Speaking in Tech

Speaking in Tech #39

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week is our year-end podcast spectacular as we review the year in tech with some predictions for next year. Ed, Sarah and Greg are all back together with very special guests Brad O’Neill, CEO of TechValidate Software and Peter Bell, General Partner of Highland Capital Partners.

This week we discuss…

  • Ed and Sarah tie off Dell World
  • New Google+ community for Speaking in Tech launches
  • TechValidate continues to grow
  • Party of the year: Bhava Communications / TechValidate VMworld Party
  • The climate for venture capital and Highland Capital Partners in 2012
  • The top tech stories of the year:

McAfee
Facebook IPO
Apple/Google product launches
Nicira acquisition by VMware - SDN became the instant buzz phrase
Steve Jobs legacy 
HP’s recovery and Autonomy

  • The fatigue phrase of the year
  • Review of last year’s predictions
  • Big 2013 Predictions

Direct download: SiT39.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:41pm EDT

Speaking in Tech #38

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Ed and Sarah take over the podcast live at Dell World 2012 in Austin while Greg takes a week off. Our special guests this week are Stephen Foskett of Tech Field Day, Stephen Spector, Cloud Evangelist at Dell and Justin Warren, Managing Director at PivotNine.

This week we discuss...

  • Dell World wrap up
  • Bolt-on acquisitions
  • The evolution of Dell
  • The language of tech
  • The new role of the CIO
  • IT vs Public cloud
  • Buzz word bingo
  • OpenStack vs OpenStack

Disclosure Statement: Speaking in Tech is independent and does not receive financial support directly or indirectly from vendors or guests and vendor relationships are clearly disclosed on the podcast. Hosts of the podcast do occasionally accept opportunities from vendors to cover special events and vendor announcements where travel, lodging  and meals are typically covered and is clearly disclosed on the podcast. For this podcast, Dell provided Ed Saipetch transportation, lodging and admission to VMworld.

Direct download: SiT38.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:21pm EDT

Speaking in Tech #37

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Ed has taken over the podcast with this special (and shorter) episode from Structure Europe 2012 in Amsterdam. Our special guests this week are Sam Johnston, Director of Cloud and IT Services at Equinix and Lane Patterson, CTO at Equinix.

This week we discuss...

  • Equinix opens new data center, with moat, in Amsterdam
  • Power efficiences and building a data center under sea level
  • The real market for Software Defined Networking
  • Extending cloud access through a WAN
  • The center of data gravity for IT

Direct download: SiT37.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 8:12pm EDT

Speaking in Tech #36

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Ed is on another secret mission while Sarah is back and refreshed from her vacation. Our special guest is Greg Ferro of the Packet Pushers Podcast and EtherealMind.com.

This week we discuss…

  • Sarah's back from vacation
  • Catching up with Ferro
  • Cisco's Acquisition of Meraki and premature blog posting
  • Defining Software Defined Networking
  • Xsigo and Vyatta's SDN washing
  • OpenStack as orchestration for SDN
  • Big Switch vs Nicira
  • Cisco's SDN play
  • Nicira and SDN - not for the Enterprise
Direct download: SiT36.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 10:16pm EDT

Speaking in Tech #35

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Ed returns from his secret mission while Sarah is on a vision quest in New Mexico. This week our special guest is the infamous Marc Farley from Microsoft.

This week we discuss...

  • Ed, the not-so-man of mystery
  • Farley reflects on being swallowed by Microsoft
  • Larry Cakes
  • Greg joins the dark side
  • Ed's still burned out and his trail of destruction
  • vendor battles in social media
  • HP says it got skunked by Autonomy
  • Farley denies culpability in Autonomy deal
  • Microsoft dives into storage

Direct download: SiT35.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:49pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Ed is out on a secret mission so it’s Greg and Sarah in a duet.

This week we discuss...

  • Eddie, the international man of mystery
  • Sarah, out next week -- Santa Fe! Again!
  • Remembering Carter George, one of the good guys

It’s a week full crazy...

  • Low tech busts the top spy
  • Gmail as a cheaters tool
  • John McAfee- buff, bath salts in Belize
  • Too much money, too much free time
  • Sinofsky bolts from Microsoft
  • Future of Windows is thrown into question
  • Speculation rages that AMD may be sold or broken up
  • Why couldn’t Apple acquire AMD?

Direct download: SiT34.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 12:12am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Ed is out on a secret mission so it's Greg and Sarah with special guest J Metz (@DrJMetz), Strategic Product Manager, Storage and Unified Fabric at Cisco Systems.

This week we discuss...

  • Happy Sarah
  • Ed Saipetch, international man of mystery
  • Catching up with J Metz
  • The State of FCoE
  • FCoE vs iSCSI
  • FCoE vs Fibre Channel
  • Brocade buys Vyatta, Software Defined Networking (SDN) keeps making waves
  • SDN hype - the scale of networks
  • The enterprise and social media rockstars
  • Social media split personality disorder
Direct download: SiT33.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 2:06am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Ed is out so it's Greg and Sarah with special guest Mark Twomey (@Storagezilla) from EMC.

This week we cover...

  • Mark recalls meeting Brent Spiner at VMworld
  • The overseas view of the American election... and election predictions
  • Hurricane Sandy... and the worst of Twitter
  • EMC acquires Silver Tail Systems
  • Uncle Larry’s evil empire and trash talk
  • AMD to sell ARM-based server chips 
  • The Samsung Chromebook: an outstanding laptop for your mom
  • Chromebook as a VDI client... or not
  • Big Apple shakeup: Forstall out, Ives up
Direct download: SiT32.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 2:05am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Sarah is playing out so it's Greg and Ed with special guest Greg Schulz (@StorageIO) from StorageIO.

This week we cover...

  • Catching up with Eddie, Structure Europe 2012 and disaster at home
  • StorSimple's Marc Farley comments on Microsoft acquisition last week
  • Farley is now 3 for 3 on big startup acquisitions
  • Greg Schulz provides an update on Strorage Networking World
  • Speculation that Amazon Glacier is running on tape
  • OpenStack chatter continues
  • Amazon usabilty zones in Europe
  • Stack fragmnetation concerns
  • Greg and Ed's upcoming European travels
  • The new Google Chromebook get's announced - Could Chromebook's be a viable client in the enterprise?
  • Trade show junk
  • The worst in tech
  • Review of Greg Schulz book, "Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking"
Direct download: SiT31.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:30pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Eddie is in Amsterdam for Structure Europe 2012. Our special guests this week are Derrick Harris - Co-chair of Structure Europe and Senior writer at GigaOm, Sam Johnston - Director of Cloud and IT Services at Equinix, Joe Baguley - CTO for VMware in EMEA andTony Lucas - Founder and SVP of Product Flexiant.

This week we discuss...

  • Structure Europe 2012
  • The momentum (or lack of) behind CloudStack and OpenStack
  • Cloud services vs products
  • C-level perception of cloud
  • Open source paranoia
  • Telcos are the worst providers of cloud service
  • The process problem
  • IT hoarders
  • Data center transition and the business value automation
  • Dynamic Ops and the future of vCloud Director
  • Software Defined Bullshit
  • Calling it a cloud doesn't make it so
Direct download: SiT30.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 2:27am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Eddie is playing hookie so it's just Greg and Sarah.

This week we cover...

  • Eddie's connectivity
  • Sarah's Birthday
  • Huawei get hammered in the U.S.
  • No one is defending Huawei 
  • The worst PR in the tech industry
  • Cultural gaps
  • The iPad Mini is for real
  • Bad apps and web browsing on tablets
  • Google goes the opposite direction with a 10 inch screen
  • Tablet photography
  • Next week, Eddie records from Amsterdam
Direct download: SiT29.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:19pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, it's just the three of us again as we toss around the tech.

This week we cover...

  • Downton Abbey fallout and other bad television reviews
  • Oracle Open World... less buzz, more cloud
  • Oracle vs. Salesforce
  • The Oracle culture
  • Cisco's new Nexus 1000V Free-mium Pricing 
  • The Cisco and VMware tapdance
  • GoDaddy kills their cloud... GoDaddy had a cloud?
  • Hosting providers and the cloud
  • Sarah sings to Greg
  • Eddie reflects on his young podcasting career
Direct download: SiT28.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:35pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, we slow it down with everyone together for the first time in weeks.

This week we cover...

  • Adventures with Ed on the road
  • Storage Developer Conference and the focus on file systems
  • Kindle Fire fights
  • Kindle Fire HD and Downton Abbey 
  • Apple 5 and maps 
  • Another Apple conspiracy
  • 7 inch iPad speculation
  • The New York Times data center
  • Efficiency vs Consolidation
  • MySpace, Part 2
Direct download: SiT27.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:50pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela but this week, Sarah has the week off while Ed and Greg are live at HDS Day in Santa Clara, CA. Our special guests this week are Ken Wood, Director of Technology and Strategy At Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and Chris Evans, The Storage Architect.

  • Ken Wood and the greatest tech job in the world
  • HDS Skunkworks
  • The growth and value in content and unstructured data
  • video and images and data extraction
  • Real time meta data generation
  • Business value of data
  • Log file analystics
  • Enriched custom meta deta
  • The scale of content and unstructured data
  • Monetizing and predicting the value of innnovation
  • The crystal ball of product development
  • The value of failure

Disclosure Statement: Speaking in Tech is independent and does not receive financial support directly or indirectly from vendors or guests and vendor relationships are clearly disclosed on the podcast. Hosts of the podcast do occasionally accept opportunities from vendors to cover special events and vendor announcements where travel, lodging  and meals are typically covered and  is clearly disclosed on the podcast. For this podcast, HDS provided transportation and lodging to HDS Day.

Direct download: SiT26.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 8:35pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela but this week, Eddie is driving the ship live from Cloud Connect Chicago while Greg and Sarah take the week off. Our special guests this week are Mark Thiele - Executive Vice President of Datacenter Technologies, Margaret Dawson - Vice President of Product at Symform, James Duncan - Chief Technology Officer at Inktank and Gina Minks - Director of Training and Certification at Inktank.

This week we discuss...

  • VMware and the Openstack ecosystem
  • Open source cloud and the standards problem
  • CloudStack and OpenStack ahead of the enterprise
  • Cloud and the real world and real companies
  • VMware, lock-in and cloud strategy
  • Building the future on legacy IT
  • Cloud and the people problem 
  • Big data and centralization vs decentralization
  • IT and competitive advantages
  • The falacy of "best practices"

Direct download: SiT25.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 9:15pm EDT

Speaking in Tech #24

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Michael Hay, Vice President and Chief Engineer at HDS.

  • Ed and Greg recap VMworld 
  • Dice bars in San Francisco
  • vOdgeball Tournament won by Arista Networks
  • Goodbye Paul Maritz
  • Greg is still convinced VMware is almost done building the Death Star
  • More discussion on multi-hypervisor environments than in the past
  • Our special guest is Michael Hay, Vice President and Chief Engineer at HDS
  • Life in Japan and coming back to the US
  • The global brand of Hitachi 
  • Unified and converged - HDS’ Unified Compute Platform
  • Cloud: Public vs Private
  • Global compliance issues for public and private clouds
  • Litigation may ultimately shape global compliance, privacy and eDiscovery in the cloud
  • HDS’ management pedigree is rooted in Storage Networks
Direct download: SiT24.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:18am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen and Ed Saipetch while Sarah Vela is taking a break this week. Live from VMworld, we crash HP's customer appreciation recpetion. Our special guests Brady Wilson, CTO Opus Interactive, Shahin Pirooz, CTO CenterBeam, Bethany Mayer, Sr VP & GM HP Networking, David Scott, Sr. VP HP Storage and Stephen Dewitt, VP Marketing, Enterprise Group

  • -VMworld recap
  • -Opus Interactive overview
  • -CenterBeam overview
  • -End-user utlization of Software Defined Networking
  • -The promise of Software Defined Networking
  • -HP and open standards
  • -David Scott reflects on HP storage's growth
  • -Vendor innovation vs acquistion
  • -the Software Defined Data Center
  • -Evolving It business models and utility billing
  • -VMware's independance

Disclosure Statement: Speaking in Tech is independent and does not receive financial support directly or indirectly from vendors or guests and vendor relationships are clearly disclosed on the podcast. Hosts of the podcast do occasionally accept opportunities from vendors to cover special events and vendor announcements where travel, lodging  and meals are typically covered and  is clearly disclosed on the podcast. For this podcast, HP provided transportation, lodging and admission to VMworld.

Direct download: SiT23.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:01am EDT

Speaking in Tech #22

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Special guest Vaughn Stewart, Director, Cloud Computing and Virtualization Evangelist at NetApp

  • Sarah... back from vacation
  • Ed and Greg will be podcasting at VMworld
  • vmOVERground at VMworld (11pm PST Sunday night at Dave’s near Moscone in San Francisco)
  • Sarah’s voice of conscious
  • Special guest Vaughn Stewart, Director of Cloud Computing and Virtualization Evangelist at NetApp
  • Expectations for VMworld 
  • vOdgeball odds for NetApp this year
  • NetApp’s plans for VMworld
  • NetApp releasing VSA
  • Vaughn recounts meeting Ed at VMworld 2008
  • Rumor: VMware killing vRam entitlements licensing
  • Ten Big Questions for Vaughn Stewart
Direct download: SiT22.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:41am EDT

Speaking in Tech #21 - Cloud backup

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Stephen Spellicy, Director - Enterprise Data Protection, HP Information Management. 

  • Sarah is out but Eddie is in!
  • Ed recaps vCoffee with VMware’s John Troyer in Indianapolis with vNerds
  • Greg whines about people who bring infants on planes
  • Catching up with Stephen Spellicy... from Virtensys to HP
  • Autonomy’s internal transition within HP
  • The market for cloud-based backup
  • The economics of cloud-based backup
  • OpenStack noise grows as Red Hat gets in the game
  • “VMoverground” party is coming to VMworld


Direct download: SiT21.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 12:18am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This is part two with our special guest Chad Sakac, Senior Vice President, Global SE at EMC.

  • VMworld 2012 Preview
  • Chad is going to be a little busy, again, for VMworld
    • Ask-the-expert vBlogger session
    • vOdgeball to benefit Wounded Warrior Project
    • VMunderground
    • Paul Maritz keynote
    • Vaughn & Chad Storage Best Practices
    • Geekfest - who do Ed and I have to bribe to get in?
    • Gelsinger Keynote 
    • Chad’s “IT Transformation” session
  • One thing I noticed, we are going to hear more about XtremeIO
    • Chad - Give us a cliff notes version of what we might see
  • Hands on Labs
    • We will we see, what can we crash?

10 BIG QUESTIONS WITH CHAD SAKAC!

Direct download: SiT20.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:26pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Chad Sakac, Senior Vice President, Global SE at EMC

  • Catching up with Chad
    • New promotion, new responsibilities
  • Oracle buys Xsigo
    • Oracle PR spins it as Software Defined Networking
    • “Sorry Oracle, Xsigo IS NOT Software Defined Networking” 
    • Looks like a reaction to VMware buying Nicira
      • VMware’s boldest move yet
      • This is the advent of virtual networking... with virtual servers combined with vSphere’s storage virtualization... VMware is building the virtual stack
      • How does the landscape change now for VMware, EMC and their competitors?
      • Enterprise deployment of SDN’s
      • How does EMC and VMware keep the VMware lovefest going?
  • Big changes at EMC and VMware
    • EMC’s President Pat Gelsinger is now the CEO of VMware, Paul Maritz is Vice Chairman at EMC
      • How does Pat manage VMware’s ecosystem partners having come directly from EMC?
    • What’s next for CloudFoundry?

Direct download: SiT19.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:33am EDT

Speaking in Tech #18 - VMware is building the Death Star

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Dave Graham of Juniper Networks.

The "Stack Wars" are on and VMware is getting close to finishing the Death Star:

VMware doesn't clarify CloudFoundry spinoff rumors

  • Potential spinoff could come with risks

EMC and VMware in big executive shuffle

  • Gelsinger to VMware and the cross polination of VMware and EMC
  • Are incremental enhancements in vSphere going to be enough?

VMware buys Nicira

  • Cisco can't be happy
  • Does Cisco make it's own acquisitions now?
  • Open standards based vs proprietary standards
  • Software defined networking (SDN) will come to the enterprise
  • Cisco and HP could be making moves, Dell is leapfrogging through acquisitions quickly
  • VMware's pricing strategy might undermine their vision

Quick review of the Nexus 7

  • Google Now is absolutely awesome
  • Nexus 7 is not behaving well right now
Direct download: SiT18.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:32pm EDT

Sarah and Eddie are out this week so we are joined by Christina Weil, District Director at Centre Technologies

  • Catching up with Christina and New Orleans


Yahoo shocks everyone, lands Google’s Marissa Mayer as CEO

  • Mayer brings strong product experience
  • One of the most visible personalities at Google
  • Yahoo all of a sudden becomes interesting


GigaOm: EMC and VMware to spin off CloudFoundry?

  • Does VMware and EMC have to spin off CloudFoundry to be competitive with with Google, Amazon and Microsoft?
  • A new identity for cloud computing?
  • Greenplum could be part of spin-off


Dell Acquires Quest

  • Greenplum and Quest overlap and compete directly against eachother


Post-Katrina disaster recovery in New Orleans

  • The IT culture has changed - and so have the data centers in New Orleans


Google Nexus 7 Arriving

  • In the voice game, Google Now beats Apple Siri
  • Siri doesn’t know the Cajun names
  • Tablet is probably not the most practical for voice recognition
  • Christina gives up her iPad
Direct download: SiT17.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 12:03am EDT

Speaking in Tech #16 - The Death of Social Media

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. 

Greg loses faith in social media

  • The Big Twitter Purge
  • The gang play “Which Twitter creeper has a real job” game
  • Greg and Marc Farley experiment with Google hangouts
  • Public Google hangouts are a nightmare. 
  • Out of 44 people who jumped in (and most getting bounced out), we found one networking geek in the Czech Republic so we decided to start over and we had a good convo about the Mini iPad vs Nexus 7

7 inch Tablet Wars: Apple vs. Google vs Amazon

  • Enterprise BYOD will be all about 7in, wifi tablets in a year
  • WiFi only will be a security problem
  • 7 inch is a better form factor
  • Android security is getting better
  • Is tere really a BYOD problem?
  • Tablets in business meetings
  • Real world BYOD problems

Cisco routers managed by the cloud... and really bad corporate lawyers writing horrible terms of service

Direct download: SiT16.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 12:15am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. 

Our special guest this week is George Reese, CTO and cofounder of enStratus. enStratus is a cloud infrastructure management solution for deploying and managing enterprise-class applications in public, private and hybrid clouds. enStratus is focused on the consumption of one or more cloud services from a single, consistent management platform.

Amazon Outage Hits Netflix, Heroku, Pinterest, Instagram

We all know the story by now: Bad weather knocked out power to Amazon’s EC2 services in Virginia and before you know it, Netflix subscribers were deprived of “Bad Girls from Mars” and Californians were deprived of posting their last foie gras pictures on Instagram. 

  • But is this really about Amazon or good application "hygiene"?
  • Build for failure - If this can happen to Netflix, it can happen to anyone. With what we have learned about this outage, what could Netflix have done differently
  • Interoperability - Is this on the Infrastructure provider or on the application owner?
  • Leap-second issue was a bigger deal than Amazon outage

Burning down the house: “The Hole in VMware's Whole Cloud Strategy”

George’s blog post:  - http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2012/06/hole-in-vmware-whole-cloud-strategy.html

“The move of Google and Microsoft into the IaaS space may ultimately be a sign that PaaS isn't the grand future of cloud everyone has been predicting, but instead just a component of a cloud infrastructure—perhaps even a niche component. If the world isn't ready for PaaS, then VMware has a huge hole in its cloud strategy because vCloud just won't cut it for cloud-scale infrastructure.”

  • VMware, Apple, Google, and Oracle cloud startegies all get run over by George
  • Does VMware's acquisition of DynamicOps change the game?
Direct download: SiT15.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 12:37am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. 

This week we discuss...

  • Uncle Larry buys an island
  • Google's new tablet, Nexus 7, leaked
  • Microsoft Surface vs Google Nexus 7
  • WHo uses Google wallet?
  • Microsoft buy Yammer for 1.2 Billion
  • Lotus Notes flashback
  • VMware goes deeper on the desktop
  • Ed gets a new Drobo
Direct download: SiT-14.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:44pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. 

This week we discuss...

  • Dell Storage Forum recap
  • Microsoft announces "Surface" tablet
  • Looks more productive than an iPad
  • Microsoft nudges OEM's
  • "Surface" could be the killer BYOD
  • NASA uses Amazon... and the Cloud is dead
  • Is Amazon feeling the heat?
  • Linus Torvalds tells NVIDIA where to go
Direct download: SiT13.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 8:08pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Live from the Dell Storage Forum in Boston, our special guests are Darren Thomas, Vice President and General Manager of Dell Storage, Brett Roscoe- Executive Director of PowerVault and Data Management Solutions and Laz Vekiarides - Executive Director of Engineering, Equallogic.

This week we discuss...

  • Dell's acquisitions are like adopted kids
  • Quick overview of announcements
  • Convergence across product lines
  • Equallogic end-to-end convergence
  • Compellent convergence
  • Integration of AppAssure
  • Audience questions
Direct download: SiT12.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 4:47pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. 

This week we discuss...

  • Twitter picks Greg’s next car for him
  • Speaking in Tech will be podcasting from the Dell Storage Forum next week
  • Cisco kills the Cius
  • Kindle Fire sales fall off a cliff
  • IBM and HP make big storage announcements this week
  • Cisco’s future and NetApp
  • Transforming IT and Chargebacks
Direct download: SiT11.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:39am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Christopher Lynch, Partner at Atlas Venture and former CEO and President of Vertica (which was sold to HP last year) and Acopia (which was sold to F5 in 2007)

In Part 2 of our discussion with Chris Lynch, we discuss...

  • Big Data, big problems
  • How Big Data solutions impact business decision making
  • VC decision making in Big Data inestments
  • Imbedding Big Data solutions within each layer of infrastructure
  • How Atlas Venture-backed travel startup Hopper leverages Big Data?
  • Whos is doing Big Sata well?
  • Lynch's thoughts on EMC's Greenplum acquisition
  • Hack/reduce and how it's prepping the next generation of Big Data

10 Big Questions with Chris Lynch

Direct download: SiT-10.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 12:06am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Christopher Lynch, Partner at Atlas Venture and former CEO and President of Vertica (which was sold to HP last year) and Acopia (which was sold to F5 in 2007)

This week we discuss...

Housekeeping:

“Speaking in Tech” will be podcasting from the Dell Storage Forum coming up June 11 - 13 in Boston as a dedicated session at the conference grilling Dell executives in front of a live audience 

After we introduce Christopher Lynch, we discuss...

  • A VC’s view of the Facebook IPO
  • Facebook’s impact on other VC’s and irrational investments
  • Jump back to Chris and his roots growing up in Boston
  • From punker to VC
  • From DEC, to Prominent, to Lucent
  • The leap to Arrowpoint and eventual $5.7 Billion acquisition by Cisco 
  • As President & CEO of Acopia Networks, sold to F5 for $210M in 2007
  • As President & CEO of Vertica Systems, sold to HP last year for $320M
  • How ex-yahoo CEO Scott Thompson helped marry HP and Vertica
  • Thoughts on Leo as a leader? From your vantage point, what did the transfer to Meg look like?
  • Now at Atlas Venture focusing on Big Data

Next week we'll be concluding our special discussion with Chris Lynch in Part II

Direct download: SiT-9.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 2:07am EDT

After catching up with Ed and Sarah, we start off the podcast with an interview with Eric Eyre of the Charleston Gazette about the paper’s investigation into a suspicious $24 million Cisco router purchase by the State of West Virginia using U.S. Federal Stimulus Funds for the purpose of “homeland security”. The enterprise routers, which are sized for at least 500 users and are typically used for thousands of users, were purchased for schools and libraries with a single computer.

The original story appeared in the Charleston Gazette: http://wvgazette.com/News/201205050057

In the interview we learn:

  • A Cisco rep confirmed the routers were dramatically oversized
  • At one library, the router cost more than the structure of the library itself
  • The routers were purchased by the state without a formal Request for Proposal by a single person after consulting with a Cisco salesman
  • The Cisco salesman retired after the $24 Million deal
  • Of the 1,064 routers purchased, 366 were never installed and are sitting in a warehouse


We get unwound with our special guest this week - Fred Nix, a vSpecialist at EMC

  • We dig into what a vSpecialist really does
  • We explore how critical vSpecialists are to the culture of EMC
  • How EMC has evolved internally
  • Recap Fred’s skiing accident


Finally, we wrap up with “10 Big Questions” for Fred Nix.

Direct download: SiT-8.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 2:27am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is John Mark Troyer, Director, Social Media Evangelism at VMware.

This week we discuss...

Housekeeping:

  • Due to a schedule conflict the podcast from HP Discover had to be canceled
  • “Speaking in Tech” will be podcasting from the Dell Storage Forum coming up June 11 - 13 in Boston as a dedicated session at the conference grilling Dell executives in front of a live audience 

In other news... 

  • VMware View 5.1 announced  
  • When did VDI turn into a dirty word? 
  • What in the hell is VMware Project Octopus? 
  • VMware Certifies vSphere(TM) 5 to Run on Open Compute Project Architecture 
  • VMworld coming up August 27-30 in San Francisco 
  • 10 Big Questions for John Troyer 


10 Big Questions for John Troyer 

Direct download: SiT-7.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:36am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Mark Twomey, also known as Storagezilla.

This week we discuss...

EMC World in Vegas is coming up

Apples Taxes
The New York Times explains “How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Global Taxes” -
It’s not a a European Sex Club trick: “Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich”

Google vs. Oracle:
Former Sun CEO: Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Founder: Scott McNealy and Java creator James Gosling contradict each other and demonstrate why Sun Microsystems was a disaster.

Klouchebag is the rage... this week http://klouchebag.com
Klouchebag is the Anti-Klout score based on Anger, Retweet Abuse, Social Apps and English Misuse

Twitter account of the week is @PinlessPics and the blog of the week is http://textfromdog.tumblr.com/


Direct download: SiT-6.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:45pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Chris Evans - The Storage Architect.

This week we discuss...

  • Sarah comes back
  • Our special guest, Chris Evans - The Storage Architect
  • Greg gets his Nexus Galaxy.... but the trip to the store didn’t go well
  • Ed addresses recent complaints about his language on the show
  • Chris Evans becomes the official “Speaking in Tech” Ambassador to the UK
  • Dell Storage Forum and HP Discover in June

Megaupload case starts falling apart

According to The Register, the case against Kim Dotcom appears to be falling apart because “Megaupload has never been served with papers in the US”.

  • Difference in privacy laws between the US and the UK
  • Will file sharing site like Dropbox and Google Drive be impacted by file sharing pirates?

All of a sudden Software-defined Networking (SDN) is the rage and Cisco is getting kicked in the press

  • How SDN’s are different from traditional networks
  • OpenFlow ecosysteam
  • Will virtual networking and SDN’s achieve the prominence of server virtualization or will it look more like storage virtualization?


“10 Big Questions” with Chris Evans

Direct download: SiT-5.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 12:54am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Brian Katz from Sanofi Pharmaceuticals, where he is in charge of the mobile engineering group.

This week we discuss...

  • Sarah goes AWOL after only 3 episodes
  • Live podcasts coming up in June at Dell Storage Forum in Boston and HP Discover in Las Vegas

Special Guest this week is Brian Katz 

Brian works at Sanofi Pharmaceuticals, a global pharmaceutical company where he is in charge of the mobile engineering group. You can follow him on twitter @bmkatz and on his blog at http://ascrewsloose.com

This week we talk about...

  • Google Drive Launching Next Week!
  • Google Drive details: 5 GB for free, launching next week for Mac, Windows, Android and iOS
  • Various internet reports claim that Google will be launching Google Drive next week with 5GB - more than double the 2GB that come with the popular Dropbox. From the reports, Google Drive will work “in desktop folders” on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android.
  • Meanwhile, a leaked VMware Memo Outlines View 5.1, Project Octopus Launch Plans, the cloud storage service referred to as "Dropbox for the enterprise," by the end of June, according to the leaked document.”
  • Katz on Cunsumerization: “You want me to do what?!? A mobile strategy challenge!” http://www.ascrewsloose.com/2012/03/14/you-want-me-to-do-what/
  • Are “acceptable use” policies effective?
  • Mobile security: The distinction between iOS devices and Android on security and compliance
  • BYOD: It’s not about saving money
  • 10 Big Questions for Brian 
Direct download: SiT-4.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:58am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. 

This week we discuss...

  • Eddie on the west coast
  • Sarah dispells pregnancy rumors
  • Greg complains about Best Buy 
  • Facebook snaps up Instagram photo-sharing app for $1 billion
  • Is this the beginning of "Bubble 2.0"?
  • Facebook mobile app sucks
  • Cloud Wars erupt
  • Citrix goes open-source with CloudStack
  • Cloud confusion reigns 
  • 10 Big Questions for Ed Saipetch

Direct download: SiT-3.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:07am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. 

This week we discuss...

  • Last week was a good first week, it only goes downhill from here
  • Thanks to The Register for support

Creepy "Girls Around Me" app has Been Yanked From The App Store

“Girls Around Me — the creepy geo-location app that allowed you to stalk and find personal information about girls in your neighborhood without their knowledge — has been pulled from the iOS App Store.”

  • Dudes have been doing this for awhile with nearly every geolocation app and especially with newer apps like Banjo, Glancee and Highlight and even basic apps like Facebook, fourssquare and Twitter
  • Every geolocation app is a potential creeper app
  • Sarah is tired of the predatory dudes/damsels in distress framework that ends up occurring in these discussions. 

GigaOm: "Systems to handle big data might be this generation’s moon landing"

“Gather the kids are the TV, were going to watch some real compute power here...” The moonlanding was an event... this “big data” project is the means to event, possibly some significant discoveries but it isn’t by itself an event on scale with the moon landing.

Dell buys Wyse

“Since Wyse is private and apparently not huge, Dell isn’t disclosing how much it is paying. Wyse is big enough to have sold more than 20 million thin-client systems worldwide; it claims that 200 million people touch its products every day. It sold a million units last year, and has a strong presence in the health care and financial services sectors, both of which have a lot of appeal for Dell generally.”

Apple’s IPad Is No. 1, Even With Heat, Consumer Reports Says

“The new iPad’s high-resolution screen provides the best detail and color accuracy of all tablets Consumer Reports has seen"

Sarah nails Greg with 10 Big Questions

Direct download: SiT-2.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:14am EDT

Speaking in Tech - Episode 1

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. 

This week we discuss...

  • New intro music
  • What happened to Nekkid Tech
  • “US gov agencies & colleges are now demanding access to Facebook accounts”

According to a report by MSNBC, US government agencies and colleges are now demanding access to applicants’ Facebook accounts — through friending and/or actual password requests. No longer can users hide behind Facebook’s privacy options, because if you want a job or a college degree, you have to give up the goods.

  • “Amazon, Eucalyptus team on cloud compatibility” 

Looking to build out its portfolio of cloud services, Amazon has partnered with Eucalyptus to deliver an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) product. As part of the deal, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is letting the IaaS provider tap into its application programming interfaces (APIs). Eucalyptus says it is now “fully compatible with the Amazon Web Services API, which means you can use or reuse your existing AWS-compatible tools, images (AMIs), and scripts to manage your own hybrid and on-premise clouds.”

  • “New iPad users slowed by expensive 4G network rates” 

Users quickly are discovering the new iPad gobbles data from cellular networks at a monstrous rate. Some find their monthly allotment can be eaten up after watching a two-hour movie.

  • The return of "10 Big Questions"

Sarah vela goes on the hot seat

Direct download: SiT-1.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 12:04pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with trusty sidekicks Ed Saipetch (@edasi),  Sarah Vela (@orchid8) and our gurest, Tom Petrocelli (@tompetrocelli).

This week we discuss...

  • SXSW Recap, Spring Break for Silicon Valley
  • Emergence of the "Social Enterprise"?
  • "Social Enterprise" tools
  • Tom and Greg bump heads on quality and timing of Forrester research
  • Heads in the sand on Google privacy
Direct download: NT23.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 10:44pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch (@edasi), our guests this week, Gina Minks (@gminks) with special guest Alistair Croll (@acroll).

This week we discuss...

  • Ed and Gina head to SXSW
  • Bitnorth Conference
  • Dropbox and Box all over the media
  • Double billing on consumer cloud storage
  • Google privacy policy changes
  • Big Data and privacy
  • Three postures for computing
Direct download: NT22.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:41am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch (@edasi), our guests this week, Gina Minks (@gminks) and Nekkid Tech virgin, Sarah Vela (@orchid8).

This week we discuss...

  • AT&T wants to make app makers pay for subscribers' data use
  • Large majorty of Verizon customers don't use LTE
  • Eddies driving habits
  • Dell isn't a PC company anymore?
  • Dell and Open Stack
  • Defining "cloud" and defining "open"
  • SXSW 2012
Direct download: NT21.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 1:24am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch (@edasi), our special guest this week is Steve Kaplan, Vice President Data Center Virtualization Practice at Presidio (@ROIdude)

This week we discuss...

  • Fred Nix takes a spill
  • VMware Partner Exchange recap
  • Possible VMware licensing changes
  • VMware's push to the cloud
  • VMware vs. Amazon
  • VMware social media presence is growing
  • Symantec suing Veeam and Acronis
  • System integrators moving to software architecture
Direct download: NT20.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:59pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch (@edasi), our guests this week, Gina Minks (@gminks) and Christina Weil (@c_weil).

This week we discuss...

  • Christina's corporate apartment in New Orleans
  • Cloud Connect conference, customers and expectations
  • Crystal the Unicorn
  • Cost of hosting with Amazon or in house
  • Cloud bandwidth costs and constraints
  • Big data failures
  • Christina's Mardi Gras outfit
  • Whitney
Direct download: NT19.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:10pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with special guest, Jim McNiel, CEO of FalconStor Software (@jimmcniel).

This week we discuss...

  • Technology, vision and adoption of clouds
  • The role of the cloud in backup and disaster recovery
  • Backup software lock-in
  • Tape is not a backup solution
  • Challenges of VMware's ecosystem for data protection
  • Replication efficiency
  • Toppling the backup industry
  • The "Blusestone" revolution
  • Convergence of backup
Direct download: NT18.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 4:13am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch (@edsai), our guests this week are Mark Twomey (@storagezilla), Greg Schulz from StorageIO (@StorageIO) and special guest, the recently unemployed Marc Farley (@3ParFarley)

This week we discuss...

  • Farley / Knieriemen reunion
  • Farley makes a job change
  • New twitter handles for Farley
  • When does Dell buy Farley's new company?
  • Amazon announces a cloud storage gateway
  • Clouds in the enterprise
  • Appliance standards for cloud vs. Storage standards for cloud
  • Cloud management architectures and shared responsibilities 
Direct download: NT17.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 11:29pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with our guests... Chris Harney, Founder of the New England VMUG (@csharney), Taya Wyss from The Enterprise Strategy Group (@TayaWyss) and Erin Banks, vSpecialist with EMC (@banksek).

This week we discuss...

  • Recap of New England VMUG, the largest VMUG in the world with over 1,000 attendees live at Gillette Stadium
  • Big topic among end-users: VDI / Virtual Desktop
  • EMC's hands-on labs testing VAAI plugins
  • The challenges and opportunities for women in tech
  • How the New England VMUG has grown
  • Taya's upcoming appearance on US television show "Say Yes to the Dress"
  • Superbowl flashback with Duran Duran's Simon LeBon
  • VMware Labs and demos in the cloud
Direct download: NT16.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 10:22pm EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch, our guests this week are Mark Twomey (aka 'StorageZilla') and Christina Weil.

This week we discuss...

  • Ed and Greg figure out data plans in Europe
  • Thai Massage Parlors in Soho
  • Spotify vs. Pandora
  • Fat Boy Slim's subliminal Apple Server message
  • Diane Greene gets appointed to Google's board of directors
  • Installing Kindle Fire Android ROMs
  • Amazon becomes the crack dealer of cloud
  • Another Silicon Valley web site covering startups
  • Proliferation of storage startups
Direct download: NT15.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 2:12am EDT

Hosted by Greg Knieriemen with trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch, we are live this week from Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Pub in London during the Dell Storage Forum

  • We kick off StorageBeers with Chris Evans and Martin Glassborow at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Pub
  • Dell Storage Forum announcements with Darren "Darth" Thomas, Dell Storage VP & GM and Phil Soran, President, Dell Compellent
  • The path to Object Storage
  • VMware integration
  • Competition
  • Acquisition challenges 
  • Andy Hardy, Managing Director, Dell Compellent International and Liem Nguyen, Director- Global Communications and Social Media, Dell Storage
  • Andy's Party - First event in Europe
  • Liem and Andy clebrating an Anniversary
  • Chellenges in Europe
  • Wrapping up with Gina Minks and Ed Saipetch

Direct download: NT14.mp3
Category:Technology -- posted at: 9:23pm EDT

1