Last night we held our first SXSW meet up at Opal Divines. Opals is very close to the worldwide headquarters of Gazzang, which last week was named by GigaOm one of The 10 Austin startups you need to meet at SXSW 2012. Gazzang focuses on securing your data in the cloud via transparent data encryption.
Given the proximity and the promise of free beer, I was able to twist the arms of four members of their development team and get them to join us. Here is a quick video featuring Dustin Kirkland, Sergio Pena, Hector Acosta, and Eddie Garcia.
Last week at OSCON in Portland, I dragged Josh McKenty away from the OpenStack one-year anniversary (that’s what Josh is referring to at the very end of the interview) to do a quick video. Josh, who headed up NASA’s Nebula tech team and has been very involved with OpenStack from the very beginning has recently announced Piston, a startup that will productize OpenStack for enterprises.
Here is what the always entertaining Josh had to say:
Some of the ground Josh covers:
What, in a nutshell, will Piston be offering?
Josh’s work at NASA and how got involved in OpenStack
Timing around Piston’s general release and GA
The roles he plays on the OpenStack boards
What their offering will have right out of the shoot and their focus on big data going forward
I recorded this interview with David Lang earlier this year and have been meaning to post it for the longest time. David is Dell’s program manager for federal security which means he is charge of the team that supports the security requirements for all Dell’s businesses that faces the federal government. He’s based in DC but I was able to grab a bit of his time when he was out visiting Austin.
David’s interesting background: he spent many years as a special agent in the air force doing computer and espionage investigations and how this lead him to the cloud.
How David addresses questions around cloud security and what type of environments you find in federal space.
The balancing act between availability, security and cost and where Homeland Security would want to use the public cloud.
Posted by Barton George 
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