Confidential AI Q&A

Erin Farr Leave a comment

Confidential AI is a new collaborative platform for data and AI teams to work with sensitive data sets and run AI models in a confidential environment. It includes infrastructure, software, and workflow orchestration to create a secure, on-demand work environment that meets organization’s privacy requirements and complies with regulatory mandates. It’s a topic the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) covered in depth at our webinar, “The Rise in Confidential AI.” At this webinar, our experts, Parviz Peiravi and Richard Searle provided a deep and insightful look at how this dynamic technology works to ensure data protection and data privacy. Here are their answers to the questions from our webinar audience.

Q. Are businesses using Confidential AI today?

A. Absolutely, we have seen a big increase in adoption of Confidential AI particularly in industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare and Government, where Confidential AI is helping these organizations enhance risk mitigation, including cybercrime prevention, anti-money laundering, fraud prevention and more.

Q: With compute capabilities on the Edge increasing, how do you see Trusted Execution Environments evolving?

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How Edge Data is Impacting AI

Erin Farr Leave a comment

AI is disrupting so many domains and industries and by doing so, AI models and algorithms are becoming increasingly large and complex. This complexity is driven by the proliferation in size and diversity of localized data everywhere, which creates the need for a unified data fabric and/or federated learning. It could be argued that whoever wins the data race will win the AI race, which is inherently built on two premises: 1) Data is available in a central location for AI to have full access to it, 2) Compute is centralized and abundant.

The impact of edge AI is the topic for our next SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) live webinar, “Why Distributed Edge Data is the Future of AI,” on October 3, 2023. If centralized (or in the cloud), AI is a superpower and super expert, but edge AI is a community of many smart wizards with the power of cumulative knowledge over a central superpower.  In this webinar, our SNIA experts will discuss: Read More

Data Fabric Q&A

Michael Hoard Leave a comment

Unification of structured and unstructured data has long been a goal – and challenge for organizations. Data Fabric is an architecture, set of services and platform that standardizes and integrates data across the enterprise regardless of data location (On-Premises, Cloud, Multi-Cloud, Hybrid Cloud), enabling self-service data access to support various applications, analytics, and use cases. The data fabric leaves data where it lives and applies intelligent automation to govern, secure and bring AI to your data.

How a data fabric abstraction layer works and the benefits it delivers was the topic of our recent SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) webinar, “Data Fabric: Connecting the Dots between Structured and Unstructured Data.” If you missed it, you can watch it on-demand and access the presentations slides at the SNIA Educational Library.

We did not have time to answer audience questions at the live session. Here are answers from our expert, Joseph Dain.

Q. What are some of the biggest challenges you have encountered when building this architecture?

A. The scale of unstructured data makes it challenging to build a catalog of this information. With structured data you may have thousands or hundreds of thousands of table assets, but in unstructured data you can have billions of files and objects that need to be tracked at massive scale.

Another challenge is masking unstructured data. Read More

Training Deep Learning Models Q&A

Erin Farr Leave a comment

The estimated impact of Deep Learning (DL) across all industries cannot be understated. In fact, analysts predict deep learning will account for the majority of cloud workloads, and training of deep learning models will represent the majority of server applications in the next few years. It’s the topic the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) discussed at our webinar “Training Deep Learning Models in the Cloud.” If you missed the live event, it’s available on-demand at the SNIA Educational Library where you can also download the presentation slides.

The audience asked our expert presenters, Milind Pandit from Habana Labs Intel and Seetharami Seelam from IBM several interesting questions. Here are their answers:

Q. Where do you think most of the AI will run, especially training? Will it be in the public cloud or will it be on-premises or both Read More

Storage Threat Detection Q&A

Michael Hoard Leave a comment

Stealing data, compromising data, and holding data hostage have always been the main goals of cybercriminals. Threat detection and response methods continue to evolve as the bad guys become increasingly sophisticated, but for the most part, storage has been missing from the conversation. Enter “Cyberstorage,” a topic the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative recently covered in our live webinar, “Cyberstorage and XDR: Threat Detection with a Storage Lens.” It was a fascinating look at enhancing threat detection at the storage layer. If you missed the live event, it’s available on-demand along with the presentation slides. We had some great questions from the live event as well as interesting results from our audience poll questions that we wanted to share here.

Q. You mentioned antivirus scanning is redundant for threat detection in storage, but could provide value during recovery. Could you elaborate on that? Read More

Survey Says…Here are Data & Cloud Storage Trends Worth Noting

Michael Hoard Leave a comment

With the move to cloud continuing, application modernization, and related challenges such as hybrid and multi-cloud adoption and regulatory compliance requirements, enterprises must ensure they understand the current data and storage landscape. The SODA Foundation’s annual comprehensive global survey on data and storage trends does just that, providing a comprehensive look at the intersection of cloud computing, data and storage management, the configuration of environments that end-user organizations are gravitating to, and priorities of selected capabilities over the next several years

On April 13, 2023, SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) is pleased to host SODA in a live webcast “Top 12 Trends in Data and Cloud Storage” where SODA members who led this research will share key findings. I hope you will join us for a live discussion and in-depth look at this important research to hear the trends that are driving data and storage decisions, including: Read More

Digital Twins Q&A

Michael Hoard Leave a comment

A digital twin (DT) is a virtual representation of an object, system or process that spans its lifecycle, is updated from real-time data, and uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision-making. Digital twins can be used to help answer what-if AI-analytics questions, yield insights on business objectives and make recommendations on how to control or improve outcomes.

It’s a fascinating technology that the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) discussed at our live webcast “Journey to the Center of Massive Data: Digital Twins.” If you missed the presentation, you can watch it on-demand and access a PDF of the slides at the SNIA Educational Library. Our audience asked several interesting questions which are answered here in this blog.

Q. Will a digital twin make the physical twin more or less secure?

A. It depends on the implementation. If DTs are developed with security in mind, a DT can help augment the physical twin. Example, if the physical and digital twins are connected via an encrypted tunnel that carries all the control, management, and configuration traffic, then a firmware update of a simple sensor or actuator can include multi-factor authentication of the admin or strong authentication of the control application via features running in the DT, which augments the constrained environment of the physical twin. However, because DTs are usually hosted on systems that are connected to the internet, ill-protected servers could expose a physical twin to a remote intruder. Therefore, security must be designed from the start.

Q. What are some of the challenges of deploying digital twins? Read More

Kubernetes Trials & Tribulations Q&A: Cloud, Data Center, Edge

Michael Hoard Leave a comment

Kubernetes cloud orchestration platforms offer all the flexibility, elasticity, and ease of use — on premises, in a private or public cloud, even at the edge. The flexibility of turning on services when you want them, turning them off when you don’t, is an enticing prospect for developers as well as application deployment teams, but it has not been without its challenges.

At our recent SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative webcast “Kubernetes Trials & Tribulations: Cloud, Data Center, Edge” our experts, Michael St-Jean and Pete Brey, debated both the challenges and advantages of Kubernetes. If you missed the session, it is available on-demand along with the presentation slides. The live audience raised several interesting questions. Here are answers to them from our presenters.

Q: Are all these trends coming together? Where will Kubernetes be in the next 1-3 years?

A: Adoption rates for workloads like databases, artificial intelligence & machine learning, and data analytics in a container environment are on the rise. These applications are stateful and diverse, so a multi-protocol persistent storage layer built with Kubernetes services is essential. Read More

Kubernetes is Everywhere Q&A

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

Earlier this month, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative hosted a fascinating panel discussion “Kubernetes is Everywhere: What About Cloud Native Storage?”  where storage experts from SNIA and Kubernetes experts from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) discussed storage implications for Kubernetes. It was a lively and enlightening discussion on key considerations for container storage. In this Q&A blog, our panelists Nick Connolly, Michael St-Jean, Pete Brey and I elaborate on some of the most intriguing questions during the session.

Q. What are the additional/different challenges for Kubernetes storage at the edge – in contrast to the data center?  

A. Edge means different things depending on context. It could mean enterprise or provider edge locations, which are typically characterized by smaller, compact deployments of Kubernetes. It could mean Kubernetes deployed on a single node at a site with little or no IT support, or even disconnected from the internet, on ships, oil rigs, or even in space for example. It can also mean device edge, like MicroShift running on a small form factor computer or within an ARM or FPGA card for example.

One big challenge for Kubernetes at the edge in general is to provide a lightweight Read More

5G, Edge, and Industry 4.0 Q&A

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

The confluence of 5G networks, AI and machine learning, industrial IoT, and edge computing are driving the fourth industrial revolution – Industry 4.0. The impact of the industrial edge and how it is being transformed were among the topics at our SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) webcast “5G Industrial Private Network and Edge Data Pipelines.” If you missed it, you can view it on-demand along with the presentation slides in the SNIA Educational Library. In this blog, we are sharing and clarifying answers to some of the intriguing questions from the live event.

Q. What are some of the key challenges to support the agility and flexibility requirements of Industry 4.0? Read More