Sports, Security AI and Infrastructure – Infrastructure Matters, Episode 47

Hello, welcome to episode 47. Episode 47. That sounds crazy to say, episode 47 of Infrastructure Matters.

I'm your host today, Steven Dickens, and I'm joined by my fantastic co-hosts, Kimberly Bates and Krista Koba. Welcome to the show. Good morning.

Good morning. We've been talking off camera and goofing around, so now everybody's just ready to get going. Goingt, we, Yeah, well, we have to tell them what we've been talking about.

Tour de France. Tour de France. Yes.

Okay. So This is just, this is a shameless, Kimberly, and I would, this is the message going out directly to any tech vendor sponsoring the Tour de France if you are looking for some organic coverage of your presence in your sponsorship of the Tour de France. Kimberly and I are available for the final stage of the Tour de France, which goes from Monaco to Nice this year.

So if you'd like to fly us over, we're more than graciously accept the trip. I have, I have also heard the beaches in Nice are beautiful, so yeah. Yeah, This is not a cycling fan like Campbell and I, but she'll come along.

So with three tickets, that's all you need. Yep. There we go.

Alright, so we got, We've got a packed agenda today. We're gonna talk a little bit about what future intelligence is doing with some analysis we're doing in the chip set market, but also what Krista's doing and driving from a cybersecurity perspective. Kimberly's gonna tell us a little bit about what's going on in the data security space.

We're gonna cover what an infin, inata, cyber Infin. I'm gonna pivot sports and talk a little bit about what IBM's doing at Wimbledon, and that'll be your show today. So, I'll start with a little bit around what we're doing with Futurum Intelligence.

This is a key part of the Futurum group. This is us building market sentiment, market analysis, market sizing, uh, growth. I've just spent 90 minutes of my morning so far this morning, and we're only at 11, 11 o'clock going through, uh, chip set data.

So we've got a, a whole team of us looking at the AI marketplace, what's going on with, um, G-P-U-D-P-U-T-P-U accelerators and trying to deconstruct that market and pull that together. So you're gonna see that coming out from us in a few weeks time. So I can't preview too much of the data yet.

We're in the final stages of curating that and, and battle testing it. But Krista, you've also been doing a piece of work on the cybersecurity space, and I think you are maybe gonna beat us to the punch on getting your data out. So maybe you can just give us a bit of a preview, what are you doing and what's some of the early findings looking like?

Yeah, absolutely, Steven. Um, and yes, our cybersecurity, um, decision maker intelligence data, um, is in the dashboard, um, similar to you. I got to walk through it, um, this past week, a couple of days ago.

Um, so very exciting. Um, and so as you're alluding to what this data is, is it is really understanding, um, sentiment of decision makers, um, in various marketplaces. Steven, you were talking about, you know, kind of chip sets.

Um, and in particular the data that I've been, um, kind of in charge of is around cybersecurity. Um, so specifically for this kind of initial effort, we narrowed it down to focus on seven product segments, specifically data protection, data security, posture management, um, your sim tools, identity and access management tools, um, networking and cloud networking, um, as well. And, um, what we found was, um, the top finding I would say that sort of jumps out to me that was really interesting was that more than half of organizations are intending to add a new cybersecurity vendor moving forward.

And actually 45%, um, of respondents told us that they plan to actually invest in a whole new product category under the seven that I mentioned. And I call this out because there's been a lot of discussion in the cybersecurity market, especially this year around this concept of, um, sort of moving to platforms or solutions, um, and trying to consolidate down the number of vendors and products, um, from a customer perspective that they're working with for security. Um, and that's because just the web of cybersecurity tools just has sprawled to become, you know, you maybe you have dozens that may be in place at any given enterprise.

Um, so this is kind of creating some gaps in, you know, visibility. It's slowing the, the ability to detect and respond to attacks. So, uh, there's sort of this push and pull, right?

So I think it's sort of, you know, ideally we would like to kind of move towards that more platform type approach. But at the same time, um, what we're hearing is that there are new capabilities that are needed in the security marketplace, whether that be to, um, you know, protect new cloud applications that are coming into the equation, for example, whether that be new tools to be able to detect new and more sophisticated attacks that are emerging. So again, there's sort of this, on one hand, we still need this kind of more innovative best of breed approach to be able to address the requirements as they're evolving, um, especially today, but at the same time, do so in a way that is, you know, I would say very, um, you know, very specific, right?

So very focused on where are the gaps in the specific, um, in the security implementation today, and specifically what is needed to be able to address those. Um, so again, that was sort of, it's interesting. It's interesting you say that.

I mean, I, I pick, I sort of track this space through a lot of your research and the commentary, and I kind of listen more generally. I've been hearing this sort of tension between platform and best of breed. You know, I, I saw your coverage out at RSA and you know, I know you're going into blackout and I just look at the vendor lists who are sponsoring that, and there's hundreds of vendors where, I mean, is it kind of two things can be true at the same time type?

Is it people are looking to consolidate and drive more horizontal platforms, but they also want to invest best and breed at the same time, rather than, is it a both and rather than an either or, I suppose is the question. That's, that's what I'm seeing. Um, and we'll actually get to this a little bit, um, with Infiniti at and how they're partnering with some of these companies.

Um, I did hear this, for example, from a company for Tribe back at RSA, how they have, um, a number of services across, um, you know, kind of a number of segments within security. And what they're trying to do is kind of provide this platform where customers can sort of add as they need and as they go. So it certainly, it's, I I I am seeing kind of both are, are kind of true at this point.

And so what we're seeing is that there are certainly are, you know, sort of partnerships. Um, we are seeing that there's areas where, um, you know, a company might try to be flexible in terms of the ability to kind of add services as customers need them. Um, and from a customer perspective, what I would say is, um, you know, it's important to sort of understand specifically where are the gaps, um, you know, in your cybersecurity capabilities today.

Um, and sort of map those to what are the most pressing threats or vulnerabilities to really understand where does it make sense if you are going to choose to kind of either add a new product or a vendor that you're working with, you know, is that really the most strategic decision? Um, and it might be if this, you know, product or company really brings some best of breed capabilities to the table, um, that kind of fill those, you know, those critical needs. So one couple comments here.

Um, I sit on a CIO CSO round table, um, when once a month. And that group, um, they do polls. It's not a mass, I think we probably have about 50 people in there.

So it's not, you know, necessarily in one of the questions that they pulled on this time was, you know, ranking of where you felt like you're, where is your biggest vulnerability? And overwhelmingly the number one vulnerability was data security, not for security, not IAM it was still the data security piece of it. So there's that heightened, continued, heightened awareness, um, is, is there.

And so that continued March forward to say, okay, so need to do, keep on doing more or different or change it up. Um, and then, you know, with that, we continue to see a march of announcements coming out of vendors to address various in a sundry pieces of it. I mean, getting back to platform versus the different vendors.

You look at strategies, you know, like Cohesity is doing mm-Hmm. City is working with the different vendors that are out there, the security vendors creating those relationships. So maybe not, they're not putting the platform together, but they're putting the relationships in the ease of use integration kind of work with their platform.

So that's another strategy that they're taking on to, to take a look at all the different various areas that they're exposed. Exactly. And you know, to that point, when a company you referenced Cohesity, I know we heard this a bit from, you know, from NetApp as well, Kimberly, when we were with them a couple weeks ago, um, from their perspective, they're saying, we're hearing that customers are working with a couple different vendors, you know, in this particular space, and those vendors really are best of breed for maybe as Azure SIM tool.

So we wanna make sure that customers can continue to work with them and that we're kind of offering that interoperability there. Um, and you, you bring up a great, Go ahead. Does that segue us into the, the infin cyber conversation?

Is that kind of what you're hearing specifically from one vendor that kind of maps into that wider trend? Is that what we're hearing? Yeah, It might be, um, it might actually be a good segue, um, to kind of of talk about that.

So I'll, I'll even further tee it up. So I know Kimberly, you mentioned data security, um, being kind of the top issue among the CIO panel. Um, so what I'll say is here, So definitely CI and ciso.

So it wasn't just, so, so that's, that was what very, very importantly in there is that you have both of these people citing this is the top issue. Yeah, that's an important distinction. Yeah.

Thank you. Um, so in, in our intelligence data, um, we asked the respondents, so those who said that they are considering changing vendors. Um, so in the data protection market, the respondents have said they're considering changing their data protection vendor.

The top reason was improving their ability to meet their recovery point and recovery time objectives. So that's your data loss and your downtime. And then we also asked in data security, posture management, and those companies said the ability to expand their existing security posture coverage.

So looking at, okay, maybe they have some new endpoint security requirements, maybe they have new vulnerability management requirements, um, to address. And I say that because, so what we've seen from infinidat is they had their launch, they call it their, um, automated cyber protection capability. This is part of what they call their infinity safe portfolio.

Um, and what this is, is Infiniti that is, um, integrating with, um, security operation centers tools like your SIM and your so tools. And when that SIM or so tool, for example, detects, um, potentially malicious, um, activity, the Infiniti DAT system will automatically take a snapshot. Um, and I bring that up because it really goes back to when we heard this feedback around the ability to mini to meet those R-P-O-R-T-O requirements.

Um, this really can help to minimize the amount of data loss because, um, where it's automatically taking the snapshot, hopefully you're minimizing, um, you know, kind of the spread of the attack within your, um, within your environment. Um, and so you're then of course preserving as much of your, you know, your good data, if you will, that isn't corrupted as possible. Similar to where NetApp is, is doing their snapshot, their immediate snapshot when they detected on the primary storage.

Again, how fast can we we get to that space? So yeah, very good. Very good.

Exactly. Exactly. Um, so you know, Steven, kind of to your question, this is an example of, you know, they're kind of working with, um, these kind of ecosystem partners in the security space to be able to, you know, kind of address that feedback from customers.

So, and then, you know, we had another company just recently store one, which is a, a firm out of Israel, um, that brought out, and one of the things that they were bringing out in this latest release is the ability to do a hundred thousand snapshots and store those, right? And, and that again, gets back to that R-P-O-R-T-O kind of situation where we're needing to, you know, it's, it's no longer just about, you know, kind of traditional data protection kind of thing, but this is all about, you know, how often do we need to snapshot to make sure we can recover? Mm-Hmm.

So, so I'm really interesting Chris Krista. So what's the big trend lines? I mean, I know the research isn't published yet, but uh, we've obviously got a bunch of enterprise CISOs, CIOs, CTOs kind of as listeners for the show to the show.

What would be those big sort of, if you had to boil it down to three takeaways, and I'm putting you on the spot here, so I apologize, but you know, what would be those three takeaways you would kind of, from the whole body of research, what would you sort of say if you had to boil it down to three banner, sort of what's Your headline in your press Yeah, headline exactly. You know where I'm going, what headline you can do's job for him now and come up with Headline People that can't pay attention. What's the headline, right, Exactly, exactly.

The T ldr Exactly. I was just gonna say that the T ldr R, right. So I would say, you know, certainly one of the major trendlines is, as we're kind of alluding to here, there is investment, right?

So we talked about investing, um, in potentially new vendors, you know, potentially adding product categories. Um, and in fact the ability to do that more quickly is more than 90% of organizations said that they need to deploy their tools faster when compared to three years ago, right? So there's spend that's happening and it's happening quickly.

Um, I would say the, the second, um, kind of trend line is kind of what we were just alluding to around, I referenced kind of that data point around data security, posture management, and kind of the need to keep up with new threats. Um, the second one is, you know, the threat landscape is evolving. And so customers are evaluating their suite of cybersecurity tools from the standpoint of the ability to, you know, detect these new attacks, um, protect all of these, you know, whether it be applications and infrastructure and endpoints and things of that nature.

Um, so the ability to sort of keep pace with the evolving security requirements, which of course is feeding our first headline around kind of spending and investment. Um, and then I would say, you know, the third, you know, this didn't necessarily fully come up in the data itself, um, but it's sort of, I, I kind of talked about it in the context of some of the conversations that we were having at RSA, um, which is that we were kind of talking about the push and pull between best of breeding consolidation. And the third is just the more that you can kind of make the life of your security operations team easier and kind of help them to, um, you know, kind of identify those needles in the haystack, um, and really kind of be as preventative as possible against all of these attacks.

Um, you know, that is going to go far. So really that would be kind of my third would be, you know, empowering the security operations center to be more proactive and preventative and, and really kind of respond more quickly. Um, so those would be, for me, based on the data and the conversations that I'm having, I can feel a specific show solely where I ask you tough questions about your data.

Maybe that's one for post honeymoon, right? And then we'll ask you one to sort of dive through. But no, that's gonna be a fantastically interesting kind of day, preferably The day get back, but I'm, you know, brushing off all the cobwebs, right?

Oh yeah, yeah. Schedule that 9:00 AM the day you get back from your home. That would be ideal.

No prep whatsoever. Just spot quiz me asking you 20 hard questions. We won't do that to you Krista.

Don't worry. Um, so pivoting topic here completely, I got a really good briefing from the team at IBM about what they're doing at Wimbledon that started this week. The championship started 1st of July.

It's one of the things I kind of miss every year about not being in the uk kind of takes over the BBC for two days. Two weeks. You kind of come home from work and you can just sit on the couch and kind of watch two weeks of tennis.

And I'm, I, I'm, I'm a kind of passive tennis watcher, but Wimbledon's kind of a national institution. So IBM's been a long-term sponsor of Wimbledon. Um, and they don't just put their logo on it, they don't just sponsor the TV coverage, they really get involved.

They've got data centers on site, you know, they really get underneath this. And, and the key thing that came away from the briefing that I had with the team at IBM this week is that they're really investing from an AI perspective, both for the fan experience, they ran some research that said 55% of global tennis fans believe that AI will positively impact sports, which is interesting. Uh, but I think it also impacts the coaches and the players themselves.

So what IBM's doing is leveraging its new granite models. These were launched out at IBM Think and Red Hat Summit a few months ago. Say, what is Granite Model?

This is, oh, IBM's granite model is their open source approach. 17 different models ranging from 3 billion to 34 billion parameters open sourced. Um, also some of the tuning on top of that with Instruct Lab, um, which they made available as an open source project.

So this is really IBM being definitive about a particular use case for AI and sports, but focusing in on really the, I suppose the two tension points that came through in the briefing with IBM was open source versus closed source, small model versus big model. And I think there's, that was the whole conversation that we got into it very quickly, got into that rather than the tennis. But I think it, for me, it's really interesting of where are we gonna see some of these small model I see from the guys on our team who are covering Qualcomm and the devices that we're gonna see small models go into either edge devices or out mobile phones.

I was on Ron West Wall's 5G Factor podcast yesterday talking about a Motorola and Google collaboration. So that's pushing models right out to the device. And then I think the other piece that IBM's leaning into is open source.

Now obviously we're seeing chat GPT and Granite, um, sort of Google's Vertex as kind of the poster child's for closed source, but I think where everybody else is going is on a open source dynamic. So I think really good use case from IBM end-to-end tech stack around what they're doing with granite through IBM Cloud to power in the app and the sort of fan experience. So I think as we look at these enterprise AI deployments, it's really fascinating to kind of go out and understand one that's kind of capturing the market from a, certainly from the two week championships, but longer term for some of the, uh, coaches and players as they look at their stats and how to tune their training.

So, just fascinating briefing for me. It's, you know, one of the things I was watching in the last few weeks has just been this ongoing march of releases and announcements on the component side of the house. It's kind of what I call chips and all that kind of thing.

And, um, and that's in support of the ai. I mean, and you look at the, all the question is where is all this deployment going to go, you know? Mm-Hmm.

The big, you know, front page of the Wall Street Journal is about, you know, the, the hyperscalers looking at nuclear energy, okay? Big deal, right? Because they can't power the, the data centers.

So is it going into there? And then we have, you know, so, so that's one area. You know, another area is the A I PCs, you know, so we look at x SK HINX this week is coming out with their, you know, what do they call those?

The, the little drives that are going into the, the PCs. And, and so they're releasing TLC drives, which are higher performing drives, um, with PCI, gen five, souped up energy kind of stuff going into, you know, two terabyte, one terabyte, half a terabyte or kind of going into your pc. So we can do whatever we're gonna do.

Some people are gonna actually do, do working on gen AI on their computer, but the large mass of us is gonna be using the computer to leverage all that stuff on, on our computer. So we won't even know we're using this stuff. It's just, it's there, it's there on there.

Um, and then you, you know, so Oxia showing their environment, showing some new two, two terabit nand, you know, they're already shipping some QLC that's, you know, big drives and that's being used by, you know, that Pure talks about using in their direct flash. You know, they talked about 150 terabyte drives and, and going, you know, to 300 terabyte drives, you know, where are we going, you know, and this is all in support of this technology that's rolling out. And um, you know, and then you've got, you know, solid dime out there with, you know, Sam and now followed by, you know, Samsung sampling some 61 terabyte drives.

So it's just, you know, it's just a, a constant parade of more speed, you know, more networking, more whatever in this data-driven kind of environment that we're living in. Well, I mean, all the guys who cover the devices have been taking pictures of their new laptops with the co-pilot button on, you know. Mm-Hmm.

I don't track that space. I'll accept any laptops that anyone vendor wants to send me, but I don't track that space specifically. But those guys are all, you know, the co-pilot button putting AI sort of out to that edge device.

I think we've just seen it all up and down the stack. And the IBM Wimbledon piece was just get away from the noise of the technology for a little bit. As you are seeing it on memory, you are seeing it on Security Krista, I'm seeing it on infrastructure.

We're, you know, we're seeing it on storage, we're seeing it across the whole stack. How does that all come together in a nice, clean, fantastic interface for the fan on their phone and gives a rich, rich experience. You kind of start there and unpick the stack.

And, and that was what came from me from the IBM Wimbledon briefing. They didn't start with the technology, it would start with the fan experience down very quickly. We got into the benefits and performance metrics of granite versus LAMA and clawed and you know, it, it kind of got there pretty quick, but it's a use case.

And I think what IBM does always does a great job of is how do you position that with a line of business executive And this story around Wimbledon's really easy to consume and understand. It's like, oh, I'm gonna have an app on my phone as a tennis fan. I'm gonna understand how the players are doing and what the, who's gonna match predictor of looking at the stats, who's gonna win and in.

But, um, it's interesting, my daughter's a, a media and they call it second screening. I've not heard this term before, but whilst you're watching the tv, you're also doing something on your phone to augment the experience of what you're doing on the tv. Well, I was doing that Thursday during the debate, listening to it, watching the interview.

So I think the second screening concept for me was fascinating around what are people doing on their phone whilst they're watching the tennis, you know, what are they doing in a break? Are they, look, are they on the IBM app? Sort of looking at who's gonna win the game and what was the percentage on, uh, you know, what was the rich data on that last set?

'cause it was fascinating, but I only caught the last four games. What happened? And then just augmenting that fan experience.

So, and then powering that obviously with AI was just really interesting for me. So I think we're done. We we're gonna lose her for a couple weeks now.

Weeks. I know it's just not gonna be the same. Well, I'm here next week.

You're the one that's not Steven. Yeah. Yeah.

So you've got a, maybe an interruption to your regular gang of free for the next few weeks. I do. I'm up To Aruba on vacation.

Well, Kris, That is coming later. But yeah, so the wedding itself is two weeks from today, which is crazy. So I probably won't see you now before the, before the vacation, so, and the honeymoon and the big day.

So send all your comments and likes and appreciation on social media to Christopher and congratulations. Thank you. You've been watching another episode of Infrastructure Matters.

Please do all the things to click and subscribe, make the algorithm work, tell a friend, we're building a show here, so we enjoy doing this every week and we'll see you next time. Thank you very much for watching. Thanks Guys.