In this 12th episode of the TECHunplugged Podcast recorded live at NetApp Insight 2018 in Las Vegas, podcast co-host Max Mortillaro (@darkkavenger) bumps into fellow Tech Field Day delegate and IT community member Chanaka Ekanayake (Chan), Technology Practice Manager (Data Center and AWS) at Insight UK and ambushes him to discuss about IT community involvement, content creation and building relationships in the community. Excuse us for the background music / noise, this was recorded at The Delano in Las Vegas in a public space since we couldn’t find at the time a quieter place.

Show schedule:

• 00:00 Intros & presentation
• 01:15 How Chan started to get involved in the community
• 02:15 From technical blogging to thought leadership content
• 03:35 Decrypting vendor messaging and having a customer-centric approach
• 04:45 Thought leadership content vs most visited articles – does it aligns with expectations?
• 06:40 How does that content creation articulates with business activities
• 07:55 What are Chan tips for people who are hesitating to make the jump into content creation
• 09:18 There’s no failure in sharing information – be opinionated, don’t be afraid to criticize, but back it with facts
• 11:45 Having a balanced view, taking a step back and looking at business outcomes beyond technology coolness
• 13:49 Chan’s role at Insight UK (Nothing to do with NetApp Insight)
• 14:20 Expectations from NetApp Insight 2018
• 16:10 Building relationships, especially with community members – how to engage with peers at very large events
• 17:20 On random encounters and friendships
• 18:08 Where’s Chan headed at until the end of 2018
• 18:54 Closing the discussion & Thanks

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In this 11th episode of the TECHunplugged Podcast, Krishna Subramanian (@cloudKrishna), President and COO at Komprise, joins hosts Max Mortillaro (@darkkavenger) and Arjan Timmerman (@arjantim) to discuss about Data Management and how Komprise helps organisations get the best value out of their file-based storage investments.

To complement the podcast and get a deeper dive on the topic, we recommend that you read Max’s article on Komprise (stub & link on TECHunplugged.io, article is on Max’s personal blog).

Show schedule:

• 00:00 Intros & presentation
• 00:55 Komprise’s genesis and customers drowning in data; what Komprise solution is about
• 02:30 Three co-founders & three startups – Distributed architectures – Krishna’s past experience in the industry
• 04:05 Transformation without disruption: how is the Komprise solution delivered
• 05:15 Komprise &  technology partners
• 07:17 How Komprise gets into solving data sprawl issues – discovery, management, reporting & policies
• 10:05 Getting started with Komprise, how easy it is to deploy and configure? And what needs to be done to be up and running?
• 12:23 What is the sweet point from a capacity perspective to start using Komprise? How does Komprise scales?
• 13:45 Savings! What space saving ratios are being achieved by Komprise customers?
• 14:55 How do Komprise customers handle backups from a data management perspective? Awesome use case with Rubrik
• 17:25 Arjan is mind-blown by the use of Komprise to further optimize costs on platforms such as Rubrik and Cohesity
• 18:55 Data tiering and storage policies with Komprise
• 21:03 Tape’s not dead! Using tape to further drive down costs and how to quickly recall cold data from tape
• 22:50 Licensing model, features and expected cost saving achievements
• 24:55 Where can we find more info about Komprise and what markets are currently in Komprise focus
• 25:57 Closing the discussion & Thanks

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In this 10th episode of the TECHunplugged Podcast, Scott Shadley (@SMShadley), Marketing Executive at NGD Systems, joins hosts Max Mortillaro (@darkkavenger) and Arjan Timmerman (@arjantim) for an insightful discussion about a potentially transformational event in the storage industry: the advent of computational storage.

To complement the podcast and get a deeper dive on the topic, we recommend that you get your own free copy of TECHunplugged Industry Insights early market research on Computational Storage, available here.

Show schedule:

• 00:00 Intros & presentation
• 00:30 Recapitulating on our encounter with Scott & NGD Systems
• 01:10 Arjan quotes our Industry Insights early market paper & how one of our quotes moved Scott
• 01:35 Scott covers his past experience and gets back to his feelings towards this transformational event
• 02:43 Arjan & Scott cover Scott’s journey in the storage industry
• 04:13 Max asks Scott about his take on the promise of computational storage, how we got there, and how it works
• 06:27 Max returns on his computational storage epiphany, mentioning his visit to the Computer History Museum and how computing architectures are fundamentally the same since the 60’s
• 07:49 Scott covers the genesis of computational storage as a tech, as a market segment, and as definition
• 09:15 Arjan gets back on Scott’s point and asks about whether there is an industry consortium and existing standards
• 10:42 Max covers the market segment and established actors, asking if there are more companies
• 11:35 Scott provides feedback on the question and talks about how the industry is coming together from the vendor, chip manufacturer and consumer perspective
• 1 4:01 Arjan asks about NGD Systems and the product readiness, customers, etc.
• 16:38 Storage Field Day and the « Aaaaah » moments. Is computational storage going to take off? What will be its markets?
• 19:20 Predictions for computational storage growth
• 20:00 The joy of witness a potentially huge transformation event in the industry
• 21:30 The use cases of computational storage – from NGD Systems’ perspective
• 23:30 Will the transformation of the car-making industry (move to semi/fully autonomous vehicles packed full with sensors) benefit to the computational storage industry? Will the computational market grow with this use case?
• 25:30 Closing the discussion & Thanks

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In this 9th episode of the TECHunplugged Podcast, Michael Cade (@MichaelCade1), Global Technologist at Veeam, joins hosts Max Mortillaro (@darkkavenger) and Arjan Timmerman (@arjantim) for a really fun discussion around Veeam.

Show schedule:

• 00:00 Intros & presentation
• 00:30 It’s that time of the year again: conferencing season!
• 01:20 What is the perspective of working for a vendor when one comes from the IT community ranks?
• 03:42 From Data Protection to Infrastructure as Code – what Veeam is showcasing lately at industry events
• 06:58 Chef or Ansible? Deploying Veeam in an automatic fashion, which platforms are preferred?
• 09:00 Demoing at a major conference: building a cloud-based SDDC with policy & behavioural-driven workload protection
• 11:34 Data Management & Veeam: everybody now does data management, what is Veeam’s story? Michael covers the N2WS acquisition by Veeam, Veeam One integrations as well as DataLabs
• 16:49 FastSCP for the win: a flashback in time! Memories from the podcast participants
• 19:35 What’s coming up with Veeam product updates in the upcoming weeks/months? Besides VMware and Nutanix support, Office 365 services, Veeam B&R, Veeam One…
• 21:17 Veeam Cloud Archive Tier – A software-defined backup storage
• 25:00 Closing the discussion & Thanks

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