Data Centers: EMP Shielding, What it is and Why it Matters

Data Centers: EMP Shielding, What it is and Why it Matters

Chris Brandt

Today I want to talk about a fascinating, frightening and complex topic, EMP. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the idea of an Electromagnetic Pulse, and have seen depictions of EMPs in popular culture and science fiction, however the reality of an EMP can be far scarier.

In my past life, I used to build high security facilities. One project I worked on was building an EMP shielded data center facility 225 feet below a mountain. Now, you might be thinking, if you are building something 225 feet below ground underneath a mountain of Limestone, wouldn’t that be enough to protect your equipment? The mountain would help shield you from the force of the blast, but it does almost nothing to protect you from EMP.

Emerging Tech and the Asian Markets

Emerging Tech and the Asian Markets

Chris Brandt
Cloud, Drones, Emerging Tech, Editorial, Market Analysis

To quote statistician, Hans Rosling from his 2018 New York Times Best Seller:

“If the UN forecasts for Population growth are correct, and if incomes in Asia and Africa keep growing as now, then the center of gravity of the world market will shift over the next 20 years from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Today, the people living in rich countries around the North Atlantic, who represent 11 percent of the world population, make up 60 percent of the Level 4 consumer market. Already by 2027, if incomes keep growing worldwide as they are doing now, then that figure will have shrunk to 50 percent. By 2040, 60 percent of Level 4 consumers will live outside the West.”

Generation Cloud

Generation Cloud

Chris Brandt
AWS, Cloud, Editorial, Lifestyle

There is an old show I loved called Kung Fu, starring David Carradine. In it he plays a Shaolin monk named Caine. He flees China a wanted man to wander America’ old west, and along the way puts the hurt on bad guys picking on the weak.

In one of the flashbacks to his childhood, he sees a somewhat disheveled man collecting shards of broken pottery. He turns to his blind master and asks, “Is he a confused one?” To which his master replies, “Not to understand a man’s purpose does not make HIM confused.”

Great new stuff from 12 for 12

Great new stuff from 12 for 12

Chris Brandt
Cool Tech, Entertainment, Shows, SXSW

My good friends over at 12 for 12 have finally posted their SXSW episode. If you look closely, you might notice someone familiar being interviewed. Even though they labeled me a Solutions Architect, I still love them. I wish I could architect a solution, but solutions to all the worlds problems. Seems like SXSW would be the place to start. They have some good interviews with Brad Spies who is the Director of Special Projects for SXSW and one of the main folks making it happen.

Can’t wait for next year!

On-Prem The New Legacy?

On-Prem The New Legacy?

Chris Brandt

Gartner has come out with a new report on the database market, and their conclusion is that on-prem is the new legacy.

Now this is a rather bold statement, but the data does seem to support that. Does this mean that all on-prem databases are going away? Probably not in my lifetime, but the question is what is the direction for the industry, and that is trending strongly towards cloud.

So, let’s look at the numbers.

The Chasm

The Chasm

Chris Brandt
Editorial, Market Analysis, Marketing

I want to talk about Everett Rogers

Everett Rogers was a communications studies professor, and in 1962 he published a book titled Diffusion of Innovations. This book talks about how innovation spreads through a community of people by diffusion.

This work grew out of the work sociologists and anthropologists from the late 19th and early 20th century did around agricultural technology. In particular around how farmers adopted hybrid seed technologies.

HPE's Little d

HPE's Little d

Chris Brandt
HCI, Marketing, Shows

HPE Discover 2019 was taking place in Las Vegas this week, and they made a lot of announcements, but I want to talk about their announcement of an additional hyperconverged product in their lineup, the Nimble dHCI.

Valley Visionaries Trip Part 2

Valley Visionaries Trip Part 2

Chris Brandt
Cloud, Emerging Tech, SaaS, Venture Capital

Many of the VC offices are built around a fabulous old tree. This one is from the courtyard of Lightspeed Venture Partners. We visited with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greylock, Sutter Hill, Sequoia, and IVP.

In this episode, I focus on some of the portfolio companies I met with.

Companies discussed in this video are:
Blameless - blameless.com
Epsagon - epsagon.com
Fiddler - fiddler.ai

Valley Visionaries trip Part 1

Valley Visionaries trip Part 1

Chris Brandt
AWS, Cloud, Venture Capital, Cool Tech

Several times a year, we take CIOs, CTOs, and other key decision makers of large enterprise companies to Silicon Valley to meet with Venture capital firms and Leadership of emerging tech companies, to get a good look at what is happening in the emerging technology space. These trip provide tremendous insight into what is happening in the market and provides a good overview of the trends that are driving investments.

2019 Nutanix .NEXT Conference Customer Chat

2019 Nutanix .NEXT Conference Customer Chat

Chris Brandt

I got a chance to sit down with some Nutanix customers at this years Nutanix .NEXT conference to talk about their experiences and their perspectives on the hyper converged market. It is always great to hear from the actual customers about their decision process and the problems they are looking to solve.

2019 Nutanix .NEXT Conference

2019 Nutanix .NEXT Conference

Chris Brandt
Cloud, Data Protection, Shows, HCI

Nutanix held its annual .NEXT conference this year at the Anaheim Convention Center. Word was that about 7,000 people were in attendance. There is a lot happening in the Hyperconverged Infrastructure space now as the large legacy vendors look to make a place in this market. The growth of HPE, Dell, and Cisco in this space have legitimized the HCI market and brought new interest to the products.

The Gear I Use 2019

The Gear I Use 2019

Chris Brandt
Video, Tips and Tricks, Gear

I haver been getting a lot of Questions about my setup lately, so I figured I would run over a quick list of things I use to produce these videos.

Quick Update: Sorry I have been absent, I had a series of cascading computer failures that ended up with me swapping out a motherboard and the drive. I am back now with a bunch of pent up content that will be coming shortly.

The CIO Journey

The CIO Journey

Chris Brandt
Market Analysis, Video Briefing, Leadership

I have spoken in the past about the changing nature of IT. Businesses are increasingly becoming IT organizations. This is being driven by data becoming a strategic asset and driving top-line revenue. As IT moves from being a cost center to a profit center, it also moves from the sole realm of the infrastructure groups to the lines of business. Gartner published a somewhat controversial statistic that CMOs have larger technology budgets than CIOs.

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