Chuck's Blog

More Virtual Thoughts On Storage

Saw a pretty good piece on www.searchstorage.com where Beth Pariseau interviewed Jay Kidd at NetApp about file and storage virtualization.  (BTW, good article, Beth!)

Jay offered his views on a number of topics, including aspects of storage virtualization.

Of course, Jay's views were colored a bit by the NetApp perspective.

Not that it would ever happen to me .. ;-)

But I thought there was a strategic side to the discussion that was worthy of exposing.  I think it shows a contrast in views between two technology companies.

Towards Smarter Storage

Operating systems have known how to dynamically balance competing workloads for years.

Networks have recently gotten good at sharing multiple kinds of traffic -- and associated service levels -- over the same pipe using QoS.

And storage arrays (specifically EMC's) have been pretty good at balancing workloads, but I think there's more to do.  And it's going to be an interesting topic for the next few years -- at least to the storage guys!

Let's see why ...

Classified Thoughts

The next big thing in IT? 

Information classification tools, I think.

Tools that can help IT discover information sources, classify them, make a decision, and process them to save money, make money or stay out of trouble. 

The stakes are getting higher. 

We can't ask users to classify their own information.

And, according to IDC, we'll have six times as much information sloshing around in a few short years.

All signs point to a personal forecast of extreme customer interest in information classification tools sooner than later.  It's already started.

Here's why ...

Cool Word, Cool Contest

Saw EMC post this video contest today ... thought it was worth a mention.

http://www.emc.com/events/2007_video_contest/

Works for me on a couple of levels.

First, it introduces a new word -- "inforati".  More on that later.

Second, I think this is the first time EMC has ever done a creative contest.  More on that as well.

Why FCoE Works For Me

I think almost every storage professional saw the news around the proposed FCoE standard. 

If you missed it, simply google "FCoE ethernet" and there'll be plenty of reading for you.  Or read this.

What's going on here? 

And why does this proposed standard offer hopes for the stalled iSCSI marketplace?

Let's take a look ...

Towards Information Laws

No, I'm not talking about new legislation that might make for more work.  I think we've seen enough of that, but we all know there's more coming.

I mean laws in the sense of Moore's Law (or Murphy's Law) -- inexorable guiding principles that will guide our thinking of information and information management over the next few years.

Today's post was triggered by an excellent post by Mark Lewis, in which he outlined 8 laws ("information laws") around what he calls "Information 2.0". 

I don't know if he was looking for a discussion on his proposal, so apologies in advance if this was not the case ;-)

I wholeheartedly agree with the first premise -- we'll need some new architectural thinking in IT that shifts how we think about information.  And the notion of guiding principles (e.g. "laws") works for me.

And, now that you mention it, I agree with the second premise that this changed mindset around information will probably need a new label, hence "Information 2.0".  The evidence is overwhelming.

So, please allow me the opportunity to expound and expand on Mark's proposed laws.

Process Innovation For IT Vendors

I had another "connect the dots" experience the other day. 

Two data points got connected for me that made me go "aha!", at least in my own little world.

It started with Mark Lewis' humorous post on process innovation.

And then a bit on how Dell was directly engaging with their audience.

Aha!

Cisco and NeoPath

Shock!  Outrage!  Horror!  Disbelief!

That seemed to be the industry's reaction to Cisco's announcement (post acquisition) that they were going to end-of-life NeoPath.

You would have thought that the Earth had shifted into a new orbit.

I wasn't surprised at the news.  I was surprised at the reaction. 

Here's why ...

Q4 Storage Scorecard

The storage industry is fortunate enough to have pretty good scorekeeper -- IDC.   They track revenue and capacity by vendor across several categories and geographies.

Every quarter, they use publicly available information to infer who sold what in what segment.  And if you do a lot of OEM business, well, that revenue goes to the company that sold it, not the company that made it.

Now, like anything else, IDC is not perfect.  Sometimes they infer something wrong, and then there's the endless vendor quibbling  about categories -- but generally speaking, they're right much more often than otherwise.

And if you're in the heart of the storage business, you spend a lot of time looking at IDC data.

Why do I think this is interesting?

Because it shows where customers are putting their most valuable asset -- information.  It's a trust thing, in my mind.

And -- strategically -- if you believe that information infrastructure starts with where information lives (e.g. storage), well, then, there are long-term implications down the road for who sold what, aren't there?

So let's dive in and see what happened in Q4 of this year.

Information In The News

One of the benefits of working at EMC is that we have this great news clipping service. 

Every morning, I get a smattering of relevant (and sometimes not-so-relevant) news pieces from across the landscape.  Including some things I would never look at otherwise.

This morning, I was kind of impressed on how most of the stories underpin some of the key thoughts I've been trying to share here.

So, I thought I'd replay today's news through a different lens. 

An informationist lens.