It has been a big year in the enterprise IT industry for many reasons. Pat Gelsinger and Intel continue to refocus its business, the SEC gets serious with SolarWinds, Broadcom’s deal to acquire VMware, HPE Aruba Ascendant, the incredible rise of generative AI, the battle of open source licenses, and of course, the Futurum Group acquiring Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day. Let’s discuss on this year-end edition of the Gestalt IT Rundown.

Users are always going to blame the connectivity medium for issues and we just have to accept it. In this episode, Sam Clements, Shannon Cranko, and join Tom Hollingsworth to discuss why users are adamant that the wireless is the problem when it’s always something else. They discuss why IT professionals should focus less on blame shifting and more on creating an environment that provides resolution even if it’s not their problem. The episode wraps up with suggestions for professionals to create an environment better suited to meeting user expectations.

Change is in the air and it’s licensed. The biggest news this week came from VMware (by Broadcom) as they announced a simplification of their licensing model. The first change is that VMware Cloud Foundation has had the subscription cost cut in half and additional support levels added to help with activation and lifecycle management. VMware vSphere Foundation is also available as a subscription offering with several add-ons available. Notably missing is the option for perpetual licensing, which was removed in this simplification. Also removed were hybrid purchase programs and anything not subscription-based. Customers may still use their perpetual licenses but will not be able to buy support for them until they transition to the new subscription model.

Automation is a very complicated subject that requires a lot of thought and planning before implementation. It’s not something that every organization needs to implement. In this episode, Tim Bertino, Jake Khuon, and Jordan Villarreal discuss the challenges inherent in automation of networks and systems. They also clarify the differences between scripting, orchestration, and real automation. In the end they give tips and questions to ask when you feel like it is time to start your journey toward automation.

IBM and Facebook parent company Meta have decided to advocate for a more open approach to AI. They’ve announced a joint AI Alliance group. The companies are part of a growing trend that sees advocates arguing that AI shouldn’t be proprietary and closed. Also signing on to the alliance are Dell, Sony, AMD, Intel, and several other AI startups. The group seems to stand in opposition to companies like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft who are focused on creating AI rules that favor outcomes that will put them on top, as well as top dog NVIDIA.

Building networks for AI is expensive. What you need is a way to better utilize your GPU resources to save money in the long run. Tom Hollingsworth looks at Enfabrica ACF-S and discusses how it can be used to take advantage of your investments.

Amazon announced that they will be using Nvidia’s NVSwitch to create new rackscale AI platforms. This allows customers to use Nvidia technology like Grace Hopper or build something using AWS Nitro DPUs and Elastic Fabric Adapters. That last combination doesn’t use InfiniBand and moves to Ethernet. Two new chips are coming out from the Amazon labs. The first is Graviton4, the latest generation of Arm processor. Graviton4 has 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth. This version of Graviton is based on the Demeter Neoverse V2 core. On the AI front Amazon also announced the next revision of their AI acceleration chip, Trainium2. This update has a 4x performance increase from the first generation and allows for liquid cooling. Trainium2 is designed to be deployed in clusters of 16 chips. In the data space, AWS made news with the GA of Bedrock, which enables customers to run foundational ML models from companies like Anthropic, Meta, and of course AWS itself. But many companies are worried about hallucination and want to include their own data in these models. That’s what AWS is delivering with Guardrails, and what AWS partners are leaning into as well. This and more on this week’s Gestalt IT Rundown.

It’s been a wild week for OpenAI. On Friday, the board notified CEO Sam Altman that he was being removed. Then President and Chairman Greg Brockman quit. OpenAI then went through three interim CEOs in a weekend. Meanwhile, Altman and Brockman were hired by Microsoft but rumors swirled they would be reinstated at OpenAI, which eventually happened late Tuesday night. The condition for the reinstatement was the removal and reappointment of all but one board member. That’s one hell of a weekend!

Changing or upgrading hardware and software is a scary proposition on the best of days. In this episode, join Tom Hollingsworth along with Keith Parsons, Mike Bolitho, and Lee Badman as they talk about moving from one vendor to another. There is a lot of planning that goes into the decision to upgrade or replace something. It’s even more frightening when you’re removing one vendor’s equipment for another. Learn what to look for and how to make the transition as easy as possible.

Join us on November 15-16, 2023 for great presentations from Cisco, Wyebot, Nile, and Ventev! Read on for more info and where to tune in to follow along.