#114 - CIO Storage & Data Challenges with Clay Ryder

This week, Chris catches up with Clay Ryder from the DCS (Data Centre Systems) group at Western Digital. The discussion focuses on the challenges for today’s CIO, with an emphasis on storage and data.

The division of responsibility between CTO and CIO isn’t always obvious. As we learn in this discussion, there’s a lot of overlap and a lot of interaction between the two. CIOs are focused on data and more specifically information, whereas the CTO has to deliver the right platform to meet application needs.

The conversation covers challenges around technical debt, determining what data to retain and what to discard, as well as how the public cloud should be used. Clay describes the idea of a “golden copy” of data, sitting on-premises, with cloud rented for compute.

Finally, the discussion closes with a view on whether the modern CIO has more or less to worry about than 20 years ago. Is it just more of the same?

You can find out more information about Western Digital online at https://www.westerndigital.com/ and in particular the blogs Clay references at https://blog.westerndigital.com/.

Elapsed Time: 00:37:13

Timeline

00:00:00 – Intros
00:01:10 – How do CIO & CTO responsibilities differ?
00:01:54 – Information or Data – what’s the difference?
00:03:00 – What are CIO top concerns – security
00:04:30 – Technical debt, worse in IT than other industries
00:10:13 – Re-using data for future value, what are the challenges?
00:14:00 – Automation will be needed to manage data sources
00:15:30 – Is public cloud the solution for everything IT?
00:20:00 – The disadvantage of opex-based charging
00:24:00 – Creating a golden copy on-premises
00:25:46 – Is the CIA listening?
00:27:02 – Should CIOs care about technologies like NVMe?
00:32:00 – Unknown unknowns, understanding what’s possible
00:34:00 – Are modern CIO challenges the same as they ever were?
00:36:03 – Wrap Up

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