NetApp - Exposed

Has Storage Swift-Blogging Finally Jumped the Shark?

Apologies to my readers outside of the US or Canada, as this title employs American political and pop culture slang which may not be familiar.

It's not even over yet, but to say this has been an exceptional month in the storage blogosphere would be an understatement.  I witnessed something I frankly never expected to see in the hotly competitive enterprise storage marketing landscape.  The end of unchallenged blogging belligerence.

Blogruptcy

Blog Bankruptcy or "Blogruptcy" comes about with the convergence of 3 underlying factors.  "Comment Bankruptcy", "Logical Bankruptcy" and finally "Ethical Bankruptcy".  I don't do this lightly, but this past week I've witnessed events which lead me to declare one particular blog completely bankrupt.

NetApp's X Factor

Data protection and information classification are often drab and serious topics.  Fortunately, NetApp's X Factor is online now and ready to bring these topics to life with a breath of freshness, intelligence, wit and insight that I haven't seen anywhere else in the storage community - and I'm willing to bet neither have you!

Easter egg blogs - Yet another reason to be a NetApp partner

If you've found your way to this blog, it's likely because you browsed over from our constantly expanding blog community on the external NetApp web site.  With all the activity here you may not have noticed NetApp's alternate blogging site over in our forum area.  It's much more than meets the eye.

Blog flame check mate?

It's not often an innocent debate via comments on a blog results in an argument so irrefutably brilliant that the refuted participant is forced to resign from his company in disgrace, but it happened today!

Exposed 2.0

I'm baaaaack!

This is the obligatory apology post for not publishing in a while.   No excuses except to announce that this blog has been foremost enough in my mind that I decided to alter my career path (by joining the NetApp Office of the CTO) in order to be able to spend more time here.  Careful what you wish for!

One of my closest high-school buddies is a blog pioneer and early on in his blogging career (almost 3 years ago) posted this very thoughtful observation: The Blog is a Harsh Mistress

While I understood what he was saying at the time, I have only recently begun to actually feel Adam's pain from his early blogging days.

Industry Fodder (Someone, somewhere is getting paid by the buzzword)

Thankfully, our industry continues to supply a healthy amount of topics both controversial and innovative to comment on, so there is no shortage of material for me to catch up on.  Industry trends such as virtualization, deduplication, flash, emerging standards, web 2.0/3.0, clouds/grids/clusters among others will dominate my coverage here.  Feel free to comment on which you'd like to see first!

2008 Election Parallels

Maybe it's just me, but I've been struck by dozens of parallels between the US Democratic Party nomination battle and the two horse race in the storage industry.  Inclusive vs divisive behavior, guilt by association, smear campaigns and cowardly propaganda are elements common between the competitive storage industry and bitterly fought electoral battles.  Coincidentally, now that the nomination phase is nearing an end, I believe it's perfect timing to draw those parallels and do some "near live" blogging on the actual electoral battle to come between now and November.

N.U.L.L. & VOID

Finally, I'm going to introduce a major new category within the next week or so which will dominate my posts here until the mission is accomplished - and I don't mean "dubya style"!  I'm offering a genuine PEI DIRT SHIRT to the first person who can guess what that heading stands for before I "out it" later on next week.