I caught up with with with Ken Grohe, President & Chief Revenue Officer at WekaIO, to talk about Weka the company, their WekaFS “file system”, the Weka journey to date, news trends, challenges & opportunities for Weka and their ecosystem of partners, integrators, resellers and customers, and how 2020 has impacted life around WekaIO.

We kick off with a quick introduction by Ken of his role, both pre and post #COVID19, as well as a high level overview of the company, with some interesting key insights into successes Weka have had in their journey to date as a startup ( as Ken describes it ).

In this show our conversation focuses on the following key topics:

1 – WekaIO the company, the WekaFS filesystem, and the Weka journey so far

I ask Ken to start us off with a high level introduction to WekaIO the company, your WekaFS filesystem, and some of the key highlights of the journey so far to get to where you are today.

We discuss the attention on emerging high growth markets around Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and the likes of Big Data, Data Science, Life Sciences, Analytics and the whole Data Driven Decision Making pivot so many organisations are undergoing, and where WekaIO fits into this story.

2 – The role high performance scale-out storage plays in data analytics & AI

I had the opportunity to an Analyst Briefing call with Ken and on this topic recently where Ken used the line “A modern Parallel file system is essential to get a ROI out of any AI initiative”. I asked Ken why data storage performance, in his view, is critical to AI performance and getting an Return On Investment from AI initiatives.

3 – Technical performance VS Operational and Cost performance

Weka use the #WeSolveBigProblems hashtag to be clear about what they do, and indeed WekaIO is known for solving big problems – I ask Ken to give us some examples of big challenges Weka have worked on with customers recently, and he shares insights into projects around the COVID19 vaccine, Genomics England and a 70PB storage solution, and an example around Supplychains.

Four key quotable quotes from this conversation I wanted to highlight include:

1 – If you haven’t started an AI project you are losing to one that has

2 – A modern Parallel file system is essential to get a ROI out of any AI initiative

3 – You can start small in AI with Weka and scale up to hundreds of Petabytes

4. Weka Makes Managing the storage demands of Big Data and AI initiatives much easier

Key takeaways for me from this show include:

1 – Weka enables successful AI and Big Data outcomes

2 – In order to achieve successful AI outcomes you need:

+ compute acceleration technology, like GPUs

+ a modern parallel file system, like WekaFS, and;

+ high speed networking

From this conversation it’s clear to be that because Weka has enterprise-ready and hybrid-cloud features it transcends AI and Big Data use cases, and enables backup and DR strategies, IT agility, and lower CapEx, Weka is a pathway to high performance computing on the public cloud.

There can be little doubt that “data is the new oil” as we say, but it seems organisations are still struggling to adjust to treating data as a new mission critical business asset, place value on it, get it on their balance sheet, place KPIs on it, manage it and derive real value from it. We wrap up by me asking Ken what enterprise persona and supporting role or roles he sees bringing the most critical in the immediate future to address this?

This is a conversation not to be missed – CXOs should tune into this show and take notes, as Ken has so much to share, it’s got something for everyone.

This podcast made in partnership with WekaIO.

For more info visit:

WekaIO homepage: http://bit.ly/wekaiohomepage

WekaIO products: http://bit.ly/wekaioproducts

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I recently had the honour of hosting and moderating a two part HPE Evolve pilot series of live-stream events with the amazing team at HPE Asia Pacific ( HPEAPAC ) – this is the second in the series, “Empowering Infrastructure and Operations to Manage Kubernetes”.

Tune in now and “push play” to discover how your business can adopt the right solutions to run at start-up speeds.

Overview

New application development environments are complex, which results in additional time, effort, and specialised skills being required of teams that could otherwise be spent achieving business goals.

The leading disruptive technology easing these concerns is containers powered by Kubernetes. Globally, enterprises are driving towards container adoption for the promise of:

+ Faster application development
+ Easier revisions and updates
+ Less system overhead
+ More platform independence
+ Broader scalability.

Managing Kubernetes to Empowering Infrastructure & Operations

Unfortunately, managing Kubernetes powered container environments can cause as many challenges as it solves. As a solution, HPE Pointnext Services and VMware are partnering to help organisations modernise their hybrid infrastructure with the introduction of enterprise ready Kubernetes alongside other technology platforms.

Now, you can unleash the full potential of your teams by leveraging combined expertise and services that enable rapid deployment, efficient and secure operations of Kubernetes infrastructure, regulatory compliance, and optimised containers across public and private cloud.

Thank you to the amazing team for making this possible, in particular:

+ David Brown – Head of Cloud Technology Partners, HPE APAC
+ Dez Blanchfield – Founder CEO, Sociaall Inc
+ Michael Draper – Director, Technical Cloud Solutions, HPE
+ Suganthi Krishnavathi – Platform Architect, VMware Tanzu
+ Andrew Farmer – Presales Lead, HPE APAC
+ Sam Speakman – Technical PreSales, HPE APAC

This video was made in partnership with HPE APAC.

For more information on on containers visit:

Why containers will drive transformations in the 2020s:
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/why-containers-will-drive-transformations-in-the-2020s-2002.html

How containers and open source Kubernetes accelerate innovation:
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/the-cloud-is-an-experience-not-a-destination-2002.html

9 tips for moving code to microservices:
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/9-tips-for-moving-code-to-microservices-1904.html

Containers as an enabler of AI:
http://hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/containers-as-an-enabler-of-ai-2005.html?ite=59462&ito=2628&itq=2ac32db1-dd38-4bff-934a-b9302d2de8a3&itx%5Bidio%5D=20086092

Why DevSecOps approach is key to mainstream container use:
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/why-devsecops-approach-is-key-to-mainstream-container-use–2003.html

Why cloud-native open source Kubernetes matters:
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/why-cloud-native-open-source-kubernetes-matters-2002.html

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Have you ever wondered what would happen if two people who believe big compute is the real centre of the universe were to meet in the same room? Well, wonder no more.

In this podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bill Giard, CTO of Digital Transformation and Scale Solutions at Intel. As we’re experiencing a massive growth phase, I was keen to get Bill’s thoughts on how to maintain performance and security hence discussing various questions related to cyber security.

As a result of his long career working at Intel, Bill has a unique perspective on Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and enterprise customers, from the chip to switches, routers, and servers. The best part is that he got transferred to Intel’s Data Platform Group (DCPG) during the beginning of the digital transformation.

As part of the DCPG team, Bill helped shape Intel’s cloud strategy, technologies, and architectures. In this podcast conversation, Bill explains the sheer breadth, depth and strategic complexity of Intel’s services and markets; you might now visualise Bill as someone with significant personal experience and resulting knowledge base.

After covering what the year 2019 entailed for him and his team, Bill went on to highlight trends he thought would continue to thrive in coming years, such as Hybrid and multi-cloud computing, Security Analytics & AI.

There can be little doubt that security needs to be one of our first concerns, so much soven Bill affirms that security is not just to be handled by security officers, but needs to now be a mainstream focus area for CIOs as well, in addition to security roles including CISOs.

There are various attack vectors and several risk profiles that we can’t just approach, thinking we can simply create a moat and a firewall in the older, angular Celtic castle model – as all too often we find that threats come from inside, that old design pattern simply doesn’t work anymore. Cybersecurity must be all-inclusive from language, behaviour, and culture to the chip level.

You need to “top your game”, as Bill puts it, which requires constant learning, and a platform approach to security. Intel has a fantastic legacy of baking security into the DNA of original silicon wafer levels of their technology, which I have always felt was a key driver of their success in this space. It allows them an enormous advantage point, as security is quite literally built-in, all the way up through the technology stack.

Bill even mentioned in this post-Snowden era that everyone needs to have an attack strategy and consider how to address insider threats, and those become even more vital as computing continues outside traditional data centres.

Bill stated, “We’ve done great security work in the public cloud, but at the edge, the security controls are just not there.”

He went on to say “Building security at the server and platform level is the only way you’re going to address security on the edge in distributed computing client globally. The landscape changes but the one truth exists, you have to bake security and performance in at the very early design phases.”

Everything appears to be unique, yet we’re actually managing a significant volume of similar things, often in entirely different and unique ways, resulting in duplication of effort and reduced value from investments.

From phishing to network engineers, human interactions are at every place, in each layer. It needs continuous attention. Be careful around continued education and execute advanced controls.

“Shrink the attack surface.” says Bill, “Hardware security helps us mitigate the breadth and reach those breaches achieve. We can bring that firewalling down into the socket with advanced silicon technologies and software around the core cache and memory to isolate that.”

Bill and I additionally discussed many of the really significant changes and challenges in the cloud this last year, be it the shift from data centre aisles of racks and administration programming to a defined framework through to the shift to new DevOps organisation models with Docker and Kubernetes. Here is a shift in thinking and approach to technical problem solving that is needed for IT, which never existed before, and it’s triggering huge cultural and behavioural changes. You’ll discover all of this and more like Bill, and I get to the cybersecurity questions in this podcast.

Bill states that he believes the key to solving today’s bigger business and technology challenges is to break the work down into small sections, stay flexible, and follow what people are excited about – that’s the opener to inspiring cultural transformations.

So as we prepare for what the year 2020 may bring, security needs get even more apparent and strong, but so does the cloud ecosystem. Both choices and competition are in abundance. People are not only involved in multi-cloud strategies; they are getting better at requiring full system-wide integration. It is about realising the complete “API economy”

Due to the type of service, or price point, we can now pick workloads in several places; the question now is, do we need to make better choices about where we put those workloads, whether internal private cloud with cloud design models or deploying into public cloud leveraging the likes of container solutions such as Docker and Kubernetes?

Bill and I also discuss cloud decision-making going away from price and even from agility. Determining workload location needs to be more about what’s the proper foundation for the workload, based on below four characteristics:

• The volume of the data: how you are using it, where you’re exhibiting it (as in production), and if you have to transfer it.
• Performance characteristics – do you require low latency, and who are you seeking to reach; a global salesforce could need a distributed infrastructure across the globe.
• Security cybersecurity questions
• Integration level with systems.

Bill stated that “Workload placement is really still at the forefront of what most organisations are doing, and then, what’s the right infrastructure to support where the application and data needs to be?”

I’m genuinely passionate about Intel’s one API” focus and the potential to drive common, consistent API models into numerous private, public, or hybrid clouds. I like the idea that I don’t need to consider the foundation at the CSP level; I just need to look at the relevant APIs and receive that service.

Bill admits that we will notice more uniform compatibility. The big providers encourage that while still allowing differentiation within their own stack. The business outcome report will take some time, but it’s occurring; it’s turning into a more significant factor in the decision-making.

I won’t reveal the ultimate crystal ball answer at the conclusion of the podcast; I’ll just note that it has to do with the genuine impact of distributed edge computing in a multi-cloud environment with quantum computing capabilities. Bill speaks about preparing for it, and his advice is to begin now and don’t wait to potentially have competitors beat you to it.

I am grateful to Bill and the Intel team for making this podcast possible. Here are a few reference links you can go through about the topics and top cyber security questions Bill and I discussed. Check out:

• Intel Cloud Computing
• Intel Cloud Management Technology
• Intel Xeon Scalable Processors 
• Intel OneAPI fact sheet