NetApp - Dave's Blog

The Pain of Tape-Based Backup—Disruptive Technology and the Red Queen

I love Clayton Christensen's book, The Innovator's Dilemma. I discussed his theory of "disruptive technology" in a blog entry about whether iSCSI is disruptive. (It isn't now but could be eventually.)

Anyway, I recently noticed an odd sort of exception to some of Christensen's rules in the backup market.

Christensen's first rule is that in most markets, user requirements go up a bit every year, but not too fast. If you buy a new car, you hope it's a bit better than your current one—maybe a bit faster, a bit better mileage, or more airbags to make it safer. But mostly you buy a new car to solve the same problems as the old car, so the requirements are about the same.

Christensen's second rule is that technology improves faster than customer requirements, especially in high tech. Ten years ago, my PC was slow and the disk was always full. Today my laptop has CPU to spare and 33 GB of free space. Christensen calls this a goodness oversupply. There's nothing wrong with a goodness oversupply except that customers won't pay for it. I don't want a faster laptop. I'd rather have it lighter and more efficient so that the batteries last longer and it doesn't light my lap on fire.

Summary: (1) User requirements go up slowly; (2) Technology improves quickly.

Together these rules set the stage for a disruption. That's when a low-end technology gets good enough to attack the higher-end: UNIX computers attack mainframes or PCs attack UNIX. I first became interested in Christensen's theory when I saw that it applied to NAS and SAN. Since then, his observations have become a key foundation for my strategic thinking.

What's so interesting about the backup market is that tape-based backup technology is not keeping pace with customer requirements. People struggle to meet backup windows they used to hit. Why are Christensen's rules failing?

The trick is that human behavior usually drives requirements, and humans just don't change that fast. But sometimes technology trends drive requirements, and then requirements rise just as fast as technology. In the case of storage, the capacity you get keeps doubling even if the corporate budget for storage remains flat. That, in turn, doubles backup requirements—twice as much data to move in the same backup window.

You could argue that human behavior must be changing in order to fill all that new capacity, but I believe technology trends are the ultimate driver. Faster computers generate more data. High-res cameras generate more data. Faster networks carry bigger e-mail attachments. Storage also has the full closet problem. My closet—however large or small—is always full. I never bought a new house because of closet space, but when I get a bigger one, it quickly fills. My behavior didn't change at all—I throw stuff away when my closet gets full—but now I have more stuff. Disks are the same. If disks stopped growing, corporate storage budgets would not double every year—not for long. So you can see, technology is what's changing, not behavior.

This is my update to Christensen's rule: When human behavior drives requirements, then technology improves faster than requirements. But when technology itself drives requirements, then you only keep even.

This reminds me of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland:

"In our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

The strange country of tape-based backup is even worse; you lose ground while running as fast as you can. That's because disks get bigger faster than tapes get faster. Switching to disk-based backup helps because now you stay even rather than losing ground, but to actually make forward progress requires serious innovation.

I think these observations explain why backup and data protection have been such hot areas for innovation. Based on the observations in this blog, I expect that to continue for the foreseeable future.

The Genius Detective Game: How to Fail in Executive Staff Presentations

Imagine this scenario.

An old friend rushes up to you and says, "I've been looking all over for you. You wouldn't believe the amazing car I saw yesterday. Twenty-five years old, but the paint is perfect, and it runs like a charm."

You ask him what his point is, but he just talks more about the car. "The current owner just replaced the tires. It's not expensive now, but a classic like this is sure to go up in value." All well and good, but you still wonder what this has to do with you.

You need to leave soon, so you stand up and look at your watch, but your friend suddenly says, "Wait! Here's the deal. This car is for sale on eBay, and I'd like you to buy it and lease it to me. Seriously, this is going to be a great investment for you."

There you are, two minutes from your next meeting. How do you react? When you say that you need time to think about it, he says, "The auction ends today. I just gave you all the data you need. My facts prove that this is a great deal. I need you to decide right now."

I hate this feeling, and I've discovered that presenters sometimes trigger it in executive staff meetings. The meeting agenda has 45 minutes on a vague but interesting topic (e.g. Classic Cars). For 42 minutes the presenter shares lots of facts and figures, and then—with three minutes left—the presenter puts up a complex proposal (e.g. Automotive/Leasing Investment) and asks for approval. You should know that presentations like this almost never go well.

The way I describe this, it sounds completely idiotic, maybe even sneaky and underhanded, but I think that people make these presentations with the best of intentions. They believe that they have an airtight case, and they want to make sure that they present all of the evidence so that when they get to the conclusion, everyone will immediately see that the plan is perfect. Kind of like in detective shows where the hero reveals the evidence piece by piece and then stands up dramatically and identifies the killer. The genius detective game is great in movies, but in presentations it leaves the audience wanting to go back and re-examine the evidence.

The problem is lack of context. As a listener, it is very difficult to evaluate an argument if you don't know where the presenter is taking you. The presentation may be informative, and it may be interesting, but if you don't know what the conclusion is, it is almost impossible to tell whether the evidence supports it or not.

To return to my simple analogy, if you knew that the conversation was about buying and leasing a used car as an investment, there are all sorts of questions you might have asked. What is the blue book value of the car? Has it been inspected? How many miles does it have? You can't ask the right questions unless you know what the presenter is going to propose.

I think sometimes people defer their actual proposal to the end because they are afraid of getting shot down, and they want to postpone the pain. Better to get shot at right away, because then you have the rest of the meeting to try to recover. You can focus very specifically on the concerns that caused objections. Maybe you'll change people's minds. Or else, you may get input on alternate approaches that will work better. Either outcome is better than getting shot down at the very end when there's no time to recover or to prepare for the next attempt.

Here is my advice: Always start your presentation with the conclusion. Somewhere in your PowerPoint slides—it may not be the last slide but it often is—there is a conclusion slide that summarizes the proposal that you hope to get approved. Put that slide first. If you need some background information, so that people can understand your proposal, then maybe you can get away with one slide before the conclusion slide, but if you push the conclusion any further back than that, then you are probably playing the genius detective game. As I said, those presentations almost never go well.