Welcome back to the all-new Chinwag! That looks suspiciously like the old chinwag. There's a bit of change of emphasis even if the style remains the same. Previous chinwags were a bit of knock about fun (which I hope remains) but it was rather non-focused we'd just jump from topic to topic!
The theme that I'm work on is the frustrations of infrustructure - and restructuring the infrustucture. The idea/pun came from when I was the printers getting the cover done for the recent www.eucbook.com. The Quarkguy kept on typing infrustructure instead of infrastructure. I stopped for a moment, and thought hey you've got something there!
So that's theme for the next couple of chinwag, until we run out of stream and look elsewhere. It's kind of linked to this whole "software-defined datacenter" concept were promoting at the moment. It's really all about looking at the bottlenecks associated with not being virtual enough - and seeing what can do about that with new hardware, software and VMware - it's all about restructuring the infrustructure!
My first waggie is a returner - he was on the chinwag almost a year ago, and we met in the flesh for the first time at last years Melbourne VMUG - we reconnected again at VMworld just a couple of weeks ago. I thought of Craig as the opener in this new theme - and I always had in mind from the start because of the way the company works restructured their folks to be aligned to a more "service-orientated approach".
Craig Waters is a Virtualisation Architect and a Data Centre Specialist (Compute/Storage/Network) with over 16 years of experience in the ICT industry. Focusing on virtualisation, Craig has enabled his clients to gain business agility by reducing infrastructure complexity through aggressive virtualisation initiatives. Building on this technology foundation has allowed the implementation of business resilience programs incorporating full disaster recovery solutions. Craig Leads the Melbourne, Australia VMware User Group (VMUG) and is continually contributing to increase its user base. Craig was recently recognised globally with the 2011 VMUG Leader Awards – President’s Award and locally being mentioned during the 2011 vForum Keynote speech in Sydney, Australia. Craig was also designated a vExpert 2012 in recognition of his contribution to the VMware and the virtualisation community.
Anyway, don't take my word for it. Have a listen to Craig and here what he has to say.
If you want to contact Craig. You can follow him on twitter at @cswaters1 - and his blog is http://http://blog.rack.org.au/
You can watch Criag talk on YouTube blow or get the media in the following formats:
ITunes (Audio Only) or RSS Feed
iTunes (Video Only) or RSS Feed
Oh, I forgot to add these are the question I asked Criag...
Q1. So Craig I was reading your blog – and mentioned the place your working undertook a radical refrustructure. But before you tell us about that – can you tell us what was so frustrating about the situation before the changes?
Q2. Okay, so much for technology, people and process – can you outline in a real practical sense an example of one of "bottlenecks" that the org used to face?
Q3. So the business restructured the IT – tells us the good, the bad and ugly… it can't of all been wine & rose?
Q5. You talks about some folks NOT been able to handle change. Like you I like change – but why do you think in the world of IT there are some folks who don't?
Q4. You name check virtualization taking on compute, network & storage – that sounds to me like the whole "software-defined datacenter" idea. What's your take on this concept. You org has been quite radical in both addressing the tech and organisational challenges – can you have the SDD without addressing the structure of how IT professionals work. Can you have your cake & eat it? Have the SDD without changing the organisation
