Wither the DMX moniker? With all his legal troubles, I guess the name association was getting a bit troublesome :)
Without too much digging tonight, I stumbled upon an over-view of EMC’s over-hyped “Over-take the Future” product announcement set for tomorrow. Seems like FT didn’t quite plug all their leaks of the EMC press embargo.
3Par’s Deep Throat and Rickroller extraordinaire Marc Farley has a point that EMC seems to be plagiarizing the InServ spec sheet from a product perspective. Seems like Compellent will soon be releasing a press release quoting their CEO with the same opinion. But that box-oriented viewpoint is far too narrow.
Continue reading "Overtake this! Symmetrix V-Max? Frames are so 90’s" »
Some of the greatest injustices are often propagated by the most powerful forces - even in plain sight of many witnesses who stay on the sidelines. The bravery of Whistleblowing is within everyone's reach when you're only exposing yourself to the backlash. However when the risk and sacrifice extends to others around you (including loved ones) going public is not always the right answer.
Forrester Research once again confirms what industry watchers like us already suspect. They report that the severe economic downturn upon us will significantly increase litigation this year. As Beth's StorageSoup blog points out today, IT departments are struggling to address last year's pace of archiving and discovery requests, leaving them in no position to handle the anticipated increases for 2009. In light of that, the last thing strained IT departments need to worry about is wasting precious time and resources on redundant data audits verifying assumptions about the fundamental integrity of their digital archives. The same archives that are supposed to protect the integrity of the parent organization itself.
If you've followed the "Exposed" blog this week, you won't be surprised by the copious feedback to my post about EMC Centera's weak reputation for data integrity. It turns out many subject-matter experts did indeed have lots of revealing professional insight into the situation. Yet unfortunately due to the collateral damage to their parent companies, all were reluctant to publish their thoughts publicly on this blog.
Except one.
The headlines of early 2009 are hardly encouraging. After almost two decades of avid purchasing, consumers have lost confidence in the economy, thereby slowing their spending. As a result, business revenue is down, driving pressure to lay employees off in an effort to maintain profitability or minimize losses. Layoff notices further erode consumer confidence and the vicious cycle continues.
The downturn in the information technology sector is a microcosm of this broader economic phenomenon. But in our world of enterprise storage there is a clear way to break out of this Vicious Cycle and turn it around 180 degrees…
Continue reading "Vicious or Virtuous in 2009? Choose Your Cycle!" »
Continuing with my Obama theme for a bit, the beginning of 2009 offers us more political and economic limbo. Yet for the IT infrastructure industry and storage in particular, there are numerous lessons that emerged at the end of 2008 which we can apply as we sit down with our peers to figure out 2009.
Three sources in particular are worth paying attention to as we look for a common theme to emerge.
Andy Bechtolsheim is an industry legend, so it's no wonder we're seeing a tug-o-war emerging between Sun and Arista regarding where he will be spending his time.
Like a slow motion train wreck, I can't stop watching CNBC lately in order to witness what I hope is (only this once) in-a-lifetime worldwide stock market crash. The implications for the storage economy are vast, but before I pontificate on the topic in more detail later this week, I encourage a quick read of Dave's and Marc's respective takes.
Candor is a NetApp hallmark and I am proud of how our executives are resisting the shallow and superficial tendency of some competitors to feign indifference to the burning of Rome around them.
Continue reading "The Recession of 2008 - Summarized in 8 Short Minutes" »
