ITKnowledgeExchange recently had the chance to talk to ITKE blogger and this month’s ‘featured blogger’ Aaron Delp. His blog, Clouds in the Open: The Operations Evolution of Open Source & Public Clouds, covers the latest trends and technology affecting the operation and maintenance of Open Source and public clouds.

ITKE: Tell us a little about yourself: What do you do? What’s your area of expertise?

AD: I am the Senior Director of Technical Marketing for the Citrix Cloud Platforms Group. I help create and define our technical materials and message for XenServer, Citrix CloudPlatform (based off the Apache Foundation’s CloudStack), and Cloud Portal Business Manager. Marketing is new to me; I have historically been involved in pre-sales and post-sales architecture, design, installation and operation of numerous products over the last 15 years or so. In addition I co-founded and co-host the Cloudcast (.net) podcast with Brian Gracely. We cover all aspects and trends in Cloud Computing including a recent spin off podcast due to popular demand hosted by Brian Katz called the Mobilecast.

ITKE: If you weren’t working in IT, you’d be…

AD: That’s a great question. I’ve been so heavily involved in IT for so long…I would have to say it would be something involved with a business at the beach.  My wife and I take our family to the beach at least two or three times a year to get away and unplug. My kids love the water and beach so that time together is very special to us. My wife and I always joke that retirement would be an ice cream cart on the beach.

ITKE: Who’s one person you look up to in the IT world, and why?

AD: Actually two people, not well known in the IT community and both from my IBM days. I had the privilege of having two exceptional managers while I was at IBM that really shaped both my career and how I approach my daily work as well as my career. They both taught me the how of doing work is just as important as checking things off a list and moving on. They are both taught me to make sure I enjoy my work on a daily basis and not just collect a paycheck. If you enjoy what you are doing, everything else (including additional opportunities) just falls into place.

ITKE: How do you see the future of IT developing over the next decade?

AD: I see two major movements coming – mobile devices and the decentralization of IT resources. I believe IT departments as we see them today (operations centers) will become less prevalent over time and IT will become more of an aggregation point for decentralized services. We don’t live in a one solution fits all kind of IT world anymore. We need to match the use case and workload to a solution and we are just starting to see the introduction of the technologies to make this a reality.

ITKE: What advice would you give prospective IT workers (say college students)?

AD: Learn mobile platforms and play with public clouds. There are many aspects of mobile that need to be mastered (writing applications, API interfaces to external services, device management and data security) and this is a growing problem for traditional IT. Most traditional IT shops don’t have the skills to keep up with the pace of the demand. One of the strongest use cases I see today for public cloud is test/dev of mobile platforms. The two almost go hand in hand and I see that trend continuing over time.

ITKnowledgeExchange recently talked to one of ITKE’s newest bloggers and this month’s ‘featured blogger’ Alan Sharp-Paul. His blog, DevOps and the Enterprise, tackles the mysteries surrounding DevOps and uncovers the benefits to the enterprise of automation and collaboration.

ITKE: Tell us a little bit about yourself: What do you do? What’s your area of expertise?

ASP: I’m currently Cofounder and Co-CEO of a startup, ScriptRock, which does automated configuration testing. I’ve come from corporate IT, predominantly financial services. I’m a developer at heart but during my career I’ve spanned a range of roles from developer to architect to process specialist and even a brief stint as a project manager. Right now I’m focused mainly on DevOps, essentially applying the skills I’ve learned in development, particularly test driven development, to the configuration and infrastructure space. 

ITKE: If you weren’t working in IT, you’d be…

ASP: I like to think I’m creative although I’d be worried if I had to make a career of it. I’d like to think I’d be a writer or a comedian but I probably would have ended up leading a life far less romantic.

ITKE: Who’s one person you look up to in the IT world, and why?

ASP: In an age where young entrepreneurs are revered as gods, I much prefer those who go about building real businesses with minimal fanfare. Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri of Workday, Fred Luddy of Service-now and Splunk’s Michael Baum are the first that come to mind. Not many people on the street would know these names but they’ve taken their experience and turned it into billion dollar businesses built on real revenue, not page views or PR.

ITKE: How do you see the future of IT developing over the next decade?

ASP: I agree with Marc Andreessen that software is eating the world. Software Defined Infrastructure is the current wave and is the main reason we started ScriptRock (if you define something in software you must test it after all). It’s taking a step further now though with the advent of Software Defined Networking. With the increased commoditization of processing, storage and bandwidth I do believe that the stage is set for the next wave of truly great companies to all be, in some shape or form, software companies.

ITKE: What advice would you give prospective IT workers (say college students)?

ASP: My advice to all those who are getting into IT because they want to build their own business and is simply this. Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur these days. The market is flooded and the chance of success in the most publicized areas of B2C is incredibly small. If you want to maximize your chance of building a great business and to give yourself an advantage over your peers, do the unthinkable. Work in the Enterprise. Nowhere on this planet do more problems exist that people are willing to pay to have solved. I may be glad to be out of corporate life for now but I never could have started ScriptRock without the knowledge I gained from working there.

ITKnowledgeExchange recently had the chance to talk to one of ITKE’s newest bloggers and this month’s ‘featured blogger’ Michelle Greenlee. Her blog, Developing Clouds, offers resources for faster development, collaboration, useful tools and analysis of the cloud and associated services.

ITKE: Tell us a little bit about yourself: What do you do? What’s your area of expertise?

MG: I develop websites, email campaigns, PURL campaigns, manage a SaaS web-to-print system, and write about technology. I specialize in communicating complex technical information in easy-to-understand terms.

ITKE: If you weren’t working in IT, you’d be….

MG: Wondering why I wasn’t working in technology. I have loved computers and technology since my first foray into programming on the Apple IIs. I ‘programmed’ VCRs before that.

ITKE: Who’s one person you look up to in the IT world, and why?

MG: I come from web development roots so there are a number of influential minds that shaped my understanding of what works on the web and why. I am eternally grateful for all that I have learned from Molly Holzschlag, Eric Meyer, Jefferey Zeldman, and Dan Cederholm. They proved the web could a beautiful place of standardized code that looks good in any browser. They were among a group of talented pioneers who created beautiful websites with HTML+CSS in an era when tricky HTML tables were used for layout and IE6 was the most modern Microsoft browser available.

ITKE: How to you see the future of IT developing over the next decade?

MG: I’ll start by admitting how terrible I am at making predictions. The future of IT is one of a hybrid approach to ‘the cloud’ and a local network. Mobile devices will continue to be a force of change. We finally have real video conferencing promised as an innovation for the early 21st century so it’s only a matter of time before holographic meetings are commonplace (right?).

ITKE: What advice would you give prospective IT workers (say college students)?

MG: Study human-computer interaction, user experience design, and follow the IT industry closely while you’re working toward a degree. Understanding how your work relates to real life will be incredibly important in your future career even if your first love is relational database queries.

ITKnowledgeExchange recently had the chance to talk to this month’s ‘featured blogger’ Sharon Fisher. Her blog, Yottabytes: Storage and Disaster Recovery, gives users valuable insight into data storage hardware, software products and disaster recovery.

ITKE: Tell us a little bit about yourself: What do you do? What’s your area of expertise?

SF: Well, I like to say that I explain stuff. I write about all sorts of things, whether it’s computers or public policy or business profiles or how the Idaho legislature works. I particularly like to explain stuff that other people might think is boring (like the Idaho legislature) and show how it’s actually really interesting.

ITKE: If you weren’t writing about IT, you’d be…

SF: If I weren’t writing about IT, I’d probably be writing about something else. Maybe the back of cereal boxes. Writers are funny that way.

ITKE: Who’s one person you look up to in the IT world, and why?

SF: It sounds like a cliche’, I guess, but I’d say Marissa Meyer; she risked a nice career at Google to take over as CEO at Yahoo, which was really struggling, and is doing a darn fine job of it, by all accounts. And then going, oh, by the way, I’m pregnant. She didn’t compromise on what she wanted. And after people like Carly Fiorina, it’s nice to have a really competent woman CEO to act as a role model. 

ITKE: How to you see the future of IT developing over the next decade?

SF: They say that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. When I was first getting started in this business, organizations were circumventing the IT department by buying PCs. Then the IT department took over PCs. Now people are circumventing the IT department by buying smart devices, and the IT department is trying to handle that. So however the IT department figures out how to control smart devices, in the next decade, people will be working on how to circumvent that. Smart watches? Google Glasses? 

ITKE: What advice would you give prospective IT workers (say college students)?

SF: Study something in addition to computer science so you can do programming *about* stuff and not just programming in and of itself. More and more, computer science is becoming interdisciplinary with science and business and even the humanities. So think about what else you like to do, and figure out how to apply IT to that.  

ITKnowledgeExchange recently had the opportunity to talk to this month’s ‘featured blogger’ Robin Miller about his new blog, Cheap Computing. His blog will be your guide to low-cost computer hardware and software for both home and business use.

ITKE: Tell us a little bit about yourself: What do you do? What’s your area of expertise?

RM: I’m a reporter and editor who covers IT, not an IT person. Think of me as a sportswriter, except I write about programmers and sysadmins instead of quarterbacks and tight ends. My area of expertise is getting behind press releases and product announcements to see who’s really doing what and why they’re doing it. 

ITKE: If you weren’t covering IT/tech, you’d be…

RM: I’d be writing about crime, politics, science, and other human passions. That’s what I was doing before IT reporting became the bulk of my work.

ITKE: Who’s one person you look up to in the IT world, and why?

RM: Just one? Linus Torvalds would be an obvious answer. Richard Stallman would be another, not only because of what he’s accomplished but because he’s the only person I know personally who’s gotten a MacArthur “genius” grant. Someone a little less noticed who has done a lot of background work to help build the modern WWW is Brian Aker, who was the Director of Architecture at MySQL in pre-Sun days. And done a lot of other important things the general public — even the general IT public — has never heard about. 

ITKE: Complete the following sentence: “Cheap computing is ______”.

RM: an extension of my belief that even if money *can* buy happiness, you should try to get the most possible happiness per dollar spent. I’ve been through a couple of phases in my life when I was determined to have the latest gadgets even if it cost me big-time. And it did! Not just in money but in stress, dealing with beta hardware and software that wasn’t really ready for production use. Now I look for good deals on proven — even used — devices, and I use more free and open source software than proprietary programs. I not only save money, but lead a happier and more relaxed life. The funny thing is, when you apply this same philosophy to SMB and enterprise IT, you get lower budgets, higher reliability, and happier bosses. And happier IT staff, too, because they aren’t dealing with as many emergencies.

ITKE: Why should IT pros read your blog?

RM: I’m 60 years old. I’ve watched people waste money and energy on overpriced and troublesome computers and other high-tech devices since the 1960s. I have a lot of experience — not necessarily my own — to pass on about how to save money and aggravation in your dealings with the ever-evolving whirl of gadgets and technological capabilities that keep our lives interesting as long as we don’t let ourselves get overwhelmed by the money we spend to buy those gadgets and the time and energy we spend to maintain them. 

ITKnowledgeExchange recently welcomed cloud computing expert Brian Gracely as a new blogger in the community. His blog, From Silos to Services: Cloud Computing for the Enterprise, will cover cloud computing technology, data center architecture and the changing role of IT. We had the opportunity to talk to Brian and find out a little more about him and his work.

ITKE: Tell us a little bit about yourself: What do you do? What’s your area of expertise?

BG: Originally from Michigan, I now live in Raleigh, NC with my wife and two daughters. My day job is Director of Technical Marketing at EMC. In the past I’ve held a variety of Product Mgmt, Tech Marketing, M&A and R&D jobs at Cisco (14yrs) and NetApp. I co-host The Cloudcast (net) weekly podcast, focused on all aspects of Cloud Computing. I’ve spent the last 5-6 years focused on Cloud Computing, and prior to that I was heavily involved with VoIP standards and architectures. Co-authored VoIP Fundamentals for Cisco Press. You can follow me on @bgracely on Twitter.

ITKE: If you weren’t working in IT/tech, you’d be….

BG: Either working as a school teacher, or building golf courses. I like the ability to help people learn new things and see the world in new ways. And I like the satisfaction of seeing the day-to-day progress of working in the dirt. 

ITKE: Who’s one person you look up to in the IT world, and why?

BG: I’ve been lucky to meet a huge number of really smart, interesting people in IT over the last twenty years, so it’s tough to pick just one. Right now I’m extremely impressed by Jack Dorsey (@jack), co-founder of Twitter and Square. I like how he’s trying to make technology less visible in how people interact. Our lives are complicated enough without more complicated technology getting in the way of progress.

ITKE: Complete the following sentence: “Cloud computing is _______”.

BG: “on-demand computers or applications on the Internet”. IT is the last department within almost every business to adopt a model which incorporate some % of on-demand resource utilization. With every new business project having an IT component, the ability for companies to understand how to leverage on-demand resources will be the difference between business success and failure. Cloud computing is a 10yr technology and business-model disruption, and we’re only a couple years into the transition.

ITKE: Why should IT pros read your blog?

BG: Cloud computing will impact every aspect of IT (HW/SW, People skills, IT process) and my blog covers it from the perspective of the intersection between all those elements. So if you’re interested in technology changes, business model evolutions or how cloud computing will impact your career, this blog will have something for you.