Andrew Hillier
Andrew Hillier, Co-founder & CTO, Cirba
Andrew Hillier has over 20 years of experience in the creation and implementation of mission-critical software for the world's largest financial institutions and utilities. A co-founder of Cirba, he leads product strategy and defines the overall technology roadmap for the company.
Prior to Cirba, Hillier pioneered a state of the art systems management solution which was acquired by Sun Microsystems and served as the foundation of their flagship systems management product, Sun Management Center. Hillier has also led the development of solutions for major financial institutions, including fixed income, equity, futures & options and interest rate derivatives trading systems, as well as in the fields of covert military surveillance, advanced traffic and train control, and the robotic inspection and repair of nuclear reactors.
Hillier holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering from The University of New Brunswick.
Articles by Andrew Hillier
Software-defined technologies and software-defined data centers (SDDCs) are generating significant traction in the IT community, and many organizations recognize the potential operational benefits to be had by software-defining their own IT infrastructure. What most do not realize, however, is that SDDC is not achieved by simply bolting together virtualization, software-defined networking (SDN), and software-defined storage (SDS).
Posted February 26, 2015
The objective of "old school" capacity management was to ensure that each server had enough capacity to avoid performance issues, and typically focused on trend-and-threshold techniques to accomplish this. But the rapid adoption of the cloud, and now OpenStack, means that supply and demand is much more fluid, and this form of capacity management is now obsolete. Unfortunately, many are ignoring this new reality and continuing to rely on what have quickly become the bad habits of capacity management. These old school methods and measures not only perpetuate an antiquated thought process, but they also lead to, among other problems, low utilization and density. In a world of tightening IT budgets these are problems that can't be ignored.
Posted June 27, 2013