One of the few COVID-19 benefits has been the shift of many major technology vendors to taking their key events online, we've already seen Microsoft, NetApp, HPE, Cisco and many more move their big in-person conferences to an online version and while they may not replace all elements of those in-person events, what it has done is opened up the opportunity to attend events that you may not normally be able with the bonus of much of the content been left available for many weeks after the event so...
Jul 01, 2020•44 min
There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it has been something we have not witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges, delivering remote IT at scale, stretched VPN's, flexibility, support, security, the list is long. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of "normal", but this also presents an opportunity to us, the...
Jun 24, 2020•29 min
The move to the cloud is hardly a new topic, for many the value of services like Microsoft 365 have proved their worth over the opening months of 2020, having key services running in the public cloud has delivered the flexibility, scale and accessibility that it promised. Beyond that we are also starting to see ever increasing tactical use of public cloud, integration into backup and archive tools, storage, cloud-based security appliances, the list continues to grow. But what about those big ent...
Jun 17, 2020•28 min
There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it has been something we have witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges, delivering remote IT at scale, stretched VPN’s, scale, flexibility, support, security, the list is long. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of “normal”, but this also presents an opportunity to us, ...
Jun 11, 2020•36 min
There is no doubt the world has changed in many ways in the last 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it has been something we have not witnessed before. From a technology point of view, it has presented many challenges, delivering remote IT at scale, stretched VPN's, scale, flexibility, support, security, the list is long. However as things start to change we are starting to turn our attention to returning to some kind of "normal", but this also presents an opportunity to ...
Jun 04, 2020•32 min
Over the last few weeks the use of collaboration tools has grown exponentially as they have become critical to enterprises of all types to enable their staff to continue to work together and to keep business moving in these most challenging of times. Many of them have moved from business tools to household names, now everyone knows what a Zoom meeting is and of course, we are all familiar with the phrase "living in Microsoft Teams". While Teams itself is an excellent collaboration tool, easy for...
May 28, 2020•33 min
Data is essential in modern business, how we store, protect, ensure it's available and portable and of course that it is compliant and meets our business and regulatory needs. To provide the kind of insight and control we need of our data in the modern enterprise requires us to think beyond how we store it, we need to be more platform focussed, ensuring that in whichever repositories we place our data they give us greater insight and control of its usage. However, to deliver things like complian...
May 20, 2020•36 min
In our increasingly data focussed world the desire to gain more insight from our data to help us to make better decisions continues to grow. This has lead to a real upsurge in the need to not only find better ways to analyse data, but also approaches that make the ability to analyse it more widespread and get tools into the hands of those inside of an enterprise who need it to help them make better decisions for their companies and customers alike. How do we go about building this kind of data a...
May 06, 2020•25 min
Data, data everywhere, that seems to be the standard refrain in most businesses, we are collecting more data from more sources than ever, yet in many cases we don’t have a clear and bespoke strategy for dealing with it, how we use, store and secure data tends to be embedded in other strategies and policies. Many enterprises talk about the importance of their data and how they see it as a crucial asset, so is now the time to have a bespoke and specific data strategy? If it is, why is it? What sho...
Apr 29, 2020•33 min
One of the questions that I always find interesting in the technology industry is whether the technology that industry watchers and analysts talk about and fill column inches with are the things that enterprises are deploying on a wide scale. I often feel that analysts and large tech vendors have a vision of the world that is shaped by the companies on the West coast of the USA and the very largest enterprises, there is nothing wrong at all with listening to the needs and challenges those compan...
Apr 08, 2020•37 min
The world finds itself in uncharted territory, gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic putting unprecedented pressure on public health and the global economy. For enterprises of all types, the challenges of trying to continue business as normal are going to be significant. I’ve been wondering how I could help, one idea is to try to share good practice and advice from those in the IT and business continuity industries on dealing with the current crisis and giving your enterprises the very best chance of...
Mar 30, 2020•33 min
The world finds itself in uncharted territory, gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic putting unprecedented pressure on public health and the global economy. For enterprises of all types, the challenges of trying to continue business as normal are going to be significant. In this special episode, we discuss one of the biggest challenges that we have seen reported already and that is the robustness of remote connectivity, this goes beyond just those working from home, how are people who work in critica...
Mar 24, 2020•25 min
The world finds itself in uncharted territory, gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic putting unprecedented pressure on public health and the global economy. For enterprises of all types, the challenges of trying to continue business as normal are going significant. How do we go about it? What is our business continuance strategy? What are some of the key things we should be considering and the challenges we need to overcome? I’ve been wondering over the last few days how I could help, one idea is to ...
Mar 20, 2020•25 min
The use of virtual desktops is seemingly always about to become the next big wave of technology, there is an industry running joke that this year will be the year of VDI (and completely coincidentally for this podcast, flexible and remote working technology has never been more in the news) but it has never quite happened, it’s not that VDI or centralised desktops aren’t deployed or remain a strategically relevant consideration, it just never quite seems to get the critical mass that it often pro...
Mar 11, 2020•31 min
Modernisation is a buzzword across the IT industry, but it is more than just a technology subject, it is about changing the way you view and use technology, deliver services, products, deal with customers and drive innovation across all aspects of the enterprise and of course IT plays a part in that, but how? This week’s podcast was recorded at Microsoft’s Ignite Tour in London early in 2020 where I caught up with two of my friends from the IT industry, Ruairi McBride and Jason Benedicic to disc...
Mar 04, 2020•26 min
It’s a big week for Veeam software with the release of Version 10 of their core product set Veeam Availability Suite. Major software releases are often about much more than just a set of new features, they are about solving evolving industry and customer challenges and helping to drive forward a company strategy (I wrote a piece recently discussing this). What then are some of the drivers behind these software releases? What thinking goes into them? Why do they sometimes take a long time to come...
Feb 19, 2020•31 min
When we deploy technology into an organisation it’s important we focus on the right thing, technology shouldn’t be deployed for its own sake, it is there to serve a purpose, deliver an outcome and provide a good and useful experience for our customers and end-users. But how do we know that our technology is providing that? Understanding our user experience is not something that is easy to do, but Why does it matter? Why is a good end-user experience important? And do we really need to care? They...
Feb 12, 2020•32 min
The move to the cloud continues at a pace as more organisations look to harness cloud-like capabilities like scale, flexibility and commercial value into their business operations. These companies are now more likely to be more "traditional" types that already have a datacentre and an enterprise IT environment, finding ways to tactically use the cloud in these environments is high on the priory list for IT teams across many types of business. One interesting consideration for helping with this i...
Feb 05, 2020•35 min
It’s part two of our new year look ahead last week we looked at areas such as tech company consolidation, more acceptance of the move to cloud and maybe even the death of blockchain. In this second part, I catch up with two more respected industry figures Rick Vanover and John Nicholson. Rick and John are highly experienced technologists and provide some fascinating thoughts on what the next 12 months may bring. We cover topics from 5G networks, accepting that hybrid cloud is OK and Kubernetes m...
Jan 22, 2020•26 min
A new year a new set of Tech Interviews podcasts for you to enjoy. In our first two shows of 2020 I chat with five people from across the technology industry to find out what trends, technologies and ideas they expect to see shape the next 12 months in enterprise IT. In this first episode, I speak with Chris Evans, Sarah Lean and Greg Knieriemen to see how they think 2020 is going to shape up. In our conversations it's interesting to see a number of subjects that run as common threads, data and ...
Jan 15, 2020•33 min
One of the biggest technology changes of the last 5-10 years for consumers as well as businesses has been the growth in the use of Wi-Fi. Today we almost feel it is our right to be connected to high performance, resilient and reliable wireless infrastructure so that we can remain online doing everything from updating social media to carrying out conference calls, the demand for wireless is endless. Wi-Fi also presents us with new challenges, its complex nature, amount of devices and speed of gro...
Dec 04, 2019•35 min
There isn’t a day goes by that our IT security isn’t under threat, been tested or questioned, it is a continual headache for organisations of all types, from ransomware to targeted attacks the issues are constant and of the highest priority to most of us. Sadly, there is no magic button that takes away all our security woes, building IT security is difficult, multi-faceted and multi-layered. Earlier this year I read a great series of articles from a friend of mine over on Solarwinds Orangematter...
Nov 27, 2019•33 min
IT loves an acronym and a trend, but eventually many of them do start to evolve, become more accessible and businesses start to deploy them and publicise the benefits, then another and another before finally the technology starts to become more commonplace and increasingly companies want to investigate the potential benefits to them. Roll back 7 or 8 years, Cloud found itself in that position, but today Cloud is the norm and becoming standard practice in businesses of all types. Over the last 12...
Nov 20, 2019•28 min
Whenever I speak with those tasked with deploying enterprise technology one of the most common challenges I find they have is finding a way to compare what they are doing with others in similar roles. How do you best find and deploy new technology? How do you encourage open dialogue in your business to identify needs and opportunities? How do you learn more about what technology is available? And how do you ensure you are not seen as the IT department who always says no? These are all real chall...
Nov 13, 2019•34 min
Increasingly automation is becoming a way of life in IT, tools that take repetitive or complex tasks and simplify them by automating much of the work they require are increasingly popular. They also have real value for many organisations, it frees up resources, improves the time of delivery and reduces risk of errors that often come when humans deliver repetitive tasks or ones they have to deliver quickly or under pressure. One such tool is Veeam Availability Orchestrator (VAO) which provides th...
Nov 05, 2019•34 min
A little while back I wrote a blog post inspired by a presentation by a friend of mine, Michael Cade, at Cloud Field Day 5 back in April ,where he talked about how Veeam were developing their workload and data portability strategy. This really struck a chord with me as it closely mirrored a lot of the conversations I was having, across businesses of all types, as they looked to develop more data-centric strategies, that focussed on ensuring that their data was where they needed it when. It appea...
Oct 14, 2019•33 min
When it comes to keeping up with the latest IT industry trends, the good, the bad, the things to keep an eye on, how do we even begin to get started when the industry is so large and diverse? There are, however, lots of places we can go to find different opinions and views, vendor events, blogs, briefings or even Podcasts. One other avenue open to us are analysts. Recently major analyst firm, Gartner, published one of their Magic Quadrant reports, this one focussed on the storage industry. As al...
Oct 03, 2019•36 min
There is no question that our IT systems are critical to the operation of the modern enterprise, its ability to meet ever-changing demands and do this quickly means our IT stack continues to grow and evolve into an ever larger and more complex beast, which presents a constant challenge to Enterprise IT teams to ensure our systems continue to perform as needed, remain secure and available to deliver the outcomes our enterprises need. When we used to have half a dozen servers, a small network and ...
Sep 27, 2019•34 min
Teams, Zoom, Slack, Webex, the list of platforms that are now commonplace in organisations and changing the way we work together and collaborate continue to grow. These applications are not only providing a conference platform for hosting meetings but are also replacing some of our traditional communications methods such as voice, video and increasingly becoming the standard message exchange application, slowly starting to replace email as a day to day tool. As we adopt these tools, how many of ...
Sep 18, 2019•30 min
The world of infrastructure is changing rapidly, the way we use and access data is driving significant change in the way we design data infrastructure to deliver at scale, with flexibility, openness and portability. One such shift is the increasing adoption of open database technology, back in episode 88 I spoke with Patrick Callaghan of Cassandra on this topic. it was a popular episode and the use of such databases is continuing to grow. With that in mind, I wanted to revisit the topic and take...
Sep 11, 2019•34 min
