Multi-cloud is here to stay, but for all its benefits there are hefty challenges too, such as complexity, heterogeneity, and inconsistent operations. In this podcast, David Linthicum talks with VMware’s Richard Munro about the many challenges of multi-cloud and how to solve them – now and in the future. Richard’s take is that right now, companies need to use cross-cloud services for more consistency. The future will be about edge computing, better data management, and decentralization.
Oct 04, 2022•27 min
Multi-cloud security is one of the most difficult pieces of the cloud complexity puzzle to solve for. It’s also one of the most critical. In this podcast, David Linthicum talks with Deloitte’s Ramesh Menon about how shifting security left—i.e., implementing appropriate security during application development to solve issues before systems go live—can help companies move from a reactive to a more proactive security posture and increase the effectiveness of their security program.
Sep 28, 2022•26 min
Despite a cooling job market in some sectors, many companies are still experiencing a shortage of cloud talent. In this podcast, David Linthicum talks with Deloitte’s Josh Haims about how companies can fill that gap. Josh’s take is that education must catch up with technology, companies should build a culture that attracts employees and builds tech fluency throughout the organization, and HR and the business need to build a closer relationship with a shared set of goals and outcomes.
Sep 21, 2022•29 min
Why do some companies glean more value from their cloud investments than others? According to the recent Deloitte US Cloud Survey, cloud leaders spend purposefully to innovate and they use technology as a force multiplier. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Deloitte’s Chris Thomas and Diana Kerns-Manolatos about that survey, and about what sets cloud leaders apart. Bottom line: leaders innovate, they build a strong software engineering culture, and they have confidence in cloud.
Sep 14, 2022•27 min
Why do some digital transformation initiatives flounder while others succeed? One answer might lie with the C-suite leadership. In this podcast, David Linthicum talks with StarCIO’s founder Isaac Sacolick about his latest book, Digital Trailblazer: Essential Lessons to Jumpstart Transformation and Accelerate Your Technology Leadership. According to Isaac, good leadership is about understanding how technology can serve the business, adapting to innovation, and building high-performance teams....
Aug 31, 2022•26 min
Blockchain is evolving, and use cases for it may be almost limitless if the technology is harnessed effectively. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Edgevana’s Mark Thiele about how blockchain has evolved and how it can help solve pressing problems ranging from protecting intellectual property and personal data, to boosting IT security, to detangling global supply-chains, to democratizing computing in general. Mark also believes blockchain may someday underpin the emerging metaverse....
Aug 24, 2022•19 min
As cloud adoption increases and multi and hybrid clouds become the norm, operations become more complex and monitoring performance becomes more difficult. In this Knowledge Short podcast, David Linthicum talks about how the concept and practice of Observability goes beyond traditional systems monitoring to help IT teams observe, gain insight into, and maybe even predict what’s happening in their cloud ecosystem to better manage increasing complexity.
Aug 17, 2022•20 min
Manufacturers continue to respond to an increasing demand for products amid a volatile supply chain, labor shortages, and a fluctuating global economy. Improving production processes in the factory can help, but it’s not the only answer. In this podcast, David Linthicum and Deloitte’s Stephen Laaper talk about how companies can use AI and other cognitive tools to harness the vast streams of data collected from manufacturing operations to automate and increase safety, productivity, and quality an...
Aug 10, 2022•27 min
Every so often, a technology comes along that has the power to change how we view and perform in the world. One of those just might be wearable cognitive assistance (WCA) devices. In this episode, David talks with Carnegie Mellon University professor Mahadev Satyanarayanan and Deloitte’s Arpan Tiwari about how WCA, via leveraging the edge and AI to augment human capabilities, will transform the way we work and live, and open up worlds of knowledge and ability to anyone who wears a device. Wearab...
Aug 03, 2022•28 min
As cloud moves into its second decade, there are still growing pains. In this episode, David Linthicum and Mike Kavis discuss cloud’s most pressing issues and offer solutions. Leveraging cloud for innovation, multi-cloud complexity, a talent shortage, and slowing cloud migration are the top challenges. The solutions? Focusing on value delivery, aligning business needs with technology, changing organizational culture, and realizing that slowing down isn’t necessarily such a bad thing.
Jul 27, 2022•23 min
For companies that operate across geographies, IT architectures and regulatory requirements can make it difficult to access widely distributed data for analysis. Extended enterprise clouds (EEC) can help provide access to disparate data via augmenting the enterprise multi-cloud with third-party services such as vertical clouds, AI clouds, or data clouds—all with a common control plane. Building an EEC takes planning and a cultural change around data ownership, but it’s well worth the effort....
Jul 19, 2022•24 min
There’s little doubt that sustainability has become a global imperative. In this Knowledge Short, David Linthicum discusses the vital role cloud computing can play in sustainability initiatives. He makes the case that cloud computing is more sustainable because resource use is optimized, and cloud providers typically employ green operations practices. He also talks about other ways organizations can practice sustainability in their everyday operations.
Jul 14, 2022•17 min
Diversity, equity, and inclusion aren’t just words; they’re a key component of success for nearly any endeavor, cloud computing included. In this podcast, David Linthicum talks with Deloitte's Josh Walker, co-founder of Black Orlando Tech, about his efforts to bring diversity to the tech workforce. They also discuss ways companies can change their culture to hire more minorities by creating a culturally diverse, friendly workspace and ensuring that minorities feel more welcome.
Jun 29, 2022•21 min
As cloud matures, managing cloud costs has become a top priority for many organizations. That’s where the new discipline of FinOps, or financial operations, can help. The goal of FinOps is to help companies manage and maintain accountability for cloud usage and costs. In this Knowledge Short podcast, David Linthicum explains what FinOps is, how it can help companies control cloud costs better, and how culture change and automation play a key role in FinOps implementation.
Jun 23, 2022•14 min
Cloud-native design principles make cloud apps scalable, flexible, and more quickly deployable. Those principles can be applied to situations other than cloud, as well. Take edge computing, for instance. Edge can be thought of as a point-of-presence cloud, so applying cloud-native principles to the edge can make app performance, speed, and scalability cloud-like. And it can help solve the “edge war” of the future: the battle to reduce latency to its vanishing point.
Jun 15, 2022•26 min
Look around at any cloud conference, and you’ll see a lopsided ratio of men to women. Why aren’t there more women in tech, and in cloud computing specifically? In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Deloitte’s Lisa Noon and Appgate’s Tamara Prazak about how to get more women into cloud. In the end, it comes down to bridging the STEM gap for girls early on, recruiting more women, and making their working lives more flexible. Cultural change also plays a big role in closing the gap.
Jun 08, 2022•22 min
Despite cloud’s many benefits, organizations are often shocked at its operational costs. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Erik Peterson, co-founder and CTO of CloudZero, about how companies can leverage software engineering and focus on costs to optimize cloud spend and drive value. According to Erik, success lies in cooperation between finance and engineering to better understand the financial impact of cloud and close the feedback loop in terms of mapping costs to features.
May 25, 2022•23 min
Edge computing isn’t a new concept, but pairing it with artificial intelligence holds new promise. However, there are significant challenges that companies must meet to realize the promise of Edge AI. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with ClearBlade’s Aaron Allsbrook about how Edge computing, paired with AI, works, and how it can give companies that leverage it a competitive advantage. He also lays out some challenges they’ll face to reach their Edge goals.
May 18, 2022•25 min
Cloud computing is a hot sector in IT right now, and many companies can’t hire enough workers to fill cloud roles. In this Knowledge Short, David Linthicum gives advice to anyone seeking to move into cloud computing as a career. David’s take is that no matter where you’re starting from—a college student or recent graduate, a non-IT worker looking to change careers or an IT professional looking to shift gears—you can find your path to cloud and a successful, often lucrative, career.
May 11, 2022•22 min
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for 40-plus years, but its future has never been brighter. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Professor Vasudeva Varma and Deloitte’s Ponnu Kailasam about how AI, in the context of information retrieval, can wade through information overload in search results to deliver contextually-appropriate, actionable information. Vasu and Ponnu agree that AI powered by cloud, and cloud powered by AI, will be critical to the process.
May 04, 2022•25 min
Digital transformation (DT) is often easier said than done, but it’s essential for organizations to transform to remain competitive. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Thomas Erl, author of the book A Field Guide to Digital Transformation, about putting DT concepts into practice. According to Erl, customer centricity is the driving force behind DT efforts, and to be successful, it’s absolutely critical to have the right thought leadership at the helm of any DT initiative.
Apr 20, 2022•27 min
Observability is the new buzzword in cloud, and many people confuse it with monitoring, but it’s so much more. In this episode, Mike Kavis talks with Erez Barak, VP of Product Development at Sumo Logic, about observability—what it is, how it helps organizations deal with cloud complexity, and how it's helped by (and helps) AI. To implement observability successfully, however, a new IT operating model that removes silos and fosters collaboration is absolutely essential.
Apr 13, 2022•24 min
Artificial intelligence (AI)—especially when it’s cloud-enabled—can be a force multiplier and powerful tool for innovation. However, there’s a crucial need to think about the ethical issues and implications of ubiquitous AI. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Deloitte’s Beena Ammanath about the reasons to establish ethical guardrails around the use of AI, as well as who should be responsible for developing and maintaining those guardrails—now and in the future.
Apr 06, 2022•24 min
Military personnel serve our country in countless ways, but sometimes the transition to private life can be difficult. To help ease that transition, Deloitte participates in Hiring Our Heroes—a collaboration with American businesses to create job opportunities for veterans post-service. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with three veterans who are participating in the program with Deloitte to find out how they’re faring during their transition and what lessons they’ve learned.
Mar 30, 2022•24 min
Music and IT may seem to be at opposite ends of a spectrum, but in reality, they have much in common if you know where to look. In this episode, Mike Kavis talks with Matt Davis, staff infrastructure engineer at Blameless, about how practice methods in music can aid in building great SRE teams and site reliability in general. According to Matt, it’s all about how you practice for the real thing: If your practices are good, and you can improvise, your SRE performance will top the charts.
Mar 23, 2022•30 min
Cloud can be a force multiplier for most companies. However, cloud is a general solution, and many organizations need industry-specific capabilities built for their particular vertical market. In this Knowledge Short, David Linthicum discusses how industry clouds can meet those needs by providing composable, industry-specific bundles of digital services that enable organizations to pick the services they need to meet their transformation needs and achieve better outcomes.
Mar 16, 2022•18 min
The impetus these days for most organizations is to transform their business to achieve competitive advantage. It’s a good imperative, but the reason for change matters, too. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with consultant and author John Hagel on how to build a future based on seeing opportunity rather than fear. John’s view is that it takes building a strong corporate narrative for the future, cultivating a shared passion, and building learning platforms to bring people together.
Mar 09, 2022•26 min
Global market forces, coupled with the pandemic, have spurred most organizations to accelerate their digital transformation to keep their competitive edge—but that’s often easier said than done. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Deloitte’s Diana Kearns-Manolatos about why strategy is central to accelerating the transformation journey. Diana lays out five “digital imperatives” for speeding transformation. She also explains the role industry clouds play in that process.
Mar 02, 2022•27 min
True digital transformation requires a hyper-connected ecosystem where information flows freely between those who need it and those who provide it. However, that level of connectivity has often proven elusive. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with MuleSoft’s Matt McLarty and Deloitte’s Kurt Anderson about how new thinking on application and technology integration holds promise to help organizations achieve their connectivity goals and enable faster digital transformation.
Feb 23, 2022•27 min
To be sure, cloud is a boon to organizations that make the leap, but, as with any technology, there are bumps along the road to implementation. In this episode, David Linthicum talks with Techstrong Group’s Mike Vizard about how companies can address three particularly vexing issues: multicloud complexity, cloud cost management, and cloud security. Mike’s advice is to develop a sound multicloud cloud strategy, treat cloud as a strategic investment, and view security as a process, not a problem....
Feb 16, 2022•26 min
