Infrastructure Matters

How is AI impacting staff-IT company operations? CISO's say AI is attacking! Then, more on the VMware battles (KVM, VMware, Nutanix), and HPE Morpheus in the mix.  What is happening with Balkanization in the cloud? And a sneak peak at Dion's latest CIO Insight studies. 

Keith and Camberley cover the latest tech notions from the events of the last few weeks, including Tech Field Day on AI, IBM Think and Nutanix .NEXT. Then, reflections on VMware migrations, OpenAI country plans and investments in IBM Quantum. 

On this week’s episode of Infrastructure Matters, we unpack a flurry of headlines shaping the enterprise tech landscape. ServiceNow, SAP, and HPE all post solid earnings, while Google Cloud continues its impressive streak with a 28% year-over-year growth. Dion Hinchcliffe flags a sobering report from AlixPartners warning that over 100 public software firms are on the brink of disruption by AI-native challengers and hyperscalers. We also cover Oracle’s cloud security concerns, the EU’s massive $200B InvestAI initiative, and Nvidia’s jaw-dropping $500B U.S. AI infrastructure plans with partners TSMC and Foxconn. Plus, Dell refreshes its storage portfolio—from PowerEdge to PowerStore—to better serve emerging AI workloads, and we close with highlights from the latest DORA AI report.

In this week’s episode, we explore a flurry of announcements shaking up the enterprise infrastructure world. OpenAI rolls out o3 and the compact o4-mini, models built for high-performance reasoning and optimized agent use. Meanwhile, European enterprises are reportedly eyeing a hyperscaler exodus, signaling potential shifts in cloud strategy. Google Cloud counters with major momentum—launching its Distributed Cloud tailored for Gemini workloads and pushing forward with Firebase Studio, designed to streamline developer workflows. We also dive into Google’s newly released agent2agent protocol from Cloud Next, and the expanding Agent Space ecosystem. On the storage front, Dell makes key updates across its portfolio, Hammerspace secures a $100M round, and Microsoft partners with Western Digital and Iowa’s Critical Materials Recycling to recover rare earth elements from aging HDDs. Plus, AWS slashes S3 Express One Zone pricing—great news for performance-conscious IT leaders.

The IM team tackles tariffs and decision making for the infrastructure gang, and what to consider and plan for on this bumpy ride. Plus we highlight news from Intel Vision with Gaudi and new data management tool Hydrolix. Lastly, LLM tackles the Turing Test and what it means. Check out Dion's CIO playbook on tariffs: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7313695623528996865/

On this episode of the Six Five Webcast – Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Keith Townsend, and Dion Hinchcliffe dive into the highlights and key takeaways from the recent GTC Conference. Topics include NVIDIA’s strategies and dominance in the AI sector, the ongoing challenges of AI infrastructure, and the intriguing concept of a token economy as a measuring tool for AI costs.

On this episode of the Six Five Webcast – Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates and Keith Townsend dive into the latest announcements and developments in data infrastructure and AI markets, ahead of GTC. Their discussion delves into new advancements and community engagement shaping the technology landscape.

On this episode of the Six Five Webcast – Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Keith Townsend, and Dion Hinchcliffe dive into the pivotal role AI plays in driving business earnings, in addition to significant trends in the tech market, innovative advancements in AI, and the impact of global tariffs on the sector.

On this episode of the Six Five Webcast – Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Keith Townsend, and Dion Hinchcliffe share a conversation on the significant impacts of recent earnings reports, advancements in AI, and the challenges of data management in corporate infrastructure.

Lenovo and Cisco earnings, HPE Gen12 servers, and the implications of the Evo2 Model. What you don't want to hear about W3/Blockchain. Lastly, data management—can unified data systems solve the AI dilemma? 

On this episode of the Six Five Webcast—Infrastructure Matters, hosts Keith Townsend and Dion Hinchcliffe discuss the hottest topics in infrastructure and technology. They cover crucial developments affecting the industry, from the surge in Intel’s stock to the ethical landscape of AI advancement.

On this episode of Infrastructure Matters, or for $100 billion we'll call it OpenAI Matters, Keith Townsend and Dion Hinchcliffe discuss the rise in Intel stock due to TSMC's involvement in helping Intel's foundry business. DataRobot acquires Agnostiq. Elon Musk and team offer $100 billion for OpenAI. Europe commits $200 billion to compete with the U.S and China in AI. Larry Ellison wants all American data in a master database for AI. Our Signal65 team benchmarks the Intel Gaudi 3 AI. SAP teams with Databricks to offer cloud-based analytics.

Google, Azure and AWS all claim AI capacity constraint -- is it impacting their growth? What is behind this? Plus, more on the latest LLM and other models from Google, DeepSeek and players from Stanford and UWA. Lastly, we get into file systems for AI and what we are seeing from key and new players: Weka, Hammerspace, NetApp, Dell and Vast.

IBM had a strong quarter, and Seagate sets the hard disk drive storage record. Intel cancels its new XPU and pushes out its 1.8 nanometer process chips, while DeepSeek continues recalibrating the generative AI inference world.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, Keith, Camberley, and Dion discuss the massive $500 billion investment from the Stargate consortium of companies. Then, Dion provides highlights from The Futurum Group's latest CEO AI research. Lastly, the model competition is heating up with China's DeepSeek AI model, and Keith gives his predictions for 2025. Learn more about Dion's insights on Stargate: https://futurumgroup.com/insights/us-govt-unveils-500b-stargate-alliance-to-lead-us-ai-infrastructure-push/ 

Lenovo teams up with Infinidat, NetApp spins off Spot and CloudCheckr to Flexera. Plus, uncover what the Feds are doing around security with executive orders and hear Dion's CIO predictions for 2025! Check out the full list of predictions here: https://dionhinchcliffe.com/2025/01/09/enterprise-tech-predictions-for-2025/

Announcements you should know about from CES, the coming U.S. regulations on AI export controls, plus 2025 predictions for data infrastructure. 

Keith and Camberley do a run down on some of the M&A, investments and valuations from this past year. Then, the super surprising $62 billion valuation of DataBricks. Plus how Broadcom is fairing with VMware (spoiler alert - very well), and NVIDIA's Jetson - how that might be a shift in the industry or not. 

The IM team covers the latest from AWS re:Invent, Google Gemini and what CIO's need to know. Then, they explore what is happening with Quantum and reflect on the intersection of AI, and Camberley covers the big, hairy topics coming out of American Society for AI. Lastly, data protection is front and center with big financial news from Cohesity, Veritas and Veeam.

The team covers the CIO/CTO Roundtable and insights into their priorities, including AI. Then, we cover earnings from Nvidia, NetApp and the trends coming out of KubeCon, SC24 and Microsoft Insight.

The Infrastructure Matters team covers what to know about the latest earnings, plus the highlights of announcements from NetApp, Pure and Veeam. We also discuss the CIO Insight Study and what CIOs should know about LLM performance. Check out the LLM performance leaderboard: https://lmarena.ai/?leaderboard

What do earnings mean to infrastructure decisions? Join us as we break down Google and AI, as well as Microsoft and Commvault. Keith also breaks down the new VMware enterprise license - a great move for the enterprise. Then, we close out on SuperMicro. 

Coming off of IBM TechXchange and a CIO roundtable of F100 CIOs, we dive into AI and Anthropic, Granite, mainframe, open source and Cohesity. CIOs express concerns on chip distribution, BRIC geopolitics, and what that means for managing the growth of IT.

Reporting from the IBM AR event, BMC conference and Lenovo Tech World, covering key announcements. Plus, a look at the impact of new investments in nuclear power, liquid cooling, IBM's Quantum chip and its implications for security, and how the formation of the new x86 group will impact future roadmaps.

Keith Townsend, Camberley Bates and Steven Dickens review the AI Infrastructure Field Day and the vendors that took part. They also discuss the Bank of America outage that impacted more than 60 million customers. Lastly, the team covered VAST Data's Cosmos announcement and the new OCI region in Malaysia.

Joining Steve Dickens and Camberley Bates, Dion Hinchcliffe and Keith Townsend discuss AI announcements from NetApp and Google Gemini, along with the implications of recent legal issues from the DOJ, EU, and California. However, as Keith says, it's still all about VMware.

Steven Dickens and Camberley Bates discuss the recent news and noise about repatriation, what's happening with application placement, decisions about VMware and options, as well as Lenovo's investments in AI and Neptune. Lastly and most importantly, a shoutout to our friend Brian Gong, who recently passed away.

Steven Dickens and Krista Case cover Oracle and AWS' partnership, AWS' sovereign cloud investment in the UK, Salesforce's planned acquisition of OwnBackup, Druva and data protection providers' investments in GenAI, and IBM's DS8000

Steve and Camberley get into Hock Tan's Q&A at Explore, the significance of the VCF 9 release, how to look at TCO and VCF as part of the business analysis, plus more on if it's on-premises or public cloud and why. Then, they dive into HPE's earnings and the strategic directions for its server business, including AI and enterprise, as well as where its storage and network strategies are headed.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, we delve into the Future of Memory and Storage Summit, discussing advancements in AI-related memory technology and Intel's ongoing challenges. We also highlight Palantir's commercial growth and Cloudera's role in data management for AI, while underscoring efforts to support women in the tech industry through the SuperWomen of FMS initiative.

In episode 50 of Infrastructure Matters, the hosts delve into recent earnings reports and industry trends, highlighting AWS's continued growth, Commvault's successful integration of its cloud division, and Intel's strategic restructuring. They also discuss Kyndryl's turnaround efforts and new announcements from Veeam, Splunk, and Google in AI and data management.

Krista Case from the Futurum Group highlighted the significance of robust cyber resiliency and disaster recovery plans in light of the recent CrowdStrike outage, emphasizing that it was a flawed software update rather than a security breach. Camberley Bates and Steven Dickens discussed the broader implications of the outage, the importance of multi-vendor strategies to mitigate risk, and the increasing regulatory focus on addressing systemic issues in cloud services.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates and Krista Macomber cover key announcements from NetApp, Druva and discuss the current strategies and choices organizations are taking in regards to VMware.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Steve Dickens and Krista Macomber discuss key topics around cybersecurity and AI, as well as IBM’s investments in Wimbledon.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Steve Dickens and Krista Macomber discuss key topics around Data Sovereignty, AI and Data Integration plus CyberSecurity.

Steven Dickens shares his experiences at HPE Discover, highlighting HPE's private cloud AI solutions and their collaboration with Nvidia. Camberley Bates discussed Pure Accelerate's focus on AI and cybersecurity, while Krista Macomber facilitated the conversation and covered insights from the FinOps X conference.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Steve Dickens and Krista Macomber cover the latest from conferences: Broadcom Mainframe, NetApp AR, Splunk and AWS reinforce.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, we discuss earnings announcements from Elastic, Lenovo, MongoDB, and Pure Storage, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s expansion into Morocco.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, we discuss our experiences at various industry events, including earnings announcements from Dell, IBM, Nutanix, and Lenovo, highlighting major announcements and key trends, particularly focusing on AI and multicloud.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Steve Dickens, Krista Macomber and Camberley Bates cover the day at Solidigm and the Red Hat, RSA 2024 conferences.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Krista Macomber and Camberley Bates take on announcements and earnings: Commvault, Dell, Microsoft and Hitachi Vantara.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Steve Dickens,  and Camberley Bates take on earnings, IPOs and business growth: Rubrik, IBM, Google Oracle.

In a discussion that spans significant financial movements and strategic acquisitions to innovative product launches in cybersecurity, hosts Camberley Bates, Krista Macomber, and Steven Dickens share their insights on the current dynamics and future prospects of the industry.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Steve Dickens,  and Krista Macomber take on the latest conference events, including Google Cloud Next, The Mainframe’s 60th birthday and Security Field Day.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Steve Dickens, Camberley Bates, and Krista Macomber take on the Mainframe’s 60th birthday, how AI lifts all boats, Memcon 2024 conference and the Rubrik IPO and what DSPM means.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Steven Dickens and Krista Macomber share perspectives on Microsoft Copilot for Security, IBM FlashCore Modules and Storage Defender, BMC, and Liqid.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Steven Dickens and Krista Macomber share their Mainframe perspectives, along with insights on the latest announcements from NetApp and SK Hynix.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Steven Dickens and Krista Macomber discuss the network trends coming out of Mobile World Congress and announcements from Cohesity.

Camberley Bates, Steven Dickens, and Krista Macomber discuss recent developments in the tech industry, including Palo Alto's earnings revision, IBM's security report, Lenovo's earnings, and Hammerspace's new Hyperscale NAS release.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Krista Macomber, Steven Dickens and Camberley Bates discuss Broadcom's strategic focus with VMware, Dell's partner program adjustments, Teradata's transition to cloud-based offerings, and the market reactions to these changes.