Category: Article

Broadcom should be broadening your VM horizon  

Posted on | by Alex | Leave a Comment on Broadcom should be broadening your VM horizon  

TLDR: The Broadcom acquisition of VMware has highlighted real concerns around the potential of rising prices and the falls of their hypervisor products.  

Enter Fluid, an all-in-one solution boasting lower, fixed cost and simple and open technology. Fluid is an orchestrating platform that builds, runs, and secures applications and workloads with all the hypervisor product functionality VMware offers.  

2 min read  

VMware customers are feeling uncertain after the acquirement by Broadcom Software Group for a sizeable US$61 billion, and with good reason. This recent purchase has raised serious questions about the strategic changes around the VMware brand, research, development, potentially discontinued products, and the biggest question – pricing.  

Gartner analyst Michael Warrilow said the most concerning change from this deal is Broadcom bumping up VMware’s prices like they have demonstrated in other recent acquisitions of CA and Symantec. “[Broadcom] put up the prices of CA and Symantec considerably and Gartner clients have said that was very concerning for their environments.” – Michael Warrliow, Gartner Analyst. Are Gartner clients the only ones? Well, according to recent survey results from canalys 46% of partners are wary of this historical change too. 


VMware is a recognized market leader charging premium prices for their services plus additional charges for every expansion product required to grow a customer’s virtual portfolio.  

What’s the alternative, more affordable, and flexible solution? Fluid. A modern VM orchestration and management platform that is easy to use, and at a much lower, and fixed, cost. 

“If you’re a smart IT operator, the Broadcom acquisition should have you thinking about how you’re going to manage your VMs in the future, and whether it really is the right solution for you. Fluid not only replaces VMware at a fixed, more affordable cost, but it is super easy and fast to install, AND has additional capabilities already included to capitalise on.“

Daniel Ward, Fluid Senior Engineer.   

Some Fluid clients began with a single VM to test its capabilities before growing once they realized Fluid’s ease. For example, Ezypay, Australia’s leading subscription and direct debit billion solution, began with a single VM migration to Fluid to test its fixed pricing promise as well as demonstrating the same feature parody of VMware. Ezypay has now migrated their entire existing workloads without rebuilding anything, having pulled VMs from an existing cluster easily over to Fluid. A simple solution that guarantees a low total cost of ownership (TCO) with no lock-in period, that is based on a fixed node usage structure.   

Through this acquisition, Broadcom has highlighted competitor hypervisor products that offer the same suite of capabilities at a significantly lower price.  

Daniel continued, “No matter how big or small your company is, a significant margin of difference in price with Fluid opens a great potential for more VMs and application deployment for your business. Which also means instantly greater business outcomes and achievements.” 

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Fluid Celebrates International Women’s Day 2022

Posted on | by Alex | Leave a Comment on Fluid Celebrates International Women’s Day 2022

Today is International Women’s Day, celebrated and supported globally by industry, governments, educational institutions, community groups, professional associations, women’s networks, charities and non-profit bodies, the media, and more. 

We are proud to be one of those businesses that support International Women’s Day, together we can forge women’s equality. Collectively we can all #BreakTheBias. 

 Today we would love to share with you what International Women’s Day means to some of the Women on the Fluid team.  

Aimee Leyland | Fluid GTM Alliance Manager 

 What does International Woman’s Day mean to you? The day to acknowledge all women whom have endured & fought against the struggle for equality & independence across the centuries. The day we celebrate our freedom & rights achieved since the inception & momentum of IWD in 1911. May we continue to do so into the future.    
 

What does the 2022 International Women’s Day slogan, #breakthebias mean to you in your work life?  #breakthebias means removing any social concepts & judgements relating to the gender gap – whether it be for a woman or a man. Both genders have suffered from “preconceived ideals” of what our roles to each other in work, in life “should” be. In this new century, I find both genders are closing the gap & establishing newly defined shared roles to support each other. As it should be. Let’s leverage each of our strengths to enhance each other’s quality of life & achievements. Gender Together = Balanced Enhanced Power. I also like to celebrate men on IWD & women on IMD to close this gap. It shouldn’t be about gender any longer. We are all humans with emotions. We all have variable strengths & weaknesses- they can be complimentary. 
 

Who inspires you? If I was to name names, the list would be too long (TLDR ! ) however any woman or man that has fought against injustice in this world.  

Be it in a: 

  • David vs Goliath situation 
  • Human rights movements – such as abolishing abhorrent past incurrences of slavery 
  • Thoughtful leadership towards the evolution of our race – such as environmentally conscious goals integrated into every day corporate life ( & personal hopefully too !  
  • Supportive leadership towards growth – a primary priority here is to care for their people & what they need to succeed 

Based on your experience, what advice would you give to women considering pursuing a career in your field?  

  • Be completely yourself – no one else delivers You better than You 
  • Be transparent in what drives your passion in life – if you love the way in which technology can empower people to operate in an easy, efficient way, then be that change 
  • Truly Listening is way more important than talking 
  • Humans are not robots – let us not forget the importance of healthy relationships with each other 
  • Love makes the world go round – Be the Light in all you do.   
     

What could tech companies do to attract more women to the industry? I have witnessed tech companies shifting the paradigm to gender equality for a number of years now. It takes time, however we in this industry tend to be trail blazers. I am inspired by the vendors & partners I work closely with. They have adopted an attitude of change towards gender equality & conducting real, supportive action towards achieving this. Thank you!  
 

Anything else that you’d like to share?  There are many inspiring, truthful quotes from this magnificent Goddess we are no doubt all familiar with. These quotes silently echo in my head often, however one stand out favourite is, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Dr. Maya Angelou 

Rachael Hedges, Marketing Director  

What does International Woman’s Day mean to you? It means celebrating all women in our realm and beyond. To me, it’s a reminder to sit and really consider what bias women encounter and how I can be an ally to break bias.  

What does the 2022 International Women’s Day slogan, #breakthebias mean to you in your work life?  Being aware of bias and calling it out when I see it, in relation to any gender. Sometimes the conversations can be awkward, but they’re worth it. 

Who inspires you?  Women who push the boundaries. Who live fearlessly, courageously, follow their own path and passions, and are kind. 

Based on your experience, what advice would you give to women considering pursuing a career in your field? Lean in. Listen and learn and always be willing to put your hand up to advance yourself. If you won’t put your own hand up, consider why not – self-doubt and sabotage often hold us back more than anything else.  

What could tech companies do to attract more women to the industry? Showcase the women who are in those roles and thriving already. Perception is rarely the reality. Create networking and support groups to discuss bias challenges so they know they’re not alone, and to discuss better ways to move forward.  

Anything else that you’d like to share? I am inspired by the women who capture the essence of a Quaintrelle.  Quaintrelle. (n) a woman who emphasizes a life of passion expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and cultivation of life’s pleasures. 
May we all empahsize such a life and move courageously in our chosen careers!


Fluid CEO and Founder, Andrew Sjoquist shared his thoughts with us on IWD. “Today I celebrate all women – past, present, and future – in my life and consider the challenges of bias that are experienced globally on a daily basis. Everyone can play a role in forging gender parity where reward is based solely on attitude, ability, and effort, and that is an expectation for the entire team at Fluid. Advocacy, inclusive mindsets, and tangible action are needed from all for withstanding change and for a progressive and inclusive environment, which we strive to cultivate together.” 
 
IWD provides an important moment to showcase commitment to women’s equality, launch new initiatives and action, celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness, highlight gender parity gains, and more. 

Collectively every person and all groups can make a difference within their sphere of influence by taking concrete action to help build a more gender-equal world. From small powerful grassroots gatherings to large-scale conferences and events – International Women’s Day is celebrated everywhere. It’s a big day for inspiration and change. 

For more information on how you can be involved, head to the IWD website. 

What it takes to build a scalable, multi-cloud, On-premise computing environment in minutes

Posted on | by Alex | Leave a Comment on What it takes to build a scalable, multi-cloud, On-premise computing environment in minutes

Cloud manager

(2-3 minute read) 

TLDR: We talked to Fluid CTO, Alexander Turner about the challenges of building Fluid from a technical standpoint. From orchestrating scalable Kubernetes environments that stand up on their own, to maintaining cluster quorum, and orchestrating complicated cloud networks. 

What was the most complex element of Fluid to bring together? 

There are obviously a couple of elements of Fluid that have been challenging.  

A couple of major elements that really stand out are;  

Alexander Turner, Fluid CTO
  • Orchestrating scalable Kubernetes environments to stand up by themselves  
  • How do you maintain cluster quorum as servers are booting and as the clusters are being built?  
  • Networking. How do we orchestrate complicated cloud networks? 
    Networks that not only allow us to get higher resiliency down to a particular server, but also allow us to orchestrate turning up cloud providers and cloud provider links to bridge that gap between internet and high-performance switching and leverage that architecture? 

For anyone who’s played in the On-premise game before, you’ll know there’s some challenges, especially for the first time, until you get some cadence. Activities such as connecting a cloud provider, ethernet service, or global interconnect to your network. We’re talking about an AWS Direct Connect or Azure Express Route, and how many steps are involved. This usually involves finding a third-party to deliver the VLAN to you, connecting to them, turning up IP on the service, configuring the cloud provider side, also configuring BGP, accepting the circuit in AWS, or Express Route, and just dancing between those and then realizing, oh, I actually need a virtual gateway. I need this, I need that… 

We’ve built is a platform that automates all of that, including accepting the link. You simply provision a Virtual Cross Connect (VXC) with a provider like Megaport or PCCW Console Connect.  

Here’s the total steps to connect to Fluid:  

  1. Deliver a circuit to your Fluid switch, connected directly into your infrastructure or switch. 
  1. A very simple wizard that takes your cloud providers credentials. You can figure out the API credentials for your VXC provider, like Console Connect, or Megaport.  
  1. Simply put, you give the virtual gateway or the VNet you want it to connect to Amazon, Google Cloud, or Microsoft, run through the wizard with a couple of simple questions, and orchestrate the end-to-end connectivity.  
  1. Test it. You’ll get a green light when it’s on and there’s connectivity.  

We took that multi-step, very cumbersome process, and made it a single flow that is really easy to operate and use. You can just insert data, get that connectivity in, and then start scaling and building your network.  

With Fluid, cloud connectivity couldn’t be easier, especially at volume.  

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