Watch our latest web seminar with Nimble Storage and catch up with the debate
Computing and Nimble Storage's web seminar, The curse of slow applications and how to lift it, is now available on demand, in case you didn't catch it live earlier this week.
Our panel of five dived straight into the conversation, beginning with Nimble Storage's UK and Ireland systems engineering manager, Rich Fenton, who was determined to put forward his case that machine learning is now a hugely valuable addition to running a data centre.
It's not about throwing hardware or disks at the problem, Rich argued, because telemetry - even on a basic level - could help detect issues before they happen and cut down the need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
But what did Computing research have to say about Rich's claims? Roland Colyer-Moore was on hand to dispense the stats, finding that 76 per cent of IT decision makers tend to make hardware upgrades and replacements due to a need for more storage, bandwidth or processing power - all issues which Rich would say can be improved with automation.
Of course, we could have thrown stats and opinions around all day, but something else we had to draw on was not one, but two voices from a Nimble customer, in this case the IT director of Stephenson Harwood LLP, and a project engineer who has worked with the Nimble solution.
Even from his relatively wide-angled view from the top of the IT chain, James observed that, for example, applications people can come to him armed with the knowledge there's a specific infrastructure problem, with enough telemetry data to prove that instantly and save time and money in addressing it.
Project engineer Sanjeevan Sivasubramaniam, meanwhile, concurred that the data he and his colleagues have been fed is often "too good to be true", and had high praise for the migration process, which he said was "a lot easier now than it was before", with virtualisation cutting what may once have taken months down to just a few weeks.
With a live audience QA, interactive polls and many other topics covered, we advise you to make a brew, put your feet up and catch up with what you've missed.
Just fill out the quick registration form and receive The curse of slow applications and how to lift it on demand right now!
