This week I’m in Berlin at NetApp’s data management conference Insight.

Always a great chance to catch up with industry friends, hear from leaders in the data industry, a range of technology companies and about the strategic direction that NetApp and the data management industry is taking.

With 4 days ahead in Berlin, what are the things I’m hoping to hear about at Insight 2017?

Extending the fabric

If you’ve read any of my blogs on data strategy in the past you’ll be familiar with NetApp’s data fabric concept, the fabric was developed to enable us to break down the data silos’s that we have become used to and enable us to build a strategy to allow us to simply and freely move data between any repository be that on-prem, software-defined, in the cloud or near the cloud while maintaining all of the security, management and control of our data that we have grown used to on-prem.

Today the data fabric is much more than a strategic aim as it is now practically delivered across much of the NetApp portfolio and I’ll be paying attention to how this continues to evolve.

Gaining understanding of our data

This is the next step for “storage” companies, especially those, like NetApp, who are repositioning themselves as data management companies.

Long gone are the days where we just want somewhere to store our data, you have to remember not only is “storing boring” it also does not serve us well, whether you are concerned about governance and security, or how to extract value from your data, this can only come with full understanding of where your data is, what it contains, who accesses it and when, all are critical in a modern data strategy and I’ll be interested in how NetApp is allowing us to gain more understanding.

Securing all of the data things

Nothing is higher on the priority list for CIO’s and those making business decisions than the security of our business data (well it should be high on the priority list), I’m keen to see how NetApp build on what they currently have (encryption, data security policies, API’s for 3^rd party security vendors) to fully secure and understand the data within an environment.

I’ll also be interested to hear more about the changes the data industry continues to make to enable us to not only secure our data from the ever-evolving security challenge but also how we can meet increasing compliance and privacy demands.

Analysing the stuff

I fully expect to hear more about how data continues to be the new oil, gold etc, as marketing based as this messaging is, it is not without validity, I constantly speak with business decision makers who are eager to understand how they can use the data they own and collect to gain a business advantage.

NetApp has made some interesting moves in this space, with integrated solutions with Splunk and the Cloud Connect service allowing easy movement of data into AWS analytics tools.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves and how NetApp can ensure the data fabric continues to extend to so we can take advantage of the ever-growing analytics tools that allow us to gain value from our data sets.

Integrating all of the things

NetApp has long innovated in the converged infrastructure market, with their joint Cisco solution Flexpod.

However, this market continues to evolve with the emergence of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), which companies like Nutanix and Simplivity (now owned by HPE) have led the way. However, up to now, I have the feeling HCI is only scratching the surface by taking infrastructure, servers, storage and networking and squeezing it into a smaller box. In my opinion what’s missing is the software and automation to allow us to use HCI to deliver the software-defined architectures many are striving for.

It is this that is beginning to change, VMware and Microsoft, amongst others, are bringing us more tightly integrated software stacks extracting hardware complexity and letting us drive infrastructure fully in software, bringing that cloud like experience into the on-prem datacentre.

It is these software stacks that really starts to make HCI an interesting platform, marrying this simplified hardware deployment method, with automated software driven infrastructure has the potential to be the future of on-prem datacentres.

I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on NetApp’s new HCI platform and how that will allow us to continue to simplify and automate infrastructure so we can deliver a flexible, scalable, agile IT into our businesses.

What else will I be up to?

Many of you know I’m proud to be a part of the NetApp A-Team, and this association has also made Insight a very different proposition from a couple of years ago.

For the first time I’ll be part of a couple of sessions at the event, feel free to come and check them out and say hello;

You’ll find me doing session 18345-1-TT – Ask the A-Team – Cloud and Possibilities with NetApp Data Fabric and 18348-2 – From the Beginning – Becoming a service provider.

I’ll also be hosting the pop-up tech talks sessions – If you want to come and meet up and chat (on camera) about your views of NetApp or the data market in general, why not come find me.

And lastly, I’ll be appearing on The Cube as they broadcast live from Berlin giving in-depth coverage of Insight.

I’ll be discussing HCI platforms on Tuesday 14^th at 2.30, you’ll find that broadcast on thecube.net

If you’re at Insight, do come say hello or hook up on the twitters @techstringy

And let’s discuss if you too have gained any insights.

Look out for more blogs and podcasts from Insight 2017 over the coming weeks.