This week, I will be attending Cloud Field Day 6. It is one of the Tech Field Day events that is focussed mainly on cloud technologies. I love attending these events as delegates get to meet vendors in an exclusive setting which is ideal for focussed discussions about their products and what customer problems they solve. The sessions are streamed live and people watching can interact by sending their questions to the delegates, who ask those questions on their behalf. There are always interesting and candid discussions which make these events a must-watch.

It is now becoming a habit of mine to let you all know about all the presenting sponsors, their session times and why should you tune in, at the start of the week. That is especially useful for those who are short on time and have to be selective about the sessions they watch.

I recommend you bookmark these links so they’re handy while joining the session. Here are the details:

Hammerspace

What do they do

Hammerspace is a software-as-a-service company delivering unstructured data across the hybrid cloud. Essentially, it’s a control plane for metadata which is abstracted from storage, thereby making it service, cloud or data centre agnostic.

Why should you be interested

As companies start to move into hybrid topologies, the problem of storage silos becomes even bigger. All the different storage locations and platforms make it difficult to have a clear view of all the data that exists.

Hammerspace hooks into on-premises and cloud storage systems and provides an abstraction layer. That enables it to gain insight into all the data by mining the metadata contained within. That enables a universal workspace for your files and objects, regardless of which platform the data exists on, thereby creating simplicity for access and management.

When will they present

Wednesday 25th September 2019 at 09:00 – 11:00 PST (UTC-0800)

Important links

Website: https://hammerspace.com/

Twitter: @Hammerspace_Inc

Tech Field Day Company Page: https://techfieldday.com/companies/hammerspace/

Hammerspace’s has also appeared at Tech Field Day 17 in the past so do check out their previous presentations on their Tech Field Day Company page.

HashiCorp

What do they do

HashiCorp is a company focussed on cloud infrastructure development, security and operations. If you’ve worked with Terraform, Packer and Vagrant etc., you already know HashiCorp.

Why should you be interested

Well, maybe you haven’t worked with the products I mentioned above in which case, I would highly recommend you watch HashiCorp’s presentation. That’s especially true if you are looking at a multi-cloud infrastructure and want to automate deployments while keeping them vendor-agnostic.

Also as Service Networking starts to gain traction in this multi-cloud world, one should also explore Consul – HashiCorp’s offering in this arena.

When will they present

Wednesday 25th September 2019 at 11:30 – 12:30 PST (UTC-0800)

Important links

Website: https://www.hashicorp.com/

Twitter: @HashiCorp

Tech Field Day Company Page: https://techfieldday.com/companies/hashicorp/

They don’t have any past sessions so there are no older links on the page yet but as videos of their sessions go out, this page will contain the links so that you can watch them later.

Morpheus Data

What do they do

Morpheus Data is a company the produces the Morpheus Cloud Management Platform. Morpheus integrates into a broad range of platforms (both on-premises and public) and networking infrastructure and provides automation and lifecycle management for them.

Why should you be interested

Any company interested in maintaining a multi-cloud presence should consider looking into what Morpheus offers. The sheer number of integrations available on this product is impressive and I’ve heard good things about the platform.

Despite my best efforts, the closest I’ve ever come to see it is at vExpert Fest this year. So, I am looking forward to finding out more about it. Hope you join the session too.

When will they present

Wednesday 25th September 2019 at 14:30 – 16:00 PST (UTC-0800)

Important links

Website: https://www.morpheusdata.com/

Twitter: @MorpheusData

Tech Field Day Company Page: https://techfieldday.com/companies/morpheus-data/

Morpheus Data has also appeared at Cloud Field Day 3 in the past so do check out their previous presentations on their Tech Field Day Company page.

NetApp

What do they do

A large and well-known company in the storage space, NetApp needs no introduction. They’ve been in the on-premises primary storage space for many years but have also been moving into the cloud space for the past few years.

Why should you be interested

Last time I visited NetApp, we were introduced to Cloud Insights, which as the name suggests, looks at your cloud environments and provides insight into consumption, costs but also user behaviours. I am expecting some updates on that.

However, could it be something to do a new storage offering – who knows!

When will they present

Thursday 26th September 2019 at 08:30 – 10:30 PST (UTC-0800)

Important links

Website: https://www.netapp.com/

Twitter: @NetApp

Tech Field Day Company Page: https://techfieldday.com/companies/netapp/

NetApp has a long history of presenting at these events so please do have a look at their past appearances and see if you can find something of interest.

LucidLink

What do they do

LucidLink’s vision is to “transform how object storage is used”. To achieve that, it has built a filesystem that utilises object storage as a platform and presents it to any device that needs it.

Why should you be interested

Availability of object storage like S3 that is virtually unlimited, low-cost and durable makes it very attractive to storage providers as a platform to build their services on.  LucidLink has decided to make it the primary storage and built a filesystem around it.

LucidLink will be talking about the new economy of cloud data access. It claims that this is “the last storage upgrade you’ll ever need” so find out why!

When will they present

Thursday 26th September 2019 at 12:30 – 14:00 PST (UTC-0800)

Important links

Website: https://www.lucidlink.com/

Twitter: @Lucid_Link

Tech Field Day Company Page: https://techfieldday.com/companies/lucidlink/

They don’t have any past sessions so there are no older links on the page yet but as videos of their sessions go out, this page will contain the links so that you can watch them later.

ExtraHop

What do they do

ExtraHop is a company that provides a cloud-native security platform providing enterprises’ with end-to-end visibility, real-time detection, and guided investigation for their hybrid clouds.

Why should you be interested

Monitoring and security of hybrid cloud environments is a big concern for enterprises, especially for ones with legacy tools that can’t deal with the challenges of encryption requirements of today.

ExtraHop aims to provide complete visibility of traffic at every point of the enterprise and also the resulting guided investigation, that is made possible by the cloud-native network traffic analytics engine.

When will they present

Thursday 26th September 2019 at 14:30 – 16:30 PST (UTC-0800)

Important links

Website: https://www.extrahop.com/

Twitter: @ExtraHop

Tech Field Day Company Page: https://techfieldday.com/companies/extrahop/

ExtraHop has also presented at Security Field Day 2 in the past so please do go and check out their presentations on their Tech Field Day company page.

Dell Technologies

What do they do

Dell started as a computing hardware vendor year ago but since then, has become this IT services powerhouse that provides its customers with IT, application, security and workforce transformation products and services.

Why should you be interested

Dell Technologies is one of the very few organisations on the planet that has both hardware and software solutions for all its customers’ needs. With that product set, comes the ability to integrate them effectively and provide an end-to-end seamless experience to the customer.

Given this ability, I am always interested in what they have to show. This time is no different so I recommend you tune in too.

When will they present

Friday 27th September 2019 at 08:00 – 10:00 PST (UTC-0800)

Important links

Website: https://www.delltechnologies.com

Twitter: @DellTech

Tech Field Day Company Page: https://techfieldday.com/companies/dell-technologies/

Solo.io

What do they do

Solo.io specialises in cloud-native technologies and provides API and service mesh service across the various infrastructure platforms.

Why should you be interested

When building or transforming applications into a microservices architecture, the first two hurdles are how the various microservices will communicate with each other in a standard fashion and how will that communication be managed.

Solo.io’s products aim to simply those complexities and it would interesting to see why their products stand out from the rest.

When will they present

Friday 27th September 2019 at 12:30 – 14:30 PST (UTC-0800)

Important links

Website: https://www.solo.io/

Twitter: @SoloIO_Inc

Tech Field Day Company Page: https://techfieldday.com/companies/solo-io/

They don’t have any past sessions so there are no older links on the page yet but as videos of their sessions go out, this page will contain the links so that you can watch them later.

Hope this post is useful and you will tune in to see all these vendors presenting and watching the interesting discussions that I love the most. As I eluded to, in the beginning, you all make the event what it is by participating in the discussions live and posting your own questions on Twitter. Don’t forget that on Twitter, the official hashtag is #CFD6 and the main page is: Cloud Field Day 6 so see you there!

Disclaimer: As is customary for Tech Field Day delegates (and just in case), I would like to say that while Gestalt IT is paying for my travel, accommodation etc. to attend Cloud Field Day 6, I am not being paid or being asked to write anything either good or bad about any of the companies that will be presenting.