Benefits of data with Carrie Goetz

In this episode I had a pleasure to talk to Carrie Goetz, fractional CTO to multiple companies, recently named in the top Top 25 Women in Mission Critical, 30 Top Most Influential Women in Tech 2021 by CIO Outlook, 10 most influential women in technology 2020 by Analytics Insight, honored as a Network Computing Inspiration Award finalist 2020, and Comptia Women in Leadership Spotlight Finalist.
Together we discussed various aspects of data: ROI from data and Cloud projects, future data center, security issues with data and their awareness, and many more.

Ewa Banaś: IT Insights talks on business and I.T. challenges with tech leaders. Hi and welcome to another episode of IT Insights; I’m Ewa Banaś and today I have the pleasure to talk to Carrie Goetz, fractional CTO to multiple companies, recently named in the top 25 women in Mission Critical, 30 top most influential women in Tech 2021 by CIO Outlook, then most influential women in technology 2020 by Analytics Insight, and honored as a Network Computing Inspiration Award finalist 2020. Carrie, great to have you here.

Carrie Goetz: Thank you, great to be here.

Ewa Banaś: Good to introduce yourself to our audience a little bit more, please.

Carrie Goetz: Sure, so my name is Carrie Goetz, as you said, I am the principal and CTO of Strategicon, but mostly lately I’ve been working on promoting my book, Jumpstart Your Career in Data Centers.

That’s been the biggest shock of my efforts here lately trying to get that going internationally; I was very, very careful to try to make sure that we pulled in as many International standards as we could so that it is applicable around the globe and really just gives everybody a kickstart into the industry.

Ewa Banaś: Thank you; I will definitely ask more about this book later on in our conversation so look forward to it. So Carrie, today we say that data is the king, and you helped companies benefit from it; what are the opportunities out of it?

Carrie Goetz: Well, data is one of those things – I’ve been in this industry for about 40 years so I can tell you this: once you start collecting data, then it almost becomes like people that can’t stop getting tattoos, right? You need more and more data, and then you do more things with data and we can get better and smarter about products we buy and what we do.

I think the real opportunity for data these days is really trying to enhance some of the things we’re going for like sustainability, what we can do with Smart Energy Delivery, and what we can do from the compute side to make sure that we’re using our resources as best we can. We can orchestrate them around where it makes the most sense for computing.

Granted, you know, there’s some applications where latency matters and they need to sit right on top of wherever they are, but there’s a lot where latency is not as critical but that data is super critical. I think the more data we have, the smarter we can become about the things we do and the better stewards we can become to the planet just by using some of that data.

Ewa Banaś: Definitely. And when it comes to the intelligent building industry, what kind of data do you have to look at when designing a perfect product in this industry?

Carrie Goetz: So, I was lucky enough to judge a contest of smart buildings not long ago and I gotta tell you, I was absolutely blown away by how intricate these designs were, all the way down to water usage and gray water usage for things like flushing toilets and being able to reuse a lot of that sustainability metrics you know that we have in a singular building.

The trick is it’s still expensive, and so if you ask a building owner, “Hey, do you want to do a smart building or you don’t?”, a lot of times it comes down to the dollars and cents unless somebody just has that stewardship commitment you know in their heart. But I think the best smart buildings are the ones that use all of the systems together so that we can make a better and smarter decisions like occupancy sensors, right?

If we know that nobody’s been in a room, then maybe we don’t vacuum that room on those days, or we only go once a week; we clearly don’t shine lights in those rooms, and we have automatic sun shades that help us with sunshine and temperature.

So I think as we start building up what we can do with these sensors, the trick is going to be how to best integrate those for the smartest decisions, and the more integrated the system is, the easier that decision is going to be and the more it’s going to be facilitated by the smarts in the building at the end.

Ewa Banaś: From what you’re saying, the idea is to optimize the building as much as possible for those people who use it, as you mentioned the vacuuming example. So I guess that that’s an argument to convince people to actually invest in it.

Carrie Goetz: Well sure, and I mean then you can actually take that, if you have a particularly smart building, and say we’re working just off occupancy sensors now; we can take those occupancy sensors and we can also feed that into the security system so we know who’s in the building and where they are.

So if there is a life safe event, now we know who we’re looking for and where they were last. I mean you can even track people around the building, so you know if you’ve got a 30-story high-rise, it’s great for the fire department to know exactly where they need to go should they need to.

So I think there’s a lot that’s really a little bit untapped for what we can do when we start making all these sensors talk together; kind of at the infancy there, but it’s pretty exciting to see what they’re doing.

Ewa Banaś: Yeah, and you also have spent years supporting corporate security building data center solutions. Do you think that organizations, smaller and bigger ones, are actually aware that they need to secure their data?

Carrie Goetz: Technically, literally aware, yes. So you know, that’s one of those age-old things – it’s like backups: nobody realizes they needed one until they lost their data and realized they needed a backup. And so security is – I think every company knows they need it and they know they need some level of it – but it also gets to be an affordability crunch.

I do think that a lot of these Cloud cyber security companies are a great equalizer to smaller companies that don’t have a security team and don’t have the resources to hire one; it definitely allows them to participate in some of the bigger platforms and take advantage of that as a small company.

But we are still at this point where people view security as a pain in the rear end and it’s just not fun and it’s not productive; it’s extra steps you have to go through. I think that as cyber security matures and we get more automated, I guess, and use more biometrics and things like that, where it becomes less of a nuisance. But we’re human beings; we’re trusting people, we want to trust other human beings, we want to trust that people will do the right thing.

Normally the companies that get bit the worst in cyber security are the ones that trust people until they realize that was not a good idea. So as hackers get better, then cyber security mechanisms need to get better, and I think that’s just one of those really exciting, never-changing fields.

But you know, I feel for all those CSOs that stay up at night wondering what the next attack is going to be because you never know, right? You never know – if you thought like a crook you’d be a crook, so that’s part of the problem.

Ewa Banaś: And when you think about the cyber security generally, it’s a bit like insurance; it’s important to have it because if something happens…

Carrie Goetz: It is, but sure, yeah. But you know, that’s another area – I don’t know if you guys have that over in Poland, but here in the U.S. we have cyber security insurance. I think a lot of companies think that that’s their protection because it’s insurance, but that insurance doesn’t guarantee that you get your data back; all that does is provide you some level of monetary compensation when it all goes south.

And that’s definitely not how you want to secure your data; you want to have that active posture and have that just in case something goes wrong, but you don’t want to have the mentality thinking that’s going to keep something from going wrong because it absolutely will not.

Ewa Banaś: Yeah, and what can actually a company do to make sure that there are no vulnerabilities, like holes in their systems?

Carrie Goetz: Well you know, I think you have to test all of your systems; you have to test your employees and keep that in the forefront of their mind because for most people it’s something you just sort of take for granted and think somebody else worries about. For most employees, there’s a security team that does it so they don’t have to worry about it.

So the more you can engage your employees on a day-to-day basis in cyber security – understanding opening emails, not opening emails, verifying the identity of the sender, things like that – certainly help. But it’s just one of those conversations that has to be constant, has to be continuous.

And for companies, they need to go out there and look and see what other companies are using; not necessarily what your buddy’s company is using, as that might be a shortcut but maybe not the best shortcut.

So I think you have to really sort of do your due diligence and if you can’t, hire a broker or hire somebody that sells those solutions that can help sort out and figure which one is going to be best for your environment because no two environments are alike.

Ewa Banaś: And from my experience, if you kind of like put people to test, you make some kind of experiences with them or like experiments actually, it also allows them to be more alert to this kind of situation.

Carrie Goetz: Yes, so you know, it’s like practice; practice makes perfect basically.

Ewa Banaś: Exactly, exactly. And thinking about the future, what will data centers look like in the future? Will they be more efficient, greener, or completely some different direction in your opinion?

Carrie Goetz: So I think we’re kind of at the point in this industry where everything’s relatively mature. There are some new cooling solutions on the market; there’s some new things around sustainability and energy efficiency that are on the market. Certainly we’re looking at resiliency more than redundancy now, so making sure that IT loads are more resilient, which means they don’t have to have as much power generation if you can fail over to another site.

I think we’re going to see kind of this big combination, and I know that people have been talking about Edge Computing for a long time, but I think we’re kind of at the point where Edge Computing is going to start coming out. I think supply chain is going to push some of this because it’s going to be easier to get some products; cost of cloud is certainly a part of that.

People are repatriating their data, especially if they have to manipulate a lot because Cloud costs can be a little unwieldy, or they’re moving to an alternate Cloud supplier for a hybrid or multi-cloud environment to do that. So I think data centers are going to continue to change. I think the data center of tomorrow is going to look a little bit like the data center of today, but I think that there’s so many new things coming along.

With new talent coming into the marketplace, fresh ideas, and the diversity that’s coming into the data center marketplace, I think we’re going to see very, very different outcomes in the next five years.

Ewa Banaś: Yeah, I feel like nowadays you cannot really predict the next year or next two years, not to mention like five years future; it’s so dynamic.

Carrie Goetz: Exactly, and you know, it’s funny how sometimes one catastrophic event can just really reshape an industry. So this year it might be supply chain – both human supply chain and physical supply chain – it might very well reshape the way we do some things, so it’ll be interesting to see how we come out.

Ewa Banaś: Yeah, actually looking forward to it. This kind of changes are always very interesting; painful at the beginning, but later on you get used to it.

Carrie Goetz: Well, and that’s the reason I’m in this industry, because it changes all the time, right? You never get bored, it never goes out of style, it never goes out of fashion; the jobs are already always there so it’s a great industry.

Ewa Banaś: You have already touched upon the cost of cloud and you’ve been engaged in numerous projects regarding data and cloud; how to plan and run them to guarantee a good ROI?

Carrie Goetz: Well, I mean it’s one of those things you have to revisit; you don’t buy a car and then just drive it without ever doing service on the car, right? And I think you have to do the same thing with your Cloud spend: once you’re in the cloud, you have to continuously reevaluate the environment, making sure you’re using it the best way, making sure you didn’t over-spec your Cloud environment, which happens a lot, and making sure that all of your configurations are tight.

I mean it’s one of those things, it’s just like keeping fit: you have to stay on it, you have to reevaluate it because your business changes. You’re not the same business environment three months from now than you are today, you’re certainly not same business environment a year from now, and so you have to make sure that the cloud grows with you or shrinks with you or conforms to your business needs. But it is one of those things that just requires constant attention.

Ewa Banaś: I guess staying agile is the case here. Okay, and the last question for the day, the one that I was really looking forward to: you mentioned a book in the very beginning of the conversation, could you say something more about it so we can get the audience more excited about it?

Carrie Goetz: Sure, so it’s available at Ingram and Amazon, but the idea was, I’ve done a ton of work over the years for women in the industry and tried to bring women and young people into the industry. One of the problems we have is people still don’t know what we are, they don’t know what we do, and they don’t know how it works. So my goal was to write a book that was about 200 pages so it could be digested in a weekend.

So if somebody’s going on an interview in the data center industry, they’ve got a good background on how it all works, what the jobs are, what an IT department looks like, and how all the pieces fit together and how that ecosystem works at a very high level. But enough so that – think about it as a young woman starting out: you’re sitting in a room full of men probably, because that’s kind of the way the industry is, and if you have no clue what they’re talking about, it’s very alienating.

And the attrition rate for women in Tech is 67% which is horrible; that’s not that they leave their job, that’s they leave this entire industry. You think about the amazing talent and wisdom that’s walking out the door. Same thing with trades; you know, we owe the trades and skilled trades everything; if it weren’t for them, nothing would be built.

So I wanted to write something that honored all of the professions that make up a data center ecosystem and let everybody see where their life fits in there and what part they play.

Then, given that basic level of understanding, so when they start the first day they don’t feel like the least intelligent person in the room and they could participate in conversations and hit the ground running faster and understand what people are talking about; so that’s the book in a nutshell.

Ewa Banaś: Yeah, I wanted to say that it seems like it’s a nutshell of the most important information, and it comes with resources too, right?

Carrie Goetz: There’s a LinkedIn group for all the people that buy the book to bounce ideas off other people. There’s two and a half years, almost three years now, of podcasts interviewing different people in the industry that’s available to them. So there’s lots of things we try to do to make people feel included even after they buy the book.

Hopefully it helps, and we encourage data center companies to buy it and give it away to on student tours, coding academies, all of those things. I think people write better code if they understand more about the ecosystem it lives in, so hopefully it does some good, and we fund scholarships on the back end.

Ewa Banaś: I will definitely keep my fingers crossed for its success and it seems like the book is still alive, constantly alive with all the initiatives that you created around it; so it’s just great, it’s perfect.

Carrie Goetz: Thanks, we hope so.

Ewa Banaś: So Carrie, thank you for our conversation and sharing all your experience with the audience and me, and also thank you our audience for listening to another episode of IT Insights; stay tuned for more.

Carrie Goetz: Thank you so much.

Ewa Banaś: Visit us at itinsights.tech and dive into our podcasts, webinars and events.