On this iteration of the Gestalt IT Networking News:
– Discussing Intel and NFV on our new podcast, the On-Premise IT Roundtable
– TELoIP tries to shake up the same old SD-WAN recipe
– An in-depth look at TCP terminator
Plus looks a VMware NSX, the future of SDN, and trying to find out who moved Jordan Martin’s Control Plane!
Confused by all the conflated claims around the abilities of “Big Data”? Karen Lopez is here with a little explainer about what it means to use data in the age of cloud computing. More importantly, Karen doesn’t mince words. Click here to find out why “Big Data” isn’t a thing.
Late last year, I wrote an overview about ClearSky Data. The company has a unique product. They offer an alternative to the usual state of cloud storage, with lots of latency and multiple data copies that you’re paying for individually. What continues to strike me about their offering is its completeness. Make no mistake, this is a fully managed storage solution.
The company has recently announced some exciting developments coming down the pipeline.
When Amazon announced they were opening an AWS region in Sweden, I asked where they were going to expand next. If you look at their map, there’s a continent shaped hole. Amazon didn’t take the hint, but Microsoft seems to be onboard. The company announced they will be opening up data centers in Cape Town and Johannesburg, starting in 2018.
When a category becomes settled, a bit of tedium begins to set in. Room for innovation rapidly shrinks, and becomes more about efficiency and refinement than redefinition. That’s kind of how I felt the hyperconverged infrastructure market was settling into. There are still marked differences in price, features, and capability between the players. But the literal configuration of hardware seemed to be homogenized.
Datrium is trying to change the expectations of hyperconvergence. Instead, they are billing their concept as Open Convergence. This is their response to the traditional issue with HCI. Their basic format is to separate bulk storage from compute, flash, and networking.
Quantum computing has advanced outside of being purely theoretical or the purview of science fiction. Several companies have specialized computes as their research projects or proof of concepts. IBM put up a publicly available quantum computer for testing with their IBM Q initiative. They’ve now expanded that from an available 5-qubit processor to 16-qubit. But it’s still the Wild West for the field.
For example, simply measuring performance gets surprisingly difficult. It’s easy to forget in classical computing with the bevy of benchmarks available, but even the language for performance on the quantum side isn’t agreed upon. Chris Lee at Ars Technica gives an in-depth look at what IBM is introducing as a measure of quantum computing performance: quantum volume.
In the last few months, I’ve had to name quite a few thing. I’ve named a child, a podcast, and a car (a Honda CR-V dubbed “Cool Runnings”). Coming up with a name can be very difficult. The name needs to simultaneously catchy, evocative, memorable, and unique. Add in a corporate setting with commitees and marketing getting involved, and it’s a wonder that anything gets named at all.
That being said, AMD has had a tough go of it with their new CPU naming conventions.
Want to use a supercomputer but don’t have a spare Scrooge McDuck vault of money available? Venerable supercomputer titan Cray is trying to do something about that, partnering with Markley to bring Supercomputing-as-a-Service to the masses. And by masses, I mean well funded organizations specializing in life sciences.
Richard Arnold put together a concise piece to address a lot of questions and concerns coming out of the WannaCrypt crisis. He outlines a little history and context for what exactly is ransomware. He then takes a storage centric approach to outlining basic IT policies that would help mitigate future disruptions.
The piece is a great summation. It doesn’t have the audacity to say the attack was preventable, but rather that best practices could serve to limit future disruptions. It’s an interesting read to wrap your head around a global issue.
Can a framing metaphor be a product differentiator? In Turbonomic’s case, I think it can. They use a supply and demand model for their application assurance platform. This brings some interesting implications into the overall solution.
