VMWorld 2019: Quick Chat with Cohesity CEO and Founder Mohit Aron

VMWorld 2019: Quick Chat with Cohesity CEO and Founder Mohit Aron

Chris Brandt
Cloud, Data Protection, Shows, VMWare

Cohesity had a great showing at VMWorld, they had a mini golf course activation at the show and they were there to raise money for Special Olympics. They had Football Hall of Fame receiver, Jerry Rice overseeing the event which featured a couple of Special Olympians going head to head in a game of miniature golf.

Special Olympics has been a long time passion for Cohesity’s President and COO, Rob Salmon and he and CEO Mohit Aron were there to present a large (in size and amount) check to Special Olympics. 

VMWorld 2019: Hands On WIth Clumio

VMWorld 2019: Hands On WIth Clumio

Chris Brandt
Cloud, AWS, Data Protection, SaaS, Shows, VMWare

There has been a lot of interest in Clumio for some time. When I posted my last video on our dinner with Poojan Kumar, CEO and founder of Clumio, I couldn’t say a whole lot because they were still in stealth.

As I mentioned before, there was a lot of interest because they are back by Sutter Hills Ventures and Mike Speiser who typically invests a lot of time and effort in nurturing young companies in his portfolio. Then there was a lot of buzz in the community because they began hiring some of the best in the field. They hired a lot of people with experience in early stage companies that have been hugely successful.

VMWorld 2019-Avi Networks

VMWorld 2019-Avi Networks

Chris Brandt
Cloud, Cool Tech, Networking, SaaS, VMWare

VMWare acquired Avi Networks this year. This is a quick video interview overview of what the company is about. This next generation load balancer is cloud native and can work with on-prem, hybrid cloud, cloud and intercloud workloads, so if any of those things are on your agenda, you might want to give them a look.

VMWorld Part 2

VMWorld Part 2

Chris Brandt
Cloud, Cool Tech, Open Source, Shows, VMWare

“With Project Pacific, we are brining the largest infrastructure community the largest set of operators, the largest set of customers directly to the Kubernetes. We will be the leading enabler of Kubernetes.” -Pat Gelsinger

The big announcement of the show was the acquisition of Pivotal Software and Carbon Black.

I mentioned in my previous video that I thought the show was well attended. Part of this could be because they moved the show to the Moscone Center in San Francisco, which isn’t as large and sprawling as their Vegas shows had been. I also heard comments that there were a lot of VMWare employees in attendance to help boost the numbers. While that may be true, the booths were all pretty packed and there was a lot of good conversations happening. I don’t think the vendors who had booths were disappointed. 

VMWorld Part 1

VMWorld Part 1

Chris Brandt
Cloud, Data Protection, Cool Tech, Emerging Tech, SaaS, VMWare

My last stop in SanFrancisco was for VMWorld 2019, and let me tell you it was quite a show. Last year my perspective was that it was a show in decline, and that VMWare was trying to stay relevant in a world that is increasingly being dominated by Cloud.

Clearly VMWare’s CEO Pat Gelsinger was on top of it, because they made some impressive and bold moves over the last year or so.

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

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