How AI Impacts Storage and IT

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have had quite the impact on most industries in the last couple of years, but what about the effect on our own IT industry? On April 1, 2020, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative will host a live webcast, “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Storage and IT, where our experts will explore how AI is changing the nature of applications, the shape of the data center, and its demands on storage. Learn how the rise of ML can develop new insights and capabilities for IT operations. In this webcast, we will explore: Read More

Pay Attention to These Cloud Standards

What’s going on in the world of cloud standards? Since the initial publication of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition of cloud computing in NIST SP 800-145 in 2011, international standards development organizations (SDOs) have sought to refine and expand the cloud computing landscape. On February 13, 2020 at our next live SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative webcast “Cloud Standards: What They Are, Why You Should Care” we will dive into the cloud standards worth noting as Eric Hibbard, standards expert and ISO editor, will discuss: Read More

Composable Infrastructure Q&A

On February 13, 2019, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) presented a live webcast, Why Composable Infrastructure? Our goal was to clearly explain the reasoning behind, and the benefits of, composable infrastructure in an educational, vendor-neutral way. We believe our speakers, Philip Kufeldt and Mike Jochimsen, did just that. Now, as promised, Philip and Mike have answered the many interesting questions we received during the live event. Q. Are composable infrastructure solutions incompatible with virtualized or containerized environments? Will these solutions only serve bare metal environments? A. Composable infrastructure solutions will eventually work across any environment that supports the orchestration toolsets. There are no compatibility issues between virtualization/containerization and composable infrastructure, even if they fundamentally look at allocation of resources within a defined resource differently. Read More

Got Questions on Container Storage? We’ve Got Answers!

Keeping up with changes in the world of container storage is not easy. That’s why the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative invited expert Keith Hudgins of Docker for a live webcast, “What’s New in Container Storage.” I encourage you to watch it on-demand. It’s well worth the approximately half-hour investment to get up to speed on container storage. As promised during the live event, here are answers to the questions we received: Q. How does the new Container Storage Interface fit in here? Read More

Wondering What’s New in Container Storage?

The landscape of containers is moving fast and constantly changing, with new standards emerging every few months. If you wondering what’s new in container storage, you are not alone. That’s why the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative is hosting a live webcast on February 26, 2019, “What’s New in Container Storage.” In this webcast, Keith Hudgins of Docker joins us as a follow up to his earlier container webcast “Intro to Containers, Container Storage and Docker.” It’s our most popular webcast to date with thousands of views. If you missed it, it’s available on demand and will provide you with some great background information before our February 26th webcast. I encourage you to register today for the February 26th session where you’ll learn: Read More

Understanding Composable Infrastructure

Cloud data centers are by definition very dynamic. The need for infrastructure availability in the right place at the right time for the right use case is not as predictable, nor as static, as it has been in traditional data centers. These cloud data centers need to rapidly construct virtual pools of compute, network and storage based on the needs of particular customers or applications, then have those resources dynamically and automatically flex as needs change. To accomplish this, many in the industry espouse composable infrastructure capabilities, which rely on heterogeneous resources with specific capabilities that can be discovered, managed, and automatically provisioned and re-provisioned through data center orchestration tools. The primary benefit of composable infrastructure results in a smaller grained sets of resources that are independently scalable and can be brought together as required. On February 13, 2019, The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative is going to examine what’s happening with composable infrastructure in our live webcast, Why Composable Infrastructure? In this webcast, SNIA experts will discuss: Read More

What the “T” Means in SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies

The SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) has had a rebrand; we’ve added a T for Technologies into our name, and we’re now officially the Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI). That doesn’t seem like a significant change, but there’s a good reason. Our old name reflected the push to getting acceptance of cloud storage, and that specific cloud storage debate has been won, and big time. One relatively small cloud service provider is currently storing 400PB of clients’ data. Twitter alone consumes 300PB of data on Google’s cloud offering. Facebook, Amazon, AliBaba, Tencent – all have huge data storage numbers. Enterprises of every size are storing data in the cloud. That’s why we added the word “technologies.” The expanded charter and new name reflect the need to support the evolving cloud business models and architectures such as OpenStack, software defined storage, Kubernetes and object storage. Read More

Simplifying the Movement of Data from Cloud to Cloud

We are increasingly living in a multi-cloud world, with potentially multiple private, public and hybrid cloud implementations supporting a single enterprise. Organizations want to leverage the agility of public cloud resources to run existing workloads without having to re-plumb or re-architect them and their processes. In many cases, applications and data have been moved individually to the public cloud. Over time, some applications and data might need to be moved back on premises, or moved partially or entirely, from one cloud to another. That means simplifying the movement of data from cloud to cloud. Data movement and data liberation – the seamless transfer of data from one cloud to another – has become a major requirement. Read More

AI, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing in Action

SNIA Cloud Storage recently hosted a fascinating webcast on the real world use of IBM Watson – the computer that mesmerized viewers on “Jeopardy!” by answering questions accurately and faster than its human competitors. Our webcast, “Customer Support through Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning,” detailed how Watson is being used as a virtual support assistant, named Elio, at NetApp. We had many interesting questions during the live event which is now available on-demand. Here are answers to them all from our expert presenters who have been driving the success of Elio – Ross Ackerman from NetApp and Robin Marcenac from IBM. Read More

Watson: From Jeopardy! to Digital Support Assistant

When IBM Watson premiered on “Jeopardy!” viewers were mesmerized by Watson’s ability to answer the quiz show’s questions and most times, beat the human contestants! Fast-forward to today and the real-world applications extend well beyond playing trivia games. Watson is being deployed in a variety of medical and business scenarios. In fact, NetApp is now using Watson as part of Elio, a virtual support assistant that responds to queries in natural language. Elio is built using Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities which enable Elio to analyze unstructured data, by using natural language processing to understand grammar and context, interpret complex questions, and evaluate all possible meanings to determine what is being asked. Elio then reasons and identifies the best answers to questions with help from experts who monitor the quality of answers and continue to train Elio on more subjects. It’s a fascinating application of artificial intelligence (AI) that we will discuss in detail at our SNIA Cloud Storage webcast on February 22, 2018, “The Future of Digital Support: The Application of Unstructured Data and AI.” Read More