VIOLIN Insights

Whether your company runs on Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM Db2, MySQL, IBM Informix, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB, your database is a complex machine that relies on maintenance to function well. A database health check is essential to identify problematic sections so you can enhance your database in the areas that aren’t operating at their fullest potential.

Sometimes the best way to advance the state of technology is to return to past architectures. I call this approach "back to the future" innovation.v

At a young age, we are pre-programmed to believe that high performance is expensive.  As kids, we played with toy cars of Ferrari and Porsche that are known for performance but associated with high cost and only the rich typically own.  Additionally, such cars are not known for efficiency or for that matter reliability until the dawn of Tesla electric cars.  Tesla offers high-performance acceleration, zero gas costs, low cost of operation and it truly transforms the pre-programmed thinking. Unfortunately, the acquisition cost of a Tesla is not that affordable for everyone, yet.

With all the technology approaches in the market place to modernize IT, it is a challenge to maneuver through all the noise and figure out which is the best approach for you and your company.   Whether you are considering cloud, hyper-converged, revolutionary database products, or a new dev ops program, it all seems daunting. In recent conversations and blogs that I have read, any of these changes need to be accompanied by a change in cultural and skill set.  The complexity of the changes and the impact they have on an organization reminds me of the process I went through to decide whether or not to modernize my existing home or buy new.

In many cultures around the world, there is a reverent respect for the life experience achieved by elders. In industry, those of us who have been around long enough eventually reach “veteran” status and if we’re lucky carry some sway with our views of where our business has been and where it is going. I’m fortunate enough to be one of those lucky ones, having people around me here at Violin Systems that respect my 30 years of experience driving storage and software solutions. Recently, I’ve been invited to share that experience with a broader audience as an invited member of the Forbes Technology Council.