Storage Nation

I hadn’t heard of this before a few days ago, when I was fact checking some of the info on Fujifilm’s video interview around its breakthrough with IBM in tape capacity.  I had thought that the IBM-Fujifilm tape capacity demonstration showed the application of PMR head technology to a new tape coating that used BaFe particles to achieve the great density improvement. 

As the IT industry rapidly transitions and matures, all sorts of traditional topics are now up for a fresh round of discussion. One of these topics that I'm getting frequently dragged into is storage management — what will it look like going forward?

I was reading posts by Elias Khnaser and Nigel Poulton over breakfast this morning that were imploring one of EMC's historical competitors — HDS — to "open up" their company and start engaging more with the communities around them. Both Elias and Nigel are absolutely correct — and their suggestions very helpful — but opening up your company is a lot harder than it looks. Trust me on this. Companies Are Like People Companies, like people, take on unique behavioral traits based on all sorts of things: the personalities of their founders, the markets they compete in, and so on

I was hanging out in San Francisco airport yesterday on a flight delay and went into one of the magazine stores to check out the latest monthlies.  A bunch of them had the same full page ad from Oracle comparing a Sun server hosted Oracle DB with apps to an anonymous IBM “server” hosted Oracle DB with apps

Everywhere I have been recently, the FlashSSD pitchmen have been noisier and noisier.  Rob Peglar gave a great cautionary presentation on the subject at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago, where I also spoke on the agenda of Todd Vojta’s great Paragon Technology Summit.  Peglar noted several things that you should Google

Storage Decisions in Chicago holds a special place in my heart.  I stopped doing SD events for several years but ramped up again in 2008 for reasons I can’t really recall.  Back in the late 90s, it was a world class show with huge attendance.  Things have scaled back a bit in the current economy, but

Success in business is essentially based on differentiation: doing something faster / better / cheaper than the other guys who are competing for the same business. It shouldn't be hard to see that one of the core strategies for achieving differentiation should involve some form of innovation

Today, I flew out to Orange County to do a "town hall" type meeting with the team from CoreLogic.  Much as I really enjoy this kind of interaction, time and travel constraints don't give me a lot of opportunity to do it as often as I'd like However, I'm really glad I made the trip this time — it was special on many levels. The Story of CoreLogic I was there at the personal invitation of Evan Jafa, the CIO of CoreLogic.   Sure, they're a great customer, but there's much more to it than that. If you ever get a chance to meet Evan you should — he's about as smart, personable and passionate as they come.    And, as CIO, he's signed up for a unique and fascinating mission — to transform a somewhat traditional IT function into a nimble and progressive external service provider.

A while back, it was part of my job to understand all the different social platforms as part of an effort to make EMC proficient at social media. If it was out there, I investigated it.  Blogs.  Forums.  Second Life.  Twitter.  Yammer.  Ning.  You name it, I checked it out. Some of these platforms made sense to me, others didn't.  Some I embraced (e.g communities, blogging, Twitter), others I largely stayed away from. And Facebook was one of those that simply raised hairs on the back of my neck.

One of the earliest things I’ve learned as I jumped into system management was the importance of standards; not only standards for equipment but also standards surrounding naming conventions.