AI is getting real, moving out of academia and hyperscale and into the enterprise. Businesses are adopting AI in strategically, and IT companies are deploying AI technologies in their products. This podcast focuses on practical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the modern enterprise datacenter and cloud infrastructure. Hosted by Stephen Foskett of GestaltIT.com, Andy Thurai of theFieldCTO.com, and Chris Grundemann of Myriad 360.
Much of what we take for granted in the IT industry was seeded from HPC and the national labs. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Gary Grider, HPC Division Leader at Los Alamos National Labs, discussing leading-edge technology with Scott Shadley of Solidigm and Stephen Foskett. The Efficient Mission Centric Computing Consortium (EMC3) is working to bring technologies like sparse memory access and computational storage to life. These technologies are designed for today's massive scale data sets, but Moore's Law suggests that this scale might be coming soon to AI applications and beyond. The goal of the national labs is to work 5-10 years ahead of the market to lay the foundations for what will be needed in the future. Specific products like InfiniBand, Lustre, pNFS, and more were driven forward by these labs as well. Some promising future directions include 3D chip scaling, analog and biological computing, and quantum chips.Guest: Gary Grider, HPC Division Leader at Los Alamos National LabsHosts: Stephen Foskett, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event SeriesJeniece Wnorowski, Head of Influencer Marketing at Solidigm Scott Shadley, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at SolidigmFollow Tech Field Day on LinkedIn, on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon. Visit the Tech Field Day website for more information on upcoming events. For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to the dedicated website and follow the show on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon.
AI applications have unique requirements for server infrastructure, so a new platform is required. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Mark Klarzynski of PEAK:AIO discussing their AI-specific software-defined storage platform with Jeniece Wnorowski of Solidigm and Stephen Foskett. With a background in enterprise storage, the PEAK:AIO team evaluated the needs of AI users with a goal of delivering a simple and integrated solution that could scale to support the most demanding applications. The company began working in healthcare to support distributed applications before finding similar use cases in research and manufacturing. Rather than focusing on advancing technology and then finding a use case, Mark advocates focusing on the needs and possibilities and bringing technology to solve these problems. Edge servers are constrained in terms of power, cooling, and cost, and this requires new thinking, as well as new software and hardware approaches, to continue to progress.Guest: Mark Klarzynski, Cofounder and Chief Strategy Officer at PEAK:AIOHosts: Stephen Foskett, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event SeriesJeniece Wnorowski, Head of Influencer Marketing at Solidigm Scott Shadley, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at SolidigmFollow Tech Field Day on LinkedIn, on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon. Visit the Tech Field Day website for more information on upcoming events. For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to the dedicated website and follow the show on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon.
Much of the conversation on AI is focused on power consumption and chatbots, but there are so many other positive applications for the technology. This episode of Utilizing Tech, sponsored by Solidigm, welcomes Keith Bradley, VP of IT at Nature Fresh Farms, discussing with Stephen Foskett and Jeniece Wnorowski how they use AI to improve crop yields and plant performance. Farming has traditionally evaluated crop performance on a large-scale basis, but AI enables Nature Fresh Farms to much more carefully tailor care to the needs of the plants. Once a tomato or pepper has been grown, Nature Fresh can use AI to classify, package, and store produce for sale. This requires a great deal of storage for active plants, and Nature Fresh Farms has standardized on solid state storage because of the incredible combination of performance and reliability it brings. It wouldn't be possible to process this much data at the edge without advanced SSDs, processors, and servers.Guest: Keith Bradley, Vice President of Information Technology at Nature Fresh FarmsHosts: Stephen Foskett, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event SeriesJeniece Wnorowski, Head of Influencer Marketing at Solidigm Scott Shadley, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at SolidigmFollow Tech Field Day on LinkedIn, on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon. Visit the Tech Field Day website for more information on upcoming events. For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to the dedicated website and follow the show on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon.
As the use of AI spreads outside the cloud and datacenter, data management and protection has never been more important. This episode of Utilizing Tech, sponsored by Solidigm, features Rick Vanover of Veeam discussing the importance of data protection with hosts Stephen Foskett and Scott Shadley. Data protection for backup and security is familiar in the datacenter but is not always considered at the edge. But as AI and sensors push data to the edge, we have to consider how to protect and manage it. Edge AI systems combine elements of endpoint, datacenter, and cloud technologies and often have limited or intermittent connectivity, creating a differentiated platform that challenges data protection software. Mixing these capabilities to build a useful platform is the key challenge for data protection at the edge. Data protection at the edge is different, with continuity and recovery from outages and attacks more important than long-term preservation of data, and IT pros are beginning to adjust their perspectives on the requirements for these systems as well.Guest:Rick Vanover, Vice President of Product Strategy at VeeamHosts: Stephen Foskett, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event SeriesScott Shadley, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at SolidigmFollow Tech Field Day on LinkedIn, on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon. Visit the Tech Field Day website for more information on upcoming events. For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to the dedicated website and follow the show on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon.
Successful edge infrastructure must be incredibly reliable and adaptable, especially in the AI age. This episode of Utilizing Tech focuses on the ultra-converged infrastructure offering with George Crump of Verge IO joining Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. Edge environments often have a diversity of hardware, especially as nodes are upgraded and replaced, and this can pose serious issues when building reliable infrastructure. The ultra-converged infrastructure concept would allow nearly any hardware to be integrated into a unified platform with simple management and scalability. As AI applications are deployed at the edge, organizations will need this level of integration to ensure they are reliable and secure. As more data is collected, more storage is needed at the edge; this makes it even more important to have advanced storage management for data protection and resilience.This season of Utilizing Tech is presented by Solidigm. For more information on Solidigm, head to their website and learn more about their AI efforts through the dedicated site section. Follow Solidigm on X/Twitter and LinkedIn.Guest: Guest: George Crump, Chief Marketing Officer at Verge.ioHosts: Stephen Foskett, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event SeriesJeniece Wnorowski, Head of Influencer Marketing at Solidigm Follow Tech Field Day on LinkedIn, on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon. Visit the Tech Field Day website for more information on upcoming events. For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to the dedicated website and follow the show on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon.
Modern AI servers are loaded with GPUs, but spend too much time waiting for data. This episode of Utilizing Tech, focused on AI at the Edge with Solidigm, features Kelley Osburn of Graid Technology discussing the latest in data protection and acceleration with Scott Shadley and Stephen Foskett. As more businesses invest in GPUs to train and deploy AI models, they are discovering how difficult it is to keep these expensive compute clusters fed. GPUs are idled when data retrieval is too slow, and failures or errors could prove catastrophic. Graid not only protects data but also accelerates access, allowing users to achieve the full potential of their AI server investment.Guest: Kelley Osburn, Senior Director of OEM and Channel Business Development at Graid TechnologyHosts: Stephen Foskett, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event SeriesScott Shadley, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at SolidigmFollow Tech Field Day on LinkedIn, on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon. Visit the Tech Field Day website for more information on upcoming events. For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to the dedicated website and follow the show on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon.
IT architecture is evolving rapidly as AI moves to the edge. This season on Utilizing Tech, Stephen Foskett and co-hosts Scott Shadley and Jeniece Wnorowski of Solidigm will explore how next-generation AI infrastructure is revolutionizing industries from healthcare to high-performance computing. With insights from leading companies Verge IO, Graid Technology, and WEKA as well as practitioners like Nature Fresh Farms and Los Alamos Nation Labs, we will show how the latest advancements in storage, data protection, and virtualization that are enabling AI to thrive beyond traditional data centers. Join us every Monday as we bring you expert discussions on the future of edge AI.This season of Utilizing Tech is presented by Solidigm. For more information on Solidigm, head to their website and learn more about their AI efforts through the dedicated site section. Follow Solidigm on X/Twitter and LinkedIn.Hosts: Stephen Foskett, President of the Tech Field Day Business Unit and Organizer of the Tech Field Day Event SeriesJeniece Wnorowski, Head of Influencer Marketing at Solidigm Scott Shadley, Leadership Narrative Director and Evangelist at SolidigmFollow Tech Field Day on LinkedIn, on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon. Visit the Tech Field Day website for more information on upcoming events. For more episodes of Utilizing Tech, head to the dedicated website and follow the show on X/Twitter, on Bluesky, and on Mastodon.
As practical applications of AI are rolled out, they are increasingly being deployed on-premises at scale. We are wrapping up this season of Utilizing Tech with Solidigm focused on AI Data Infrastructure by discussing practical deployment considerations with Ariel Pisetzky, VP of Information Technology and Cyber at Taboola in a discussion with Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. Companies like Taboola are built on data and have been deploying AI-driven applications for years. Generative AI brings new capabilities but is part of a spectrum of solutions that leverage data to produce results for customers. As applications mature, many companies are looking to bring them back on-premises, and this trend will likely accelerate given the cost of AI infrastructure as-a-service offerings. Owned infrastructure can also deliver beyond expected lifespans, representing a potential windfall for businesses that can continue to use deprerciated hardware. This is especially true of large flash drives, which have proven much more reliable than initially predicted. Although it is tempting to buy the biggest, fastest infrastructure to extend the lifespan of equipment, Pisetzky recommends focusing on equipment that is flexible and can be re-purposed in other ways in the future. Server storage is unique in that it is easy to upgrade and replace it in place, even hot-swapping drives, and large lives have a very long lifespan. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/ Guest: Ariel Pisetzky, VP of Information Technology and Cyber, Taboola: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariel-pisetzky/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,
Modern AI infrastructure has exposed the importance of reliability and predictability of storage in addition to performance. This episode of Utilizing Tech, presented by Solidigm, features Kelley Osburn of Graid Technology discussing the challenges of maximizing performance and resiliency of storage for AI with Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. AI servers are optimized for machine learning processing, and Graid Technology SupremeRAID offloads processing to GPUs similarly to the way these massively-parallel processors offload ML processing. They also have a peer-to-peer DMA feature to direct the data directly to the processor rather than forcing all data to pass through a single processor or channel. There is a need for RAID software at many spots in the data pipeline, from ingestion and preparation to processing and consolidation, and each requires performance and availability. There are many applications that require maximum performance and capacity without impacting the host CPU, including military, medical research and diagnostics, and financial, in addition to AI processing. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/ Guest: Kelley Osburn, Senior Director at Graid Technology: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelleyosburn/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,
Many of the largest-scale data storage environments use Ceph, an open source storage system, and are now connecting this to AI. This episode of Utilizing Tech, sponsored by Solidigm, features Dan van der Ster, CTO of Clyso, discussing Ceph for AI Data with Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. Ceph began in research and education but today is widely used as well in finance, entertainment, and commerce. All of these use cases require massive scalability and extreme reliability despite using commodity storage components, but Ceph is increasingly able to deliver high performance as well. AI workloads require scalable metadata performance as well, which is an area that Ceph developers are making great strides. The software has also proved itself adaptable to advanced hardware, including today's large NVMe SSDs. As data infrastructure development has expanded from academia to HPC to the cloud and now AI, it's important to see how the community is embracing and improving the software that underpins today's compute stack. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/ Guest: Dan van der Ster, CTO at CLYSO and Ceph Executive Council Member: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-vanderster/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,
As the volume of data supporting AI applications grows ever larger, it's critical to deliver scalable performance without overlooking power efficiency. This episode of Utilizing Tech, sponsored by Solidigm, brings Chris Gladwin, CEO and co-founder of Ocient, to talk about scalable and efficient data platforms for AI with Jeniece Wnorowski and Stephen Foskett. Ocient has developed a new data analytics stack focused on scalability with energy efficiency for ultra-large data analytics applications. At scale, applications need to incorporate trillions of data points, and it is not just desirable but necessary to enable this without losing sight of energy consumption. Ocient leverages flash storage to reduce power consumption and increase performance but also moves data processing closer to the storage to reduce power consumption further. This type of integrated storage and compute would not be possible without flash, and reflects the architecture of modern processors, which locate memory on-package with compute. Ocient is already popular in telco, e-commerce, and automotive, and the scale of data required by AI applications is similar, especially as concepts like retrieval-augmented generation are implemented. The conversation around datacenter, cloud, and AI energy usage is coming to the fore, and companies must address the environmental impact of everything we do. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/ Guest: Chris Gladwin, CEO and Cofounder, Ocient: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-gladwin-7ba42b/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,
Cutting-edge AI infrastructure needs all the performance it can get, but these environments must also be efficient and reliable. This episode of Utilizing Tech, brought to you by Solidigm, features Davide Villa of Xinnor discussing the value of modern software RAID and NVMe SSDs with Ace Stryker and Stephen Foskett. Xinnor xiRAID leverages the resources of the server, including the AVX instruction set found on modern CPUs, to combine NVMe SSDs, providing high performance and reliability inside the box. Modern servers have multiple internal drive slots, and all of these drives must be managed and protected in the event of failure. This is especially important in AI servers, since an ML training run can take weeks, amplifying the risk of failure. Software RAID can be used in many different implementations, with various file systems, including NFS and high-performance networks like InfiniBand. And it can be tuned to maximize performance for each workload. Xinnor can help customers to tune the software to maximize reliability of SSDs, especially with QLC flash, by adapting the chunk size and minimizing write amplification. Xinnor also produces a storage platform solution called xiSTORE that combines xiRAID with the Lustre FS clustered file system, which is already popular in HPC environments. Although many environments can benefit from a full-featured storage platform, others need a software RAID solution to combine NVMe SSDs for performance and reliability. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing, AI Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/ Davide Villa, Chief Revenue Officer at Xinnor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davide-villa-b1256a2/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,
Organizations seeking to build an infrastructure stack for AI training need to know how the data platform is going to perform. This episode of Utilizing Tech, presented by Solidigm, includes Curtis Anderson, Co-Chair of the Storage Working Group at MLCommons, discussing storage benchmarking with Ace Stryker and Stephen Foskett. MLCommons is an industry consortium seeking to improve AI solutions through joint engineering. The organization publishes the well-known MLPerf benchmark, which now includes practical metrics for storage solutions. The goal of MLPerf Storage is to answer the key question: Will a given data infrastructure support AI training of a given scale. The organization encourages storage vendors to run the benchmarks against their solutions to prove the suitability to support specific workloads. The AI industry is already shifting its focus from maximum scale and performance to more-balances infrastructure using alternative GPUs, accelerators, and even CPUs, and is increasingly concerned about price and environmental impact. The question of data preparation is also rising, and this generally uses a different CPU-focused solution. MLPerf Storage is focused on training today and will soon address data preparation, though this can be quite different for each data set. The next MLPerf Storage benchmark opens soon, and we encourage all data infrastructure companies to get involved and submit their own performance numbers. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing, AI Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/ Guest: Curtis Anderson, Co-Chair MLCommons Storage Working Group: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtis-anderson-174aa/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,
Model training seriously stresses data infrastructure, but preparing that data to be used is a much more difficult challenge. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Subramanian Kartik of VAST Data discussing the broad data pipeline with Jeniece Wnorowski of Solidigm and Stephen Foskett. The first step in building an AI model is collecting, organizing, tagging, and transforming data. Yet this data is spread around the organization in databases, data lakes, and unstructured repositories. The challenge of building a data pipeline is familiar to most businesses, since a similar process is required in analytics, business intelligence, observability, and simulation, but generative AI applications have an insatiable appetite for data. These applications also demand extreme levels of storage performance, and only flash SSDs can meet this demand. A side benefit is the improvements in power consumption and cooling versus hard disk drives, and this is especially true as massive SSDs come to market. Ultimately the success of generative AI will drive greater collection and processing of data on the inferencing side, perhaps at the edge, and this will drive AI data infrastructure further. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/ Guest: Subramanian Kartik, Ph. D, Global Systems Engineering Lead at VAST Data: https://www.linkedin.com/in/subramanian-kartik-ph-d-1880835/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,
Analysts and press spend a lot of time talking about specs and performance numbers, so it's always a treat when we get to talk to people who are testing and using these products. This episode of Utilizing Tech is focused on AI Data Infrastructure and features Jordan Ranous from StorageReview and is co-hosted by Stephen Foskett and Ace Stryker from our sponsor, Solidigm. StorageReview has constricted an experimental environment focused on astrophotography as a way to demonstrate AI applications in challenging edge environments. Their setup included a ruggedized Dell server, NVIDIA GPU, and Solidigm SSDs. This is the same sort of setup found at edge compute environments in retail, manufacturing, and remote use cases. StorageReview benchmarks storage devices by profiling real-world applications and building representative infrastructure to test. When it comes to GPUs, the goal is to keep these expensive processors operating at maximum capacity through optimal network and storage throughput. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing, AI Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/ Guest: Jordan Ranous, AI, Hardware, & Advanced Workloads Specialist at StorageReview.com: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jranous/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingTech, #Sponsored, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,
Great AI needs excellent data infrastructure, in terms of capacity, performance, and efficiency. This episode of Utilizing Tech serves as a preview of season 7, brought to you by Solidigm, and features co-hosts Jeniece Wnorowski and Ace Stryker along with Stephen Foskett. Solidigm's partners are discovering just how important it is to optimize every element of the Ai infrastructure stack. With ever-larger AI datacenters being built, efficient storage can make a big difference, from power and cooling to physical density to performance. As we will hear throughout season 7, different AI environments will need specialized data infrastructure, from the edge to the cloud. With retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) emerging as a new trend in AI, it makes high-performance even more important at run-time. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Jeniece Wnorowski, Datacenter Product Marketing Manager at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeniecewnorowski/ Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingTech, #AIDataInfrastructure, #AI, @SFoskett, @TechFieldDay, @UtilizingTech, @Solidigm,
We knew that 2024 would be the year of AI right from the start, but this season of the podcast has seen incredible development and change. This final episode of Utilizing Tech Season 6 features hosts Frederic Van Haren, Allyson Klein, and Stephen Foskett discussing the current state of AI infrastructure half-way through 2024. In addition to AI Field Day, we experienced NVIDIA GTC and numerous product introductions over the last few months. It's truly an ecosystem play now, with every company showing how well they can partner to build AI infrastructure. At the same time, a few superusers of AI are responsible for the basic models, including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, and of course OpenAI and the other dedicated generative AI firms. The key to bringing this to the enterprise market is transfer learning, which will see a few base models tuned and trained for specific use cases. This season saw a range of guests discussing storage, data platforms, connectivity, and application development, and every one is focused on delivering practical AI solutions in the enterprise. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Allyson Klein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/ Frederic Van Haren: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingAI, #UtilizingTech, #YearofAI, @UtilizingTech, @TechFieldDay, @TheFuturumGroup, @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @TechAllyson,
Both AI and quantum computing seemed entirely theoretical just a few years ago, yet generative AI is everywhere today. This episode of Utilizing Tech considers the promise of quantum computing generally and the applicability of this technology in AI with Dr. Bob Sutor of The Futurum Group, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. One big challenge for quantum computing is the difficulty of storing data for calculations, a severe limitation for using the technology in AI. But there is the possibility of pairing classical computers with quantum processors to bring the best of both concepts. Both AI and quantum computing deal with linear algebra, so there is an affinity between the technologies, but it is likely that each will find use cases in different areas. Ultimately there is still a lot of development to do but quantum technology shows great promise in AI and beyond. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Alastair Cooke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alastaircooke/ Guest: Bob Sutor, Vice President and Practice Lead od Emerging Technologies at The Futurum Group: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobsutor/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @TechFieldDay, @SFoskett, @DemitasseNZ, @TheFuturumGroup, #UtilizingAI, #AI,
As we consider the impact of AI on modern applications, we should consider the ways that this technology will improve these products. This episode of Utilizing Tech brings Matthew Wallace, CTO of Kamiwaza AI, to discuss the adoption of AI in application development with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. Large SaaS providers were the first to add AI-powered features but this technology is rapidly coming to market across the spectrum of applications. Matthew likens this to the evolution from spreadsheets to SaaS tools and cloud, which was a similar revolution. He mentions tools like ?, Cursor, Llama2, Mixtral, and more. We also discuss retrieval-automated generation (RAG), which enables LLMs to bring in external data at run time. We must also consider the source of the data, both in training and RAG, and questions of sovereignty, privacy, copyright, and safety. Looking forward, Matthew expects companies to customize their own models based on use case specific data. Looking forward, we expect new frameworks and models to be adopted rapidly to bring maturity and reliability to AI in enterprise applications throughout 2024. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Allyson Klein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/ Guest: Matthew Wallace, CTO and Cofounder of KamiwazaAI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewwallaceco/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @KamiwazaAI, @TechFieldDay, #AIFD4, #AI, #UtilizingAI,
AI is accelerating application development and modernization in many ways, but developers are just ramping up their use of the technology. This episode of Utilizing Tech includes Paul Nashawaty, who focuses on application development at The Futurum Group, discussing this topic with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. Use cases for AI include documentation, chatbots, data integration, programming co-pilots, and more. Regardless of how AI is used, organizations must accept that they are ultimately responsible for the products and outputs produced. Accelerating testing and thus the entire DevOps release cycle is one area where AI is making incredible growth. Another popular concept is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) which brings existing datasets to generative AI to improve results. There is currently a lack of confidence in AI-based solutions and concern about the complexity and level of effort required to bring them to market, so vendors must help make deployment easier and better integrated. Product vendors are addressing this by delivering solutions with partners and popular platforms and frameworks. Open source tools and open data are also helping to move AI technologies forward. Developers want invisible infrastructure and platforms that just work, and the emerging AI PC segment promises more processing power on the desktop. 2024 is shaping up to be the year of AI in application development. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Allyson Klein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/ Paul Nashawaty, Practice Lead, Application Development Modernization at The Futurum Group: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulnashawaty/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingAI, #AppDev, #AI, @TheFuturumGroup, @GestaltIT, @TechFieldDay, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @PNashawaty,
We are at a turning point, as AI has matured from theoretical experimentation to practical application. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, Neeloy Bhattacharyya joins Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett to discuss how VAST Data's customers and partners are making practical use of AI. Data is the key to successful AI-powered applications, and VAST Data supports both unstructured and structured data sets. Neeloy emphasizes the interactive nature of AI application development and the flexibility required to support this. He also discusses the need for structured data to support LLMs and the challenges of keeping these up to date and synchronized. One of the biggest issues in deploying AI applications is the complexity inherent in these systems. That's why it's heartening to see companies working together to created integrations and standardized platforms to make AI easier to deploy. Collaboration is the key to making AI practical. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Allyson Klein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allysonklein/ Guest: Neeloy Bhattacharyya, Director of AI/HPC Solutions Engineering at VAST Data: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neeloybhattacharyya/ Follow Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech Tech Field Day Website: https://www.TechFieldDay.com LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/Tech-Field-Day X/Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/TechFieldDay Tags: #UtilizingAI, #AI, #Data, @VAST_Data,
Ultra Ethernet promises to tune Ethernet for the needs of specialized workloads, including HPC and AI, from the lowest hardware to the software stack. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Dr. J Metz, Steering Committee Chair of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, discussing this new technology with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. The process of tuning Ethernet begins with a study of the profile and workloads to be served to identify the characteristics needed to support it. The group focuses on scale-out networks for large-scale applications like AI and HPC. Considerations include security, latency, ordering, and scalability. The goal is not to replace PCIe, CXL, or fabrics like NVLink but to extend Ethernet to address the connectivity and performance needs in an open standardized way. But Ultra Ethernet is more than hardware; the group is also building software features including a Libfabric interface and are working with OCP, DMTF, SNIA, and other industry groups. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/ Guest: J Metz, Chair of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium and SNIA, Technical Director at AMD: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmetz/
Everyone uses AI today, whether they know it or not, and it's critical for users of this technology to understand its capability and limitations. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Chris Grundemann, a fellow podcast host and Tech Field Day delegate, talking the many ways we use AI every day. Like Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett, Chris uses AI to assist with content creation in many ways, from summarization and organization of data to image generation. Content creators are using AI tools like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and more to process data, but we all agree that it's best to spend time and effort to refine the output, especially when it comes to tone and voice. We are also using AI based tools for coding and structuring data, especially interactively. Although some have suggested that AI will replace content creators or coders, the technology is instead democratizing access and making it easier to use on a daily basis. It also makes computing more available to those who were previously locked out, expanding the impact of the technology we have spent decades creating. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/ Guest: Chris Grundemann, Managing Director at Grundemann Solutions: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgrundemann/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT #UtilizingAI #Storage #AI #Datacenter #Hyperscale @UtilizingTech
Many people involved in artificial intelligence don't spend much time considering storage infrastructure. That's the topic of this episode of Utilizing AI, which features Ace Stryker of Solidigm discussing the role of flash storage in AI infrastructure with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Considering the cost of GPUs and the rest of the AI stack, idle time is the enemy. That's why it's critical to have a low-latency storage layer to support tasks like training. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/ Guest: Ace Stryker, Director of Product Marketing at Solidigm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acestryker/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingAI #FlashStorage #AI @Solidigm @UtilizingTech
AI training is a uniquely data-hungry application, and it requires a special data pipeline to keep expensive GPUs fed. This episode of Utilizing Tech focuses on the data platform for machine learning, featuring Molly Pressley of Hammerspace along with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Nothing is worse than idle hardware, especially when it comes to expensive GPUs intended for ML training. Performance is important, but parallel access and access to multiple systems is just as important. Building an AI training environment requires identifying and eliminating bottlenecks at every layer, but many systems are simply not capable of scaling to the extent required by the largest GPU clusters. But a data pipeline goes way beyond storage: Training requires checkpoints, metadata, and access to different data points. And different models have unique requirements as well. Ultimately, AI applications require a flexible data pipeline not just high-performance storage. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/ Guest: Molly Presley, Head of Global Marketing at Hammerspace: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollyjpresley/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingAI #AI #AITraining @Hammerspace_Inc @UtilizingTech
AI is powering breakthroughs across all domains. In this episode of Utilizing AI Podcast brought to you by Tech Field Day, part of The Futurum Group, David Kanter, Founder and Executive Director of MLCommons, joins hosts, Stephen Foskett and Frederic Van Haren, to talk about MLCommons' role in driving valuable AI solutions, and helping organizations overcome the challenges around AI safety. MLCommons' set of benchmarks provides transparent ratings and reviews of a wide range of products guiding buyers towards better purchase decisions. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/ Guest: David Kanter, Founder and Executive Director, MLCommons: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanterd/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingTech #AI #MLPerf #UtilizingAI #AISafety @MLCommons @UtilizingTech
AI is all about data, so it is no surprise that enterprises are deploying their own private AI inside the firewall. This episode of Utilizing Tech brings Chris Wolf, Global Head of AI and Advanced Services at VMware by Broadcom, to discuss private AI with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Companies looking to deploy AI are finding that it doesn't require nearly as much hardware as expected, software is widely available, and are reluctant to trust sensitive data to a service provider. VMware by Broadcom is deploying their own private AI code assist, keeping proprietary software and standards inside the firewall. But the solution also helps the AI team be more agile and responsive to the needs of the business and customers. One of the first use cases they found for private AI was customer support, and this is tightly integrated with internal documentation and sources to ensure valid responses. The biggest challenge is to integrate unstructured data, which can be spread across many locations, and this is actively being investigated by companies like Broadcom as well as projects like LlamaIndex. VMware has contributed back to the open source community, notably with the Ray workload scheduler, open source models, and related projects. It's important to build community and long-term engagement and support for open source as well, and this is in keeping with the overall trends in the AI community. Organizations looking to get started with private AI should consider the VMware by Broadcom reference architecture, which incorporates best practices at a smaller scale and pick a use case that provides immediate value. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/ Chris Wolf, Global Head of AI and Advanced Services at VMware by Broadcom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cswolf/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingAI, #AI, #PrivateAI, @VMware, @Broadcom, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren,
Data is the foundation on which AI models are built, and integration of enterprise data will be the key to generative AI applications. This episode of Utilizing Tech brings Nick Magnuson and Clive Bearman from Qlik to discuss the integration of data and AI with Frederic Van Haren and Stephen Foskett. Enterprises sometimes worry that their data will never be ready for AI or that they will feed models with too much low-quality data, and overcoming this issue is one of the first hurdles. Another application for machine learning is improving data quality, organizing and tagging unstructured data for applications. The concept of curated data is an interesting one, since it promises to elevate the value of enterprise data. But what if a flood of data causes the model to make the wrong connections? If data is to be a product it must be profiled, tagged, and organized, and ML can help make this happen. The trend of generative AI is driving budgets and priorities to make data more useful and organized, but even unstructured data streams can be valuable. The application of large language models to structured data is promising as well, since it enables people to query these data sets even if they lack the background and skills to construct queries. Hosts: Stephen Foskett, Organizer of Tech Field Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Frederic Van Haren, CTO and Founder of HighFens, Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredericvharen/ Guests: Nick Magnuson, Head of AI, Qlik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-magnuson-0a253931/ Clive Bearman, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Qlik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clivebearman/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT
In the two years since we focused on AI on this podcast, OpenAI added a simple conversational interface to their deep-learning model and AI has exploded on society. This season of Utilizing Tech focuses on practical applications for artificial intelligence and features co-hosts Frederic Van Haren and Mark Beccue along with Stephen Foskett. In this episode we return to AI with a look back at the incredible impact that generative AI has had on society. Humans traditionally interfaced with machines using keyboard and mouse, touch and gesture, but ChatGPT changed all that by enabling people to communicate with computers verbally. But this is just one of many potential AI model components that can be used to build business applications. The true power of generative AI will be realized when these other components appear, and when they are able to integrate custom data. We will also see innovation in the AI infrastructure stack, from GPUs to NPUs to CPUs, storage and data platforms, and even client devices. Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT X/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @TheFuturumGroup, @SFoskett, @FredericVHaren, @FutureBec, #UtilizingAI, #AI, #GenerativeAI, #AINetworking,
As we've discussed all season on Utilizing Edge, innovation is coming from all directions, including hardware, software, and applications. This special crossover episode of the On-Premise IT and Utilizing Tech podcasts features Edge Field Day delegates Brian Knudtson, Ned Bellavance, and Jody Lemoine discussing their perspectives about edge innovation with Stephen Foskett. The primary drivers at the edge are integration, efficiency, and connectivity, as well as the unique needs of the applications there. Starting with hardware, customers are headed in two directions, with more enterprise availability features deployed in some locations and less-capable hardware in others, both in terms of compute and networking. At the software level, most edge infrastructure is hyper-converged, meaning that multiple layers of the stack are integrated in software and managed as one. Although intended as an application platform, Kubernetes is being deployed as a packaging abstraction and distribution solution at the edge. Host: Stephen Foskett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sfoskett/ Guests: Ned Bellavance: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ned-bellavance/ Brian Knudtson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bknudtson/ Jody Lemoine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodyl/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #EFD2, #Edge, #UtilizingEdge, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @SFoskett, @Ned1313, @GhostInTheNet, @BKnudtson,
Edge is leading the hardware industry into a new era of innovation. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, Stephen Foskett, and co-hosts, Allyson Klein and Alistair Cooke, sit down to dissect this. In the wake of Intel's discontinuation of its NUC product line, a question that is in everyone's mind is, what's next. Intel, and many behemoths like it, have a proud legacy of knowing how to break a stalemate and preserve the churn, and even if that means stepping up and pulling the plug on an old product. It oxygenates the marketplace, welcoming new solutions and keeping the wheel of innovation moving. In the context of the emerging paradigm of edge, this change will likely propel the market towards a new breed of powerful, low-cost, pocket-size hardware that delivers breakthrough energy-efficiency and compute performance with little infrastructure. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #Edge, #NUC, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @DemitasseNZ,
Personal devices are increasingly being used across enterprise IT, from smartphones to wearable devices, and these are becoming the true edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Field Day delegates Mark Houtz and Jim Czuprynski together with Stephen Foskett to discuss the personal side of the edge. Mobile Device Management (MDM) has been used to manage smartphones and similar technology is used for personal computers, but it seems inevitable that there will be a mixing of business and private data. The mix and match of personal devices at the edge is sure to be a topic of future focus. Host: Stephen Foskett: https://www.Twitter.com/SFoskett Guests: Jim Czuprynski: https://mastodon.social/@jimthewhyguy@techfieldday.net Matt Houtz: https://www.Twitter.com/Marko_With_A_K Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, Edge, #RaspberryPi, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @JimTheWhyGuy, @Marko_With_A_Why, @GestaltIT, #EFD2,
Although blockchain technology has been tainted by scammers, the core idea of distributed consensus is relevant for certain edge applications. This episode of Utilizing Edge focuses on practical application of blockchain technology in edge and IoT, featuring Jason Benedicic, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. Two key concepts in blockchain are the distributed ledger and consensus approach. There is a lot of work being done to apply blockchain in medical, finance, IoT, and proof of provenance. Although many applications can rely on authority or quorum, larger and more heterogeneous applications might benefit from consensus instead. The other aspect of blockchain, chain of custody and immutability of data, is potentially relevant in preventing supply chain attacks and dealing with transient devices. It's important to remember that many of the things that have put people off blockchain, from financialization to public exposure of transactions, are not necessarily required in all blockchains. Guest: Jason Benedicic: https://www.twitter.com/JBenedicic Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #Edge, #Blockhain, #IoT, @GestaltIT, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @DemitasseNZ, @JBenedicic,
Computing and sensors have been deployed at the edge for decades, and this is certainly true in the agriculture sector. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Edge Field Day delegates Ben Young and Alastair Cooke discussing with Stephen Foskett the evolution of connectivity and orchestration at the edge. Governmental policies can have a huge impact on the deployment of technology, from connectivity to environmental regulations, as has the emergence of inexpensive sensors, batteries, and processors thanks to the mobile phone industry, along with solar power. Cloud-inspired automation and orchestration is another key enabler of technology in agriculture and at the edge, with zero-touch provisioning, management, and central maintenance. Containerized applications, caching, and cloud-derived control planes are very popular at the edge, though not exactly the same way as in the cloud. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Guest: Ben Young: https://www.twitter.com/BenYoungNZ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #Orchestration, #Edge, #UtilizingEdge,
VMware Explore 2023 featured a broad set of products and technologies, all of which could be included under the banner of edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge considers this dynamic and varied world with Roy Chua and Brian Knudtson, along with host Stephen Foskett. Virtualization, networking, storage, and orchestration are all key edge technologies, and VMware and its partners are deeply involved in bringing these technologies to the edge. VMware announced Edge Cloud Orchestrator, new security capabilities, integrated networking, client integration, and the exciting potential of private 5G networks. Dive into this episode to unravel the complexities and promising future of edge computing. Host: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Guests: Brian Knudtson: https://www.twitter.com/BKnudtson Roy Chua: https://www.twitter.com/WireRoy Follow Gestalt IT Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #EdgeComputing, #UtilizingEdge, #EFD2, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @BKnudtson, @WireRoy, @GestaltIT
Industrial control and operational technology systems face the same forces as IT applications and are rapidly being integrated into comprehensive edge infrastructure. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Andy Foster of IOTech to discuss standardization of industrial IoT with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. There are many more similarities between industrial control systems and information technology systems than many people realize. Both are impacted by standards in commodity hardware, networking and communications protocols, and cloud integration. And OT and IT are colliding at the edge, with a massive opportunity to leverage data. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson Guest: Andy Foster, Product Director and Cofounder of IOTech https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-foster-673b268/ https://www.iotechsys.com/ Follow Gestalt IT Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #EdgeComputing, #IoT, #UtilizingEdge, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @IOTechSystems, @GestaltIT,
Media and entertainment is one industry generating and moving vast amounts of data at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Jimmy Fusil of Tsecond into a discussion with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett about the unique data challenges in media and entertainment. There is a great need for local processing, secure data transport, and efficient storage utilization in managing the ever-increasing volume of data generated during film and TV production. The podcast explores the continued relevance of physical media, like tape, for long-term archiving, while also emphasizing the security measures necessary to protect creative privacy and prevent potential plot leaks in the industry. Fusil also discusses Tsecond's groundbreaking product, Bryck, a portable NVMe storage device capable of holding up to a petabyte of data with a remarkable 40GBps data transfer speed. The discussion highlights how Bryck's high-performance storage facilitates on-device data processing, ensuring quick backups and maintaining data integrity. It's critical to consider edge storage solutions like Bryck in many data-intensive sectors beyond media and entertainment as well. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Guest: Jimmy Fusil, M&E Expert and Business Development Manager, Tsecond https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmyfusil/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge #EdgeComputing #Bryck #EdgeStorage
Edge computing comes in many forms and brings many challenges, including bandwidth limitations, network reliability issues, and limited space. This episode of Utilizing Edge brings Brian Chambers, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett together to discuss the state of the edge in 2023. Industries like retail, multi-tenant environments, and industrial IoT find practical applications, but defining the edge remains an ongoing exploration. Implementation varies, from repurposing existing technologies to adopting modern approaches like containers and function as a service. The debate between virtual machines and containers continues, driven by organizational comfort. Despite constraints, edge environments offer greater control and accountability. The future promises more innovation and adoption, cementing edge computing's significance in the tech landscape. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeDiversity, #EdgeComputing, #EdgeSolutions, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett, @DemitasseNZ, @BriChamb, @GestaltIT,
In this episode of the Utilizing Tech podcast, Stephen Foskett, Alison Klein, and Gina Rosenthal discuss dark data in edge computing. Dark data is unutilized or unknown data collected by organizations. The distributed nature and use of third-party apps can make it challenging to handle dark data, limiting insights and posing security risks. Establishing a stronger IT-business connection is crucial. Observability solutions and data analytics can aid in discovering and centralizing dark data. AI has potential for data hygiene improvement, but human-driven cleaning is still necessary. Despite challenges, edge computing offers better data management due to controlled deployments. Host: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Panelists: Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson Gina Rosenthal: https://www.twitter.com/Digi_Sunshine Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #DarkData, #EdgeComputing, #Edge,
Although we use Intel's NUC as a shorthand for the type of hardware deployed at the far edge, this recently-cancelled platform isn't all there is. This episode of Utilizing Edge looks beyond the NUC, to platforms from Lenovo, Nvidia, and more, with Julian Chesterfield of Sunlight, Andrew Green, and Stephen Foskett. ARM-based solutions, many using the Nvidia Jetson platform, are particularly interesting given their low cost and power consumption and strong GPUs for edge AI. A hyperconverged stack runs all of the components required for high availability, including storage and networking, in software spanning all of the nodes in a cluster, and this is commonly deployed on low-cost devices at the far edge. The trend to deploying applications at the edge is driven both by new hardware and software capabilities and the changing expectation of consumers and businesses. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Andrew Green, Analyst at GigaOm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-green-tech/ Guest: Julian Chesterfield, CTO and Founder, Sunlight.io: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-chesterfield-3B74951 Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #IntelNUC, #EdgeHardware, #EdgeComputing, #UtilizingEdge, @Sunlightio, @UtilizingTech, @SFoskett,
Edge infrastructure is susceptible to many of the same security risks as datacenter and cloud, but is often run in less protected environments. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Craig Nunes, Co-Founder and COO of Nebulon, talking to Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett about the provision of reliable infrastructure services at the edge. Nebulon's product presents storage to servers in a managed way, monitoring and protecting storage in real time. Edge servers must have a known-good system image to ensure that they are secure, yet this is difficult to achieve in remote devices. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb Guest: Craig Nunes, COO and Co-founder, Nebulon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-nun... Follow Gestalt IT Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #ResilientInfrastructure, #Security, #EdgeSecurity,
Perhaps no company is more important to the datacenter than VMware, but how are the company's technologies applied at the edge? This episode of Utilizing Edge features Saadat Malik, VP and GM of Edge Computing at VMware, discussing the evolution of VMware at the edge with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett. The discussion delves into the evolution of VMware's presence at the edge, highlighting the differences between datacenter and edge environments in terms of people and technology. Malik emphasizes the importance of outcomes and product-focused mindsets in edge environments, as well as the constraints posed by limited physical resources. VMware's technologies in connectivity, storage, security, and management are showcased as key enablers of successful edge computing. The episode also touches upon the growing significance of AI and machine learning at the edge and the need for standardized solutions to drive edge growth and transformation. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb Guest from VMware: Saadat Malik, VP and GM of Edge Computing at VMware https://www.linkedin.com/in/saadatmalik/ Follow Gestalt IT Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #Edge, #CustomEdge,
Datacenter IT is used to having tight control over infrastructure and applications, but this is challenging to maintain at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Pierluca Chiodelli of Dell Technology discussing the modern edge application platform with Allyson Klein and Stephen Foskett. A typical edge environment features many different platforms, devices, and connections that must be deployed, managed, and controlled remotely. When looking at the modern edge, Chiodelli recognizes the different personas and needs and constructs a plan to achieve the required outcome at this location. Modern applications need specialized hardware and connectivity that must be supported, deployed, and managed. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson Guests: Pierluca Chiodelli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierluca-chiodelli-3b743a4/ Follow Gestalt IT Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #Edge
Between the so-called last mile and first mile lies the middle mile, the realm of colocation and network service providers. This episode of Utilizing Tech features Roy Chua and Allyson Klein, discussing the middle mile with Stephen Foskett. This middle area includes content delivery services like Varnish and Akamai, as well as companies like Cloudflare that are delivering content and compute there. The middle network includes providers like Equinix, Digital Realty, and Megaport, which provide connectivity to the cloud and service providers, the hyperscalers themselves, and some interesting networking startups like Packet Fabric and Graphiant. We must also consider observability, with companies like cPacket and Kentik as well as companies like Cisco and Juniper Networks. Host: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Guests: Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson Roy Chua: https://www.twitter.com/WireRoy Follow Gestalt IT Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #Edge
When it comes to edge computing, money is not limitless. Joining us for this episode of Utilizing Edge is Carlo Daffara of NodeWeaver, who discusses the unique economic challenges of edge with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett. Cost is always a factor for technology decisions, but every decision is multiplied when designing edge infrastructure with hundreds or thousands of nodes. Total Cost of Ownership is a critical consideration, especially operations and deployment on-site at remote locations, and the duration of deployment must also be taken into consideration. Part of the solution is designing a very compact and flexible system, but the system must also work with nearly any configuration, from virtual machines to Kubernetes. Another issue is the fact that technology will change over time and the system must be adaptable to different hardware platforms. It is critical to consider not just the cost of hardware but also the cost of maintenance and long-term operation. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ NodeWeaver Representative: Carlo Daffara, CEO of NodeWeaver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdaffara/ Follow Gestalt IT Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gest... Tags: #EdgeEconomy, #EdgeComputing, #Edge, @NodeWeaver
Although everyone wants high availability from IT systems, the cost to achieve it must be weighed against the benefits. This episode of Utilizing Edge focuses on HA solutions at the edge with Bruce Kornfeld of StorMagic, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett. Although it might be tempting to build the same infrastructure at the edge as in the data center, but this can get very expensive. Thinking about multi-node server clusters and RAID storage, the risk of a so-called split brain means not just two nodes but three must be deployed in most cases. StorMagic addresses this issue in a novel way, with a remote node providing a quorum witness and reducing the need for on-site hardware. Edge infrastructure also relies on so-called hyperconverged systems, which use software to create advanced services on simple and inexpensive hardware. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ StorMagic Representative: Bruce Kornfeld, Chief Marketing and Product Officer at StorMagic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucekornfeld/ Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeStorage, #EdgeComputing, @StorMagic
The edge isn't the same thing to everyone: Some talk about equipment for use outside the datacenter, while others talk about equipment that lives in someone else's location. The difference between this far edge and near edge is the topic of Utilizing Edge, with Andrew Green and Alastair Cooke, Research Analysts at Gigaom, and Stephen Foskett. Andrew is drawing a line at 20 ms roundtrip, the point at which a user feels that a resource is remote rather than local. From the perspective of an application or service, this limit requires a different approach to delivery. One approach is to distribute points of presence around the world closer to users, including compute and storage, not just caching. This would entail deploying hundreds of points of presence around the world, and perhaps even more. Technologies like Kubernetes, serverless, and function-as-a-service are being used today, and these are being deployed even beyond service provider locations. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Guest: Andrew Green, Analyst at GigaOm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-green-tech/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1789 Tags: #UtilizingTech #EdgeComputing #UtilizingEdge @UtilizingTech @GestaltIT
One of the main differentiators for edge computing is developing a scalable architecture that works everywhere, from deployment to support to updates. This episode of Utilizing Edge welcomes Dave Demlow of Scale Computing discussing the need for scalable architecture at the edge. Scale Computing discussed Zero-Touch Provisioning and Disposable Units of Compute at their Edge Field Day presentation, and we kick off the discussion with these concepts. We also consider the undifferentiated heavy lifting of cloud infrastructure and the tools for infrastructure as code and patch management in this different environment. Ultimately the differentiator is scale, and the key challenge for designing infrastructure for the edge is making sure it can be deployed and supported at hundreds or thousands of sites. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb Scale Computing Representative: Dave Demlow: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ddemlow/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing TechWebsite: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltITLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gestalt-it/ Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #Edge, #EdgeComputing, #EdgeTechnology, #ScalableEdge, #EdgeInfrastructure, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @AvassaSystems,
There is a long-standing gulf between developers and operations, let alone infrastructure, and this is made worse by the scale and limitations of edge computing. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Carl Moberg of Avassa discussing the application-first mindset of developers with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett. As we've been discussing, it's critical to standardize infrastructure to make them supportable at the edge, yet we also must make platforms that are attractive to application owners. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Brian Chambers: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb Carl Moberg, CTO and co-founder at Avassa https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlmoberg/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing TechWebsite: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltITLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gestalt-it/ Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #Edge, #EdgeComputing, #EdgeTechnology, #EdgeApplications, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @AvassaSystems,
Edge has many different stakeholders, applications, and needs, and this is especially true in distributed retail environments. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Simon Gamble of Mako Networks talking with Brian Chambers and Stephen Foskett about the complexities of technology at the retail edge. The key according to Gamble is segmentation of brands, franchisees, and technical applications. In some cases a single location might even include multiple separate companies or tenants under the same roof. Video, sensors, IoT, and location-based services are coming to retail locations as well, and some of these leverage outside service providers as well. Although sharing infrastructure is desirable, segmentation and security is key. Retail edge environments are increasingly complicated, but there are many ways to consolidate, converge, and standardize to make them practical to implement. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Brian Chamber: https://www.twitter.com/BriChamb Mako Networks Representative: Simon Gamble, President of Mako Networks: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simongnz/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing TechWebsite: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltITLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gestalt-it/ Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #EdgeComputing, #RetailEdge, #Edge, @GestaltIT, @MakoNetworks
Edge environments were historically very specialized, but virtualization and cloud technology is enabling companies to deploy commodity platforms at the edge. This episode of Utilizing Edge features Raghu Vatte of ZEDEDA discussing this commoditization with Alastair Cooke and Stephen Foskett. Although the transition is still getting started, standard compute platforms are rapidly being exploited at edge locations, from warehouses to retail to industrial. Even is some specialized hardware is still needed, a unified platform can increasingly absorb a majority of applications at the edge. Another factor contributing to commoditization is the standardization of application requirements, with most now virtualized or containerized with standards developing for I/O and shared hardware resources. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ ZEDEDA Representative: Raghu Vatte, VP of Product Management and Customer Success, ZEDEDA: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raghushankar-vatte-970a9214/ Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing TechWebsite: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltITLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gestalt-it/ Tags: #UtilizingEdge #Commoditization #EdgeComputing #EdgeInfrastructure @UtilizingTech @GestaltIT @ZededaEdge
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