Here are five interesting facts about the state of tech today:
- A new start-up is founded every 20 minutes in Berlin[1]
- Barcelona is the most wired city in the world[2]
- Women make up less than 20% of the tech workforce, worldwide
- 78% of companies run on Open Source[4]
- It will take until 2133 to close the gender gap for women in the workplace[5]
What do these seemingly random fact have to do with one another? This September and October will see key industry events such as LinuxCon Europe, OpenIoT and Embedded Linux Conference, OpenStack Summit, Ceph Days, and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). These events are taking place in some of the most exciting tech hubs inside and outside the U.S. today, and are part of shaping key technology, open source, and community trends. Western Digital is proud to be at these events sharing our work and supporting these events.
Between Data and Innovative Communities
Recently, SanDisk® became a Western Digital® brand and we are busy creating our open source plan for the year. As a company that cares deeply about storing data and about creating innovative communities, we are contributing our efforts in both areas. October is one the most exciting and busy months for open source work.
From LinuxCon Europe, taking place in the fast growing tech hub Berlin, to OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, and the annual GHC, we will be speaking about how we and other companies are getting behind open source projects and the key trends in this space.
Major Trends
In my work with SanDisk, now a Western Digital brand, I have been at the intersection between technology, community, corporate business, and open source. Open source has become a mainstay of almost all mainstream IT. As such, I see commercial companies undergoing two big changes in how they view the role of open source and their role in the community.
The first is that companies look to open source for innovation. For us at SanDisk, that is exactly what we did when we turned to Ceph for distributed and scalable storage software. We saw in Ceph a community we could work with to bring massively scalable flash and HDD-based storage to cloud and web-scale companies.
The second area companies are lagging behind is in ensuring that communities inside companies, and in open source communities, are diverse and inclusive. When communities are more diverse and value everyone in the community, innovation and creativity flourishes.
Supporting Diversity, Delivering the Possibilities of Storage
The Linux Foundation, the OpenStack Foundation, and the Anita Borg Institute do a great deal to create healthy and vibrant communities. It’s a great honor to speak and support these communities and help open doors to new, diverse entrants into these communities and to support innovation in technology as well as within the community itself.
Here’s an overview of our upcoming activities:
Ceph Days Munich
Ceph’s New Engine: BlueStore
At Ceph Days which took place in Munich, Germany, Allen Samuels spoke about BlueStore, the community’s effort to re-write the storage backend for Ceph. The new engine will have significantly higher performance as well as implementing fundamental primitives that will become the basis for other important functionality like allowing the RBD protocol to directly manipulate erasure-coded pools.
LinuxCon Europe
Ceph and Flash – Allen Samuels, Western Digital Fellow
Tuesday, October 4 • 12:15 – 13:05
Ceph has been rapidly evolving to support large-scale deployment of flash. This presentation will examine the history and current best-practices for deploying flash with Ceph. Future developments in the Ceph platform will also be described and their impact on flash deployments
Women in Open Source Lunch, sponsored by SanDisk
Tuesday, October 4 • 12:55 – 14:15
We would like to invite all women attendees of LinuxCon Europe to join one another for a networking lunch at LinuxCon + ContainerCon. This is a chance to connect with one another in person. We will begin with a brief introduction and then guests will be free to enjoy lunch and mingle. This year, we will also do some powerful brainstorming on key problem areas in diversity where we can jointly create solutions. All attendees must identify as female and will need to register to attend.
Corporate Trends in Open Source Engagement – Nithya Ruff
Tuesday, October 4 • 16:50 – 17:40
I will discuss some of the key trends happening in corporations as they encounter open source development and how to be successful in managing open source engagement. I will cover areas like Open Source offices, Inner Source, how to collaborate with other companies, etc. This is aimed at companies that want to improve how they engage with open source communities and integrate open source into their open innovation strategy.
OpenIoT and Embedded Linux Conference, Oct 2016
Better Alignment of Flash Storage to Mobile System Behavior – Alex Lemberg
Wednesday, October 12 • 09:00 – 09:50
Alex will share how the smart phones of today have become the go-to computers for work and life. As consumers, we demand real-time performance and unlimited storage. This has translated into modern Android mobile systems and platforms demanding very strong performance requirements from embedded storage devices. This presentation will cover the characterization of those requirements based on real mobile usage cases and benchmark analysis, and how the modern embedded flash management solutions are solving them. He will also cover what storage driver developers need to know in order to enable mobile/embedded flash devices to perform faster.
Grace Hopper Conference, Houston, TX
Opening Doors in Open Source – Nithya Ruff
October 21, 2016 • 11:10 am – 11:30 am
Grace Hopper Conference has now become the largest and most interesting tech conference in the US focused on women in computing. It is an energizing, empowering, and enlightening conference where over 15,000 women and men are expected to attend this year. Western Digital will be sending over 50 employees to the conference, supporting gender diversity efforts within the company. I am very excited to be speaking at my first GHC on a topic that is very near and dear to me, how to open doors to newcomers in open source. My session will discuss careers and opportunities to get involved in open source and share how everyone can be a part of the disruption.
OpenStack Barcelona
Women of OpenStack Initiatives
Wednesday, October 26 • 5:00pm-5:14pm
OpenStack does a very good job of creating an inclusive community and at every summit, we have a number of programs that help newcomers to the community get started and feel included. I will share an update on the Women of OpenStack (WOO) and diversity initiatives during this virtual #vBrownBag talk.
An Evening of Ceph and RDO
Tuesday, October 25 • 5:00pm-9:00pm
Join the community for a mix of Ceph and RDO lightning talk presentations (5-10 min.) and a social hour at the Gym Bar at the Princess Hotel (2 min. from the main OpenStack venue). Allen Samuels will be sharing his thoughts on the latest work Western Digital is doing in the Ceph project.
One Sure Trend: Diversity Leads to Innovation
The challenges for data storage, computing, and networking are growing at least as fast as the opportunities. These challenges are no longer just silos affecting single workloads or verticals, rather they are impacting the industry as a whole and the way in which we all interact and take advantage of data.
As the industry moves to find new solutions and new possibilities we will rely more and more on a shared knowledgebase through the community efforts of open source and the contributions of corporate development. Diverse and inclusive communities will lead the way in creating innovation and these events will be supporting this.
If you’re headed to Berlin, Barcelona, or Houston, make sure to join Western Digital at one of our speaking sessions or sponsored events. I look forward to seeing you there!
[1] https://amp.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2015/oct/22/berlins-startup-scene-is-knuckling-down-to-business
[2] http://fortune.com/2015/07/29/barcelona-wired-city/
[4] https://opensource.com/business/15/5/report-future-open-source-survey
[5] http://www.forbes.com/sites/elenakvochko/2016/01/04/women-executives-in-tech/#5addce2d4d16
