/ Patrick Hubbard

Patrick Hubbard

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Patrick Hubbard

With over 20 years of IT experience spanning network management, data center, storage networks, VoIP, virtualization, and more, Hubbard's broad knowledge and hands-on expertise affirm his IT generalist authority. Hubbard’s initial interest in technology began with a grade school dive into Assembly on the Apple II, and eventually to a half-decade of technogenesis in skunkworks IT at American Airlines. Since then, Hubbard’s career has involved product management and strategy, technical evangelism, sales engineering and software development, all with a focus on application and service delivery for startups and Fortune 500 companies alike that span high tech, transportation, financial services and telecom industries. Hubbard is also a Cisco® NetVet and a regular speaker at technology conferences for Ethernet, IPv6 and SDN.

The Latest Posts Featuring Patrick Hubbard

The High-Performance DBA: Breaking the Burnout Cycle in Modern Database Teams

In this article, Kevin Kline introduces The High-Performance DBA webcast series, drawing on insights from our recent State of Database Report to explain why DBA burnout is rising and how teams can move beyond constant reactivity.

April 1, 2026
Database
The High-Performance DBA: Breaking the Burnout Cycle in Modern Database Teams
Man with hand to face in despair, holding a laptop.
IT pro looks at computer and works
Inside the Black Box: Bridging the Database Observability Gap
March 27, 2026
Database

Over the past 15 years, Agile and DevOps have accelerated application delivery, enabling faster, more reliable releases. Yet the database layer often remains a blind spot for observability and performance monitoring.

In this article, Kevin Kline shows why closing the database observability gap is critical to improving performance, efficiency, and resilience for DBAs, developers, and the businesses that depend on their data.
7 Strategies to Contain Network Costs (Layer 6 Will Amaze You)
May 12, 2021
Monitoring and Observability Network
First, thanks for indulging the clickbait title joke. Serialization is the unsung hero of harmonizing network and application relations and deserves the occasional, snarky callout. Moreover, identifying how the unique…
CostOps: The Overlooked Developer Responsibility
May 3, 2021
Applications Monitoring and Observability
Developers are the kingmakers. Millions of decisions made by tens of thousands of developers are ultimately responsible for the triumph or tragedy of IT. Developers for commercial vendors, open-source projects,…
A Conversation With Robert Metcalfe (Part 2) — SolarWinds TechPod 041
April 27, 2021
Podcast TechPod
What drives technology innovation?  In the second part of our conversation with Dr. Robert Metcalfe, the co-founder of Ethernet and internet pioneer explains the relationship between innovation and freedom/prosperity, the importance of…
A Conversation With Robert Metcalfe (Part 1) — SolarWinds TechPod 040
April 27, 2021
Podcast TechPod
Dr. Robert Metcalfe is arguably one of the most influential pioneers of modern technology. In this episode of TechPod, the award-winning engineer relives the critical events that led to the invention…
Outdated Calculus of Cloud Cost Containment
April 20, 2021
Applications Monitoring and Observability
“Cost” would seem to underpin almost every decision IT teams make. Sure, business requirements drive overall operations budgets, but it’s always in tension with decades-old certainties about cost. It’s long…
Cloud Native, You Keep Using Those Words
September 25, 2020
Applications Monitoring and Observability
Ask a hundred IT pros and their managers what “cloud native” is, and you’ll get as many different definitions. In part it’s because public cloud providers (PCPs) seek to provide…
Hybrid Cloud Monitoring: Take It to Twitter
September 2, 2020
Applications Monitoring and Observability
If you’ve run across other articles I’ve written about hybrid cloud, you’ll notice a familiar theme: it’s an artifact of other technology decisions nobody asked for. As such, it’s left…
Nominations for SolarWinds Inaugural IT Pro Day Awards Now Open
August 1, 2020
News
2020 has been a challenging, yet outstanding year for IT professionals. “Unique” doesn’t begin to describe the pressures and urgency of the many projects they’re addressing while playing pivotal roles…
Surviving IT in Snap Downturns
July 3, 2020
Monitoring and Observability
The global effect of and challenges to business in 2020 is the very definition of “unprecedented.” While large enterprises enjoy the advantage of scale to redistribute focus and sustain demand…
How Automation Benefits IT Operations: Good Automation Things Come in Threes
June 24, 2020
Monitoring and Observability Network
IT professionals talk about automation… sometimes ad nauseum. We generally understand its value, even if we’re tribally divided by the specifics of its application. For civilians, automation is a catch-all…
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