Here on theCUBE, you hear it first when a ripple of innovation is made in tech’s constantly renewing waters. But not all of us are ready for cloud-native, serverless, microservices-orchestration platforms, or what-have-you, just yet. We also ask real-world businesses how they’re coping with their technology aches and pains today.

“The bleeding edge doesn’t always work for us, but we also can’t afford to lag behind,” said Carl Holzhauer (pictured), supervisor of infrastructure at Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick LLP. Law firms generally must comply tightly with data regulations; the one Holzhauer works for is no exception. Sometimes data must be stored completely unchanged from its original form, for example. 

Rendering data for in-office use can also get complicated. People in different parts of the firm have their own preferences. “They like their programs this way, or that way, and they’re all different. The hard part for us is how to keep that data always available to them in different systems … [and make] sure all these things work as one,” he said. 

Holzhauer spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando, Florida. They discussed how to make practical technology choices in a crowded, rapidly changing market. (* Disclosure below.)

Word at the water cooler

All things to do with data — including backup — are top priorities for Shumaker. The firm is open to new technologies that offer obvious improvements over older ones. 

“You know, is there something that I haven’t thought of that blockchain can do … better than we’re doing it now?” Holzhauer said. 

Word of mouth is the most reliable tech recommendation engine, according to Holzhauer. “It’s having those trusted people or colleagues that go, ‘Hey, I saw this. I saw that. Take a look at this. See what you think,'” he said. 

A trusted vendor recommended Cohesity Inc. and Zerto Ltd. for backup and recovery. The longer the firm uses them, the more pleased Holzhauer is with the pick.

As infrastructure supervisor, Holzhauer is keen to keep the firm’s staff smiling at their computers. “In my help-desk days … I could take the end-user beratings a lot easier because, well, [it was] nothing personal,” he concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Microsoft Ignite event. (* Disclosure: Cohesity Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cohesity nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE