Back in 2012, Joe Kinsella had a simple idea—one that eventually drove him to quit his day job. Focusing his energy on shrinking the complexity gap, Kinsella set out on a journey that led him to founding CloudHealth Technologies (now CloudHealth by VMware), the industry’s leading multicloud management company. Today, CloudHealth is an independent VMware business unit with over 7,000 customers and $11.2 billion dollars of cloud spend in management. As one might imagine, his simple idea did not come with a simple answer. In fact, his goal of mitigating the evolving challenges of managing spend and resources in the cloud was anything but simple.
Kinsella defined the three core challenges of effective cloud management as:
- Pace of change. Changes in the cloud move at rates that are 4-5x magnitudes faster than in the data center. IT processes that historically managed on-premises infrastructure won’t be able to support cloud infrastructure in the same way.
- Decentralized management. In the past, IT departments owned the data center. Today, an organization’s cloud environment can be used, owned, and managed by numerous teams across lines of business. As management moves from a single, centralized location to numerous, decentralized locations, guardrails need to be built throughout an organization to ensure things like cost and security remain in check.
- Pervasive multicloud. In the early stages of cloud adoption, most organizations were using one or two clouds (AWS for public cloud and VMware for private). Now it’s common for an organization to be utilizing numerous public and private clouds, with an extensive portfolio of SaaS products that number in the hundreds.
In the early stages of developing a solution to these challenges, Kinsella wrote his first line of code that would shape the foundation of his mission which was to connect data in a way that allows you to make meaningful decisions. Fast-forward to today in 2019, we stand at another point of disruption in the industry, one that is reminiscent of the Kinsella’s 2012 opportunity to drive complexity mitigation.
So, what’s next? That’s the big question Kinsella has set out to answer, and during today’s CloudLIVE keynote session, he gave the crowd a glimpse into the future of the cloud industry and how users can enable success through his revolutionized approach to strategic cloud management. Read all about his vision for the future of cloud management and how to develop a strategy that will empower your organization in the new era and beyond.
Michelle McKenna, CIO of the NFL
After three impressive demos from the CloudHealth team, Michelle McKenna, the CIO of the NFL, took to the stage and immediately launched an invigorating video to demonstrate the role of technology in the NFL.
I’m constantly challenged to leverage bleeding-edge technology, new ideas and ways to collaborate, and tie it all together in real-time.
– Michelle McKenna, CIO, National Football League
McKenna focused on the four key trends that repeatedly pop-up across the tech industry–– machine learning, performance measurement, intense collaboration, and microservices.
Using an example that clearly related to the audience, McKenna went over the trials and tribulations that the NFL had run across while drafting game schedules in the past—before it was a single person, Val Pinchbeck, working with mental math. Today, the NFL automates game scheduling with the unlimited horsepower of cloud technology, using an algorithm designed around Pinchbeck’s original methodology.
According to McKenna’s latest financial evaluation, the NFL is dedicating over $60 million to its engineering roadmap, primarily targeting health and safety research and innovation. The application of technology plays a leading role in efforts to enhance how we learn about the risks players face on the field. For the first time, the NFL has begun placing new spoke sensors in the mouthguards of players on four different teams so they can get real-time data on the physical impact of the players’ face on the field.
I’m sure everyone here in technology can feel that the pace of change never has been greater.
– Michelle McKenna, CIO, NFL
Through technology, McKenna made the point of how important this level of collaboration is and how across the world in many different industries, people are making the world a better place through innovation. From measuring call center performance to getting the right people to the right places during emergency situations, McKenna highlighted how the four trends can be observed within each scenario. Tying it all back to her experience working for the NFL, she drove home the importance of real-time data and its role in revolutionizing the technology industry as a whole.
Over the course of this week at CloudLIVE 2019 in Boston—the conversations, speakers, attendees, and everyone involved overwhelmed the CloudHealth team with positive experiences and opportunities to make next year even better. We can’t wait to reconnect with everyone at Re:invent 2019 in Las Vegas, NV!
