It’s that most wonderful time of the year, yes, the last Tech Interviews of 2018. For this show, we focus on two of technologies biggest trends, ultra-high performance and the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
At the core of these technology trends is data, businesses of all types are now realising that there is value to be taken from being able to use their data to drive change, be that delivering new services, increasing operational efficiency, or finding new ways to make money from the things that they do.
As organisations realise the value of their data it inevitably leads to the question, “how can we use technology to help extract that value and information we need?”
That’s the focus of this episode, they are the last two chats I did on my recent tech conference tour, both of which focus on technology that can start to deliver, into organisations of all types, the ability to use their data more effectively to drive business change.
First, we look at ultra-high performance as I chat with Glenn Dekhayser, Field CTO at Red8, about NetApp’s new technology MAX Data and how it is changing the very nature of delivering extreme performance.
Glenn provides some insight into what MAX Data is and how it drives the storage industry close to its ultimate goal, to ensure that storage performance is never the bottleneck of any solution. We also discuss not only how this solution delivers extreme performance but how it does so while greatly simplifying your infrastructure.
Glenn also shares, importantly, how not only does this solution offer unparalleled performance it can do it at a very low cost, not only commercially, but by negating the need to refactor or modernise existing applications.
We wrap up taking a look at some of the use cases for such a high-performance solution.
In the second part of the show, it’s the technology industries favourite topics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). John Woodall, VP of engineering at Integrated Archive Systems (IAS) joins me to talk about the industry in general and how NetApp is the latest tech provider, in association with NVIDIA, to offer businesses the chance to buy an “off the shelf” AI solution.
We talk about how the technology industry is finally starting to deliver something that technologists and scientists have spoken about for decades, the ability to build true AI and make it available in our daily lives. Beyond this NetApp solution (known as ONTAP AI) we look at the wider use of AI and ML. John shares some thoughts on why business is looking at these technologies and what it can deliver, but he also cautions on the importance of understanding the questions you want this kind of technology to answer before you get started.
We discuss the importance of not only knowing those questions but also ensuring we have the skills to know how to ask them. We also discuss why you may want to build an AI solution yourself as opposed to using the plethora of cloud services available to you.
We wrap up looking at why it’s important to be able to have AI platforms that allow you to start small and we also explore some of the use cases, operational efficiency, increasing margins or finding new ways to monetise your business expertise, but most importantly to focus on business outcomes and not the technology.
There is no doubt that AI and ML and the desire for extreme high performance are key parts of many technology strategies and it’s clear from both these developments from NetApp and the trends in the wider technology industry, that ways of meeting these business desires are becoming more widely available and importantly, affordable for an increasingly wide range of businesses.
To find out more about these technologies you can visit NetApp’s website for MAX Data and ONTAP AI.
If you want to get in touch with or find out more about Glenn and John, you can find them both on twitter @gdekhayser and @John_Woodall.
This is the last show of 2018, so I would just like to thank you all for listening to Tech Interviews throughout the year and I hope you’ll be able to join me for more shows in 2019.
That leaves me to just wish you all a great Christmas holiday and until next year, thanks for listening.
Techstringy 