After a productive day of interviews and presentations, VTUG Winter Warmer 2016 drew to a close on its array of special guests and attendees. With such a large set of information and discussion to process, a wrap-up segment on theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, was in order to pick through the big pieces and find some of the smaller, possibly overlooked, details.

Stu Miniman, cohost of theCUBE, was joined by John White, director of product strategy for Expedient Data Centers, to discuss the events of the day along with the details of Expedient’s services. Still excited by the day’s occurrences, the two found plenty of interest to pass back and forth.

Tools and talk

White felt that the keynote presentation by Microsoft had set a great agenda for the day, and the rest of the event had followed in strong suit. Along with cloud transformation for IT and its implications for jobs in the field, White seemed positive on the general buzz coming from attendees in regards to keeping a dynamic pace and environment active.

“The noise I’m hearing is that people realize that they have to change,” he said.

As Miniman followed up on this line of inquiry, noting that the question of IT’s relevance had been virtually retired, discussion shifted to ways of empowering end users with the tools and utilities created by the management and architecture developers. Among these items was what Wikibon has termed the “true private cloud,” which allows customers to manage things for themselves without operating through layers of connection.

Deployment and localization

Along with touching on the current vagueness of the term “hybrid cloud” for IT, and a desire to see that clarified, White moved on to examine some aspects of data efficiency, both in general and as handled by Expedient. Exploring the idea of companies coming to jettison the business of persistent upgrades, which tread a fine line between success and failure, in favor of more reliable and productive projects, White linked the simplification of organization to Expedient’s service focus.

As part of its emphasis on enforcing customer assurance, Expedient’s policy of establishing local datacenters (within two hours’ drive of major business locales) has expanded its ability to draw in customers with interest in either public or private cloud utilities. White noted that by offering the option of setting up private cloud on-premise, Expedient has removed much of the worries about data migration and other common implementation hassles from the process.

Looking forward, White anticipated a shift toward layering on tools to existing architecture, so as to simplify things for users who have other things to organize. He also noted that while Expedient makes use of and supports VMware, it would continue efforts to anticipate new options to stay on the cutting edge.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of VTUG Winter Warmer 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE