As part of my role as a Technical Director, one of my tasks is to attend events and hear from the community about the challenges they have and to hear from tech vendors about how they are fixing them. However, every now and again one of the things that happens is someone presents something that introduces me to a whole new challenge that I'd never considered. That happened at a recent User group event, where Francesco Giarletta of Avanite to discussed the mysterious world of the webcache and the...
Nov 07, 2017•30 min
As the world continues to "transform" and be more digitally driven, then the inevitable also has to happen, systems that support our day to day processes start to become outdated, inefficient and ineffective for a world that needs to move more quickly and in different ways. One such innovation that is gathering momentum is the use of blockchain and it is starting to have a major disruptive impact on the way many traditional transactions are done. If you are like me and interested in the technolo...
Oct 24, 2017•23 min
Sharing our data is an important part of our day to day activities, be that for analysis, collaboration or system development, we need to be able to share data sets. However, this need to share has to be balanced with our needs to maintain the security of our data assets. How do we address the problem and maintain that balance? One answer is data anonymization and that is the subject of this week's show, as I'm joined by Harry Keen, CEO and founder of anon.ai. In our wide-ranging discussion, we ...
Oct 17, 2017•31 min
It's not news to anyone listening to this show that the challenge around the security of our data and systems is a substantial one. Our technology seems to be under constant threat, from external hackers, to insiders, from targeted attacks to malware finding its way randomly onto our systems and causing havoc and all of this before we look at increased regulation and compliance demands. The ever-increasing threat has led to us looking to technology to help protect our systems, however this has n...
Oct 10, 2017•39 min
Over the last couple of episodes, we've had some interesting round-ups from the recent VMWorld conference, reviewing the announcements from the show, as well as how VMware are evolving to maintain relevance to their many customers in an ever more software defined, data-centric and of course cloud and as-a-service based world. Part of the VMware response to these changes ( I hasten to add, not the only technological evolutions they are making) is a smart one, rather than fight the tide King Canut...
Oct 04, 2017•28 min
VMware, along with Microsoft, is perhaps the most influential enterprise software company in the industry. VMware and their virtualisation technology has revolutionised the way we deliver IT infrastructure into businesses of all types. Today, however, the infrastructure revolution they helped create presents challenges to them, as the broad adoption of cloud and new ways of managing and deploying our infrastructure has led to the question "how do VMware remain relevant in a post virtualisation w...
Sep 18, 2017•30 min
This time of the year is a busy one for the technology industry as we move into conference season. But are these events worth your while, or are they just an excuse for a few days off and a good time? Over the next two shows, I get the views from this years VMworld 2017 conference and ask the question "was it good for you?". In this first episode, I'm joined by 4 guests; Becky Elliot - Sr. Systems Administrator for a US government contractor Michael Cade - Veeam Mark Carlton - Concorde IT Barry ...
Sep 11, 2017•41 min
This week is the third and last of our panel discussions looking at the major challenges facing business IT. We pick up again with our panel from last week to discuss a range of new topics. We look at how a business vision, without assessment and understanding of the current environment, may well mean you never achieve your end goal. We look at how our increasingly digitally native workforce may leave us without the skill sets needed to architect our future solutions. The changing role of the co...
Sep 04, 2017•26 min
The IT Avengers are assembling again this week, but this time I'm joined by a whole new team, as four more experts from the IT community share their view on the current state of IT within business, the day to day issues and how to overcome them. This weeks panel is; Ed Morgan - Sales Engineer at Rubrik Mick Kehoe - Chief Technologist at Logicalis Ruairi McBride - Technical Account Manager at Arrow ECS Jason Benedicic - Principal Consultant at ANS This weeks show is so action packed that it's bee...
Aug 23, 2017•31 min
This weeks Tech Interviews is the first in a short series, where I bring together a selection of people from the IT community to try to gauge the current state of business IT and to gain some insight into the key day-to-day issues affecting those delivering technology to their organisations. For this first episode i'm joined by three returning guests to the show. Michael Cade - Technical Evangelist at Veeam. Mike Andrews - Technical Solutions Architect at NetApp Mark Carlton - Group Technical Ma...
Aug 21, 2017•44 min
The podcast is back from its summer holidays, a week earlier than expected, with this special episode looking at a problem that is often overlooked. There is no argument that increasingly we are taking more of our business IT solutions as services, be that building platforms and infrastructure or whether it's consuming specific software as a service (SaaS)solutions like Salesforce or of course the almost omnipotent Microsoft Office 365. However, many people operate their SaaS solution under the ...
Aug 14, 2017•29 min
There has no doubt been a change in the way we look at protecting and securing our key data, with robust data protection, enhanced data security plans and increased governance to ensure compliance with ever-increasing regulatory requirements. However, much of this is concentrated in our datacentre and our central data sets, which although critical, is not all of our data. Today critical data no longer lives behind corporate firewalls and security, it lives out on a wide range of mobile devices, ...
Jul 17, 2017•31 min
There is no doubt that our organisations are becoming ever more data centric, wanting to know how we can gain insight into our day to day operations and continue to be competitive and relevant to our customers, while delivering a wide range of new experiences for them. These changes do mean we need to reconsider how we design and deliver technology. Which has led to the idea of "The Next Generation Datacenter", but what does that mean? What is a Next Generation Datacentre? That is the subject of...
Jul 10, 2017•31 min
This weeks episode is a little different, rather than chatting with someone from the tech community about technology trends and IT business issues, we talk to an actual user! In the final part of our brief series looking at moving to the cloud, we look at a real use case, someone who has embraced cloud technology to bring innovation to an industry as I'm joined by Lee Clark of Givepenny UK. Lee describes how a 100-mile charity bike ride, that he never got to do, made him think about a whole new ...
Jul 03, 2017•30 min
This week is the second of three looking at the challenges associated with moving to the cloud as we discuss the area of picking the right cloud service provider partners. I'm joined by Jon Green, Technical Solutions Director at Navisite Europe Ltd. We look at a range of issues and potential "gotchas" that can impact our attempts at taking advantage of the flexibility, scale and commercial attractiveness that cloud can bring. We look at the risk of assuming cloud is simple, the importance of und...
Jun 26, 2017•26 min
We're all heading to the cloud, data is the new gold, all of our competition is putting its data in the cloud and getting massive competitive advantage, if we don't know how to use our data and take advantage of the cloud we'll be obsolete. But, if that is all true, why isn't everyone charging headlong into cloud services and finding more and more valuable information from their data and making the rest of us a thing of the past? Over the next few Tech Interviews episodes we are going to explore...
Jun 19, 2017•28 min
Over the last 15 years or so, there has been major shifts in the way we deliver technology in the enterprise, cloud, mobility and of course virtualisation. You can't look at the virtualisation industry without looking at the company who has defined the industry more than any other, VMware. However, they are not immune to change and the world is certainly changing as we become more application and data centric and with this our expectations of how we consume our IT services has also changed. How ...
Jun 12, 2017•24 min
This weeks episode is part two of our view at the wider data availability market as I'm joined by three more guests from the recent VeeamON event to continue our discussion. This week we look at how our data availability strategy is not and can not just be a discussion for the technical department and must be elevated into our overall business strategy. We also look how technology trends are affecting our views of backup, recovery and availability. First I'm joined by Dave Stevens of Data Gravit...
Jun 06, 2017•28 min
Now honestly, this episode has not gone out today sponsored by British Airways, or in any way taking advantage of the situation that affected 1000's of BA customers over the weekend, the timing is purely coincidental. However, those incidents have made this episode quite timely as they again highlight just how crucial to our day to day activities as individuals and businesses technology is. As part of my time at the recent VeeamON event, I took the opportunity to chat with the wider IT community...
May 30, 2017•29 min
One of the biggest challenges we face in technology is constant change. Change is not bad of course, but it presents challenges, from upgrading operating systems and applications, to integrating the latest technology advancements, to responding to new business problems and opportunities. The IT industry is full of stories of companies who had great technologies but have then been blindsided by a shift in the needs of their customer base, or a technology trend that they failed to anticipate. It w...
May 22, 2017•25 min
The IT world is a funny place, we love a bit of innovation, sometimes it's new and revolutionary, sometimes something whose time has come and sometimes, some just keep coming back and remaining relevant, but maybe relevant in new and different ways. One such technology is the focus of this week's podcast as I am joined by Tony Main of Italian thin client vendor Praim. I'll be honest, I was sceptical as to whether a discussion of Thin Client was really relevant in the world of modern IT. So we di...
May 13, 2017•34 min
Shouting at Siri, arguing with Alexa or cursing Cortana the idea of talking at technology, whether on your phone, laptop, tablet or even a specialist device like an Amazon Echo, is becoming increasingly commonplace and is only going to become more common. Voice is an example of the move to change how we interact with our technology, a move away from monitor, mouse and keyboard, to more flexible and, let's face it, efficient ways of working. Another such technology is the subject of this weeks sh...
May 08, 2017•29 min
Data is increasingly driving the world we operate in and the way we are using data to drive it is changing rapidly. Business decisions are no longer made just by Fred with his humongous spreadsheets, or Mary and her accounts package wizardry. Data analytics is now something that we see every day, even if we don't realise it, from the intelligence in our smartphones, to high performance computing crunching masses of numbers, the use of analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning is be...
May 01, 2017•31 min
I think we all accept that as individuals, businesses and organisations, the way we see our data is changing, more than ever we see it as an asset and like any asset we see it as something to treat carefully, ensuring it is stored properly, secured, protected and of course something we are getting value from. A big part of this shift is driven by the technology industry itself, tools, technologies and services are now available that allow us to use our data in ways that previously we had not bee...
Apr 24, 2017•33 min
Data it's one of a modern organisations most crucial assets. With that in mind, how do we build a strategy that meets todays data challenges, how do we make sure we have a strategy not only ensures we can store our data on a resilient and secure platform, but also that we can take advantage of new data trends, like analytics, IoT and public cloud storage. In this weeks episode I discuss this with NetApp A-Team member Mark Carlton, we look at how NetApp's data fabric strategy can help you to plan...
Apr 10, 2017•28 min
There is no doubt that the world we live and work in is changing, in our personal lives we expect an always on experience and ever more digital interaction with the world. This is not just in our consumer lives. In our work lives expectation is the same, not only in the way we expect to work with technology, but also in the way our businesses expect to operate. But what does that mean, what does that mean to us as either IT professionals, or those trying to navigate their organisations through t...
Apr 03, 2017•24 min
You don't need to look around the technology industry too much to hear phrases such as "data is the new gold" or "data is the new oil", but like any good marketing phrase, it is based on a degree of fact. It is certain that the modern organisation is becoming increasingly digital, transforming into one that is relying on data and digital workflows for its success, however when it comes to data, it's not how much data you have, it's what you do with it and learn from it that will determine who re...
Mar 27, 2017•29 min
We are all familiar with the saying “what you don’t know, won’t hurt you”. Well in the world of data management, security and privacy the opposite is most definitely true. For most of us, as our organisations become more digital, we are increasingly realising the value of our data, how big an asset it is and how important maintaining it is. However, although we understand its value, we actually have very little insight into what is happening to it on a day to day basis. That’s our focus this wee...
Mar 20, 2017•26 min
Losing USB sticks, leaving laptops on trains, installing malware, clicking phishing links. From maliciousness to stupidity, our people are a constant problem. In fact people are our biggest data security issue aren't they? Aren't they? We have to ask ourselves, are we doing all we can to help our people? Rather than seeing them as a security problem, have we thought about how we can make them an asset as we continually look to take on the threats to our critical data? Our people can be a huge be...
Mar 13, 2017•21 min
There is no doubt that there are many difficulties presented to organisations when it comes to their data. We understand it's an asset, something that, if we make the most of it, can be a significant advantage to us, but of course we also understand maintaining the security and privacy of it is critical. In this weeks podcast, the second part of my conversation with Global Data Protection Attorney Sheila Fitzpatrick, we discuss exactly what GDPR is going to mean to us as organisations, its impac...
Mar 06, 2017•18 min
