DataCentric

Keeping your Data Center Cool with 2-Phase Immersion Cooling

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 15:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

Special Guest: Matt Kimball.

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 02:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

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

Special Guests: Dominique Bastos and Matt Kimball.

Taming the MultiCloud Problem, with Nutanix's Lee Caswell

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 20:00:00 -0500

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

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

Special Guests: Lee Caswell and Matt Kimball.

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 09:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

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

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

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 15:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

Special Guests: Matt Kimball and Nipun Agarwal.

Exploring Edge Computing, with Stratus's Jason Andersen.

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 15:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

Special Guest: Jason Andersen.

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 11:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

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

45:59 Spiffy Outro Music.

Special Guest: Larry Genovesi.

Cyber-Security at the Edge

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 15:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

Special Guest: Gary Cohen.

Modern Data Architecture: A Look at NoSQL & Couchbase

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 16 May 2022 01:00:00 -0400

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

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

00:00 Show Open

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

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

Special Guest: Jeff Morris.

The Changing Face of Cyber-Security

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 05 May 2022 10:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

Special Guests: Gary Wang and Tim Liu.

High Performance Storage, with Infinidat's Eric Herzog

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 18:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

This podcast is sponsored by Infinidat.

Special Guest: Eric Herzog.

Links:

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

The Data Center is Changing: Are You Ready?

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 15:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

This is one you don't want to miss.

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

Special Guest: Zac Smith.

Intelligently Managing Multi-Cloud Environments

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 14:00:00 -0400

Deploying IT services into the "messy middle" between on-prem and cloud can be challenging.

This episode finds hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talking to Todd Brannon, Cisco's Senior Director of Product Marketing for Cloud Platforms, about the challenges of managing IT resources in a multi-cloud world.

The guys talk about the challenges of managing a mixed cloud/on-prem, the adoption (or lack of adoption!) of autonmous infrastructure,

00:00 Podcast Opens
02:44 Introducing Cisco's Todd Brannon
04:58 What are the biggest cloud-related challenges facing IT today?
07:30 Solving the common needs of enterprise IT
12:25 Cisco Intersight Services for Cloud
22:51 Autonomous Infrastructure
26:05 We've talked a lot about software -- what's happening in the hardware space?
34:35 Cloud is one thing -- what's happening at the Edge?
39:50 Roll Credits!

Special Guest: Todd Brannon.

A Look Inside VAST Data's Growing Momentum

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 11:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

Special Guest: Jeff Denworth.

Going Cloud Native with NetApp Astra

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 17:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

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

Special Guest: Eric Han.

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 11:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

Special Guest: Al Yanes.

Trends to Watch in 2022

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 17:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

Delivering Database-as-a-Service with Nutanix Era & HPE GreenLake

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 01:00:00 -0400

The cloudification of IT is happening. There is a trend in IT towards simplifying the IT experience, both technologies and IT services. Nowhere is this more evident than in how IT organizations deliver services, such as database services, to the broader enterprise.

On this edition of DataCentric, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, principal analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talk to HPE and Nutanix about how these two companies have partnered to help IT shops simplify both their own, and their user's, experience.

Joining Steve and Matt are Kate Davis, Global Marketing Manager for HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, and Maggie Smith, senior solution manager for Nutanix database solutions.

The Nutanix Cloud Platform complements the public cloud-like billing and standby capacity of HPE GreenLake, with fully integrated compute, storage and virtualization building blocks that provide turnkey, instant operations.

Special Guests: Kate Davis and Maggie Smith.

Overcoming the Challenges of Multi-Cloud with HCI

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Sun, 24 Oct 2021 11:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

Special Guests: Rakesh Sreekanth and Ritu Jain.

Application Transformation with Data-Driven DevOps

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 13:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

Special Guest: Jedidiah Yueh.

Data at the Edge with Western Digital

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 15:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

This podcast is not sponsored.

Special Guest: Scott Hamilton.

Dell Technologies APEX & the as-a-service Market

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 18:15:00 -0400

Dell Technologies entered the as-a-service market with full-force earlier this year when it unveiled its APEX portfolio of offerings.

Adam Glick, senior director of product marketing for Dell Technologies APEX, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, to talk about the trends and drivers that makes as-a-service attractive to IT shops of every size.

Adam also helps us navigate Dell's APEX offerings, taking us through what's being offered, as well as some of the thinking behind the various services. For Dell, APEX is all out delivering the desired outcomes to IT practitioners, without having to worry so much about the technology.

Whether you're intestered in Dell APEX, or just want to get a better handle on what as-a-service means to IT, this episode has you covered.

Topics

00:00 Opening
02:30 What's motivating the increasing adoption of as-a-service?
04:09 Delivering a 'cloud-like' experience, where outcomes out-weigh technology.
07:10 What is Dell APEX?
07:55 Dell is Delivering Software and Services on a scale not seen from Dell before
15:38 APEX and Equinix
18:15 Is there strong vertical pull for APEX?
19:45 How does Edge fit into this model?
25:53 Partner-centric engagement
28:34 AI/ML and APEX
31:56 What's Dell's Long-Term Vision in this space?
37:37 What does As-a-Service really mean to IT?
40:00 Over-and-Out!

Special Guest: Adam Glick.

Thinking about Cyber-Security

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 23:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

It's a great and timely discussion.

Special Guest: Tim Liu.

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 02:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

Dell goes APEX over as-a-service & Ampere rolls out its latest

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 27 May 2021 16:00:00 -0400

It's an as-a-service world as Dell goes big with Project APEX. APEX delivers storage and HCI as-a-service, plus delivers some custom solutions. Ampere Computing, the ARM-based server player, continues its journey as it unveils its next generation Altra CPUs for the cloud world -- with a few cloud partners up on the stage (including Azure).

Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talk about what it all means.

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 13 May 2021 14:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

Special Guest: Rajan Sethuraman.

Inside Arm Neoverse & Arm9 with Arm's Brian Jeff

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 04 May 2021 14:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

Special Guest: Brian Jeff.

Links:

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

The Impact of AI on Enterprise IT Architecture

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 12:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

Doug is the global ecosystem leader for IBM Storage.

This episode is sponsored by NVIDIA.

Special Guests: Doug O'Flaherty and Tony Paikeday.

AMD Launches its EPYC New Server CPU

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 01:00:00 -0400

AMD continues its impressive run at conquering the server market as it introduces its latest generation EPYC processor, "Milan".

Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, both senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talk about what AMD's launch means to the server industry. The guys also find time to talk about the latest infrastructure market numbers. On the latest DataCentric podcast.

Professional Services for Modern Enterprise IT

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:15:00 -0500

Professional Services teams can bring tremendous value to an IT organization. A professional services engagement brings a trusted advisor into your organization, one who can bring targeted expertise to help increase both the momentum and success rates for digital transformation and IT modernization projects.

Joining hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, tare a couple of seasoned professional services experts. Tom Schroeder, vice president of professional services at Pure Storage, and Don McCullough, the senior product marketing manager for professional services at Pure Storage.

The Pure teams goes into detail of its "evaluate, activate, innovate" philosophy to help move digital transformation and IT modernization programs forward. This includes everything from strategy workshops, through project planning and scoping, all the way through projects such as legacy data migration.

Professional services isn't just about bringing more hands to help accelerate an IT projects. It's really about helping IT organizations understand where they're heading and why.

Don't miss this eye-opening conversation.

Special Guests: Don McCullough and Tom Schroeder.

Links:

Is the Enterprise Infrastructure Market Rebouding?

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 10:00:00 -0500

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

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

Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 13:00:00 -0500

Commvault is having a great run in the white-hot data management and data protection space. It's most recent quarter set records for the quarter-century old organization. Credit for its revitalization and success falls directly in the lap of its CEO, Sanjay Mirchandani, who took the reins in early 2019.

On this edition of the DataPodcast podcast, Steve McDowell of Moor Insights & Strategy goes one-on-one with Sanjay to get his unique perspective on the data management and data protection market, and how Commvault's strategy aligns with that vision.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Sanjay and Steve talk about the new realities of a hybrid/multi-cloud world, re-thinking business continuity in the wake of COVID-19, why storage is critical to data protection, and how Commvault is thinking about the future .

Special Guest: Sanjay Mirchandani.

Inside Pure Storage's FlashBlade and FlashArray Announcements

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 12:00:00 -0500

Pure Storage, one of the original pioneers of all-flash storage, has released a slew of updates to the software behind both its FlashArray and FlashBlade products. In this episode of DataCentric, the gang goes into what's happening in storage today, before talking about how Pure's latest announcements move the ball foward, for Pure Storage and, more importantly, its customers.

Host Steve McDowell talks with Pure Storage vice presidents Amy Fowler and Scott Baker about what's happening in enterprise storage, and what's changing with Pure's latest release. Amy is Pure's vice president for strategy and solutions in Pure Storage's FlashBlade business, while Scott is the vice president of product marketing for Pure's FlashArray Portfolio.

There's big news for both FlashBlade and FlashArray.

The participants talk about why FlashBlade is a "Unified Fast File & Object" (UFFO) solution, and what makes it different from more traditional storage technologies. We talk about where FlashBlade fits, and why.

FlashArray has also received a bevy of updates, and Scott talks to us about where FlashArray plays best, where QLC makes sense, NVMe-over-fabric (including Pure's new support for NVMe-over-FC), and how Pure is thinking about the future of storage.

Special Guests: Amy Fowler and Scott Baker.

AMD & Intel Earnings: What's it mean for the server market?

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 10:00:00 -0500

Both Intel and AMD released earnings last week, with Intel's Data Center Group sliding a little bit, while AMD's server fortunes rise.

What's it mean for the enterprise server market overall? And how is 2021 starting to shape up? Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk about it on this episode of DataCentric.

Data Center Predictions for 2021

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 14:30:00 -0500

It's a new year (2021!), which can only mean one thing: Predictions! Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, both senior analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, turn their datacentric focus to the future of the data center and the trends that will be most impactful in 2021.

00:00 Let's start
03:01 Arm-based processors in the cloud: where's it going? Does it impact Arm server adoption? Will there be Arm-based general purpose servers?
14:15 Forget about Arm, what about AMD? Will they hit 15% server share in 2021?
18:15 Intel has had a monopoly in the nascent 3D XPOINT (Intel Optane) business, despite co-inventing the technology with Micron. Does that change in 2021?
20:50 Nutanix gained new private equity backing in 2020, changing CEOs, and positioning itself for.... something... in 2021. One of our hosts think its an HPE acquistion.
25:31 How impactful will the various OEM's as-a-service offerings be in 2021? Let the boys tell you.
30:20 A contrary prediction about the future of Nvidia's quest to absorb Arm
35:37 In-person conferences will come roaring back. Or not.

That's it! Tune in wherever you find podcasts.

Digital Transformation during an Uncertain Time

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -0500

Digital Transformation is always front and center of every IT organization, but at no point has digital transformation been more critical than now, as we navigate uncertainty on a global scale.

To help us understand how IT organizations are treating digital transformation projects as we exit 2020 and enter a new year, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell (senior technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy) welcome an expert in digital transformation. Bipin Sahni is the chief strategy officer for Persistant Systems, a global system integrator and solution provider who helps enterprises of all sizes navigate the waters of digital transformation.

This is a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation touching on everything from IT in the time in the time of COVID, data migration, stack modernization, hybrid-cloud and as-a-service adoption, and the emergence of AI in the enterprise.

Special Guest: Bipin Sahni.

Catching up on the IoT Edge

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 11:00:00 -0500

You can't escape the Edge, but what does it really mean for IT? This is a world where there are limited standards and no "one true way" to deliver solutions, so IT practitioners look to middleware and common tooling to help mangage the complexity. What's working? What isn't? And is there a turf war brewing between IT and OT teams within the enterprise?

This episode finds hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talking to Jim White, the CTO of IOTech Systems, about the trends and technologies that are influencing the evolution of the IoT-driven edge. The guys also talk about some of the pitfalls and challenges faced by IT teams as they take on this challenging new area.

Special Guest: Jim White.

Catching up on High Performance Computing, with Penguin Computing

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 15:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

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

Special Guests: Kevin Tubbs and Matt Jacobs.

Cloud-Native Data Protection, Commvault Style

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 13:45:00 -0500

It's KubeCon week, which means that we're all thinking about containers! Containers require a different way of thinking about persistent data, which deeply influences how data protection operates in a cloud-native world. It's really all about intelligent data management. And nobody understands intelligent data management quite like CommVault.

CommVault's Global VP of Sales Engineering Don Foster joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about the intersection of data protection and container orchestration.

The guys touch on everything from how data protection for containers is differerent from more traditional architectures, to how you integrate containers into an end-to-end DP strategy, to cloud-native backup-as-a-service.

It's a great conversation for anyone charged with protecting data in an increasingly container-driven environment.

Special Guest: Don Foster.

Inside Modern Flash Storage Technologies

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 13:00:00 -0500

Flash storage continues to evolve, with that evolution triggering changes in how we think about and deliver enterprise storage.

Andy Walls, IBM Fellow and IBM's CTO for its flash storage products, takes us through the big impactors affecting the flash storage industry, We hit on everything: QLC, NVMe-over-fabric, Server-Class Memory, and much more.

00:00 Introductions
02:07 The role of QLC flash in enterprise storage & overcoming its inherent limitations
12:55 Where does Server Class Memory fit?
17:44 NVMe-over-Fabric changes the interconnect game
21:21 Disaggregated storage: are the days of traditional block storage arrays numbered?
23:55 How is Storage for Mainfames different?, Steve asks from a position of ignorance
26:28 Impactful emerging technologies: CXL bus, Computational Storage,
32:00 Does storage need to change to support Quantum Computing?

Special Guest: Andy Walls.

Architecting a Flexible & Resilient Data Center

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 13:00:00 -0500

The events of the past year have taught us a valuable lesson: unexpected change is going to happen, and that change requires IT organizations to quickly respond. Data centers built on a solid foundation of fast, flexible, secure, and resilient infrastructure are the ones poised to adapt and keep the business moving forward.

In this episode, Moor Insights & Strategy technology analyst Steve McDowell is joined by a group of storage infrastructure experts to talk about the fundamentals of a flexible cyber-resilient infrastructure.

AJ Casamento and Brian Larsen join from Broadcom, while Brian Sherman comes to us from IBM's Storage division.

The group talks about cyber-resilient architectures, autonomous infrastructure, and building a fast and flexible storage architecture to support it all.

Fibre Channel Gen 7, NVMe-over-FC, Intelligent Storage Systems, tiered storage, disaster recovery... it seems like the group hit on most of the topics that an IT practitioner needs to be aware of as we all look forward to a disruptive future.

This episode is sponsored by Broadcom.

Special Guests: AJ Casamento, Brian Larsen, and Brian Sherman.

Links:

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:00:00 -0400

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

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

Special Guest: Mohamed Awad.

Inside the latest IBM Storage Announcements - Live from IBM Tech U

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 13:00:00 -0400

It's all about cloud-native and containers as IBM announces a slew of new features and offerings at its annual IBM Tech U event. The announcements included:

Spectrum Protect Plus enhancements for containers in production.
Spectrum Scale container-native storage access for Red Hat OpenShift.
Spectrum Discover now has deeper integration with Red Hat Openshift Container Storage & IBMB Cloud Digest Storage File Access
Vmware vSphere 7 support for end-to-end NVMe
Increased capacity for SCM in the FlashSystem 7200 & 9200 series

IBM also announced a longer-term vision for container-native data management.

There's a lot to digest, and IBM's Eric Herzog and Sam Werner join host Steve McDowell to talk through what was announced, and how IBM sees the challenges in today's hybrid-multicloud world.

Special Guests: Eric Herzog and Sam Werner.

Accelerating the Kubernetes Container Experience

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 15:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

Special Guest: Brian Waldon.

Inside the Hyper-Scale Server Market & the Future of the Data Center

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 16:00:00 -0400

The hyper-scale market is often a leading indicator of broader enterprise data center trends. This is true of software to manage scalability, autonomous management, security, disaggregated storage, and AI/ML.

Jay Shenoy, vice president of technology for Hyve, joins hosts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell (each a senior technology analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy) to talk about what he's seeing in this space.

This wide-ranging conversation touches on seemingly everything: an overview of the hyperscale market; the software-defined data center; autonomous infrastructure; disaggregated storage and the increasing adoption of NVMe-over-fabric; the rise of ARM and accelerators; and even the impact of AI/ML in both training and inferernence use cases.

It's another great conversation on the rapid evolution of the enterprise data center.

Special Guest: Jayarama (Jay) Shenoy.

Inside the Server Market with Dell Technologies' Jonathan Seckler

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 23:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

Special Guest: Jonathan Seckler.

It's Cyber-Security Month and HPE has a Unique New Server Offering

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 10:00:00 -0400

Securing the supply chain for enterprise infrastructure is a key element to any comprehensive cyber-security strategy.
As cyber-security month kicks off, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announces a new "country of origin" server program that takes things to the next level.

John Grosso, who leads the HPE's Global Operations Engineering organization, joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk through cyber-security, the criticality of securing the supply chain, and how HPE is stepping up its secure server program with a new "county of origin" program, where servers are assembled and validated in the United States.

This one is a fascinating exploration of an area most of us don't think about on a daily basis. Listen in.

Special Guest: John Grosso.

Links:

Matt's Forbes column on HPE's new programs

Inside the HCI Market with Hewlett Packard Enterprise

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 16:00:00 -0400

What is it about HCI that enterprise IT likes so much? On this episode David Wang, HPE's director of storage marketing, drops in to talk to hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell about why HCI is compelling, and how the different flavors of HCI address a range of needs in the enterprise, whether on the edge or in the core.

HPE is in an interesting place with HCI. The company has two in-house HCI solutions, dHCI and SimpliVity, and is a major mover of both Nutanix and Vmware VSAN software. How does HPE position them? And what's the right answer for your IT shop?

Join us in a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation about HCI's place in the enterprise, and where HPE's dHCI and other solutions fit.

A special thank you to Sonal Dave' for helping out with the logistics and, of course, David Wang for joining us!

Special Guest: David Wang.

Links:

Supercomputing Invades the Enterprise

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 15:00:00 -0400

Supercomputing has left the lab and is fast becoming a mainstream enterprise IT capability, whether we're talking about a dedicated compute cluster, or HPC-as-a-service. These capabilities are driving everything from COVID-19 modelling to video-analytics at the retail edge to deliver "frictionless retail".

There's nobody better to talk to us about this market than Penguin Computing.

Penguin's SVP of Strategic Solutions Kevin Tubbs joins DataCentric hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about what matters when thinking about technical computing in the enterprise.

Special Guest: Kevin Tubbs.

Understanding the Enterprise Infrastructure Market in 2H 2020

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 12:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

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

DataCentric is a registered trademark of Bynum Iron Works.

Inside the Server Market with Dell Technologies' Jonathan Seckler

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 12:00:00 -0400

The server market is rapidly changing. It's less about the speeds and feeds of your hardware, and much more about the capabilities required to support critical workloads. From software-defined to edge, Dell Technologies director of server marketing join Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell in a wide-ranging discussion on the shifting landscape of servers.

The group seems to touch on every from the on-going "generational shift" of IT buyers, the cloudification of IT, edge computing, open standards, the impact of COVID-19 on IT, and much, much more.

Special Guest: Jonathan Seckler.

Inside Earnings: Intel, AMD, & IBM all Beat-the-Street

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 16:00:00 -0400

Earnings for 2Q have started rolling in, with IBM, AMD, and Intel all early reporters from the Data Center world. There's solid financial news for all three, but each with different industry-level impacts. Hosts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell, both from Moor Insights & Strategy, talk about what it all means.

Intel delivered solid numbers, but were punished by both guidance and disclosure of some execution problems in rolling out its next generation, 7nm, processors. Solid numbers for the quarter none-the-less, with a surprising bright spot in Intel's NSG memory group.

AMD, who has become a solid competitor to Intel across nearly every segment, is firing on all cylindars, expecially in the DataCentric Server world.

All while IBM seems to be finding its groove with freshman CEO Arvind Krishna, as IBM's Cloud and Red Hat businesses are standouts. IBM Z-series and Storage also remain particularly strong.

All of this, and more, on this episode of DataCentric

00:00 - Let's kick it off!
01:21 - Intel Earnings Analysis
20:08 - AMD Earnings Discussion
43:38 - IBM Earnings
57:34 - See you Next Time!

News Roundup: Twitter Hacked, VMware (maybe) spinning out of Dell, & does hardware still matter?

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 12:00:00 -0400

It's a potpourri episode as Moor Insights & Strategy data center analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell round-up of the past few week's news: twitter was hacked, Dell Technologies says that it might spin VMware out, ARM gets yet more traction, and does a software-defined datacenter make hardware irrelevant? All this, and more, on this edition of DataCentric.

00:00 - 03:50 Virtual Conference Life
03:51 - 07:23 Twitter is hacked & the popular and tech press have very different spins on the story
07:24 - 14:24 Dell Technologies is "exploring" spinning out VMware: will they? and what's it really mean if they do?
14:25 - 29:35 A hodgepodge of ARM news as Apple announces, AWS Graviton performance numbers start coming out, and more
29:36 - 39:11 How relevant is the hardware platform in today's software defined world?
39:11 - 46:24 Microsoft endorses Citrix for Azure remote desktop.
46:25 - that's all!

Edge Computing: IT meets Industry

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 14:00:00 -0400

Enterprise IT is rapidly moving towards the edge, but what does that really mean? There are extremes to what defines edge. Edge can describe the safe environment of a remote branch office, or maybe the air-conditioned cushiness of a remote telco hut. Then there's the extreme edge, where the lines between IT and OT blur, and anything can go.

Jason Andersen, Stratus Technologies' vice president of business line management, joins Moor Insights & Strategy senior technology analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about what edge computing can really mean.

If you're wondering how far the reach of IT can (or should) extend out into the wilds of remote infrastructure, then this is the podcast for you.

Special Guest: Jason Andersen.

Q1 2020: All About Software-Defined and As-a-Service

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 14:00:00 -0400

What did we learn about datacenter infrastructure from the latest batch of earnings? That’s it all about software-defined and as-a-service. Data center hardware sales were down across the board, while the bright spots for the quarter landed on Nutanix and VMware, who showed particularly strong growth in is VSAN and NSX segments. This, while the traditional OEMs saw boosts in their respective service-based offerings.

Moor Insights & Strategy Industry analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk about what it all means.

Securing the Infrastructure Supply Chain

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 14:00:00 -0400

You don't always think about the security of your vendor's supply chain as a part of your organization's cybersecurity and compliance efforts -- but you should. Everything from ensuring the authenticity of components, all the way through the potential exploitation of systems & subsystems in-transit can cause enterprise's damage.

This episode has hosts Steve McDowell and Matt Kimball, both senior analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, talking with John Grosso, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's vice president, global supply chain, about what these issues are, and how technology providers like HPE are addressing them.

Special Guest: John Grosso.

Infrastructure Earnings during a Pandemic + AMD EPYC's Continued Traction

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 27 May 2020 17:00:00 -0400

It's a strange time for infrastructure companies as we start seeing the first full-quarter earnings in this COVID-19 world. Hewlett Packard Enterprise & Lenovo are first up, and we're learning from them how to think about this market. At the same time, AMD's EPYC server CPU continues to gain traction, with new wins in HCI and Deep Learning.

Join hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, both senior analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, as they digest it all.

01:08 Attending Virtual Conferences
05:50 AMD EPYC & HCI and Edge Computiong
08:50 AMD EPYC & Nvidia's New A100
13:16 We don't talk about HPE Earnings
21:35 Lenovo continues to show strength
30:00 The End.

Inside the new Dell EMC PowerStore Mid-Range Storage Solution w/ Dell's Caitlin Gordon

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 05 May 2020 08:00:00 -0400

Dell Technologies shakes up the hot midrange storage market with the introduction of its long-anticipated offering: the Dell EMC PowerStore.

Dell's vice president of productg marketing, Caitlin Gordon, joins hosts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell to talk through the vision of the new offering, as well as offering insights into some of the things that make this one unique -- things like an embedded hypervisor, in-the-box AI, new upgrade options, why this will be the last data migration Dell's customers face, and much, much more.

Special Guest: Caitlin Gordon.

Infrastructure Management & Deployment in a Quarantined World, with Pure Storage's Shawn Rosemarin

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 10:00:00 -0400

IT infrastructure needs maintenance, and, as we reconfigure for a remote workforce, it needs critical expansion. This is challenging in an environment where social distancing has become the norm.

What does it take to deploy, maintain, and grow infrastructure in this environment?

Pure Storage's VP of of World Wide Systems Engineering joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about this, as well as what Pure is doing to help out.

The group talks about installation options, how infrastructure (and storage) as-a-service facilitates expansion, the role of remote managment and predictive analytics tools, as well as what it might all mean long-term.

A great conversation. Thank you to Shawn, and the gang at Pure Storage, for helping us put together a great podcast.

Special Guest: Shawn Rosemarin.

Links:

Pure Storage Remote Installation Options — Many of our customers are facing a new challenge during these unusual times. Physical access to facilities for third parties is not always possible, and in fact, may be limited by the facility owner. Meanwhile, the need for reliable data services is growing exponentially as more employees work remotely. Today we’re excited to introduce a simple and modern option to install and activate your FlashArray™ systems, even when it’s not possible to physically bring third parties onsite.
Pure Storage Expands Remote Installation to FlashBlade — We recently posted about how it’s not always possible to provide third parties with physical access to your facilities, especially now. Meanwhile, the need for reliable data services across block, file, and object storage is growing exponentially as more employees need remote access to data. In keeping our focus on what you need most right now, we’re introducing a new way to get you up and running — even when it’s not possible for our teams to physically work onsite in your facilities. Remote Installation Service for FlashBlade™ is now available from the Pure Storage® Customer Experience team.

HCI & vSAN with VMWare's Lee Caswell

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 12:00:00 -0400

HCI has become a rare success story, a technology that continues to grow at 25-30% year-over-year. There isn't a technology company doing more to fuel that growth than VMware, with its leading vSAN solution. vSAN almost defines HCI, owning nearly 40% of the all HCI installations (with Nutanix hot on its heels with 27% of the market).

The face of vSAN for VMware is Lee Caswell, and this week Lee joins Matt & Steve to talk about what's behind the growth of HCI as a technology, what's happening in that world today, and where it's all heading.

Lee talk with Matt & Steve about what's behind the continued growth of HCI, why it's become nearly ubiquitous in the enterprise, and how the technology is evolving the serve the needs of the modern hybrid-multicloud world.

Lee also shares his thoughts about the future of HCI. This is a great conversation -- don't miss it.

Special Guest: Lee Caswell .

Cybersecurity in the age of the Intelligent Edge: A conversation with HPE and Aruba

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 10:00:00 -0400

The Intelligent Edge, encompassing "devices that aren't in the datacenter", is growing at a nearly exponential rate. This challenges how traditional IT thinks about managing intelligent infrastructure, especially at the intersection of IT and OT, forcing everyone to think just a little bit differently -- all of this as nearly every company is forging their own paths.

DataCentric hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell are joined by two experts in this field: Jon Green, VP and Chief Security Technologist and Aruba, a Hewlett Packard company, and Tim Ferrell, master cybersecurity architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, bring their unique perspectives about the challenges involved.

The gang ponders the how IT should think about evolving people, processes, and practices in the age of the Intelligent Edge.

This episode is sponsored by Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Special Guests: Jon Green and Tim Ferrell.

Post-Earnings Enterprise Infrastructure Market, New ARM-based Ampere Server CPUs, & AMD Financial Day

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 14:00:00 -0400

Now that we've seen earnings from all of the tier-one infrastructure players, hosts Steve McDowell & Matt Kimball talk about what the flat-to-down quarter means to the overall enterprise infrastructure market. There are earnings from Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Vmware, as well as other recent earnings announcements, that give us color.

The HCI space is also continuing its hot streak, with VSAN delivering $900M in bookings to Vmware, while Nutanix also continues to grow at a nearly 50% growth rate. But are they leaving room on the edge and in ROBO for more single-focused competitors like Scale Computing?

The ARM cloud market saw a major new introduction this past week with Ampere's announcement of it's 80-core server part targeting the hyperscale market, but was disappointingly sparse with benchmark numbers. Who wins & loses here? Matt & Steve talk about it.

Finally, on the backside of AMD financial analyst day we talk about AMD's continual and aggressive push in the server market, their giant win with HPE for a massive DOE supercomputing project, & everyone's push against Nvidia for enterprise AI.

It's a lot. Skip to your favorite sections:

01:42 Infrastructure Market
14:22 HCI Market
24:54 Ampere brings ARM into the Hyperscaled Data Center
34:40 AMD continues its surge forward. Should Intel be worried?
43:38 Matt & Steve's closing thoughts.
48:29 The End.

Links:

Edge Computing: New Announcements from DELL & HPE + News!

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 15:00:00 -0500

Dell Technologies releases new edge products, HPE drops a new micro-server for edge and SMB, and Lenovo announces earnings. What's it all mean? Where's it all fit? Moor Insights & Strategy technology analysts Matt Kimball and Server McDowell try to figure it all out.

Timeline:

04:15 New Edge offerings from Dell Technologies
14:55 Huawei and the Edge
18:25 HPE Proliant Microserver Gen 10
23:24 New Entry-Level EPYC parts from AMD
24:12 Lenovo Earnings
34:29 Tidying Up

Links:

Storage-made-Simple with IBM's Eric Herzog

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 14:00:00 -0500

On the heels of a big set of announcements from IBM Storage, Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Worldwide Storage Channels for IBM, joins Moor Insights & Strategy senior technology analyst Steve McDowell for a conversation about what's new and different from IBM as the company both simplifies its non-mainframe storage offerings with top-to-bottom FlashSystem products, and continues its efforts to bring that simplicity to a hybrid-multicloud world.

Matt Kimball is away this week on special assignment.

Special Guest: Eric Herzog.

Links:

Earnings Galore: AMD & Intel + All the Cloud Guys (plus some VMware & Cisco)

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 06 Feb 2020 15:00:00 -0500

It's been a busy few weeks on the earnings front, as Intel blows away all estimates, AMD does well enough, and the cloud wars continue to rage with Google Cloud, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure. That, and both VMware and Cisco are back in the news. What's it all mean? Tune in and find out.

01:50 Is the VMWare multi-core license change really a big deal?
06:40 Intel Earnings recap
09:30 AMD Earnings
11:35 Lisa Su joins Cisco's board + what's going on with Cisco's server business?
16;42 What are Google, Amazon, and Microsoft's earnings tell us about the state of the cloud market?
19:26 Thinking about Cloud & On-Prem As-a-Service
24:07 That's a wrap!

Links:

Cisco Appoints Dr Lisa Su to the BoD — Cisco Systems, Inc. appointed AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su to its board of directors on Monday, January 27th. What does this mean for Cisco? And how does AMD benefit from this appointment? This quick take will attempt to answer these questions and more.
What AMD and Intel numbers tell us about the DataCenter Business — Earnings season is in full swing—both AMD and Intel announced 4th quarter (and annual) results recently. Both companies claimed strong quarters with robust growth. The following few paragraphs will attempt to dissect those numbers in a little more detail and provide some guidance on what these numbers say about the 2020 business outlook.

Scale Computing CEO & Co-Founder Jeff Ready talks HCI

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 16:00:00 -0500

Scale Computing is a pioneer in HCI (inventing, in fact, the very term). The company has just come off a record year demonstrating 90% growth. They also recently showed off a full HCI cluster running on an Intel NUC. Scale's CEO and Co-Founder Jeff Ready joins us on this episode of DataCentric, where we talk about:

The origins of Scale Computing, and HCI
Where HCI fits into enteprise architecture
Why HCI is a great fit for the edge, both as it exists today (ROBO, etc), as well as what will be enabled by 5G.
What Scale Computing is doing differently in the world of HCI.

Special Guest: Jeff Ready.

Links:

Top 2020 DataCenter Trends

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 20:00:00 -0500

It's 2020, and that means a whole new set of predictions for the year! Join Moor Insights & Strategy technology analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell as they discuss what they believe will be the most impactful trends impacting data centers and IT architecture over the coming twelve months.

02:21 Silicon Architecture is no longer a buying critera for servers -- it's all about matching capabilities to workloads (whether x86 or ARM)
09:50 The Public Cloud providers will begin a cycle of acquistions to move their offerings up-the-stack.
19:30 The big OEMs will stop talking about servers and storage and instead both double-down on consumption-based compute models, and deliver more workload-specific solution stacks.
28:20 It's not the year of edge (yet), but 5G is deploying and it will be the year that Edge impacts IT planning for the following years.
35:46 The End!

Big Trends from 2019

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 17:00:00 -0500

It's been an eventful year, but largely one setting chess pieces up for what's to come. Moor Insights & Strategy technology analysts Steve McDowell and Matt Kimball each give their top trends of the past year. Not to spoil it, but you can jump directly to the topics from the timeline below:

00:50 Silicon is Sexy Again! Whether we're talking about AMD, ARM, Ampere, NVIDIA, Intel, or one of the emerging players, we're talking about chips.
03:13 The Year of AI Enablement, both applications & inference, with a coming battle for the inference market
05:38 OEMs are Moving to Solution Sales & Application Stacks
08:30 There's a Fight Brewing for On-Prem As-as-Service
13:45 Kubernetes dominated the headlines, but is it here to stay?
16:25 More as-a-service, as we dig deeper into consumption based computing
21:22 The End.

AWS ReInvent 2019 Wrap-Up

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 10:00:00 -0500

Amazon's massive AWS ReInvent Conference is nearly overwhelming in its breadth and scope, with dozens of announcements spanning numerous areas, from ARM to AI to on-premises Outpost.

Moor Insights & Strategy senior analysts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell help clear the path and talk about what the sum of it all really means to IT, as well as the rest of the technology industry.

Live with Arm's Mohamed Awad, VP Infrastructure LOB

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 12:00:00 -0500

Arm's Mohamed Awad, as VP in Arm's Infrastructure group, is front-and-center in their architecture's invasion into enterprise compute. Let's look at where ARM stands in the enterprise today:

Nearly every tier-1 OEM has an Arm server offering
Every major public cloud vendor offers Arm instances
NVIDIA, Marvell, Fujitsu, & Ampere jointed announced an Arm-based Super Computer reference platform at SC19 this week

As we look forward towards a 5G-enabled edge, Arm is finding itself ideally situated to play aggressively in thatspace.

It's not about mobile processing anymore.

Mohamed joins hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell to talk about what it all means, and where it's all going.

Special Guest: Mohamed Awad.

HPE's Container Platform with HPE Cloud Strategist Robert Christiansen

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 12:00:00 -0500

As Hewlett Packard Enterprise launches its bare-metal container platform at KubeCon this week, Moor Insights & Strategy analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell have a conversation with HPE VP and Chief Cloud Strategist Robert Christiansen. The guys talk about how HPE views cloud workloads, and how the power of Kubernetes and containers might just be the right answer for both cloud and edge.

It's a great conversation with unexpected insight about the long-term impact of Kubernetes on IT architecture. HPE is helping to shape that future as it brings the power of MapR and BlueData into the fold. Listen in.

Thank you to Robert for taking the time to join us this week.

Special Guest: Robert Christiansen.

Links:

HPE Unveils Container Platform

November 2019 Event News Roundup: Microsoft Ignite, VMWorld Europe, NVIDIA GTC DC & More!

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 22:00:00 -0500

It's been a busy few weeks as the fall conference season hits its stride. In this episode, Moor Insights & Strategy analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk about it all: Microsoft Ignite, VMworld Europe, NVIDIA GTC DC announcements.

There's also chip news as AMD delivers a stellar quarter, Intel has a benchmark oops (and then recovers), and lots of discussion of ARM and Edge. Join us for our unique perspective.

Times:
00:00 Microsoft Ignite: Azure News
13:24 AMD’s stellar quarter
19:00 Intel’s Benchmark Oops
24:35 VMWorld Europe
27:00 ARM at the Edge & in the Datacenter
32:00 NVIDIA GTC DC + NV at the Edge
46:43 That's all!

Links:

NetApp talks about Cloud Native, Containers, & HCI

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 15:00:00 -0500

NetApp is about more than just about on-prem enterprise storage. They are changing with the industry as it embraces HCI, Cloud Native, and Kubernetes as part of the Data Fabric. This is critical to the company's strategy.

We had the chance to sit separately with NetApp's SVP & GM of Cloud Native (which includes its Kubernetes/Containers activity) Anthony Lye to talk about how NetApp and its enterprise customers view that space, as well as how they are evolving from an "on-prem first" storage player into a multi-cloud and cloud-native solution.

We also had a great conversation with NetApp's Chief HCI Architect Adam Carter at the show who talked about the philosophy behind NetApp's untraditional approach to HCI.

This one is a great listen, and we owe a serious debt of graditude to both Anthony and Adam for making the time at a busy event, as well as the entire NetApp A/R and PR team who made it all happen.

00:00 - 05:15 Matt & Steve hit on some recent news & travel, including Micron 3D XPoint and FujiFilm's IT Summit
05:15 - 24:00 NetApp HCI with Adam Carter, as well as Matt & Steve's post-interview discussion & thoughts
24:00 - 34:50 NetApp's Cloud Native and Container Strategy with NetApp GM and SVP Anthony Lye
34:50 - 36:32 Wrapping Up

Special Guests: Adam Carter and Anthony Lye.

Links:

ARM TechCon 2019 Wrap-Up with Patrick Kennedy from Serve The Home

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 22:00:00 -0400

As ARM TechCon 2019 wraps up in San Jose, hosts Steve McDowell and Matt Kimball from Moor Insights & Strategy are joined by Patrick Kennedy of Serve the Home in a wide-ranging discussion of the entire microprocessor market, and where ARM fits in.

Here's a general timeline for the discussion, though the topics overlap, so you owe it to yourself to listent to the entire thing.

00:00 Intros
02:20 Big Themes & Announcements from TechCon
03:50 Patrick's views of TechCon from a server, storage, and networking perspective
06:00 ARM at the Edge
10:30 ARM in the Server Market
14:05 ARM in the HPC and other Server-Adjacent Spaces
17:28 ARM in power and performance hungry applications
22:00 Does OpenPOWER and IBM's recent Open Sourcing moves matter?
24:10 Does heated AMD/Intel competition open the door for ARM to gain traction against those players?
27:17 What's Patrick Kennedy and Serve the Home looking forward to in 2020
32:20 Let's talk about Inspur & "Inspur-like" players
38:00 What's Serve the Home doing Differently in the review space?
41:00 Overarching takeaways

Special Guest: Patrick Kennedy.

Links:

Serve the Home

Talking Data Protection with Arcserve CTO Oussama El-Hilali & VP of Strategic Partnerships Clark Brown

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 22:00:00 -0400

In the data era, data protection is everything. Cyber resilience can mean life and death for companies that rely on intelligence to drive business. So what’s more important? Securing your organization? Or being able to quickly recover from cyberattacks without having to pay ridiculous ransom amounts to a group of hackers in Eastern Europe? The answer is “both.”

In this Datacentric podcast, Steve and Matt speak with Arcserve about its partnership with Sophos and how this integrated solution can help in both the prevention and recovery from cyber incidents. Oussama El-Hilali, Arcserve’s CTO and Clark Brown, VP of Channel Sale and Strategic partnerships talk about the trends leading to this partnership and how they view the market evolving.

Special Guests: Clark Brown and Oussama El-Hilali.

News Round-Up: RedHat Summit, Pure Accelerate, Dell's EPYC Server,

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 16:00:00 -0400

A catch-up podcast as Moor Insights & Strategy technology analysts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell run through a very news-filled September. The guys recap Red Hat Summit, Pure Accelerate, and also hit product announcements from Dell EMC, IBM, and Huawei, bemoan the dwindling quality of conference SWAG, and more. Much, much, more:

Red Hat might be owned by IBM, but its about helping enterprises manage digital transformation, focused on where "opportunity and innovation intersect". Steve's a little dense on this topic, and Matt helps him understand what Red Hat's up to.

Pure Storage holds its annual conference in Austin, where they announce new products and supplement others. It's all about delivering a consistent data-driven expeirence to enteprises, and IT practitioners seem to be on-board. We also talk about partying back-stage with Weezer.

Beyond that, there are Optane-related storage announcements from Dell and Oracle, while Huawei releases the highest-capacity flash array in the world.

Times:
00:00 Start!
01:45 Red Hat Summit - Digital Tranformation!
14:40 Pure Accelerate (and Weezer!) - New QLC Flash Array, Optane Caching, Consumption-Based, Cloud Volumes!
26:20 Huawei Ships the Worlds Largest All Flash Storage Array
28:40 IBM Ships a Really Fast Storage Array for MainFrame
31:00 Dell updates its PowerMax storage with Optane persistent memory for both read & write.
35:40 Oracle also puts Optane in a storage box, if you want to buy an Oracle box.

36:30 Dell puts AMD's Epyc Rome CPU in a couple of new servers
42:25 Where are the guys focused over the next few weeks?

Talking with Coz: Pure Origins and the Future of Storage

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 15:00:00 -0400

Want to hear a good origin story? Or about the future of data? You're in luck. As Pure Storage heads into its annual Pure Accelerate Conference in Austin next week, it's looking to celebrate its 10th anniversary. 10 years in which Pure has grown from a seed-stage start-up to a ~$4B publically traded company. And Pure continues to be a disrupter in the storage industry.

Given this milestone, we thought we'd step back and talk to the man behind the all-flash storage revolution, Pure's Co-Founder and CTO John "Coz" Colgrove.

Coz touches on everything you're interested it, from the origins of Pure, to current challenges, to the future of storage.

The interview starts about 3 minutes in, if you're the type who likes to fast foward.

Special thanks from the MI&S DataCentric team to Terri, Armi, and Rena at Pure Storage for making this happen and, of course, to Coz, who was very generous with his time. Tune in!

Special Guest: John "Coz" Colgrove.

VMWorld 2019 Wrap-Up

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 13:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

Talking with Pure Storage CEO Charlie Giancarlo

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 16:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

Special Guest: Charles "Charlie" Giancarolo.

AMD Releases an Epyc ROME while Lenovo delivers very nice earnings

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 14:00:00 -0400

Moor Insights & Strategy analysts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell are back from their various summer adventures and are easing back into the podcast saddle by asking the question: Is AMD's new Rome server part really "all that"? Should IT buyers care? And if you do, should you buy a server from Lenovo, who's continuing a stellar run of solid execution? All that, and more, on the newest DataCentric.

00:00 AMD's EPYC Rome server launch: How does it stack up? Is Intel really being threatened?
21:30 Lenovo released very solid earnings for last quarter, continuing an impressive run of datacenter growth. Let's talk about that.
32:24 The End.

IBM Closes Red Hat Acquisition + Releases New Storage Offerings

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 15:00:00 -0400

It's been a big week for IBM. The company closed its acquisition of Red Hat, while also expanding its storage offerings.

We bring in IBM's Storage group CMO Eric Herzog to tell us all about the new storage offerings. For Eric, it's all about Applications, Workloads, and Use Cases, but with a strong focus on data protection and Big Data/AI. Keeping with that theme, IBM Storage releases a massive update to its Spectrum Discover tool for big data and AI, which now supports a broad swath of third-party storage solutions, while IBM Spectrum Protect Plus takes on new cloud capabilties. There's more, but you need to tune in and let Eric tell you all about it.

And did you know that IBM used to have a corporate song? Of course you did. Given the strong IBM slant on this podcast, we'll close out with a rendition that we snagged from IBM's corporate archive site.

Listen in!

Times

00:30 IBM Closes the Red Hat acquistion
07:10 IBM Releases new Storage Offerings
09:35 IBM Storage CMO Eric Herzog joins to talk about what IBM is releasing today
23:09 IIAR industry analyst awards
25:43 IBM's traditional corporate song: Ever Onward!

Special Guest: Eric Herzog.

July 2 2019: HCI Market Share Numbers + Wrapping up HPE Discover

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 17:45:00 -0400

HCI market share numbers for Q1 2019 are in and, boy, have things changed! Nutanix slides while Dell EMC holds dominance in branded systems, but isn't that part of Nutanix's strategy? Shifting to less branded, more partner/OEM sales? That, plus we recap the big themes from the recent HPE Discover Conference.

All that, and more, from Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, technology analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy.

3:26 HPE Discover recap -- it's Everything-as-a-Service
16:00 HCI Market Continues to grow, but there's drama in the numbers.

Cyber-Security with HPE's Bob Moore: Live from HPE Discover

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 10:00:00 -0400

During this wide-ranging half-hour discussion recorded live at the 2019 HPE Discover in Las Vegas, hosts Steve McDowell and Matt Kimball talk to HPE's Director of Server Software and Product Security, Bob Moore, about the insidious attack vectors that are emerging. This covers everything from firmware attacks to supply chain interceptions, along with the growth of mafia-like organizations that are driving attacks at an unprecedented scale.

We also talk about how the industry is helping IT respond to those attacks. IT best practices are being supplemented by silicon-based defenses, AI-driven predictive analytics (such as HPE's own InfoSight), and new cyber-insurance offerings.

It's a jam-packed, wide-ranging discussion. It's also one you won't want to miss.

Thanks you to Bob Moore for joining us, and HPE's analyst relations team for helping coordinate it all.

Special Guest: Bob Moore.

Converged Infrastructure with HPE's Gary Thome: Live from HPE Discover

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 12:15:00 -0400

Joining the podcast this week is Gary Thome, HPE's vice president and chief engineer within the Converged Datacenter Infrastructure business. Moor Insights & Strategy analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk to Gary to gain a deeper understanding of what converged infrastructure is, and how it fits into modern IT architecture.

It's a fascinating conversation that will help you better understand what's happening in this new world

Thank you to Gary for taking the time to talk to us, and the HPE analyst relations crew for hooking us up.

Special Guest: Gary Thome.

Live from HPE Discover: Announcements! Themes! Fun in Las Vegas with HPE!

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 09:00:00 -0400

HPE Discover kicks off with an overwhelming list of themes focused around software-defined, multi-cloud, intelligent edge, and, of course, the stars of the show: Storage and HCI. Hosts Matt Kimball & Steve McDowell provide a high-level recap of all the happenings, and contextualize the announcements. You won't want to miss it!

HPE Launches Primera high-end storage.
SimpliVity gets two new offerings + now supports HPE InfoSight
Composable Infrastructure
A "cloudless" furture?
And more!

June 10, 2019: Quarterly Server Numbers! Dell Tech Earnings! What's happening at Nutanix? And Computex!

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 13:00:00 -0400

It's been a newsworthy week in the world of data center. IDC released server numbers that validate what the recent spate of earnings has told us. The market's down from last year, but there are still winners and losers, and you don't want to get caught on the wrong side of that line!

Even in the face of an uncertain server market, Dell Technologies released positive earnings. Matt & Steve go into thiose

Is Nutanix heading towards the rocks, or just experiencing natural transition pains? Nutanix also relased earnings, which weren't postive. Do down earnings and the loss of a key executive point to Nutanix heading towards the rocks? Or are we just watching a painful transition to a new business model? Only time will really tell, but Steve & Matt talk about it anyway!

Computex is very consumer focused, but there was drama on the AMD/Intel front, as the x86 CPU wars are heating up. Intel takes exception to AMD's claims of 2X performance on some supercomputer numbers, while AMD goes big in HPC. Matt also gives us an explanation of what's really happening when AMD says that they're cutting off x86 "technology transfer" to it's China JV.

All that, and Steve's thinking about starting a Twitch feed that highlights his tractor -- a real life video game.

Timeline:

01:10 Apple World Wide Developers Conference -- anything for IT? (hint: not really)
02:50 Inside IDC Server Market Numbers
12:00 Inside Dell Technologies Earnings Numbers
15:20 Let's talk about Nutanix's earnings and outlook
24:55 Computex: AMD, Intel, and more
38:33 Steve's Twitch Channel -- available soon
41:10 That's a wrap!

Inside IBM Storage with Eric Herzog, CMO & VP WW Storage Channels

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 20:00:00 -0400

This episode of the DataCentric Podcast has co-host Steve McDowell talking with Eric Herzog. Eric, a long-time veteran of the storage world, is the Chief Marketing Officer and VP WW Storage Channels for IBM Storage. In a wide-ranging conversation, Eric offers up IBM's vision of what's important in storage. Not to give away the game, but it's all about applications, workloads, and use-cases.

IBM Storage is laser focused on delivering storage technologies (hardware and software solutions) against four of the most impactful IT trends:

Hybrid Multi-Cloud
Storage for AI and Big Data
Cyber Resiliancy
Modern Data Protection

Beyond this, we talk about IBM's NVMe and NVMe-over-fabric story, and Eric tells us why IBM designs their own flash modules.

If you touch storage at all (and look at those four trends listed above -- you touch storage whether you think you do or not), then tune in and and hear what Eric has to say.

You can find Eric on twitter @zoginstor and linkedin at @erherzog

You can Steve McDowell on twitter at @srmcdowell, Matt Kimball at @MattKimball_MIS, and, of course, Moor Insights & Strategy at @MoorInsStrat.

Special Guest: Eric Herzog.

May 28, 2019: Earnings Extravaganza! HPE! Pure Storage! NetApp! Plus China, Huawei, Lenovo, and More!

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 28 May 2019 00:00:00 -0400

Last week was a big week for earnings, with Hewlett Packard Enterprise beating the street and providing some intriguing commentary in their conference call, Pure Storage misses its number while putting up great growth numbers, and NetApp is clearly struggling. All that, along with good discussion of Lenovo, plus grossly uneducated musings on China & Huawei.

Looking to jump to the part you're interested in? Here's where things line up:

1:00 Themes across all earnings: this there an elongation of the enteprise sales cycle? What's it really mean?
3:00 HPE Earnings: Cray Acquistion, Edge, Servers, Storage, Software Defined, GreenLake
14:50 NetApp Earnings: we continue to be bearish, unless they go deeper with Lenovo
23:40 Pure Storage Earnings: Don’t be fooled — their earnings don’t reflect their momentum.
32:00 China: Some uneducated discussion about latest news.
38:00 Miscellaneous News: AMD, Intel Bugs, plus random musings
41:32 What’s coming up? HPE Discover.

May 23, 2019: Recapping Lenovo Accelerate

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 23 May 2019 16:00:00 -0400

Recorded live from Lenovo Accelerate in Orlando, FLA, hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell wrap up their coverage of the event. They talk servers, storage, edge, networking, Lenovo's place in the world, and touch on the overall vibe of the event.

Lenovo Accelerate Day 2: Talking HCI & Software Defined with Lenovo

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 14 May 2019 15:00:00 -0400

We're podcasting live from Lenovo Accelerate in Orlando, and there are special guests!

Shekhar Mishra, Director of Product Marketing for Software Defined Datacenter at Lenovo, and Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy join hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell in an interesting and informative discussion of the impact of software-defined infrastructure, HCI, and cloud on enterprise IT.

The group talks about the value of a flexible infrastructure for enterprise IT, the forces behind the trend towards a software-defined infrastructure, the current market, and Lenovo's offerings in the space.

If you care about software-defined infrastructure (and if you work IT, then you should!), you should tune in!

Special Guests: Patrick Moorhead and Shekhar Mishra.

Lenovo Accelerate Day 1: Lenovo Enters with Strong Momentum

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 14 May 2019 09:00:00 -0400

Lenovo's data center group, under the leadership of Kirk Skaugen, is on fire, outgrowing the market. The company is exhibiting stellar growth in server, top-tier peformanance in HPC, disrupting the capacity-on-demand market, innovating in client, and is targeting edge computing.

Join hosts Matt and Steve as they recap Lenovo Accelerate, the company's premier event for its enterprise customers, today talking about what they learned at the kick-off, and what they hope to learn over their next three days in Orlando.

Nutanix .NEXT Day 2: The Customer Experience

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 10 May 2019 02:00:00 -0400

Nutanix .NEXT hosted nearly 7,000 IT professionals -- Matt & Steve managed to get one to talk about his experiences deploying Nutanix HCI in an enterprise environment.

Join hosts Matt Kimball, Steve McDowell as they talk to special guest Drew Harris, who is Vice President of IT Operations at the Cosmopolitan Casino in Las Vegas to hear about the reality of modern IT colliding with HCI.

It's an interesting chat about the complexities of HCI in the real world, with a few interesting digressions along the way.

We'd like to thank Drew for helping us out, and Nutanix for being such a great host during the event.

Special Guest: Drew Harris.

Nutanix .NEXT Day 1 Recap: All About the Announcements

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 08 May 2019 20:00:00 -0400

Nutanix .NEXT 2019 kicks off in Anaheim CA, where nearly 7,000 IT professionals gather to hear Nutanix's vision of software-defined multi-cloud world. Included in that 7,000 are hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, analysts with Moor Insights & Strategy.

Nutanix has become the dominant challenger in the software-defined datacenter world. That's not lost on Steve & Matt, who offer up their overall impressions of the event so far, the great energy surrounding .NEXT, and the ambitious vision that Nutanix is setting forth for IT.

All in this very special Nutanix .NEXT recap edition of the DataCentric Podcast.

Special Dell Tech World Day 3 Recap: What'd we Learn?

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 01 May 2019 21:00:00 -0400

Dell Tech World day 3 was a day of closure, better coffee, and smuggled bacon. Hosts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell talk about their key takeaways in this short recap of what was a great event.

Storage. Servers. Edge. VMWare. HCI/CI. And much, much more.

Special Dell Tech World Day 2 Recap: Storage, Data, and a Server

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 23:00:00 -0400

Dell EMC released a flurry of product announcements targeted at the enterprise. New Midrange Storage. New PowerMax storage. Dell joins the Storage-on-Demand world with offerings that span on- and off-prem.

Add to that new Dell Latitude laptops, networking branding, VMware cloud management tools... the list goes on and on.

Moor Insights & Strategy data center analysts Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell give you their quick take on it all on this special recap edition of the DataCentric Podcast.

Special Dell Tech World Day 1 Recap: All About that Cloud!

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 23:00:00 -0400

Day one of Dell Technologies World 2019 has just concluded, and Matt & Steve from Moor Insights & Strategy provide a quick recap of the day's events, from serving humanity to VMWare everywhere.

The first day of Dell Tech World usually lays out the major themes that we should expect to hear through the four days of the conference, before the more product-focused announcements kick in on Tuesday. This year it's all about Dell Technologies being a global leader, and taking that leadership seriously. There were panels on diversity, and consistent messages about providing the technology that makes the world a better place.

That's not to say there wasn't news: Microsoft CEO stood on a stage with Pat Gelsinger and sang the praises of VMWare and Azure working better together as he described a new Microsoft offering (who would have ever imagined that one?). VMWare takes their dominance very seriously, and is making moves to protect that. Dell EMC has embraced VMWare, and is telling a "better together" story that we're not sure we've heard before.

And that Michael Dell -- he was everywhere. He continues to be one of the most accessible (and least scripted) technology CEOs in the industry.

Spend 15 minutes with Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell, hear all about it.

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 15:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

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

April 2, 2019: NVIDIA in the DataCenter, Nutanix Everywhere, Open Compute, & more on Huawei

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 00:45:00 -0400

This week Matt & Steve talk through some of what they learned at recent industry events, including the moves that NVIDIA is making into the data center, some discussion of containers in the enterprise, a brief wrap-up from Nutanix's investor conference in New York, some light-thinking following Matt's first missed Open Compute Summit in a decade, and a bit of non-political discussion on Huawei.

If you follow Data Center technology, as well as the players behind the what's happening, you'll be in good company with Matt KImball and Steve McDowell from Moor Insights & Strategy and the DataCentric Podcast.

Timeline

00:30 - 08:00 NVIDIA GTC Wrap-Up: NVIDIA heads into the Enterprise
08:00 - 11:00 Impact of Containers on Data Center management frameworks
11:00 - 21:20 Nutanix Investor Day Wrap-Up: NTNX takes aim
21:20 - 30:00 Open Compute Summit: Why it still matters.
30:00 - 42:30 Huawei: A Serious Player, despite all the geopolitical noise around the company
42:30 - 44:44 Senseless Banter

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 13:00:00 -0400

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

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

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 23:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

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

Feb 8 2019: Data Center Trends for 2019

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 15:00:00 -0500

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

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

Dec 19 2018: 2018 Datacenter Trends

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 01:00:00 -0500

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

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

Companies mentioned:

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

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

datacentric@nand-research.com (NAND Research ) — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 20:00:00 -0500

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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