Gestalt IT - Why It’s Time to Stop Thinking In Terms of Silos

Gestalt IT

Why It’s Time to Stop

Thinking In Terms of SilosStephen Foskett

[email protected]

@SFoskett

Blog.Fosketts.net

© Foskett Services

1

Stephen Foskettis the organizer of Tech Field Day,

proprietor of Gestalt IT,strangely interested in storage,

baseball believer,all-around nerd, car nut,

Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert,former first-chair bass clarinet player and punk rock frontman,

obsessive about lightbulbs, lover of a good Manhattan,watch blogger, Apple blogger, vegetarian blogger,

dad to three kids with anagram names,grammar obsessive, avid reader,

King of the Andals and the First Men,

humanist, frequent traveler,

and (apparently) lover of his own voice

© Foskett Services 2

Who Are You? How Did You Get Here?

are you "a storage admin" or a

human being with wants and

needs and diverse interests?

you can't be pigeonholed and

neither can your systems!


Gestalt

the ideal of Holism,

that systems and

their properties

should be viewed

as wholes, not as

collections of parts


in the beginning, computers were

just computers

and the people that managed

them knew them inside and out!


Then Something Changed


IT got too complicated…

…so we started building silos

now, production IT is awash in

specialists

but we all rely on each other


The Biggest Problem

each of us specialists assumes

that everyone else’s stuff “just

works”

so we treat it like a black box


nothing “just works”


hardware, software, or people,

it's all the same

we all need to work together

more effectively

we all need better-defined

integration points


Have you seen the future?commoditization of components is a sign

virtualization is a sign

converged infrastructure is a sign

software-defined stuff is a sign

cloud platforms are a sign


Commodities

the datacenter went from dozens

of CPU architectures to just one

storage went from dozens of

interconnect technologies to just

a few

almost everything talks via

Ethernet


Virtualizationthe virtual hardware platform is

the secret of server

commoditization

that every server thinks it’s

running on the same hardware

this makes whole servers a

commodity

(containerization is the same

thing)


Convergence

converged infrastructure pulls

everything together into “building

blocks”

server and storage are co-

located and distributed

integration is the key


Software-Defined

you interact with your computer

hardware using software

your computer interacts with

software on a server

server software that interacts

with other server software to

configure hardware is truly

“software-defined”


Gestalt IT is already here!

"Gestalt" IT is already here

servers, storage, even

networking gear

it's all made of the same stuff


Gestalt People

all this integration and software-

definition leads us to a new

platform for IT

managing the cloud requires

understanding of the connections

and interactions

we all need to embrace the

“gestalt” of the whole system


Thank You!

Stephen Foskett

[email protected]

@SFoskett

blog.fosketts.net

TechFieldDay.com

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Gestalt IT - Why It’s Time to Stop Thinking In Terms of Silos

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Transcript of Gestalt IT - Why It’s Time to Stop Thinking In Terms of Silos