is a serious discussion point in most organisations, as the use of our information has become an increasingly everyday part of the way we operate our lives, ensuring organisations take care of it appropriately is critical to the privacy and security of our "digital selves". However much of the compliance technology organisations rely on is based on understanding our digital footprint, to ensure the person making the transaction is authorised to be doing it and that transaction is legal and correct. That's great when the use of technology is commonplace, but what when it isn't, how do you examine a digital footprint when there isn't one? On this week’s show, I am joined by Shubhradeep Nandi, co-founder at PiChain Labs a company looking at how they can use leading-edge technology trends to start to deal with the global problem of reducing fraudulent transactions in a world where technology is not always easily accessible and digital footprints are harder to identify. We discuss. Fintech and Regtech what do they mean? How a "black box" attitude means we are missing the gaps in compliance. The size of the problem. How not actively engaging with compliance is a problem. When regulation impacts a financial institution. The problems of "hotfixes". The problem of scale. What happens when there is no digital record? The three steps to making compliance sustainable. Using leading-edge technology to solve the compliance problem. Thanks to Shub for providing insight into what is a massive problem impacting us on a global scale and how by using technological advances we may be able to solve it. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest email podcast@techstringy.com and to catch the next episode then please subscribe on YouTube or all good homes of podcasts. Full show notes are here: https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1PD

It is 2021 and Tech Interviews is back with new shows looking at all aspects of enterprise IT. For this first show of the year, we do what all good podcasts like to do and take a look ahead to 2021 and what we expect to see in the technology space. The topic of our look ahead this week is the storage industry, as I catch up with some of my fellow delegates from a recent industry event we attended, Storage Field Day 21. What of Storage Field Day 21? What did it have to offer? What were the key themes? And what did it tell us about current storage industry trends? That is the topic of this first show of the year as I join up with three of my fellow delegates to hear what they thought and their key “takeaways” from the event. I am joined by Barry Coombs, Jason Collier and Max Mortillaro to discuss the key moments from another excellent Storage Field Day Event and hopefully apply some context to what we heard. Thanks for listening. Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Pt

2020 has been one heck of a year, for all kinds of reasons, many of them of course less than positive. The world has been turned on its head, with lots of the things we took for granted as our “normal” behaviour no longer allowed or drastically changed. 2020 has also put a strain on the global community in unprecedented ways, straining healthcare, education, and business. The technology industry has been at the forefront of much of the global response, not just in business, but across all areas of life tools like Zoom and Teams moved from corporate apps to an everyday part of people’s lives, a way to do business, yes, but also a way to stay in touch, have get-togethers, quizzes and of course of ways of carrying on education from the youngest to those studying for advanced qualifications. However, this move to a more technologically driven world, also highlighted real disparity while for many they have plentiful access to technology and are tech literate, for swathes of the population that is not true. It was this disparity that was noted by two of my close IT community friends, Michael Cade and Jason Benedicic, both are regular guests on the show, and both have very busy day jobs, but both saw examples of that technology gap and wondered what they could do about it. This led them to start to look at different ways of making technology available, what exists today, and what we may need to change to truly make technology accessible to more people than it is today. It was this work that caught my eye and felt like a great topic for our last Tech Interviews of 2020, so that is exactly what we do as I’m joined by Michael and Jason to explore what we can do as individuals and industry to make technology available to all. It’s a great chat and with a fine collection of Christmas outfits for you to enjoy (if you watch the YouTube version). What Jason and Michael have taken on is a great example of what we can do as a tech community, if we just think about the way we can use technology a little differently and look to solve problems. As this is the last show of the year, I would just like to say thanks for all of the support of the show this year from both a fantastic collection of guests and to you the listener, because without listeners there wouldn’t be a show. May you all have an enjoyable holiday season and let’s hope 2021 is a bit of an improvement on 2020! Until next year, thanks for listening and watching. Full show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1P0 Thanks to PowerTribe for the use of their version of Carol of the Bells in our festive theme tune.

As our technology stack continues to evolve and the demands on our IT systems grow, we need to become increasingly smarter with the way we deliver it. Increasingly we want all elements of our technology infrastructure to be software-driven, we want intelligence about performance so we can use it to drive and automate change. However, one area that is often not considered is the area of networking. Networking is at the very heart of modern infrastructure but often we still see very traditional approaches to how it is designed and deployed. Why is that and how do we change it? That is the topic of this week’s show as I catch up with Rich Martin, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer at intelligent network automation specialists Intential. Join us as we discuss. • The networking bottleneck in IT automation. • Why can’t we “spin-up” networking? • How do we modernise when there a lack of strategy, skills and tools? • The COVID effect. • The problems with a traditional approach. • The cloud networking quandary! • Automation “sprawl”. • Cloud networking, like a network but different! • How networking is evolving. • Building a network automation strategy. • What Itential do. • Building a network platform. • Tips for your network modernisation approach I find network automation an interesting part of the evolution of the way we deliver technology and one that is beginning to change. I think Itential is offering some strong solutions in helping enterprises to evolve their network automation capabilities and are well worth checking out. If you have an idea for a show why not email podcast@techstringy.com. If you want to be sure to catch our last show of 2020 then why not subscribe, you’ll find us in all good homes of podcasts or over on YouTube. Until next time thanks listening. For full show notes : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1OQ

As we have covered many times on this podcast, data is a core asset for modern enterprises, how we gather it and use it is amongst the hottest topics for enterprise IT decision-makers. Of course, along with that comes how we protect and secure that data, making sure we do not lose it for technical, commercial and regulatory reasons is vital. However, there is one area of data, that in my experience gets far less consideration and that is erasure. There is always a lifecycle when it comes to data, it is created, it is used and then when it has served its production purpose there is the question of “what do we do with it now?”. That is the subject of this weeks show as I’m joined by Paul Katzoff, CEO of WhiteCanyon Software a company specialising in the secure erasure of data. Paul brings a great perspective to understanding the challenge and the things you need to consider when you include erasure as part of your data strategy. Join us as we discuss. • While erasure is not new the challenge continues to evolve. • How do I verify erasure? • The issues in “physical destruction”. • Compatibility and standards. • The evolving challenge of data erasure. • “Consumer” tech and enterprise data. • Data erasure is not just a technology problem. • Plan for your data’s lifecycle. • How is the tech evolving? • Tips for your data erasure strategy at scale • Should I do it myself? Paul’s experience in the industry offered me a fresh perspective on the challenges of data erasure and the importance of not forgetting that data is not all about collection, analytics and production use, we need to consider what happens when our need for data or the repositories that hold it ends. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest, then please drop me a line at podcast@techstringy.com. To catch the next episode be sure to subscribe. Thanks for listening. Full Show Notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1OJ

Security is a constant challenge for organisations big or small whether it is the security of our systems, network or data the problem continues to get more complex. Our complexity doesn’t stop there as increasingly more enterprises look to embrace Internet of things (IoT) projects our challenge grows significantly. But why, why does IoT present such a peculiar challenge? This is an interesting question and a major security challenge. On this week’s show, I’m joined by AgilePQ CEO Paul Clayson as we discuss both the IoT problem as well as some of those approaches to addressing it, including the innovative and elegant approach Paul’s company is taking. An approach not only looking at solving the IoT issues of today but also is looking ahead to how they can use the same approach to help crack one of the security industries biggest conundrums, quantum computing. Join us as we go all quantum and discuss. • The IoT security challenge. • The inadequacy of today’s approaches. • Is the IoT security risk real? • When just good enough is not good enough! • Rethinking encryption for IoT. • The importance of simplicity in security at scale • The quantum computing problem. • Quantum hacks are closer than you think! • Tips for the top of your IoT security list. I enjoyed this chat with Paul, it’s an area that is new to me but one that is hugely interesting not only for today's threat posed by IoT devices but the real threat, that maybe is closer than we think, posed by a quantum computing future. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then why not drop me a line at podcast@techstringy.com and to make sure you catch the next episode then please subscribe. Until next time thanks for listening. For full show notes :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1OD

There is no doubt that the way businesses operate has changed significantly throughout 2020 and while many of us had plans for and technology in place to deal with a distributed workforce, not many of us have the plans, technology or processes in place to deal with all of our workforce been distributed. Now then, is the time for us to take a step back and rethink our distributed workforce, how we approach it? To help me to explore this is this week’s podcast guest Doug Miller, CEO of Brightworks Group, a company specialising in helping enterprises of all sizes to modernise their approach to IT and help to service a distributed workforce. Join us as we discuss. • Doug’s props! • The demands of our changing world • The opportunity of distributed workforces • The power user problem! • Big issues are not necessarily technical • The digital transformation “lag” • The data portability problem • When the leadership does not embrace technology • The importance of working with specialists who can help you • Tips on rethinking your distributed workforce. Doug brought a fabulous insight to the topic and shared it with not only great enthusiasm but also with a sword! You cannot ask for more than that! His knowledge and experience shone through as he shared some fantastic tips on how to re-tool your business to not only support but to take advantage of the opportunities presented by a distributed workforce. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then email podcast@techstringy.com. To catch then next episode then why not subscribe. Until next time thanks for listening. For full show notes : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Ow

The public cloud is playing an ever more important part in the modern enterprise’s infrastructure, whether they are SaaS services such as Microsoft 365 or native cloud services from compute to storage. The challenge when we look to adopt the cloud is how do we avoid developing a technology silo in our business, how do we make sure we don’t put the cloud on an island all of its own, one that has no integration into our enterprise datacentre. Because that is not the point is it? We want the cloud to be a valuable extension of what we do, something we can use “tactically” to solve problems and enable us to do things that are hard on-premises. How then do we build appropriate bridges between what we do in the datacentre and those resources and services the public cloud has to offer? That is the subject of this week’s show as I am joined by Principal Architect and Cloud Evangelist at NetApp, Phoebe Goh. We discuss. • Why we need a Cloud data strategy. • We need an Enterprise-ready cloud. • It is not just about “somebody else’s computer”. • Cloud is a “mindset”. • Make your datacentre more cloud-like and your cloud more enterprise. • Avoiding the human nature of silos! • Joining the technology dots. • The value of “specialists”. • Tips for “joining the cloudy dots!” • Looking forward to NetApp INSIGHT. I always enjoy catching up with Phoebe her knowledge and enthusiasm are a great mix for sharing her experience of cloud architecture and providing tips on how you can make sure your use of public cloud is as effective as it can be. Phoebe also talked about NetApp INSIGHT during this session and regardless of whether you are a NetApp customer or not, this is a really useful event to hear from a specialist in data storage both on-premises and in the cloud and with a great line up of speakers Including Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest, then email me podcast@techstringy.com and to catch the next episode why not subscribe. Until next time thanks for watching and listening. You'll find full show notes here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Or

The fact that the importance of data to every business continues to grow is not a surprise. Our data estates been more complex, more geographically spread and housed in more data repositories than ever before, again should not be a surprise and neither is it that our demands on our data are also increasing, we want it to be more useful to us, be used as part of new data strategies, but we also need it to be more highly available than ever, more portable and more flexible. However, it is these challenges that are also leading to us needing to consider another part of our data infrastructure and that is our data protection. The state of our data protection strategy should also be under constant review, does what we are doing today meet the demands of our business? A few months ago, I attended VeeamON, Veeam’s annual technical conference, one of the sessions I found extremely useful dealt with the exact topic I’ve just described, the state of the data protection industry in 2020. With that in mind, I asked the presenter of the session if he’d be happy to share those thoughts with the Tech Interviews audience and he said yes, so on this week’s show I’m joined by Dave Russell, Veeam’s Vice President of Enterprise Strategy to share some of the ideas from that session as well as applying some updates to it based on the changes we have all witnessed in 2020. We discuss. Data strategy is for businesses of all sizes. The current state of the protection market. The enterprise “frustration”. The complexity of data protection. How 2020 has changed the market. Do not underestimate “it just works”. The risk of “cyber threat” and data protection. How can we get our “backups” to do more? How does a backup vendor be a part of “transformation”? The importance of data portability. Three tips for your data strategy. Even licences need to be portable. Data protection remains critical to every business and ensuring the strategy you have is right for your business needs is crucial. Dave mentioned the upcoming Veeam Live event on 20th October, for those of you interested in your data protection strategy and developing cloud data management best practices, this may be an event you find very useful you can find out more and register for it at veeamlive.com . If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest why not email podcast@techstringy.com and to ensure you catch the next episode then please subscribe on YouTube or via your favourite podcast app. Until next time thanks for listening. For full show notes please visit https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1O9

The need to modernise the way we deliver technology continues to be high on the agenda of both IT and broader enterprise leadership, whether it's how we manage and store data, build security or work with partners and customers we are looking at ways to do this more effectively and efficiently. This is also true of the applications that we use across the enterprise. The public cloud has changed the perception of how we want to see our technology, including our applications, behave. This has led to new app development methodologies and tools, one of these is serverless. But what is serverless? Can I use it? I have got lots of big enterprise applications is it all relevant? All of which are good questions and are the subject of this week's podcast as I'm joined by Ezhilarasi Chezhiyan of KOVAI.co to talk about serverless architecture. Join us as we discuss. Serverless is not without servers! The LEGO approach to applications Abstracting the infrastructure Flexibility Serverless use cases Serverless limitations Integrating with legacy applications Defining serverless candidates Building one thing supporting Serverless is something else! I am new to the world of serverless and what it can do, but I learnt a lot from Ezhilarasi, I hope you did too. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then why not email me at podcast@techstringy.com. To make sure you catch the next episode of Tech Interviews please subscribe either on YouTube or via you podcast app of choice. Thanks for listening. Full show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1O2

As September rolls around it seems that the technology industry has decided this should be digital conference season, as we publish this week’s podcast in the week of the 28th September we see VMworld 2020 happening online and throughout October companies like Veeam, NetApp, ONUG and others will be holding their own digital events. Ahead of all of those we have had Microsoft Ignite, their major conference for the technical community. What did we hear at Ignite? What Microsoft announcements should we go and check out? In the first of what is going to become a series of event wrap up shows over the coming weeks, I’m joined by Microsoft’s Sarah Lean and NetApp’s Kirk Ryan to give their views of Ignite, what surprised them and excited them. So technical issues (with the video version of the show) aside, settle back and join our chat as we talk about. • Microsoft’s aims for ignite • Azure in Space and in the sea • Automating your Azure estate • Windows is not dead • Putting the power in the hands of those who need it • If you could only check out one session As you can tell from our chat there was a significant amount of content and a wide range of strategic and technical information. Kirk and Sarah did a great job of summing them up as Ignite again demonstrated just how much Microsoft has changed over the last few years and how cloud is helping them and their customers to innovate and grow in ways that would have seemed unlikely before Satya Nadella's time in charge. If you'd like to appear as a guest on the show or have an idea for a show then email podcast@techstringy.com and to catch the next episode then please subscribe on YouTube or you usual home of quality podcasts! Thanks for listening. Full show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1NX

There are two camps when it comes to the world of technology, there are those who use it and those who make it. The challenge is, how do we make sure that those who are developing and selling technology are supplying things that are useful to and solving the challenges of those who are buying and using it? How do you bring those two disparate groups together in a way that allows for constructive dialogue which in turn leads to delivering products that solve business problems while still allowing tech vendors to innovate and of course make money? On this week's show, we look at an organisation who although new to me, has since 2012 been looking to address this problem and have done so with a fair degree of success, ONUG, as I'm joined by Co-founder and Co-chair Nick Lippis joins me to share the ideas behind ONUG and how you can get involved. We discuss. Where do execs go to talk to their peers? Getting beyond price only influence with vendors. It's not about users v sellers – it's about healthy debate! ONUG successes – talking about things that end up getting built. Pushing back on vendors. The integration of business and digital strategy. Upcoming ONUG conference. Digital platforms for modern business. Not new just quicker! Leaving the datacentre. The ONUG collaborative. ONUG is certainly attempting to find a way of bringing together those disparate communities and ensure we get the right kind of solutions into the technology market and I'm certainly looking forward to catching some sessions at the upcoming conference. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then why not email podcast@techstringy.com. To ensure you catch the next episode please subscribe on either YouTube or your favourite podcast app. for full show notes and links : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1NR

2020 has of course been a very different year for most of us and for those of us in the technology industry one major impact has been on the tech community. For many of us the community is one of our core career tenants for us as we develop, it is where we learn and where we build relationships and friendships. As VMworld 2020 approaches, like most of the major conferences this year, it will only happen online and while this is a great opportunity for many to attend for the first time, it also means that we will lose that chance for the tech community to be brought together. On this week's show, I'm joined by VMware content strategist and founder of the excellent community initiative The Tech Level Up Project, Yadin Porter De León as we discuss what VMworld 2020 has to offer. Join us as we discuss. Inclusion in numbers Community side channels The no-risk chance to try out VMworld A chance to pick and mix "the future forward" them A chance to "really deliver for the widest audience" The Tech Level Up Project Community and your career The vTrailmap – signposting your way into the vCommunity VMworld remains a key part of the technology calendar and this year, while different, still offers a great chance to learn and make new community connections. Thanks to the work Yadin has done and his enthusiasm for the tech community, the vTrialMap provides a great resource to guide you through this big and valuable community. To find out more about Yadin and his work check out the full shownotes here https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1NH If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then email at podcast@techstringy.com and if you want to make sure you catch future episodes then please subscribe via YouTube or your podcast app.

It's pretty much the norm for us now that when we visit a website we are increasingly used to seeing the arrival on-screen of a helpful chat assistant, normally popping up in the bottom corner of the page and offering to help us out and to try to triage our requirements. The issue though is these types of services are limited and are not smart enough to understand our requirements or add context to the conversation, but what if they were smarter? That is the question we ask on this week's Tech interviews with my guest CEO and founder of aigo.ai, Peter Voss. Join us as we discuss; the current state of "assistants" where is the value in deploying them? the limitations of assistants without a brain! how is the technology and the market changing? the power of cognitive intelligence how a good assistant can help retain customers how aigo.ai are helping where to start with a cognitive assistant project Peter provides a fascinating insight into a part of the technology market that is going to become increasingly prevalent to business as we all look at ways we can use technology to help us be more efficient and improve the experience of our customers, partners and employees. If you have an idea for the show or would like to appear as a guest then email me at podcast@techstringy.com. To catch the next episode, you can subscribe in all the usual ways. Thanks for listening. For full show notes :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Ny

There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the global response to it has been something we have not witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of "normal", but this also presents an opportunity to us, the chance to take what we have learned over this period and take that knowledge and experience to help plan what we do next, so that next time we need to react quickly to change we can do it better. To help with that I have put together a short series of shows looking at where do we go next for some of our technology decision making. In this episode, we take a look at an area that has been pushed more than most during the COVID response and that is the area of connectivity and especially how the reliance on connectivity. To discuss that I'm joined by Rob Shore, Rob is a Senior Vice President of Marketing for Infinera a specialist in connectivity solutions for the most demanding of networks. Rob has 27 years' experience in the telecoms industry and offer a fascinating take on what he's seen during the COVID response and what it means for the telecoms industry in the future. We discuss. Where are the telecoms industry now and where does it need to go? COVID has accelerated issues and changes that were already planned The datacentre revolution. COVID driven reliance on the cloud. While we are used to compute flexibility and scale where is this in our connectivity? COVID highlighting the access problem. The need for "software-fication" Redesigning lasers. 5G – it is more than a 4G update. Rob's experience in the industry allowed us to have a really interesting conversation touching on the cloud, communications and the need for more intelligence in our network layers and how this is going to be key to take connectivity and network access that today, is struggling to cope with the huge changes that COVID has brought, into the future and make it fit for purpose. This is the last Tech Interviews for a few weeks as we have a summer break, but to catch our shows on our return then you can subscribe in all good homes of podcasts. We will be back with a bunch of new shows later in the year and if you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then email me at podcast@techstringy.com. For now, enjoy the summer months, stay safe and healthy until next time, thanks for listening. For full show notes : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Na

In this episode, we look at a topic that is not normal Tech Interviews territory, but one that is going to be a huge focus for businesses of all shapes and sizes as we come to grips with the COVID realities that will be with us for some time to come and that is how do we use technology to better market our organisations and sell our services? My guest is Vlad Edelman, CEO and founder of Targetable a digital marketing platform and service that helps businesses to use technology to better market and sell to their customers base. Vlad has vast experience in the areas of both digital platforms and online marketing services with a very impressive CV developing solutions for some of the best-known brands in the world, in this episode Vlad shares some of that experience as we discuss some of the pitfalls with today’s marketing approaches and how marketing may not be quite as easy as everyone likes to think! We discuss. • I’m in IT why should I care about marketing? • Why everyone thinks they can do a marketeer’s job! • Contextually aware marketing. • It’s all about the data. • Not all interesting data is valuable. • Nobody spends enough on marketing! • The issue with tools from the big online providers. • Importance of consistency and quick reactions. Vlad shares some fascinating insights into the challenges and potential solutions when it comes to targeted transactional marketing in the modern world and how for many of us finding ways to win new customers is going to be crucial in the months to come and Vlad provides some valuable tips on how to achieve better results. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then why not email me at podcast@techstringy.com. If you want to ensure you catch the next episode then please subscribe. For full show notes including links : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Mu

One of the few COVID-19 benefits has been the shift of many major technology vendors to taking their key events online, we've already seen Microsoft, NetApp, HPE, Cisco and many more move their big in-person conferences to an online version and while they may not replace all elements of those in-person events, what it has done is opened up the opportunity to attend events that you may not normally be able with the bonus of much of the content been left available for many weeks after the event so you can consume what you need at your own pace. June saw Veeam's popular VeeamON event move online for 2020 with nearly 30,000 registrations it seems to have proved a huge success, so on this week's show, we look at how was it running such a big event online? What were the key messages and announcements from the conference that would be relevant for Veeam partners, customers and the wider data management industry? With a focus on "Elevating your cloud data-strategy" we also ask what that means and how Veeam is hoping to enable their customers to do just that. Joining me to discuss it is regular contributor to the show is Veeam Senior Global Technologist, Michael Cade as we cover. What was the online experience like? The challenges of scale and online anxiety! The benefit of on-line events live and on-demand. Even in a changing world we need to manage our data Key announcements Backup for AWS, 365 and Teams, Availability orchestration More key announcements Availability suite V11, CDP, Capacity Tier, Instant Recovery for NAS and Databases. The importance of a data focussed conversation. Portability and flexibility. Are Veeam a cloud data management company? Veeam as with several online events I have attended did a really good job of making the session an experience and as businesses learn from each other these online events will only get better. From a content perspective, Michael shared the importance of some of those key messages as Veeam continues to innovate and evolve to meet the ever-changing demands that enterprises are placing on their data. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then please email me at podcast@techstringy.com If you'd like to watch the YouTube version of the show you can find it here : https://youtu.be/rIj7wmfpmnI For full show notes : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Mn

There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it has been something we have not witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges, delivering remote IT at scale, stretched VPN's, flexibility, support, security, the list is long. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of "normal", but this also presents an opportunity to us, the chance to take what we have learned over this period and take that knowledge and experience to help plan what we do next, so that next time we need to react quickly to change we can do it better. To help with that I've put together a short series of shows and in this third part we pick up on something we discussed in the initial episode the "journey to cloud" and how do we make that easier? On this week's episode, I'm joined by Microsoft Cloud Advocate Sarah Lean to discuss Microsoft's Cloud Adoption Framework, a hugely valuable set of resources that you can take advantage of regardless of where you are in your cloud project. We discuss. What the framework is and why it exists. How it can help educate users and dispel some of the myths of the public cloud. The importance of knowing where you currently are before you start deploying more cloud. You don't know what you don't know. Where people slip up! Don't get lost in the tech remember the business case. Nuggets of wisdom. Other types of Microsoft help. As Sarah discusses in the show, the Cloud Adoption Framework is not the only way to move to the cloud, but what it does provide is a good set of reference documents that you can use to help you with your cloud projects regardless of whether you want to follow the document closely or just use it to see if there is something you've forgotten it doesn't matter it's just another useful tool in your cloud project "armoury". If you have an idea for the show or would like to appear as a guest you can contact me via podcast@techstringy.com and to catch futures episodes please subscribe. Until next time, thanks for listening. For show notes with links :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Mg

The move to the cloud is hardly a new topic, for many the value of services like Microsoft 365 have proved their worth over the opening months of 2020, having key services running in the public cloud has delivered the flexibility, scale and accessibility that it promised. Beyond that we are also starting to see ever increasing tactical use of public cloud, integration into backup and archive tools, storage, cloud-based security appliances, the list continues to grow. But what about those big enterprise core applications like SAP, the systems that are running every element of a business, are we starting to move them as well? I ask that question because of an announcement that caught my attention this week (w/c June 15th 2020) from NetApp proudly declaring they are the first to offer SAP HANA certified storage via their Cloud Volumes Service (CVS) inside of Google Cloud Platform (GCP). What I wanted to know was why? NetApp has no doubt put a lot of time, effort and money into gaining this certification, but is there an opportunity for this and are companies moving platforms as potentially complex at SAP HANA into the cloud at all? 'm happy to admit that I don't know a lot about SAP and their products but luckily I have a friend who does and he was happy to join me on this weeks show to share some of his experience. Andre Schmitz is a Senior Consultant for Datacenter Infrastructure in Germany for Bechtle and has been delivering major enterprise systems like SAP HANA for 17 years so was well placed to give me his view on the market. We cover. What is SAP HANA? Why are people struggling to shift to it? Complexity and the cloud. Is there a shift for enterprise applications to the cloud? Are NetApp's enterprise storage services a useful addition? Are they going to help with a shift to the cloud? The importance of enterprise-class storage features in the cloud. Moving to the cloud, here are some things to consider. This was Andre's podcast debut and he did a great job at sharing a wide range of experience, some insight into the challenges of having systems like SAP HANA running in the cloud and some thoughts on whether NetApp (or anyone else) offering these kinds of enterprise-class features has real value. If you have an idea for a show or would like to be a guest on a future show why not email me at podcast@techstringy.com. Until next time, thanks for listening. Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1M8

There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it has been something we have witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges, delivering remote IT at scale, stretched VPN’s, scale, flexibility, support, security, the list is long. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of “normal”, but this also presents an opportunity to us, the chance to take what we have learned over this period and take that knowledge and experience to help plan what we do next, so that next time we need to react quickly to change we can do it better. To help with the “what next” planning is a short series of shows looking at that topic, in this second part we look at the world from a user point of view and explore how we need to rethink our end-user experience. Joining me to discuss this is Tony Main of Italian end-user device company Praim as we explore how the world has changed and what have Praim and their customers learnt that can help the rest of us? Tony provides some thoughtful insights and shares some ideas that should get you thinking as we discuss. • How Remote working has changed. • Supporting our users when we’ve broken the rules. • Going back? • Did you realise enterprise tech was too tricky? • How to make enterprise IT just work. • Changing support models. • We need to simplify. • What Praim have learnt. • Managing devices like they were on the LAN. • Flexibility is key. • How the “nice to haves” have become the necessities. • Focus on the user and the data. While end-user computing devices and “thin clients” may not seem the sexiest of topics, to ensure we have the right technology foundations in the future and are giving our users a workable, reliable and secure user experience is crucial and Tony shares some valuable insight in some of the areas we need to consider. Thanks for listening. For full show notes and contact information visit :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Lw

There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it has been something we have not witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges, delivering remote IT at scale, stretched VPN's, scale, flexibility, support, security, the list is long. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of "normal", but this also presents an opportunity to us, the chance to take what we have learned over this period and use it to better plan what we do next, so that next time we need to react quickly to change we can do it better. To help with the what next conversation is a short series of shows looking at what next, we start with the public cloud, which is first on the list of most "what next" discussions. To help me to explore this first topic is first time guest to the show, but long time industry friend, Grant Caley, he is Chief Technologist for NetApp in the UK and Ireland and brings with him 20 years of experience in helping enterprises change the way they operate and of course, in most cases, this now means how they use the cloud. We dsicuss. What is a "journey to the cloud"? COVID-19 accelerating the demand. Do not throw away your datacenter good practice. Cost, cost, cost. Data is often the biggest problem in the datacentre, that does not change in the cloud. What you lose moving to the cloud. What should the areas of focus be? Be flexible. The NetApp cloud story. Building bridges. Grant provides some great insight and raises a range of crucial points when it comes to cloud, cost, security and the importance of treating your cloud infrastructure as you would your datacentre. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest why not contact me via email podcast@techstringy.com or via twitter @techstringy. Next time we talk about how to rethink the way we work from different locations, to catch that show why not subscribe. full show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Lf

Over the last few weeks the use of collaboration tools has grown exponentially as they have become critical to enterprises of all types to enable their staff to continue to work together and to keep business moving in these most challenging of times. Many of them have moved from business tools to household names, now everyone knows what a Zoom meeting is and of course, we are all familiar with the phrase "living in Microsoft Teams". While Teams itself is an excellent collaboration tool, easy for users to work with and to work together on, its backend complexity can be a challenge, especially as much of that complexity is hidden from not only users but administrators too which leads to increased risks that can impact your sensitive data assets. That problem has inspired this week's show, my guest is Stephen Nesbitt of Varonis, Steve has been with them for about a year, but before that had worked for Microsoft with a particular focus on SharePoint. Recently I recorded a video with Steve highlighting some of the challenges and risks that deploying Teams can present and I thought it would be great to get that information shared on the podcast too, so here it is! We cover. What is teams and why does it exist? Teams simplicity is part of the problem! The Teams security conundrum. What creating a Team really does? Teams "sprawl". How do you keep an eye on Teams usage? Native tools and their limitations. What Varonis can add to Teams to secure your "sensitive data". Teams is not "full of holes" but you need to know where the risk lies. Teams can both enable "transformation" and limit it – just putting it in the cloud is not enough! Over the last couple of months, I've spoken with many organisations who have rolled out Teams and have all been unaware of some of the challenges it poses, I'm hoping this podcast and Steve's eagerness to help to educate those using Teams will help all of us mitigate the risks that it presents so we can use this extremely powerful product without putting our data assets at risk. If you'd like to contact me, either with an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest you can contact me on twitter @techstringy or email the show at podcast@techstringy.com. Until next time, thanks for listening. Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1L8

Data is essential in modern business, how we store, protect, ensure it's available and portable and of course that it is compliant and meets our business and regulatory needs. To provide the kind of insight and control we need of our data in the modern enterprise requires us to think beyond how we store it, we need to be more platform focussed, ensuring that in whichever repositories we place our data they give us greater insight and control of its usage. However, to deliver things like compliance traditionally has needed multiple products, a storage location, a separate compliance tool and professional services to integrate it all together. But what if your storage could do this natively as new data was written to it? With that in mind, I was intrigued to see NetApp announce their Cloud Compliance tool an integrated compliance solution that would offer immediate native reporting to data written into their cloud storage repositories (Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Azure NetApp Files and Cloud Volumes Service)What does it do? And how can we use this kind of native, cloud based data compliance tool to deliver benefit to our enterprise? Joining me on this week's podcast are Amit Ashbel and Chilik Hochberg, both security industry veterans with around 20 years' experience prior to NetApp and now are part of a team bringing that experience to the company. In this episode we discuss. What we mean by data compliance? Changing how we see our data and its value. Data storage is not enough we need to think “platform”. Why whatever data we have we need to consider how we are handling it. The impact of a lack of visibility. Importance of native compliance. The NetApp solution. The importance of making it easy to use. I think this is hugely important topic and positive first step to building more intelligence natively into our data repositories and I'll be interested to see how Amit, Chil and the team develop this further. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover or would like to be a guest email me at podcast@techstringy.com or find me on twitter @techstringy. Thanks for listening. Full shownotes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1KY

In our increasingly data focussed world the desire to gain more insight from our data to help us to make better decisions continues to grow. This has lead to a real upsurge in the need to not only find better ways to analyse data, but also approaches that make the ability to analyse it more widespread and get tools into the hands of those inside of an enterprise who need it to help them make better decisions for their companies and customers alike. How do we go about building this kind of data analytics strategy? That's the question for this week's podcast, the second in our series looking at how we use data. This week I'm joined by Catherine Wilks, Data and Analytics Practice Lead at data specialist Slalom. Join us as we cover. *What do we mean by visualisation? *How to avoid making stepping into work seem like stepping back in time? *Are we adopting Analytics and why we should be? *How starting small can still bring big benefits. *Why it's OK to not always find something new. *How data analytics can attract talent. *5 Steps to building an analytics strategy. *The importance of a "Data Culture" Data visualisation is a fascinating area and one that is only going to become more prevalent inside of every enterprise as we all strive to find ways to get more value from our data assets. Catherine shares some fantastic tips and insight into starting the process of building your data visualisation strategy. If you have an idea for or would like to appear as a guest on the show, then drop me an email at podcast@techstringy.com To make sure you catch our next episode you can subscribe in all the usual places. Until next time, thanks for listening. Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1KP

Data, data everywhere, that seems to be the standard refrain in most businesses, we are collecting more data from more sources than ever, yet in many cases we don’t have a clear and bespoke strategy for dealing with it, how we use, store and secure data tends to be embedded in other strategies and policies. Many enterprises talk about the importance of their data and how they see it as a crucial asset, so is now the time to have a bespoke and specific data strategy? If it is, why is it? What should it include? How do we go about building one? that is the focus of this weeks show as I’m joined by returning guest Matt Watts, CTO EMEA at NetApp. Matt has been at NetApp for 15 years and during that time he has always had a great enthusiasm for understanding technology trends and that is exactly the same here as we discuss the importance of a data strategy and why now is the time for enterprises to develop theirs. In this episode we discuss. • Are we still too fixated on “boxes”? • Before we talk tech, what is the strategy? • What is driving the change in how we view data and its use? • Closing the void between business decision makers and IT • DataOPS • Stop having our data strategy dictated by the storage we have bought! • Data platforms not storage • The importance of communication • Tips for building a plan • If you are going to disrupt anyway take a step back and think As always Matt provides some fascinating insight into the development of a data strategy, why in his view it is important and why its crucial that we are taking all angles of our enterprise needs into consideration when making decisions around our data platform. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then contact me at podcast@techstringy.com Until next time, thanks for listening. Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1KJ

One of the questions that I always find interesting in the technology industry is whether the technology that industry watchers and analysts talk about and fill column inches with are the things that enterprises are deploying on a wide scale. I often feel that analysts and large tech vendors have a vision of the world that is shaped by the companies on the West coast of the USA and the very largest enterprises, there is nothing wrong at all with listening to the needs and challenges those companies face, but not all enterprises are those types of organisations and does that view of the world translate to everybody else? On this weeks show we explore exactly that question but a bit differently as this time I’m the guest! as I share with you a podcast I recorded recently with two industry friends and fellow podcasters Chris Evans and Martin Glassborow on their excellent Storage Unpacked podcast. Between us we have a wide and varied debate about what kind and how technology is used, evaluated, and bought by enterprises of all types, I hope you enjoy our chat as we discuss. • Hype V Reality • Are enterprises innovating or still trying to keep the lights on? • Technology may evolve but is it still delivered “traditionally”? • What is digital transformation? • Focus on data and outcomes • Technology for business benefit, not technologies sake • The challenge of investigating long-term technological shifts • Day two deployments, what happens after you have deployed? • Are technology business decisions still to “techie” lead? • Vendors, account management is important • Does your technology solution solve a problem that exists? As you can see, we discuss many varied topics, Chris and Martin bring a lot of experience of the IT industry and share some interesting thoughts and hopefully I contribute a little too! The show will be taking a break for a few weeks over the Easter holiday here in the UK but we will be back with some brand new (not COVID-19 related!) shows including a series on data analytics, an intro to Kubernetes and native data compliance to make sure you catch those shows then please feel free to subscribe. If you would like to be a guest or have an idea for the show then drop an email to podcast@techstringy.com Until next time, stay safe and healthy, thanks for listening.

The world finds itself in uncharted territory, gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic putting unprecedented pressure on public health and the global economy. For enterprises of all types, the challenges of trying to continue business as normal are going to be significant. I’ve been wondering how I could help, one idea is to try to share good practice and advice from those in the IT and business continuity industries on dealing with the current crisis and giving your enterprises the very best chance of successfully finding a path through these challenging times. What better way to do that than through the Tech Interviews podcast. In this special episode, we pick up on something that is a question I’ve been asked on many occasions over the last couple of weeks “with all of these remote users how do I ensure we maintain the security of our systems and data?” It’s a great question to be asking, to help me explore this topic I’ve drafted in a returning guest Amy Stokes-Waters, Amy works for Identity Experts a company that specialises in identity security who has written a handy LinkedIn article called “Secure remote working at short notice” and it was some of the key ideas in this article that I thought would be valuable to share and Amy was good enough to join me at short notice to do just that. We discuss. • The risk of people working from unusual locations with unusual devices • Pushing people outside of their comfort zones • Tips for maintaining security and effectiveness for our users. • We need security but we need people to be able to operate • Just becomes times are unusual don’t forget the basics • Importance of familiar communication • Let people know what is expected of them • Importance of using sanctioned tools for storing data • Maybe now is not the best time to come up with new ideas • VPN is not the only answer to your remote access problems • Amy’s two top tips Amy is hugely passionate on this topic and shares with us some great tips on ensuring you retain a strong security posture while enabling your users to continue to work effectively during these vastly changed times. If you’d like to talk to me professionally you can email me at pauls@gardnersystems.co.uk. If you have a topic you’d like us to cover on Tech Interviews then email me at podcast@techstringy.com or find me on twitter @techstringy. Until next time, stay safe, healthy and thanks for listening. Full show notes with links are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Kz

The world finds itself in uncharted territory, gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic putting unprecedented pressure on public health and the global economy. For enterprises of all types, the challenges of trying to continue business as normal are going to be significant. In this special episode, we discuss one of the biggest challenges that we have seen reported already and that is the robustness of remote connectivity, this goes beyond just those working from home, how are people who work in critical enterprises, who have remote locations and services that are needed and under increased pressure and demand at this time, ensure they remain stable and usable when it is very difficult to access those facilities and services when your IT Pro’s can no longer travel to them. This topic came up when this episode’s guest contacted me to ask if he could come on and share some of his experiences and of course I was happy to provide the platform. Roger Sands is CEO at Wyebot and he shares some of his experiences in helping their customers deal with this as well as some of the initiatives Wyebot have introduced to help enterprises deal with the challenges presented to them. We discuss. • The critical wi-fi challenge has moved • The need for increased remote visibility and automation • Remote working easier said than sometimes done • Monitoring and automation • It is not just the public cloud that is stressed but private services as well • Remote performance is no longer a “nice to have” • People are adapting quickly to change if we can give them the tools. • Some of the changes we are making are going to be more “permanent” • Top tips for remote working and remote locations • How Wyebot can help There is no doubt we are in unusual times and issues around remote locations and working is going to continue to be a challenge as we all readjust. Wyebot has tools that can be very valuable across several industries, but tools that are also going to be valuable in the future of how we work, not just in the short term. We'll have some more special episodes soon, until then stay healthy and thanks for listening. Full show notes :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Kp

The world finds itself in uncharted territory, gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic putting unprecedented pressure on public health and the global economy. For enterprises of all types, the challenges of trying to continue business as normal are going significant. How do we go about it? What is our business continuance strategy? What are some of the key things we should be considering and the challenges we need to overcome? I’ve been wondering over the last few days how I could help, one idea is to try to share good practice and advice from those in the IT and business continuity industries on dealing with the current crisis and giving your enterprises the very best chance of successfully finding a path through these challenging times. What better way to do that than through the Tech Interviews podcast. In this first Tech Interviews special, I speak with business continuity specialist and returning guest, Steve Lambert of Biscon, a UK based risk and business continuity consultancy to share with us their experience and tips on how delivering an effective plan for dealing with this current global crisis. We discuss. The main areas of consideration Why crisis communication is crucial The challenge of dealing with IT that has never been tested like this before Thinking about your staff – can they really work remotely? Keeping in contact Not all communication is technology! Be flexible Supplying and suppliers What things may catch you out? Keeping informed The advice is fluid, your continuity plan needs to be too. Prioritize what’s important today Make sure you learn your lessons These are certainly unprecedented challenges we are dealing with and to a degree we are all learning as we go but having a plan is hugely valuable and Steve shared some great tips, experience and advice. If you have questions about the topics covered or other areas you’d like us to cover on the podcast, then of course, you can email me at podcast@techstringy.com I’ll have some more special shows coming soon alongside the more usual content, but for the time been, stay healthy and thanks for listening. Full show notes are here https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Kl

The use of virtual desktops is seemingly always about to become the next big wave of technology, there is an industry running joke that this year will be the year of VDI (and completely coincidentally for this podcast, flexible and remote working technology has never been more in the news) but it has never quite happened, it’s not that VDI or centralised desktops aren’t deployed or remain a strategically relevant consideration, it just never quite seems to get the critical mass that it often promises too. Why hasn’t VDI become a widely adopted technology? On this week’s show, I’m joined by NetApp’s Laurence James (Products and Solutions Manager for Northern EMEA), to explore VDI, why it has not been more widely adopted up to this point and how both changing end-user computer demands, as well as more powerful and flexible technology, may be evolving just enough to drive wider virtual desktop adoption, is this finally the year of VDI? In this week’s episode, we discuss. • What is VDI? • How a changing world is driving the need for richer content to be more widely available • The $12bn market • The Changing demands of the end user “experience” • Why VDI has failed before • It’s not applications it’s end user demand • How flexible compute can make VDI investments more realistic • If VDI hasn’t been for me in the past, why would it be now? • How are vendors like NetApp helping their customers to adopt this kind of technology The centralised desktop with all the simplification of management and better control and security for our data makes a lot of sense, however it has, up to now, never quite taken off, but Loz makes some fascinating points and a strong case as to why that may be about to change, as evolving end-user demands and more flexible hardware infrastructure may just make VDI a more attractive option when we discuss our future technology and data strategies. Thanks for listening. Full show notes are here :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Kf

Modernisation is a buzzword across the IT industry, but it is more than just a technology subject, it is about changing the way you view and use technology, deliver services, products, deal with customers and drive innovation across all aspects of the enterprise and of course IT plays a part in that, but how? This week’s podcast was recorded at Microsoft’s Ignite Tour in London early in 2020 where I caught up with two of my friends from the IT industry, Ruairi McBride and Jason Benedicic to discuss modernisation across applications, datacentres and businesses and how technology providers like Microsoft are helping to enable this kind of transformational change. Amongst our topics, we discuss. *What we mean by modernisation *How and what is application modernisation *How the speed of development and delivery is key *What types of companies are investing in application modernisation *Who is modernising their datacentres? *Why it is much more than just technology refresh *Why “consumer” technology is driving enterprise thinking *Microsoft modernisation technologies *The “enterprise focussed” cloud *What is driving companies to modernise? I really enjoyed this chat and learned a lot about how and what is driving enterprises of all shapes and sizes to modernise their business practices and technologies. I hope you gain as much from the insights Ruairi and Jason provide as I did. Next week we take a fresh look at the changing face of the virtual desktop, to make sure you catch that show, why not subscribe? If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest on Tech Interviews then email me at podcast@techstringy.com Until next time, thanks for listening. Full show notes :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1K1

It’s a big week for Veeam software with the release of Version 10 of their core product set Veeam Availability Suite. Major software releases are often about much more than just a set of new features, they are about solving evolving industry and customer challenges and helping to drive forward a company strategy (I wrote a piece recently discussing this). What then are some of the drivers behind these software releases? What thinking goes into them? Why do they sometimes take a long time to come out? And why do they focus on some of the features they do? With Veeam having a major software release, I thought it would be a great time to explore some of those questions with two friends of Tech Interviews Michael Cade and Adam Bergh of Veeam Software. We discuss. • Why V10 took 3 years? • The importance or recognising the changing landscape • 5 keys of cloud data management • V10 helping deliver an overall strategy • Delivering what customers need and putting data to work • The value of close partnerships • Taking a holistic approach • Be better than “good enough” I’m a fan of what Veeam do both as a software solution but more importantly as a company with a very clear strategic direction and I think what shows in my chat with Michael and Adam is how Veeam have a very clear direction and that V10 is more than just a software release but is part of a much bigger picture. I hope you find their insight useful. Thanks for listening. Show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1JP

When we deploy technology into an organisation it’s important we focus on the right thing, technology shouldn’t be deployed for its own sake, it is there to serve a purpose, deliver an outcome and provide a good and useful experience for our customers and end-users. But how do we know that our technology is providing that? Understanding our user experience is not something that is easy to do, but Why does it matter? Why is a good end-user experience important? And do we really need to care? They are some of the questions we cover on this week’s podcast as we examine the idea of Digital Customer Experience monitoring with Catchpoint founder and CEO Medhi Daoudi. He formed Catchpoint 11 years ago but has spent most of his career working in technology monitoring and shares with us that experience and how you can build a strategy for ensuring that both your customers and employee experience with your technology is a positive one. We discuss; • What is digital experience monitoring? • The positive experience monitoring can deliver. • How more complexity is driving more sophisticated monitoring. • Monitor outcomes, not things, the “outcome economy”. • The increasing drive to monitor the employee experience. • Examples of what happens when we don’t monitor employees experience. • How to start your digital experience monitoring plan. • The importance of proactively identifying issues and customer experience. Mehdi shared some great ideas and certainly provided a lot of food for thought during our chat on this increasingly important topic. Full show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1JK Thanks for listening.

The move to the cloud continues at a pace as more organisations look to harness cloud-like capabilities like scale, flexibility and commercial value into their business operations. These companies are now more likely to be more "traditional" types that already have a datacentre and an enterprise IT environment, finding ways to tactically use the cloud in these environments is high on the priory list for IT teams across many types of business. One interesting consideration for helping with this integration is looking at how to exploit more traditional enterprise technology to ease adoption and integration and that is the premise of this week's show. To discuss this I'm joined by Kelly Goolsby a Presales Solutions Architect at Liquidweb, working with customers to help them find the right technology to meet their changing business demands, he has 17 years in the IT industry under his belt spent predominately in the cloud and hosting space. During the show we cover; Cloud, more than just someone else's computer? Is cloud about more than a technology shift? The innovation driver to cloud adoption The shrinking datacentre The VMware reality and meeting customers where they are Private versus Public clouds and the process to help decide The value of private cloud partnerships Kelly's experience in the area opened up a really interesting chat and makes some great points and provides a fascinating insight into the topic. Thanks for listening. For full show notes visit https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1JF

It’s part two of our new year look ahead last week we looked at areas such as tech company consolidation, more acceptance of the move to cloud and maybe even the death of blockchain. In this second part, I catch up with two more respected industry figures Rick Vanover and John Nicholson. Rick and John are highly experienced technologists and provide some fascinating thoughts on what the next 12 months may bring. We cover topics from 5G networks, accepting that hybrid cloud is OK and Kubernetes moving from hype to adoption. Background on our guests. Rick Vanover @RickVanover Rick is Senior Director of Product Strategy at Veeam and a well-known figure across the technology community. He’s now entering his 10th year at Veeam and has spent much of his career in the data management and protection field. John Nicholson @lost_signal John is part of the technical marketing team at VMware, focussing on their HCI and VSAN technologies, also a well know tech community figure, John co-hosts the excellent Virtually Speaking podcast (find it here you can also contact the show podcast@vmware.com) which covers all things VMware as well as a broader look at the technology industry. Next week we look at the part VMware plays in building cloud solutions, public, private and hybrid with my guest Kelly Goolsby. To get that you can subscribe to the show in all good homes of podcasts, now including Spotify. If you would like to be a guest or have an idea for the show, then email podcast@techstringy.com Thanks for listening. Full show notes here: https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Js

A new year a new set of Tech Interviews podcasts for you to enjoy. In our first two shows of 2020 I chat with five people from across the technology industry to find out what trends, technologies and ideas they expect to see shape the next 12 months in enterprise IT. In this first episode, I speak with Chris Evans, Sarah Lean and Greg Knieriemen to see how they think 2020 is going to shape up. In our conversations it's interesting to see a number of subjects that run as common threads, data and cloud is at the core of much of the thinking as most of the contributors feel that both better understanding and a growing maturity of these technologies and what they can deliver will see them continue to dominate as topics throughout the year. Background on the guests; Chris Evans - Chris is a well known and respected industry analyst who can be found hosting the excellent Storage Unpacked podcast as well as some fascinating analysis, particularly on the enterprise storage market, on his website architecting.it. Sarah Lean - Sarah is a cloud advocate at Microsoft and spends her time working with the technical community to understand how cloud can better meet the demands of the modern business. Greg Knieriermen - Greg is a wearer of many hats at NetApp, but mainly spends his time advocating NetApp strategy to the wider community, a well known IT community figure, Greg is the co-host of the excellent Go Your Way podcast with Phoebe Goh. Some interesting insights from all our guests. Next week in part two, I speak with two more people from the technology industry about what they think 2020 has instore for Enterprise IT. If you would like to be a guest or have an idea for the show, then email podcast@techstringy.com Thanks for listening. Full show notes are here : https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1Jp

One of the biggest technology changes of the last 5-10 years for consumers as well as businesses has been the growth in the use of Wi-Fi. Today we almost feel it is our right to be connected to high performance, resilient and reliable wireless infrastructure so that we can remain online doing everything from updating social media to carrying out conference calls, the demand for wireless is endless. Wi-Fi also presents us with new challenges, its complex nature, amount of devices and speed of growth are making managing and delivering reliable and enterprise-class wireless increasingly difficult, how then do we look to ensure the quality of our wireless networks to meet these business mission-critical demands? That is the topic of this week's podcast as I chat with Roger Sands, CEO at Wyebot. Roger has 25 years' experience in the IT industry with the last 15 of those spent working in the Wi-Fi space, in that time he has seen a huge growth in demand and of course a massive growth in complexity and challenge of delivering Wi-Fi to our modern connectivity hungry world. We chat about; The trend to "mission-critical" Wi-Fi Is Wi-Fi architecture "growing up"? Wi-Fi complexity presenting new challenges Little problems cause big issues The security risk Importance of Wi-Fi intelligence to augment our IT teams The Wyebot approach Why you need Wi-Fi assurance One of the great values of doing this show is learning about something new and this chat with Roger was a great example of that, the critical nature of Wi-Fi was not something I'd considered and in my experience is still considered a nice to have benefit rather than core infrastructure, Roger shares some great insights into why that needs to change and how to do it and I hope you found it as useful as I did. Thanks for listening. For show notes :- https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1J3