Corey Quinn chats with Miles Ward, CTO of SADA, about SADA’s recent acquisition by Insight and its impact on scaling the company’s cloud services. Ward explains how Insight’s backing allows SADA to take on more complex projects, such as multi-cloud migrations and data center transitions. They also discuss AI’s growing role in business, the challenges of optimizing cloud AI costs, and the differences between cloud-to-cloud and data center migrations. Corey and Miles also share their takes on domain registrars and Corey gives a glimpse into his Raspberry Pi Kubernetes setup.

(00:00) Intro

(00:48) Backblaze sponsor read

(2:04) Google’s support of SADA being acquired by Insight

(2:44) How the skills SADA invested in affects the cases they accept 

(5:14) Why it’s easier to migrate from one cloud to another than from data center to cloud

(7:06) Customer impact from the Broadcom pricing changes

(10:40) The current cost of AI

(13:55) Why the scale of AI makes it difficult to understand its current business impact

(15:43) The challenges of monetizing AI

(17:31) Micro and macro scale perspectives of AI

(21:16) Amazon’s new habit of slowly killing of services

(26:55) Corey’s policy to never use a domain registrar with the word “daddy” in their name

(32:46) Where to find more from Miles and SADA

As Chief Technology Officer at SADA, Miles Ward leads SADA’s cloud strategy and solutions capabilities. His remit includes delivering next-generation solutions to challenges in big data and analytics, application migration, infrastructure automation, and cost optimization; reinforcing our engineering culture; and engaging with customers on their most complex and ambitious plans around Google Cloud.

Previously, Miles served as Director and Global Lead for Solutions at Google Cloud. He founded the Google Cloud’s Solutions Architecture practice, launched hundreds of solutions, built Style-Detection and Hummus AI APIs, built CloudHero, designed the pricing and TCO calculators, and helped thousands of customers like Twitter who migrated the world’s largest Hadoop cluster to public cloud and Audi USA who re-platformed to k8s before it was out of alpha, and helped Banco Itau design the intercloud architecture for the bank of the future.

Before Google, Miles helped build the AWS Solutions Architecture team. He wrote the first AWS Well-Architected framework, proposed Trusted Advisor and the Snowmobile, invented GameDay, worked as a core part of the Obama for America 2012 “tech” team, helped NASA stream the Curiosity Mars Rover landing, and rebooted Skype in a pinch.

Earning his Bachelor of Science in Rhetoric and Media Studies from Willamette University, Miles is a three-time technology startup entrepreneur who also plays a mean electric sousaphone.

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