Serverless computing

I’ve been watching and reading on developments around serverless computing. I’ve never used it myself so only have limited understanding. However, given my extensive knowledge of servers, firmware, OS, Middleware and business applications, I’ve had a bunch of questions.

Many of my questions are echoed in this excellent write-up by Jeremy Daly on the recent Serverless NYC event.

For traditional enterprise type customers, it’s well worth reviewing the notes of the issues highlighted by Jason Katzer, Director of Software Engineering at Capital One. While some attendees talk about “upwards of a BILLION transactions per month” using serverlesss, that’s impressive, that’s still short of many enterprise requirements, it translates to 34.5-million transactions per day.

Katzer notes that there are always bottlenecks and often services that don’t scale the same way that your serverless apps do. Worth a read, thanks for posting Jeremy.

Digital Copiers, Faxes and MFP’s and their hard drives

I’m a subscriber to long time UK Tech journalist and Blogger, Charles Arthur / @charlesarthur Overspill blog where he currates links etc. Recently, he linked to an old report, from 2010, but it’s always worth reminding people of the dangers of photocopiers, fax machines and multi-function printers, especially older ones.

Digital photocopiers keep a record of what they’ve seen. Think about that. https://t.co/ihgo9DqXA4 pic.twitter.com/pAucE7FOPw

— Charles Arthur (@charlesarthur) May 11, 2018

Copiers that are lightly used often have a lifecycle of 10-15 years. If you buy rather than lease, it’s quite possible you still have one that doesn’t include encryption of the internal hard drive. Even with a encrypted drive, there is still potential to hack the device software and retrieve the key, although pretty difficult.

The surprise thing is that many modern Multi-function Printers (MFP) also have local storage. While in modern models it is not an actual hard drive, it is likely to be some form of onboard flash memory ala cell phone memory, either part of the system board or via an embedded SD card. It’s worth remembering that these machines are Fax, copier, printers, and scanners all in one machine.

The US Federal Trade Commision has a web page that covers all the basics, in plain language.

Whatever the device, it is still incumbent on the owner to ensure it is wiped before returning it, selling it, or scrapping it. PASS IT ON!

For those interested in how you can get data from a copier/MFP type device, Marshall University Forensic Science team has a paper, here.

Nobody wants to use…

Everyone wants to have everything. Bertil Muth has a great blog on software invisibility and use, where he asserts “Nobody wants to use software“.

Bertil makes a good case for AI driven software, that senses or learns why it exists, and just does what it should. Of course building such software is hard, very hard. It’s a good read though with some thought provoking points.

In the article when discussing Amazon he made a claim it was worth clarifying. It’s about the “infamous” 1-click patent. My comment is here.

“Then they [Amazon]pioneered 1-Click payment”
Actually they didn’t, they popularized a prior method, which after re-examination by the patent office was restricted to the use online, only in shopping carts.

The idea of a single click payment or financial transaction had been implemented many times before, however, prior to 1982 software patents were extremely hard to get for individual functions of so-called unique concepts, and were reserved for much broader, unique “inventions”.

In 1984, I was one of many working on Chemical Banks Pronto Home Banking System. For transfers between accounts within the bank, we initiated a 1-click on the UI for the PC Junior version of Pronto.

As far as I’m aware, nothing from Pronto was patented due to the high cost at the time. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s software patents started to be filed for individual methods, by the mid-90’s software patents became commonplace, and their use both defensive and offensive, sadly became commonplace too.

Overall though, it’s an excellent post which resonates with many of the themes of simplicity and usability I’ve argued here and elsewhere over the years.

Woe are apps

As a follow-on to my recent app post, a couple of interesting udates. First up, marketplace.org ran an interesting piece on apps on June 9th. Sabri Ben-Achour covered the Apple iTunes announcement by saying:

• It’s hard for app developers to get noticed(thats a “no shit sherlock” moment)
• It’s hard to make money (thats NSS #2)
• There are 1.6 million apps on the Apple store, the search function isn’t that great
• There have been 75 billion app downloads, but the average user downloads zero apps per month.

Apples answer? Paid promotion within the iTunes store. Of course if apps didn’t exist and companies and developers were using the power of mobile through web, css etc. their sites would be found in context of content and SEO. They could focus their efforts in a single way to promote their content and the web UI to access it.

Also new, to me, I went to use Skype to contact one of my kids in Europe the other day and was surprised, and more than a little disappointed to find the Skype app was no longer working and no longer available. It’s not clear if this was a business decision, or a technology one. The app was the only one I ever used on the Samsung SmartTV that used the camera. Yeah, I know I should have taped over the camera.

That’s the problem with apps, you wait for ages for a platform that makes sense, and then two or more come along at the same time. You better hope you pick the right one. There are some 137 pages on a single thread on the Skype Community forums debating if either Skype or Samsung was the wrong platform.

The app hell of the future

Just over 5-years ago, in April 2011, I wrote this post after having a fairly interesting exchange with my then boss, Michael Dell, and George Conoly, co-founder and CEO of Forrester Research. I’m guessing in the long term, the disagreement, and semi-public dissension shut some doors in front of me.

Fast forward 5-years, and we are getting the equivalent of a do-over as the Internet of Things and “bots” become the next big thing. This arrived in my email the other day:

This year, MobileBeat is diving deep into the new paradigm that’s rocking the mobile world. It’s the big shift away from our love affair with apps to AI, messaging, and bots – and is poised to transform the mobile ecosystem.

Yes, it’s the emperor’s new clothes of software over again. Marketing lead software always does this, over imagines what’s possible, under estimates the issues with building in and then the fast fail product methodology kicks-in. So, bots will be the next bloatware, becoming a security attack front. Too much code, forced-fit into micro-controllers. The ecosystem driven solely by the need to make money. Instead of tiny pieces of firmware that have a single job, wax-on, wax-off, they will become dumping ground for lots of short-term fixes, that never go away.

Meanwhile, the app hell of today continues. My phone apps update all the time, mostly with no noticeable new function; I’m required to register with loads of different “app stores” each one a walled garden with few published rules, no oversight, and little transparency. The only real source of trusted apps is github and the like where you can at least scan the source code.

When these apps update, it doesn’t always go well. See this picture of my Garmin Fenix 3, a classic walled garden, my phone starts to update at 8:10 a.m., and when it’s done, my watch says it’s now 7:11 a.m.

Over on my Samsung Smart TV, I switch it from monitor to Smart TV mode and get this… it never ends. Nothing resolves it accept disconnecting the power supply. It recovered OK but this is hardly a good user experience.

Yeah, I have a lot of smart home stuff,  but little or none of it is immune to the app upgrade death spiral; each app upgrade taking the device nearer to obsolescence because there isn’t enough memory, storage or the processor isn’t fast enough to include the bloated functions marketing thinks it needs.

If the IoT and message bots are really the future, then software engineers need to stand up and be counted. Design small, tight reentrant code. Document the interfaces, publish the source and instead of continuously being pushed to deliver more and more function, push back, software has got to become engineering and not a form of story telling.

Touch screen and the desktop

I just posted a response over on a CNET discussion topic. As often is the case, rather than write, review, edit and post; I banged away a response and submitted, as always I made a few typo’s, so here is a corrected version.

I’ve just retired from an senior engineering position at Dell, specializing in software and firmware but I also participated in a number of usability studies for hardware/software combinations. I was the originator of the NFC enabled server systems management concept. I’d offer a few thoughts to confirm what some others have said, but also a slightly different perspective.

1. yes reaching across a keyboard to a monitor mounted at the back of a desk is ergonomically unpleasant.

2. Touch is an interesting technology, but for fixed monitors and TV’s etc. it is less than optimal. There are numerous efforts underway to come up with a more responsive, natural way to control a UI. Think X/BOX or Nintendo, or the Samsung SmartTV gestures, voice ala Amazon echo etc.

3. That said, I for one would never go back to a non-touch laptop screen. I can lift my arm from the keyboard and prod the “submit post” button below much quicker that I can use the touchpad, or grab an extrnal mouse and click.

4. If you want a touch screen desktop I’d highly recommend getting an all-in-one with a touch screen and mounting it into a desk. I had one of the Dell XPS 27’s and had an IKEA draftmans desk. We cut a hole 99% the size of the screen; mounted the screen into the hole; secured it with picture wire in a # format across the back. I gave up using a physical keyboard and mouse, bought a Targus Stylus and went 100% touch. The advantage of the IKEA desk is that you can easily angle the surface to one that suits you. Also, it came with a medal lip which stopped things sliding off the edge; also it came with a built in glass area, which was great for to-do lists, notes etc.

One final note, on Touch screen PC’s. As with Windows 10, when switching over to touch screen you have to try to stop doing the way you did them with a mouse and keyboard. The Adobe PDF app for Windows 10, is much easier to use than the Adobe desktop app for Windows 10. Using a drawing program for line art, block diagrams etc. either with your finger, or with a stylus is a huge leap forward to messing about with Word and Powerpoint. In the case of slides, and powerpoint, it made me released me from decades of serial text mode slides.

So rather than ask why so few touch screens for desktop computers. Ask, what are top-5 applications I use, and how could touchscreen make them better, easier, or me more productive. If it’s email, calendar and web browsing, it probably won’t. Although even in those cases, zoom in and zoom out is an improvement.

REPLY-TO-ALL storms

One thing that I’ve come to loathe is a “reply-to-all” email storm. They happen on all sorts of email systems, are are often made worse by making the reply-to-all but the default, rather than an option. They are also compounded by distribution lists, especially in big organizations. We had the perfect-storm Friday afternoon, an errant email addressed to an-all-org distribution list.

Peoples inability to use the advanced features the tools they spend so much of their time using, and their willingness to compound the problem with banal, stupid, inconsiderate and just thoughtless responses, also sent reply-to-all, not only astounds me, it frustrates me.

Yes I’m sure you want to be removed from this email chain; yes I know you want people to stop using reply-to-all but sending the response reply-to-all just shows you’ve not thought it through, and don’t know how to use your tools. I understand the problem is compounded by mobile use, where you don’t have the same technology, and having your blackberry vibrate in your pocket 200x can be a little overkill.

If you have Microsoft Outlook, and especially Outlook 2010. Then help is at hand. I keep a couple of Quicksteps for these occaisions, the first is called REPLYTOALL and the second is called EDUCATE. REPLYTOALL just replies to the sender pointing out how useless their reply-to-all was. The quickstep changes the subject, adds the text, signs the email, and sends it, finally it deletes the original message.

If they reply, and this is known since the subject is changed, then I use EDUCATE to reply. It sends the following reply, again changing the subject, adding the text, signing the email, sending it, and finally deleting their response.

You replied to an email chain by using reply to all… asking to be removed or similar… a completely pointless effort that just added to the problem.

Interestingly you simply don’t have to do that. You have three choices that don’t need a reply at all, let alone a reply to all.

1. After you have read the first message where you decide you don’t need to read anymore, from the inbox view right click on that message and choose ignore
2. Right click the message and select ALWAYS MOVE MESSAGES IN THIS CONVERSION and then select deleted items. Right click and select create rule(this is more complex than the two above but can achieve the same thing)
3. What I set up sometime ago is a quickstep. It’s easy to do, its called REPLYTOALL. I select the messages and click the QUICKSTEP, it is set up to send the reply you got, but also deletes the original email, and I just got the chance to update it to change the Subject, as per this reply, to READ ME!And yes, just in case you wondered, yes this reply came from another QUICKSTEP.

Some of us actually think email is still a vehicle for communicating ideas, not just the quickest way to abdicate responsibility for doing anything.

 

QR Codes and PowerEdge 12g servers

One of the things that is great about the new 12g hardware is the innovative use of QR Codes for service and support. It’s one of those “aha” moments where something that seems so obvious just works. Congratulations to Kevin and the ID team that pulled this together. The youtube video explains it all. 

Why is complexity bad?

In an internal meeting here this morning, I had another “rant” about unnecessary complexity in a design. One of the guys in the meeting wrote down what I said, pretty much verbatim and sent it to me afterwards asking if he could use it as a quote. When I read it even I was surprised with the clarity.

“Complexity in computing systems is really a bad thing, it’s the result of too many bright people making misguided judgements about what customers want, and customers thinking that their need to control has to come from complexity. Complexity creates cost, bugs, inhibits design, makes testing overly expensive, hinders flexibility and more. Most IT companies design approach to complexity is to automate it, which in turn creates more complexity.”

Comments?

Customer service – You’ve been Zappos’d

When I first ordered from Zappos.com and they screwed up with the packaging, craming a $200+ dollar jacket in a shoe box, so much so I had to have it professionally steamed to get the creases out, I was prepared to forgive them. After another order they put me on their VIP list, free shipping both ways[read shipping included in the price, since they are anything but cheap.] Zappos is an Amazon.com business.

My 3rd order was for some shoes, I ordered a 12, they shipped an 8. I returned them free, instead of a refund, I got a credit note. I’d have happily accepted the right size, but they didn’t have them. I did do at least one more order, but have backed off recently.

Then late last week I got an email telling me they’d been hacked, some of my data and my password had been compromised, they’d reset my password and I should logon and change it. So I tried. Their system responded “”We are so sorry, we are currently not accepting international traffic. If you have any questions please email us at help@zappos.com”.

Here is my summary email sent back to them today. What’s clear is that their customer service, average under normal circumstances, is less than what I’d expect, VIP or not.

“No wonder you got hacked. Let recap, please read carefully…

1. You got hacked
2. You write to me telling me to change my password
3. Your system won’t let me change my password because I’m overseas attending my father’s funeral.
4. I ask you to remove my account and ALL my data
5. You write back telling me to change my password
6. I write back telling you that wasn’t what I asked, and to delete my account and remove all my data
7. You write back telling me to deactivate my own account
8. I can’t. See #3
9. I write this email back pointing out how useless you are.”

Simplicity – It’s a confidence trick

My friend, foil and friendly adversary James Governor posted an blog entry today entitled “What if IBM Software Got Simple?”

It’s an interesting and appealing topic. It was in some respects what got in our way last year, it was also what was behind the 1999 IBM Autonomic computing initiative, lets just make things that work. It’s simple to blame the architects and engineers for complexity, and James is bang-on when he says “When I have spoken to IBM Distinguished Engineers and senior managers in the past they have tended to believe that complexity could be abstracted”.

There are two things at play here, both apply equally to many companies, especially in the systems management space, but also in the established software marketplace. I’m sure James knows this, or at least had it explained. If not, let me have a go.

On Complexity

Yes, in the past software had to be complex. It was widely used and installed on hundreds of thousands of computers, often as much as ten years older than the current range of hardware. It was used by customers who had grown up over decades with specific needs, specific tools and specific ways of doing things. Software had to be upgraded pretty much non-disruptively, even at release and version boundaries you pretty much had to continue to support most if not all of the old interfaces, applications, internal data formats and API’s.

If you didn’t you had a revolt on your hands in your own customer base. I can cite a few outstanding examples of where the software provider misunderstood this and learn an important lesson both times, I would also go as far as far as to suggest, the product release marked the beginning of the end. VM/SP R5 where IBM introduced a new, non-compatible, non-customer lead UI; VM/XA Migration Aid, where IBM introduced a new, non-compatible CMS lightweight VM OS; and of course, from the X86 world, Microsoft Vista.

For those products a descision was taken at some point in the design to be non-compatible, drop old interfaces or deliberately break them to support the new function or architecture. This is one example where change brings complexity, the other is where you chose to remain compatible, and carry the old interfaces and API’s. This means that everything from the progamming interface, to the tools, compilers, debuggers etc. now has to support either two versions of the same thing, or one version that performs differently.

Either way, when asked to solve a problem introduced by these changes over a number of years, the only real option is to abstract. As I’ve said here many times, automating complexity doesn’t make things simple, it simply makes them more complex,.

On Simplicity

Simplicity is easy when you have nothing. Get two sticks, rub them together and you have a fire. It’s not so easy when you’ve spent 25-years designing and building a nuclear power station. What do I need to start a fire?

Simplicity is a confidence trick. Know your customers, know your market, ask for what it will take to satisfy both, and stick to this. The less confident your are about either, the more scope creep you’ll get, the less specific you’ll be about pretty much every phase of the architecture, the design and ultimately the product. In the cloud software business this is less of an issue, you don’t have releases per se. You roll out function and even if you are not in “google perpetual beta mode” you don’t really have customers on back releases of your product, and you are mostly not waiting for them to upgrade.

If you have a public API you have to protect and migrate that, but otherwise you take care of the customers data, and as you push out new function, they come with you. Since they don’t have to do anything, and for many of the web 2.0 sites we’ve all become used to, don’t have any choice or advance notice, it’s mostly no big deal. However, there is still a requirement that someone that has to know the customer, and know what they want. In the web 2.0 world that’s still the purview of a small cadre of top talent, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Williams, Page, Schmidt, Brin et al.

The same isn’t true for those old world companies, mine included. There are powerful groups and executives who have a vested interest in what and how products are designed, architected and delivered.  They know their customers, their markets and what it will takes to make them. This is how old school software was envisasaged, a legacy, a profit line, even a control point.

The alternative to complexity is to stop and either start over, or at least over multiple product cycles go back and take out all the complexity. This brings with-it a multi-year technical debt, and often a negative op-ex that ,most businesses and product managers are not prepared to carry. It’s simpler, easier and often quicker to acquire and abandon. In with the new, out with the old.

Happy New Year! I Need…

Dell vStart 50 – Start simple… stay that way

One thing I’ve think I’ve been fairly consistent about is taking the complexity out of IT. Seems to me that one of the big wins that people are getting from using public cloud based apps, systems, is that they are easy to get started with. PaaS, Saas etc. offer the options of quick deployments, not just flexible utilization deployment and elastic resource consumption.

Since it will be a very long time before cloud is the de facto deployment environment, and especially while virtualization continues to gain significant traction across the spectrum of businesses, I was delighted to see the formal announcement of the Dell vStart 50 which is a significant effort to deliver that same simplicity of deployment into small and mid-sized businesses.

We’d previously announced the Dell vStart 100, and Dell vStart 200 but they were firmly aimed at larger businesses looking into what’s become known as private cloud, and a virtualization fast start. It is a classic example of what we use to describe as a server consolidation solutions, with the pre-validated, pre-wired vStart system, which can integrate nto your existing infrastructure.

Apart from the smaller physical, logical and virtualized size of the Dell vStart 50, it continues the simplification thread, delivering a package  that delivers both servers, storage and switch configs. The Dell vStart 50 will be sold in two versions – vStart 50m with support for Microsoft Hyper-V, and vStart 50v with support for VMware ESXi. The main dell.com web page for additional information is http://dell.com/vstart

Windows 8 and is change ever good?

The tech sector thrives on change, it is what lets the next generation discover the mistakes of older generation, except in a new context. It is also why there are still thousands of new patents every year, same invention different context and use. People in all walks seem to be afraid of change, just recently the South Congress merchants association fought the city of Austin as they felt it would harm their businesses, drivers complained as it changed the “user interface”. Yet a month or so on and it seems to be working perfectly.

And so it’s no surprise to find Microsoft having to re-assure people over the upcoming UI change in Windows 8. This reminds me of almost every other big change, making sure people know you have not forgotten or overlooked what is important for them.

And so it will be with Windows 8. I had a version of the metro UI installed for a while, but I never really got to use it much. None of my apps exploited it, I never really put in any time to learn how to operate it, with a mouse since I don’t have a touchscreen laptop, well apparently thats the same as Mary-Jo. Introducing new interfaces, either user or programming, is always problematical. Ultimately something will end up going into “sustaining mode” and become pure cost to maintain compatibility. The only question is which it will be, the new or the old?

And there’s the rub, maintain two entirely different and to a degree incompatible sets of interfaces, is an entirely different game. When they are on the same platform, even more so. The question is will there be enough benefit over time to drive PC users to use the new interface exploitation, or should Microsoft just gone with the new UI for the new platform/form factor tablets?

This is what Apple have done fabulously well on. Picking the form factor device and building around it. As I’ve posited a few times in the last week, Steve Jobs wasn’t the best innovator, he didn’t deliver any earth shattering new technology. What Apple did under his recent reign was to deliver on a set of previously established technologies, but deliver them in such a way that the user experience was as good as it could be, even when that meant forcing change.

An interesting question for all those change loving technologists, are we reaching a point where the technology is good enough, and getting it right is more important than changing it?

I guess that depends on what change is. I’ve nailed my colors to the mast pretty much, simplification isn’t change, removing complexity is one of the most important things we can do, and it is one of the biggest barriers to entry.

App Internet and the FT

Walled Gardens

former Colleague Simon Phipps reports on the FT(Financial Times) move to escape the app trap, that I discussed in my earlier App Internet post. Simon useful covers a number of points I didn’t get to, so it’s worth reading the full article here on ComputerWorld(UK).

This is a great example, they’ve clearly done a great job based on their web page feature list, but since I don’t have an iPhone or iPad, couldn’t try it out.

Simon makes an interesting point, that the FT is incurring some risk in that it is not “in” the app store, and therefore doesn’t get included in searches by users looking for solutions. This is another reason why app stores are just another variation of walled gardens. Jeff Atwood has a good summary of the arguments on why walled gardens are a bad thing here. In Jeffs 2007 blog, he says “we already have the world’s best public social networking tool right in front of us: it’s called the internet” and goes on to talk about publicly accessible web services in this instance rather than app stores.

One of the things that never really came to pass with SOA, was the idea of public directories. App stores, and their private catalogs, are directories, however they have a high price of entry as Simon points out. What we need now to encourage the move away from app stores is an HTML5 app store directory. It really is little more than an online shopping catalog for bookmarks. But it includes all the features and functions of walled garden app store catalogs, the only exception to which is the code itself. In place of the download link would be a launch, go, or run now button or link.

We’d only need a few simple, authorized REST based services to create, update, delete catalog entries, not another UDDI all encompassing effort, although it could learn from and perhaps adapt something like the UDDI Green Pages. This is way out of my space, anyone know if there are efforts in this area? @cote ? @Monkchips ? @webmink ?

Large-scale Software Engineering at High Speed

I very much enjoyed presenting the Distinguished Lecture at this years Texas A&M Industrial Affiliates Program, and have uploaded my slides to slideshare.net. I had the opportunity to review and judge a number of the under grad and doctorate poster sessions, and was impressed with both the breadth of the ideas being explored and the depth of the doctoral thesis topics. Some very imaginative projects. I liked a couple so much I’m going to make an effort to get them in as summer interns here at Dell.

Visiting Universities and especially Computer Science classes is always fascinating, any trends that are going to happen are often really visible in this type of environment. What I noticed, and I shouldn’t have been surprised, was a number of this year under-grad class with projects using Android phones and bluetooth, combined with GPS. There were proximity projects, location awareness projects, directions finding projects and more. None really required a GSM contract.

What this indicates is that Android based mobile phones are becoming generalized computing platforms, not just smart phones. Of course, if they are doing this at Texas A&M, similar projects will be running at other universities all over the world. The knowledge, education and development in this space will push the next generation apps, often around the same platform. Back in 1998, I visited Warwick and a number of other Universities and this convinced me Linux was coming.

Today, we’re in an era where speed is of the essence.

• It’s critical for competitive reasons to stay ahead of the competition.
• The customer expectation for the Internet is much higher.

Engineering is a discipline.

• Foundation: I look for people who have a firm foundation in engineering and treat it like a discipline
• Definition: Look up engineering on Wikipedia and the first descriptive word behind it is discipline (followed by art and profession)
• Software: Software is NOT [treated like] an engineering discipline today.[It’s all about invention]
• Discipline: The key to success: We have to get better as a profession at treating software engineering like a discipline.

Culture is critical.

• Garage band?: The days of four or five people starting out of their garage and working that way is less common now[in the enterprise app space, but increasing IS in the personal space].
• Big=global. Most big projects are globally distributed and developed.
• Global differences. The attitude and approach of teams in the USA, India, and China will be vastly different.
• Play to cultural strengths. Adapt to cultural strengths — understand, and use them to your benefit.

Process matters.

• The “how”: It’s not just what you’re doing, but how you do it.
• No surprises: Good ≠ good; Bad ≠ bad
• Communicate: Overcommunicate if needed, but make sure people understand and are aligned.
• Incremental works: Let people see checkpoints where they can gauge progress and give individual groups/teams a chance to report out. You don’t need everyone to review.

Architecture must support the engineering.

• No roadblock: Architecture can’t get in the way of engineering/development.
• Good architecture: Allows people to work effectively in a globally distributed environment.
• Vertical no more: Silos were the old way; technology grew up vertically.
• Alignment: The way people think about constructing systems needs to match the engineering.
• x86 and Cloud: Both allow for globally distributed environment (open source is another example)

Customer First: Dells Software Approach

• Starting anew: Starting and building from scratch
• Integration: It’s all about bringing elements together
• Customer choice: We’re taking a different approach, delivering customer choice through open, horizontal integration (customers can choose hardware – storage, networking – and hypervisor)

Thanks to Michael Conway in Dell Product Group for helping me crystallize my thoughts into a concise structure for the slides. Also to Dr Valerie Taylor, Department Head and Royce E. Wisenbaker Professorship in Engineering at Texas A&M for the invitation and for hosting my visit.

As always, if you have any comments or feedback, please feel free to post here, or via email.