Category Archives: Infrastructure

Open Infrastructure Summit and Community Recap w/ Ben Silverman

Joining us this week is Ben Silverman, Chief Cloud Officer, Cincinnati Bell Technology Services.

Highlights

  • Ben Silverman Background
  • Experience at Denver Open Infrastructure Summit
    • PTG Separation
  • Free Software does not mean Free Support
  • Vendors in Attendance: Significant Downsizing of Companies
  • Installer Wars and Airship
  • Ironic Push & MaaS Alliance
  • Developers Portability and Languages
  • Cross Community Compatibility
  • Only Tools are OpenStack
  • Final Event Thoughts

Time Stamp

0.0 – 0.52             Introduction
1.43 – 3.28          Ben’s Background
3.28 – 7.37          Open Infrastructure Summit Experience
* Separate of Developers and Corporations
7.37 – 10.38        Free Software does not come with Free Support
* Vendors are not bad
10.38 – 12.57     How many vendors in attendance? Less than 15
* Not seeing revenue opportunity
* Business only; not interested in giving SWAG
* Vendors still selling OpenStack; Almost no Ecosystem at this time
12.57 –  17.27     Installation Tools and Promotion of Airship
* AT&T adoption is driving the promotion
* Airship is not a production ready technology
* Install Kubernetes and OpenStack with HELM charts (Very Complex)
* Ironic Push at Event
17.27 – 22.28     Developers Portable across Project
* Adding other projects into existing projects
* OpenStack always selects 1 way to do something
22.28 –  26.30     Cross Community Compatibility
* CNCF Comments
* Kubernetes and OpenStack in same world
26.30 –  33.15     Not talking about operating/open infrastructure; just OpenStack
* Not including other projects for best solution
* Day 2 Not Considered in OpenStack
33.15 –                  Wrap Up
* BRING BAG LUNCH DURING EVENT

Podcast Guest: Ben Silverman, , Chief Cloud Officer, Cincinnati Bell Technology Services.

Ben is currently the Chief Cloud Officer for the Service Provider/Telco team at Cincinnati Bell Technology Services (OnX Service Provider/Telco). He is also the co-author of the book “OpenStack for Architects” “Mastering OpenStack” and was the Technical Reviewer for “Learning OpenStack” (Packt Publishing).

When Ben is not writing books he is an active in the OpenStack Superuser Editorial Board and a technical contributor to the OpenStack Foundation Documentation Team (Architecture Guide) He also leads the Phoenix, AZ Open Infrastructure User Group. Ben is often invited to speak about cloud adoption, implementation, migration and cultural impact of the cloud at conferences, meetups, and special vendor events.

Prior to OnX, Ben was a Senior Cloud/System Architect at Mirantis, a top OpenStack distribution, where he was responsible for creating enterprise OpenStack architectures for some of the most prominent telecommunications and Fortune 100 companies worldwide.

Before joining Mirantis, Ben was the Lead Technical Architect and Engineer for the OpenStack cloud at American Express and was directly responsible for the architecture and deployment of the largest U.S. financial services cloud in production at the time. Today, this same cloud supports over 10,000 workloads.

Ben holds a degree in English communications and a Masters degree in Information Management from Arizona State University. When he’s not out evangelizing more people into the cloud lifestyle he likes to spend time with his beautiful wife and two crazy little boys in Phoenix, Arizona.

 

Olivier Avaro on Democratizing Gaming

Joining us this week is Olivier Avaro, Founder & CEO Blacknut.

About Blacknut

Blacknut aims to fundamentally change the video game industry by creating a service where users can access a vast catalog of curated games, play without limit across all devices, and no longer have the need for dedicated hardware, all for a simple subscription.

Using the latest cloud computing technology, Blacknut digitizes video games, delivering them through the cloud directly to smart devices such as televisions, tablets, and phones or through devices like set-top boxes and dongles.

Highlights:

  • Working at a Gaming Company
  • Game Streaming and Experience
  • Elimination of H/W Limitations for Modern Games
  • Delivery of Game from Cloud vs Edge
  • More than 50% of 5G traffic expected to be Gaming
  • Edge/Cloud Infrastructure Requirements
  • Virtualized Game Platform
  • Challenges in Building the Blacknut Platform

 

Time Tracking

  • 1 min 18 sec: Introduction of Guest
    • Background on Olivier and Blacknut
  • 3 min 01 sec: Gamers and Gaming Companies
  • 4 min 21 sec: Game Streaming Platform Overview
    • Elimination of Various H/W for Simple Gaming Access
  • 5 min 48 sec: Virtual Desktops for Games?
    • Processing power in the cloud and not locally
    • Stream is a video stream
    • Issues: Latency, Jitter, Bandwidth Issues
  • 7 min 48 sec: Changes Power of Device for Gaming
    • Everything can be a gaming console
    • No Downloads, installs – Just Click and Play
  • 12 min 10 sec: Latency and Distance for Gaming Servers
    • Networks always remain a challenge for hard-core games
    • 60% of Europeans playing games online (access, discovery and game options are primary concern)
    • How manage backend to meet scale?
      • Either build own cloud and leverage public clouds
    • 16 min 30 sec: Platform Neutral or Specific Vendor?
      • Select best cloud provider by country so don’t lock in to one vendor
    • 19 min 57 sec: What makes an infrastructure attractive for an edge?
      • Capability, Global, and Cost
      • Distribution Networks and Bandwidths
    • 23 min 42 sec: Blacknut providers service (SaaS) – Is tech available outside service?
      • B to C only w/ over 300 games
      • Looking into additional services for B to B as well
    • 25 min 30 sec: Technology Challenges
      • Optimization across various clouds/edges
      • Density – # of games on given infrastructure
      • Distributed Storage? Game distribution AI
    • 30 min 09 sec: Wrap-Up

 

Podcast Guest: Olivier Avaro, Founder & CEO of Blacknut

Olivier began his career at Orange where he researched on video compression technology. Olivier has been instrumental in managing the MPEG Systems standardization group in ISO. His outstanding contribution ultimately paved the way for the MP4 file format, one of the most popular outcome of his work. Olivier then spun-off technology from Orange and co-founded Streamezzo. The company published an Open Mobile Development platform that allows to easily create Rich Mobile Applications working on all major mobile operating systems. The company was successfully acquired by Amdocs in 2010. As the new Vice President at Amdocs, Olivier initiated a number of intrapreneurial projects, out of which several new companies and business units were created. In 2014, Olivier launched his own private equity fund ‘Skyrods’ which financed a number of innovative start-ups. One of them captures his full attention today: Blacknut, a leading cloud gaming service provider created in 2016.

Mark Thiele Rants on IT Monopolies and Impact of Edge

Joining us this week is Mark Thiele, Director Engineering Edge Computing, Ericsson and Host of IDCA Podcast.

About Ericsson
Ericsson is one of the leading providers of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to service providers, with about 40% of the world’s mobile traffic carried through our networks. We enable the full value of connectivity by creating game-changing technology and services that are easy to use, adopt and scale, making our customers successful in a fully connected world. For more than 140 years, our ideas, technology and people have changed the world: real turning points that have transformed lives, industries and society as a whole.

About IDCA Podcast
To Infinity Paradigm and Beyond – a community driven podcast series by the industry veterans that you trust. Stay for revealing interviews, expertise and education. Enjoy the light hearted conversations about life in and out of the industry. https://www.idc-a.org/idca-podcast    

Highlights:

  • Monopolies in IT
  • Restrictions in Innovation as everyone has same Cloud tools
  • Monopolies are not Good for Customers
  • Edge Push from Public Clouds
  • Learnings from Edge Research
  • Will Edge Save us from Cloud Monopolies?
  • Telcos at Edge

Time Tracking

  • 0 min 12 sec: Introduction of Guest
  • 3 min 12 sec: IDCA Podcast Overview
  • 4 min 04 sec: Rant on Monopolistic Culture
    • Running risk of Monopoly in IT
      • Small group of centralized cloud providers
    • Monopolies have less interest in innovation for niche opportunities ~ not enough revenue to make it worth it for them
    • Service delivery issues (e.g. SaaS vs On-Premise/Self-Managed)
    • On-Premise still needs innovation
  • 10 min 56 sec: Are we missing innovation?
    • Jevon’s Paradox Podcast – Efficiency can be Disruptive
    • All using same base components
    • What happens in future when everyone is standardized on a few platforms?
    • Future opportunity in On-Premise
  • 15 min 33 sec: More Vendors is Better than a Few Giant Clouds
    • Pushback from Clouds is they would respond unlike previous monopolies
    • We forgot Microsoft is a Monopoly just not a cool company
  • 18 min 18 sec: Edge Push from Public Cloud Providers
    • Attempting to “Scare” the Market to Prevent Innovation?
    • AWS Outpost Announcement – First time AWS talking about solution at least a year away
  • 20 min 56 sec: Research on Edge via LinkedIn – What did you Learn?
    • There is an Edge Vision: People need the Edge or still at start of journey?
    • Large % of respondents buy into Edge marketplace that is a true opportunity
    • Most thinking of Edge based on their viewpoint/need without thinking about entire opportunity for everyone: could be a legacy IT environment added on
      • Not scalable model
      • Do we have to wait for AWS to tell us how Edge works?
    • Patchwork Edge – not waiting for AWS to show up; people building it now with available technology
    • Railroad History of Monopoly Power – US vs Tokyo Organization
      • We ignore the costs and losses of what could have been
    • 34 min 16 sec: Is Edge going to Save us from Monopoly?
    • 37 min 03 sec: Can Telcos respond to Edge demand?
    • 37 min 03 sec: Wrap-Up

Software is Not Eating the World, it’s Dying

Rob Hirschfeld and Stephen Spector talk about the Software industry and how SaaS and other trends are killing the traditional software solution based on installation and management in your own data centers.

This is our 100th Podcast for L8istSh9y!

Haseeb Budhani on App Development for Edge and Cloud Best Fit

Joining us this week is Haseeb Budhani, Co-Founder and CEO, Rafay Systems.

Highlights
• Building an application deployment platform as close to the Edge as possible
• Supporting containers, microservices (move latency sensitive parts of app to Edge) and availability of infrastructure
• Definition of Edge to Rafay Systems
• Issues of massive amount of data at the Edge to be handled – Use Cases
• Will Edge suffer from device specific infrastructure needs?
• Application bottlenecks and impact of cloud locations and end user
• Placement control of services is still an open issue based on user requirements
• IT infrastructure and ownership and performance issues (IT vs Operation Teams)
• Cloud and Edge are not competitive; they work together to offer applications best fit

Paul Teich on Enterprise Security, Hardware Issues at Edge, Augmented Reality and 5G

In this week’s podcast, we speak with Paul Teich, Principal Analyst, Tirias Research. Paul offered his insight into several key industry trends as well as the recent Spectre and Meltdown discoveries.

* Spectre and Meltdown – Will this drive additional security focus?
* Augmented Reality and AI is the holy grail of Edge and Cloud
* Capabilities of 5G and its impact over next 10 years
* Why is Hyper Converged Infrastructure popular?