SNIA Experts on Data
Listen to interviews with SNIA experts on data who cover a wide range of topics on both established and emerging technologies. SNIA is an industry organization that develops global standards and delivers vendor-neutral education on technologies related to data.
SNIA Experts on Data
Standard Data Management Formats: From Tape to Cloud
Tape storage is making a comeback. Hear why as SNIA experts highlight the evolution of tape storage and the importance of data formats and standardization in driving innovation within the storage industry. This discussion dives into the significance of security in data management, evolving roles of technologies like Linear Tape File System (LTFS) and the SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), and how collaborative efforts driven by SNIA shape the future of interoperability. You'll also learn how exciting new initiatives like the SNIA Cloud Object Storage Compatibility Plugfest pave the way for enhanced interoperability. Join this conversation on:
• The resurgence of tape storage in the AI era
• Standards to address cybersecurity challenges in the cloud
• Emerging data structures like directed graphs reshaping data access
• Security protocols becoming integral within data management frameworks
• How LTFS enables interoperability between different vendor solutions
• Call for new members to join SNIA and contribute to future standards
SNIA is an industry organization that develops global standards and delivers vendor-neutral education on technologies related to data. In these interviews, SNIA experts on data cover a wide range of topics on both established and emerging technologies.
About SNIA:
All right. Thank you everybody for joining today. My name is Eric Wright. I am the host of the SNEA Experts on Data podcast and co-founder of GTM Delta Super exciting, because we've got three amazing humans that I'm excited to chat with. We're going to dive into some tech to some people and we're going to talk about the idea of format. Now, format is a funny thing. In fact, this is probably the first thing we want to start with. Is what do we say when we talk about format?
Speaker 1:Under the auspices of an amazing group of technologists of SNEA coming together building standards, we've also focused a lot on how do we make sure that our practice areas align with what we call data focus areas. So if you go to the SNEA website, you're going to see a lot of really, really neat stuff that we're doing around making sure that we're bringing down sort of columns and pillars of where practice areas align, but we're actually seeing a lot of cross pillar alignment. We'll get into that. More than anything, let's get into the amazing folks I'm sharing the call with today. So if you don't mind doing a quick introduction, let's start with Curtis and then I'll work our way around.
Speaker 2:Well thanks, Eric. I'm Curtis Ballard with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. I'm a storage strategy technologist with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, working on future storage technologies with the SNEA organization. I'm a member of the technical council where I help the SNEA organization organize, run, oversee their technical efforts.
Speaker 1:You are one of the cat herders. Welcome to the joy, george.
Speaker 3:Hey guys, my name is George Kambouris and, yes, it's a Greek last name. German accent People get so confused by this Industry veteran. For more than 20 years worked for EMC, dell, hitachi. Right now. I'm in that up right now and my main focus is product management engineering. So my job is to define what and why and what is really a house on this one. I did work with Snea in 2005 on the NDMP Twig back then long time ago, and right now I'm world director at Sneha driving new standards with the whole team.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, and I love the potpourri of both accent and background. This is such a we've got a good, diverse representation. And last but very certainly not least, michael, if you want to do a quick intro and then we're going to jump in.
Speaker 4:Awesome. Hi, this is Michael Horde, and I've been in the industry for 30 years working with McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, Sequent Computer, IBM, Seagate and Intel, and so I'm the chair for the Cloud Storage Technology Initiative, and we have two subgroups or they're different twigs and activities that are going on. One is the Cloud Storage Twig that's working on CDMI, the cloud data management interface, and then there's another group of folks that we've just put together over the last year and that's the Cloud Object Storage Compatibility Plugfest, and we'll talk more about that later.
Speaker 1:Yes, remind me, definitely let's cover Plugfest, because that's actually such a fantastic format. Let's cover Plugfest because that's actually such a fantastic format, and I've participated in some myself back in the day before I was, when I was a vendor and contributing on some of the working groups, so very, very cool. But, like as as James Lipton says, we we start, as always, from the beginning, which should be. What does it mean when we talk about format data? George, do you want to walk us through what we're talking about in this?
Speaker 3:So to remind everybody about SNEA's main mission, right, snea is, people say, a safe space where competitors come together to collaborate in the favor and the benefit of the end customer right. We don't want proprietary companies which is great for them to have something unique for them, but the customers are asking for interoperability to work together on common standards. So SNEA is there to drive this innovation across competitors in a safe space. Just a reminder about SNEA in the overall context. So if you go, if you haven't been there, you should go there. On the SNEA org website there's actually a section we call Completed Standards and this is mentioned for a bunch of areas innovation-wise, starting with DDF, the Common Rate Disk Format, to LTFS right, for example, the Neurotank Pulse System.
Speaker 3:We have a bunch of standards we've done over the years. The key is how we drive alignment between these standards develop. The key is how we drive alignment between these standards, develop them together, roll them out. And of course, there's innovation happening in the market with new technologies coming out over time and we have to adapt and change with these things. So format is one of the crucial areas when I work in SNEA to standardize and work together. So we categorize now under the complete standards, a new format area to drive innovation and bring new science out of the market. Let's just mention CDMI as an example. We can deep dive into this as well, but let's start with the beginning first. The standards are there to drive innovation across competitors in the favor of the end customer.
Speaker 1:Well, that is the thing that I so adore about this. I've been lucky. I've worked with a lot of, I'll say, vendor agnostic communities and even vendor associated communities, where we make a point of separating brand from purpose, and it is such a great way that this comes together, because we literally are competitors by day sometimes, but we understand that together we can innovate if we collectively define standards and the entire industry sees the benefit of it. And it's such a beautiful set of people that I've been able to learn from and become friends with over the years. This room alone, you know, alone is proof of that. So maybe let's talk about some of the innovations that have happened. Because you talked about stuff like LTFS, people will say, ooh, I'm looking forward to LTO6. May not sound exciting, but not realizing that there is a lot of innovation even in stuff that is tried and true, standards that are evolving, along with physical, you know, and software capabilities. I'll let you guys go. Maybe, curtis, I'd love to get your thoughts on. You know what excites you about what's being innovated on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you mentioned LTFS and people being excited about LTO6. I chuckled to myself when you said that, eric, people are currently excited, I hope, about LTO10.
Speaker 1:We're getting way ahead. I'm so far behind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, technology changes so fast you just can't keep up with it. So, for those that don't recognize the acronym, lto is linear tape open and it's a tape technology which a lot of people think is gone. I've worked for Hewlett Packard Enterprise for over 30 years now, and when I joined the company, I actually worked for the team that was directly connected to the group that did tape products and people told me don't ever get put on one of the tape projects. Tape is dead. That was over 30 years ago and just in the last year I can't count the number of times I've run into people that I've told I work for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and they've said oh, hewlett Packard Enterprise, you guys have tape products, don't you?
Speaker 2:We've got AI solutions where we're creating lots of data and we're looking for ways to save it cheaply. So tape is still very much alive and is actually getting a bit of a resurgence with all of the AI training and needs to have cheap ways to archive data that was used in AI and archive data that's generated by AI or data that you might want to use for AI. And LTFS is a standard that SNEA worked on a few years ago. It's not currently under active development because it's successfully being used in a lot of industries today.
Speaker 2:Ltfs is the Linear Tape File System.
Speaker 2:It's a format that Snyk standardized for writing file system data out to any streaming device, generally a tape device, any streaming device, generally a tape device in a defined format that is self-describing and is standalone in a single tape cartridge so that it can be used across multiple vendors, creating data on tapes or other streaming devices that can be used for archival purposes and long after the vendor that wrote the data is gone.
Speaker 2:The standard developed by SNEA and published as an ISO standard will have the specifications and their open source software developed around it that will allow customers to always read their data. I do not currently work directly with tape products so, out of curiosity, as we were preparing for this call, I went out to the GitHub repository for the LTFS software and thought, hmm, what's going on out here? It's really stable. So there haven't been a lot of recent changes. But the most recent change was in a release published three days ago when I went out and checked it, so actively being used every day, and SNEA's still got the expertise and is ready, if there's ever a reason, to update that specification.
Speaker 1:As my favorite phrase is you call it legacy, I call it production.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, Sorry.
Speaker 1:George, I stepped on you there.
Speaker 3:I had a discussion with a customer BigBank I won't say the name for a second, but talk about how much tape they actually have, right, and we talk about exabytes on this thing. And he goes we have over a zettabyte of tapes. And I go, wow, right. And they say, oh, we use the World War II silos, the bunkers, they store these tapes. The temperature is perfect for these guys and they have no intention to change this back to a point because they keep them around. But they have to be able to go back and read data from 10, 20 years ago.
Speaker 1:So it is a standard out there which is heavily used and will continue to be used in the future.
Speaker 1:Right, Well, I'll tell you that's one thing, that standards are not just about what we're doing now, but how we will cleanly deprecate these technologies and methods as we go forward. It's as important to think about the transition between formats and styles and technologies, because I mean, mean and look, it doesn't even necessarily require a, an actual linear tape. You know we've, there are tons of products that build in this virtual you know, front-end layers so that we can emulate tape, and that is again another way where we're going to see, you know, know, cloud storage that appears like tape but doesn't face the penalties of, you know, archive. You know, you make a request and in a couple of days you may or may not see that request come back. It's, there's lots of ways where we can use that interface, but even higher speed technologies we may find that you know some really fast. We may find that some really fast. Apparently, tapes are being used in production for stuff like data training and much more.
Speaker 4:I'd like to add a little bit too. So, in terms of exciting innovation, of course, the AI and with regard to data format, of course, a lot of the new data structures, and that's with the directed graph or the knowledge graph or vector databases. So there's a lot of work in that area. A lot of it's driven out of data science itself, but when you look at CDMI itself, it is structured as a directed graph, so it's already set up in terms of providing access, control and then the set of functions that you can essentially build, operations that you can build out, the structure for directed graphs, and that's the containers, the data, the metadata and the operations to manage all of that. That's what's in CDMI today, so 2.0, that was standardized in September 2020.
Speaker 4:And right now, david Slick is the chair for the technical working group for this cloud storage twig, and so I talked with him just a couple of days ago, and so the intention is to bring to the table new data structures. So that's data format and then the potential for different semantics with regard to language support, protocol support. There's several NFS, smb. Those are very well established, but there's others that we need to look at. So part of the effort is to assess the industry what are the needs? And, just like what was shared earlier I think, george, you mentioned SNEA is entirely member-driven. So everything we do comes from member requests and when we see a pattern where gosh, there's a lot of folks coalescing, and then we have that discussion as an industry group to then get consensus and then start driving collaboration. Snea is a third-party vendor neutral. We put together forums, roadmaps and then the technical initiatives and then finally standards efforts where that's appropriate. So that's exciting.
Speaker 4:The other aspect, just briefly, is on the data formats with regard to multi-protocol gateways. So when you're looking at actual on-prem to cloud and multi-cloud, at actual on-prem to cloud and multi-cloud, all of this is so dynamic in terms of shifting data. So the data format integrity is to have a unified management, but also the capability to have consistency and integrity across all the multi-protocols. And, of course, the existing cloud has a number of very large entities, but those are all different. There's a lot of protocol translation that happens under the covers and that's precisely what we're working on for the Plugfest. So I just wanted to give that little point on that.
Speaker 1:Go ahead.
Speaker 1:So I just wanted to give that little point on that part Go ahead, yeah, the plug fest and this, the human cross. Collaboration is what's amazing, and in fact I've seen a lot of vendors who made the choice to not run to the market with a product but run to the industry with a standard and then, through developing those standards, then develop a product that has, you know, a way to interact by that standard, because that ensures that they have partners and innovation is shared. Because you know, they always say we, we don't want to reinvent the wheel. Well, we've actually reinvented the wheel quite a bit, because previous wheels used to used to not be good like, or they were fine at the time.
Speaker 4:but wheels have evolved, not necessarily at an incredible pace, but it needs to happen, or they become a reference architecture and then the new foundation is built thereon.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, we forget about how much happens that way.
Speaker 3:You just mentioned how people innovate and the environment is changing. Let me go back with Michael to talk about CDMI. Yes, september was 2020 last update, but the version 1.1 was in 2011. So why was there a need let's touch this for a second for changes? Here's one example 18 months ago, customers were saying how do I prevent hackers coming in? That was 18 months ago.
Speaker 3:The last six months, all the CIOs, ceos in our customer briefings are now saying what do I do after I get hacked? How can I restore? So the cyber attacks happening left and right are rapidly increasing. So the market shifted now from how do I stop hackers to how do I react? How can I recover fast? Ransomware attacks is an example right, huge out there right now. So the market has shifted. As a result, we have to adjust the standards as well. So we went beyond than just saying how do I store data? How do I access protocols to data? But how do I secure it? How do I do key management? How do I access across protocols to ensure that integrity? Who has authentication, authorization, different methods, right. So the CDMI style has evolved big time over the last, I would say, five years to adopt innovation and security change over time, security is becoming a key point going forward.
Speaker 1:And security is probably one of the greatest reasons we always say that. You know, when DevOps became a thing that dripped off the tongues of all these you know excited pundits and CIOs, and then along the way, about a year and a half later, suddenly comes DevSecOps and someone said, whoa, why do you have to like explicitly put sec in the middle? It was implied. I'm like, well, it may have been implied, but they weren't actually there. So, yeah, we've had to go out of our way.
Speaker 1:But in the SNEO, in the TWIGs, so the technical working groups and a lot of the other parts of the community, the fact that you're in the room with people that are security experts and they have software developers, so all of these people that in production environments collaborate, but they never collaborate in the planning room. We're doing that now. It's actually the successes in software optimization for things like what we do with LTFS and CDMI. Those software innovations happen because they're sitting in the room, with people understanding where the standards came from and how other people are using it as well, which that you know, george, you we've talked before about this like the use case is what matters. I'm a nerd, I love the bits, I love the speeds and feeds. But in the end I really love when I see like medical benefits and human benefits and scientific benefits that we get from doing stuff with these technologies and these standards.
Speaker 3:You just mentioned personas, right? Let's touch on this for a second. We used to have the chief security officer, but now they have a new title of chief data officer, for example, and these guys are talking to senior as well, saying look, my challenges are 58 applications, I have to share it across them. How do I do it securely and not having to reinvent the wheel? Back to your previous comment right, these guys are talking to us about standards and CDMI. One example is awesome for these guys.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about one use case. Let's take healthcare as an example. Right, biggest challenge If you are not up to date and you take your cell phone, you probably have a healthcare app on your cell phone Most likely I have on that one and I can talk to my doctor in a secure chat and they can make prescriptions in the app online with my CVS pharmacy. Whatever All this, automation has to be standardized, regulated, secure, gdpr compliant, hipaa compliant. Automation has to be standardized, regulated, secure, gdpr compliant, tipper compliant. The list goes on and on right.
Speaker 3:To get to this point, it took years of innovation and cdmi is the back end of this foundation. So it's just one example of use case we can say a start is driving innovation to the consumer, in this case, to make our lives much, much easier. I love this app. So easy before call the doctor, make an appointment, go inside, inside, get the prescription, try to see me. Oh my goodness, right Now it's all online. My kids now are expecting this to be a standard going forward. Ten years ago it didn't exist. So major innovation happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would spend five hours to avoid a 15-minute doctor's appointment any day and the fact that work has happened in the industry using standards you know, we always say it's the standards well-defined means that the artifacts can change. It's the interplay between those artifacts that's the most important thing, and it's not even at the moment in time, but the thing that we thought was not useful. Like archive data, people are like, ah great, what are we going to do with this? We store it for the seven years, which is actually not even a real thing. The seven years is the same as don't yell fire in a movie theater. It's not actually written down, but we use it as a standard, supposedly.
Speaker 1:But we took all this data which we just said we'll put it over in the corner just in case we need it. Well then AI came along and we needed to train on company and customer data safely. Well, where do you think that data has been for a long time, right? So all of a sudden, the archive became primary storage and it flipped on its end because the use case changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the topic we're talking about today became way more important the formats, you know, the formats that organizations like SNEA help define. Snea is not the only one, but SNEA focuses on formats of data in storage ecosystems, and it's critical that we have these well-defined standards for how your information is formatted. Information exchange that enables the technology that so many people count on today, and SNE is here to help define those formats. And one of the things we're trying to do today is look at what's the next gap gap. Where is the next format that we need to be defining to enable that next important information exchange opportunity?
Speaker 3:I have a comment, if I may finish the previous thought on this one, which was a good example. So back to my healthcare example. Let's first a little bit show you how these things work together. Back to format data from Eric in the beginning. Right, I just touched a bit on CDMI. However, if you swipe your ID at the doctor, they have a system in place with CDMI to go back to the tape device before and pull up your x-rays. So now we have CDMI working with LTFS together. Number one this is someone's sort of a system probably a NAS device or something else storage system using DDF formats. So now we have three formats in one healthcare use case working together from SNEA. So it's not just one example of a standard. These work all hand-in-hand together. Just to add as well, interoperability between systems is very important If work all hand in hand together. Just to have this as well, interoperability between is very important. If you haven't seen or haven't been to our conference, by the way, the State of Web Conference was in September in Santa Clara and we had, for example, david Silk give an awesome presentation on CDMI with example use cases. If you haven't been there, next one is coming up, one in Colorado early next year and then of October next year in Santa Clara Again. Please come there for that one.
Speaker 3:But you just mentioned to us futures. Just to give you a quick glimpse of another example of formats, I'm driving now a new initiative within SNIA as well, how we can start across NFS, smb and S3. Just an example it doesn't exist yet. It's a brand new program. It might not complete anytime soon, but customers are asking us. I have compliance issues, I have auditing issues, I have share of custody issues. I'm working now cross-functional SNEA across all our competitors together to come to the end customer view and say how can we make their lives easier to have one start across these things? It might take us six months, two years, it doesn't matter. The point is the customers have a challenge. We recognize the SME as a team and we work on new stars going forward, so we don't stop today. We have new stuff coming all the time.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 4:And then going back to the data format, that it's not just simply the data itself, but it's the metadata that really should be stored with the data, and those should be very closely coupled and go together as things progress, wherever that data is migrated or used across the multi-cloud.
Speaker 4:And that's actually what CDMI does. And so when you look at what George was talking about the healthcare example, what they're doing as far as data science or the data chief data officer, et cetera, they're looking at the overall structure of all data and that's the ontology, and so it's literally at the highest level. And then, in order to make that searchable, then they're using knowledge graphs and algorithms to then get to more precise or exact results. Instead of like with a vector database, it's more of a similarity approach algorithm and that is not exact. So that's kind of the bleeding edge of using vast amounts of data and with the tape that was described with zettabytes. But it's really, how do you package that into a way that's consumable and useful in our lifetime instead of calculating over decades? It needs to be responsive, and that's where the technology is at right now, today, and I'm excited about Sneha's play in this.
Speaker 3:I love your example about AI Michael. Do you want to touch base on security for a second, because we have seen the news? Oh, chep CPT index, blah, blah blah without my authorization. Can you touch on this one security for a second? Because we have seen the news? Oh, chat, gpt index, blah blah. Without my authorization. Can we touch on this one, too, for a second?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I'll start off and then, michael, maybe we could complement this one. You have seen in the news about all these ILM models out there learning on data sets and you can see all these actors. You and companies now said you use my data without my permission. You just touched base with this, michael, about security. Right, the databases Want to elaborate maybe on the security aspect of this one?
Speaker 4:Yeah, should we ask them this one? Yeah, so with the and I'll just say the example is CDMI. It has all of the access controls. It has delegated access control so you can use the proprietary or the system of your choice on-prem. And so there's all the ports and exports in and out of going down to ACES, which is access control entries. So it's very fine, tuned down to the individual object level data, they're able to look at those aspects that George just talked about. As far as the heritage or lineage of that data, where did it come from? What are the protection methods? Need to know who should be involved. So all of that is something that exists today. So the next step is really applying that into real systems.
Speaker 1:So go ahead, and this is what you really highlighted. This thing of that definition of the sureness of the format means that everything else we do can always rely on that consistency across platforms, across software, across hardware platforms, across software, across hardware. Even RAID is well. Again, not a lot of innovations happening in RAID, but yet the hardware and software innovations that allow us to do more with understanding how to optimize and extend the life of hardware and protect another group that we have as a data-focused area.
Speaker 1:I had a little mini server back I'm an older fellow so I've been I've had used to have those like tiny servers started in distributed computing and we had extra ones that were left over because they've been decommissioned and I thought, oh, you know I'm a nerd, I want to dig in and do some new nt windows, nt goodness.
Speaker 1:So I found an old server and like, oh, we had a stack of the old drives and so I took five drives and I put them into the tower and I powered on the server to get ready to put in the cd and it came up to the operating system screen and I thought, oh, and I logged in with my regular production id and it was like wait a second, because, just by sheer coincidence, I picked up five drives that were originally from it, stuck them back in and it became the server.
Speaker 1:It was that six months earlier had been unplugged and well, security problem because we didn't really think about how to clean that data. The fact that five disparate drives had enough information to be able to tell the controller to rebuild the operating system. In this it went back in place and again it's like what do we store with metadata? Where do we store index indices? Where do we do all these things? Those common standards, then, mean that if we want to do things like emulation and innovation, it has to be done on the basis of a foundation. Cinder blocks are always the same shape for a bloody reason, so that we can build houses on top of them.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:That's boring.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, you mentioned a lot of innovation happening. Let's touch on this for a second because, as we might have seen the press now Kiyokya, wd, samsung, you name it right they just announced 120 terabyte media on Flash 256 come running. After this, we have seen the first pre-announcement of one petabyte drives Media drives coming right. So, while RAID's not evolving a lot, let's discuss, because rebuild times is one of the main things people are worried about. If you have too long rebuild times, you're exposed. Yes, there's erasure coding. Yes, there's rate DP and triple tech. These are all out there, but we have to look at the market and always evolve and adjust. So you might see more innovation coming in the rate group division about rate standards going on as these capacity evolve, so there might be another version coming out. We never stop, we always innovate. Just to make the point here, it's not dead and done. We're done with it. We will innovate going forward because the technology evolves over time. It doesn't stop.
Speaker 1:It's. I'll say SNEA is not unlike the moon mission that people think it was a trip to the moon. But what they don't realize is it was the beginning of decades of innovation because of research done on that trip to the moon. That's, that's why these communities have to exist, and even we talked about different standards bodies, iso, ieee. We have cross, you know, organization collaboration. That's going on. We've had folks on the podcast already that are doing work within and across the standards orgs, and this can be done because built on standards means innovation happens faster. I just want to hammer that like I should put that on my forehead. Standards drive innovation. It may seem boring to slow down and define it right at the start, but boy oh boy does the flywheel kick in because of the work that's being done by this group.
Speaker 3:That reminds me, eric, a great suggestion to remind our audience here. We do want more members. Okay, there are a lot of companies out there, especially on AI, for example, start companies popping up left and right. We live and die by our members. As Michael mentioned before, we have a great set of companies working together already, but we want more. We need innovation. We need people coming in to drive standards. If you haven't been looking at SNEA yet, please look at our website. Look at our membership. We just changed our structure Much more easy to join SNEA now and participate in certain work groups at every level of this one. If you have suggestions on new standards, don't think you're on your own. Come to us. We're happy to work with you. Bring you in. We are open for new idea suggestions. So don't think we're closed off. We want more members. Just to point this out to the audience here.
Speaker 1:The beauty of how we can safely share how we're doing things that still allow us to, in our individual companies, continue to work as the way we do but the fact that you can probably save a ton of time Just being in that room and seeing, like you said, the talks that happened at SDC and they're on the YouTube channel as well. There's quite a few that are there, so folks should go check those out. You get to interact with engineers who are building these tools and seeing real customer experiences. There's very rare opportunities to get in front of that kind of community. So, oh boy, I could spend all day with you guys. But I definitely want to say, as a wrap for what we, what you see ahead and you know, specifically around format, but, sneha, in general, with 2025, curtis, I'll let you lead us out what's got you fired up about, what's new and coming.
Speaker 2:What's got you fired up about what's new and coming? Oh well, we've mentioned it several times already, but AI has just introduced so many challenges. With every AI tool that they use, stores, provenance information in a different format, and there's opportunities for identifying how we can take some of these tools that the world is building on for AI and start creating a little bit more structure around how those things can work better together. Especially, you know, there's so many things throughout the storage infrastructure behind AI that, as everybody is focused on the GPUs and the compute and the processing, there's this entire storage layer that underlies that. You've got to get that data into your AI processing and there is so much opportunity for building out that storage layer for accelerating your AI world accelerating your AI world.
Speaker 1:And, michael, what's got you excited to wake up on Christmas morning knowing that you've got a year ahead and presents?
Speaker 4:to open. Well, I'd have to say that every day is pretty much like that, opening a brand new presence every day through the year, and the reason I'm saying that is this last year we had a very remarkable activity with the Plugfest. There was a whole community put together and many of the contributors are not traditional SNEA members. So we're reaching out into areas for cloud storage. So we're reaching out into areas for cloud storage that and it's not just the storage, but it's the gateways and other infrastructure that goes on-prem and various software. So, and to get very specific, with the Plugfest, we conducted that in September. We had a November 21st webinar. So I'd love to like, in your comments, we can publish that link for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:That was a report to the industry on the activity there and that gives a lot of the detailsFest and we're going through the review process within SNEA to create a new organization for that, and so that was just recent.
Speaker 4:We've got our PlugFest calls coming up in January as well as the open source test suite, so we have separate calls for that. And then just yesterday I had a wonderful conversation with one of the candidates we're looking at for leading the open source test suite development, and why I point that out is what excites me is to have those conversations where these are time commitments and it's not easy. People are extremely busy, but when you have something vitally important that is exciting and then having that discussion about okay, where is the industry going, how can we influence that and provide a significant impact. That's the kind of discussion just individually we have, but also with our forum we had a birds of a feather session looking at strategies and then the final thing is I'm doing some outreach to open source test people. So it's a very long list of new people. So my goal personally is to double the size of our test matrix by April for the next Plugfest.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, and that's where real testing happens. I always say there's no greater lie than things like I have read and accept the terms and conditions and all the tests are in the PR. Thank you, yeah, nice, excellent, well, definitely, we've got a lot ahead and I want to make sure that we bring it back. So, george, my German and my beautiful cornucopia background friend, what is ahead for us and what has you excited about 2025?
Speaker 3:So being the board of directors for SNIA is an amazing role. The collaboration is awesome across the companies. Also, being part of the membership committee, with our new structure we just rolled out and we haven't seen it. Please check it out. We now made it easier for you to join, and Michael just mentioned virtual feather event.
Speaker 3:I hosted my first one at the HTC in September and I was just so happy to see that even competitors in a room can talk about customer outcomes and how we can benefit, and the concern about companies saying, oh, I would share my confidential IP. You don't. You don't have to share any IP whatsoever. This is about the customer outcome. It's not about we want your IP to publish your IP and you no longer differentiate in the market. No, we talk with them and say you can be first to market. If you have some innovation, bring it up. We want to work with you on these things. What excites me right now is 2025 coming up on this one Working with these new parts of weather events. They will drive new standards across all these competitors working as one team. There's no A B companies. What's the point of the end customer? How do we get there on these things, and I'm looking forward to the Colorado event coming up next year, the STC next year October coming up for even more innovation and driving new starts in the future.
Speaker 1:That's what excites me about the future. We almost need a podcast just called the humans of SNEA, because that is the reason why I love being there and, as you said, we know how to safely exchange ideas without breaking the boundaries of of IP. You know, we, we're all professionals and, in fact, they're the people that are the closest to the metal but also the closest to the customer, and being able to bring those together is such a fantastic thing. So, yeah, definitely, folks listen to to these, this amazing crew. So, michael George and Curtis, thank you for sharing time with us today. And if people want to reach out, of course, connect with all of us through SNEA events. There's great virtual events as well as in-person events. Head to SNEAorg and see where all the action is. There's lots of stuff that's coming up, and quickly. So for folks, if they did want to connect with you directly, what's the best way, curtis? If we want to spend more Curtis time, how do we do so? We want to spend more Curtis time.
Speaker 2:How do we do so? If they want to connect with me directly, my email address is widely published through a number of industry organizations and they're free to look me up through any of the multitudes of documents I've contributed to send me an email. Of course, there's always a communication mechanisms like LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
Speaker 1:Fantastic George.
Speaker 3:Same here. I've been in this for 20 plus years, many companies but there are open websites like LinkedIn. You mentioned other ones. Our published names are in there. If not, surely they can reach out to every three of you to reach out to us and, by the way, there are no dumb questions. Anything you might have, reach out to us.
Speaker 1:Happy to have worked with you, bingo. I love that. That's exactly it, michael.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so easiest way is cstichair at sneaorg Very, very quick.
Speaker 1:And definitely anybody who is at sneaorg is a friend of mine. So, folks, thank you for sharing an amazing year together. We saw a lot of cool changes in 2024, much more coming ahead, much more great conversations like this. So, even if you're seeing this after the new hero is already launched, there's many more coming. So head to the website. The podcast, as well, is available for audio subscription, and we're also on YouTube. The podcast, as well, is available for audio subscription, and we're also on YouTube, so these beautiful smiles can be seen ad infinitum, which is also the reason why none of us really need to give out an email address. We're everywhere. But come to come to SDC. It is truly one of the best, one of the best groups of folks and a great. It's a nerd fest in the greatest possible way, and with that, thank you very much, team.
Speaker 1:Enjoy the experts on data. Thank you, yeah, this is. This is a lot of fun. I love my job, I love all that we do, and we'll see you all at the next snea event thank you.