theITHollow Turns 10 Years Old

Eric Shanks, a Field Day delegate, celebrates 10 years of his personal site, theITHollow. He gives a special shoutout to Tech Field Day and Stephen Foskett for the opportunities gained within the delegate community. Congrats Eric!

ServiceNow Streamlines Operations

After presenting at Cloud Field Day, Eric Shanks has changed the way he views ServiceNow. At the event, the company showed how they can serve as an central management plane for business operations, unifying management and allowing automation between disparate services. In the end, Eric finds their true value as a platform themselves. “ServiceNow is more than just an ITSM tool these days. It’s a business tool.”

Are We Really Concerned with Public Cloud Vendor Lock-in?

Fear of public cloud lock-in is real for many companies. Eric Shanks looks at why this is, why this fear is historically overblown, and also what the advantages of keeping your options open actually are. He then reviews how three companies he saw at Cloud Field Day last month, Scality, Platform9, and Nirmata, address the lock-in question.

NetApp at a Crossroads

In light of their Cloud Field Day presentation, Eric Shanks knows that NetApp is at a crossroads as a company. Their traditional image as a storage vendor will have to shift as NetApp begins to adapt the cloud and move into more cloud focussed products. Eric says, however, that this will be particularly difficult for a company as large as NetApp to accomplish swiftly. After all, they cannot simply abandon all of their older products and revenue streams. But with new hires and determination, NetApp is looking to be a player in the cloud market and despite anything else, NetApp will be a very different company in the next few years.

HPE Built Another Cloud – Storage This Time

Eric Shanks gives the pros and cons of HPE’s Nimble Cloud Volumes presented at Cloud Field Day. He is optimistic that this will be familiar to many data center administrators, but worried about the lack of APIs and availability given there are only two Nimble Cloud Volumes data centers. Either way, Eric is interested that HPE has taken this approach and expects them to do well with this product in the short run.

What’s Worth Interrupting Shark week? CFD2

Eric Shanks comically reflects on his time at Cloud Field Day, claiming that the trip was worth missing Shark Week. He talks about how Field Day events work and his experience, but also about the real value of these events. Outside of sessions, he finds talking to the other delegates who have different skill sets and are from different places to be the most rewarding part of Field Day events.