Love is in the air!  Geek love, that is.  Networking guru Stu Miniman showed up on this morning’s NewsDesk show for a special Valentine’s Day segment on user trends in the consumer space and enterprise.

He begins by explaining the meaning of “love” for technology and technology brands. It’s all about the fans, he says: consumers who are passionate enough to get involved with the roadmap of their favorite products. Apple and Instagram are two examples of brands that have become hugely successful thanks to their cult followings – or in other words, their ability to tap into the long term value of loyal customers. It’s this value that makes Miniman believe acquiring the photo sharing service will prove to be a smart investment for Facebook.

Apple’s rise to dominance and present day popularity, in turn, can be credited in great part to the company’s solid lead in the user experience department. To date, iPhone owners’ dedication to their devices has only been matched by the excitement around Google’s Nexus 7, one of the first Android phones that managed to master the “feel of it,” in Miniman’s words.

The consumer and enterprise segments are equally competitive, but it’s a lot harder to get CIOs fussing about your products. The same cannot be said of their tech-savvy iT administrators  however.  Miniman says that operating systems, especially certain flavors of Linux, are getting a lot of attention in IT departments today. The open-source movement is finally starting to catch up with Microsoft and IBM.

The Wikibon analyst lists several technologies that are disrupting IT today: OpenStack, flash, and VM-aware storage. One is Tintri, now pushing hybrid hardware that couples spinning disk with SSDs to replicate VMware’s success on the server side in the storage layer.

To see Miniman’s full segment on geek love, watch the video below.