The 'cloud' has certainly captured the attention of our industry - an industry, after all, that loves nothing better than a bright shiny new trend. Today most vendors seem a lot more in love with it than many users, but - heck - we'd rather the vendor community was leading and not following eh? I'm not a complete naysayer or Luddite when it comes to all-things-cloud - in fact far from it, but right now we are in danger of attaining the title of this blog, simply because there are so many competing ideas, interpretations and possibilities.
Yes, it's good to have vigorous academic debate and various implementation options, but for the most part users are looking for definitions before dipping their toes into the fluffy white opportunities. SNIA, some governments (the US for one) and various other parties are doing stalwart work to try to address the 'certainty-gap' but multiple definitions - even from such august bodies - are still multiple definitions. Even the strong - and real - user examples that many of the bigger vendors can now provide do not in-and-of-themselves provide the answer. In fact they can increase the frustration for those who conceptually wish to take advantage, but want to do so in a standards-based-environment.
So, 'Cumulative Nebulous' is what the vendor community must avoid if possible, lest the massive potential 'baby' of the cloud, gets thrown out with the 'bathwater' of competing semantics.I was reminded of this when reading ('The Week' June 6th '09) that 'there's a new cloud on the horizon'. Gavin Pretor-Pinney is founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. Now, the clouds he deals with are the sky-bourne types and not the IT variety but his claim to have discovered a new type of cloud sounds strikingly similar to some of the rhetoric in data-center-land. His new cloud is called asperatus(after the Latin word for rough) and once codified by experts at the Royal Meteorological Society Pretor-Pinney will apply to the UN to include it in the International Cloud Atlas. Describing asperatus, he said "It's a bit like looking at the surface of a choppy sea from below". If that doesn't strike a chord of similarity to the the choppiness of the IT seas right now, then try the quote from the chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, who said there would need to be "quite a lot of heat around to produce the energy required to generate such dramatic cloud formations"!
Right now, we certainly have plenty of heat in our industry - let's hope we can turn from producing all the hot air about defining and refining our own clouds to precipitating all the talk into an IT version of the International Cloud Atlas. If I may be allowed one last bad pun, although with a serious message: such a set of definitions will absolutely improve the forecast for real clouds to succeed in both IT and business terms.
Just this week, NetApp held its annual Analyst Event, and was nice enough to take my colleagues and me to dinner the night before. Although very courteous of them I'm not wasting your reading-time to simply recount that I ate well. What I want to pass along is what happened between the main and the sweet / dessert / pudding / 'afters' course. A man in white turned up at the table - I knew it wasn't the maitre'd or our waiter, so assumed that it was the chef coming to do one of those fly-by "was everything to your satisfaction" checks. But no, it was the pastry chef who had arrived to announce (in other words, to market) his wares. In sufficient - but not excruciating - detail he outlined the flavors, styles and portion sizes as well as describing the care that had been lavished and why we'd enjoy his creations (in other words: features, advantages and benefits).
You've no doubt guessed where this is heading? Every single person at dinner ordered a dessert! I can honestly say that I can't recall the last time (if ever) that happened at a business dinner. Not only had he not left things to chance, but he'd made it personal....and of course nicely driven up the profit margins on our table for that evening! The dishes were great by the way and added to our enjoyment of the meal and the evening. Whether you read this little tale and picture yourself as the pastry chef or the diner, there is clearly always room for both sides in any business transaction to gain from not assuming things. Do not dismiss the 'small' stuff or take understanding for granted. It could make a significant difference to both the buyer and seller. I've luckily had a good many decent meals in my time but have never had such attention and explanation from the pastry chef. I enjoyed his efforts (both the marketing and consumption of them) and I'd lay odds on that restaurant having the highest dessert revenue and margin in the area....sweet success indeed.
As you probably figured these items in the title are not new news stories. I'm about to head off with my 'better half' to celebrate 25 years of marriage and I thought I'd better blog something before I go! Anyone who reads this regularly will know that I have a soft spot for historical perspective....so, given that everyone else has the Data Domain / EMC / NetApp (in alphabetical order!!) covered with paparazzi-type zeal I wondered what might provide a respite from the mounting speculative frenzy. And it occured to me that a quick look back at where we were 25 years ago when Sarah and I tied the knot might amuse a few, as well as reminding us how far we've come.
The 200MB (yes, that's MB, not a typo) in the title refers to the native capacity of the 3480 tape cartridge that IBM introduced that year - marking the effective end of 9 track round tape drives (except for their extended life in every James Bond movie for years afterwards!). Don't forget, disk drives in the 80's were still the size of washing machines and didn't always spin quite so well!! And also that year - ta dah! - Apple introduced the first Macintosh, just 3 years after IBM's first PC, and still a year before the first version of Microsoft Windows! Remember letters, memos, and fax machines (although I was working for Xerox at the time and it called those new fangled delights 'tele-copiers').
Outside of IT, Madonna was starting out 'Like a Virgin' - 25 years on she has kids a-plenty. Rollerblades were the big new thing - only now we do that on the Wii. And, yes, the Dow averaged 1,212 that year - hopefully we're not working on repeating that! Back to technology, and on June 9th (our actual Anniversary) Polygram's Hanover plant in Germany announced that it had produced it's 10 millionth CD! - until my iPod turned up I think I had every single one of them sprinkled around the house, car and basement.
And what hadn't happened by 1984? Well for starters RAID (not even defined), terabytes were barely dreamed of (EMC got to the 5500-9 in 1992), the Internet (in any form that we'd recognize), and probably at least half of the corporations that you now rely on for your mission critical data processing. Oh yeah, and we didn't have a family then - we were the architypal 'DINKies' (dual income, no kids).
It's been quite a quarter century - the fact that today I can compose this blog wirelessly from my desk and be read or downloaded anywhere in the world instantly is pretty amazing. Which is precisely why the idea of being disconnected for a week is also appealing....my normal, non-philosophical service will be resumed later this month!
You know how occasionally you hear of something that runs counter to the norm, but once you step back and consider it for a moment you have an 'aha' realization that maybe the 'norm' isn't the only, or necessarily the best, way to do something?
So, recently I had the good fortune to have the opportunity to speak with Ashby Lincoln. As well as being a helpful and decent fellow, Ashby is the CEO of Veristor, and I don't think he'll take offense at being called an industry veteran. He certainly 'gets' the business. Veristor is a specialist reseller, based out of Atlanta. Now, I'm sure we're all aware that most resellers and systems intgrators like to parade their credentials by pointing out that they are 'certified by Vendor A' or that they have a gold star, super-duper training achievement award from Vendor B. That's the norm, yes?
Well, at Veristor, they've turned this on its head - figuring that their job is to get the best results for their customers rather than just be the field sales force for a chosen subset of vendors, THEY certify those vendors with which they deal, rather than the traditional way around! To use a colloquialism, neat huh!?
I'm not saying this would work in all cases - you (the reseller) have to be in the postion to have customers with whom you have great relationships and that genuinely look to you for best advice and not just best price comparison. But, once you have that, isn't this an interesting 'aha?'
In other words, behind all the hype-smoke around solid state, will we find fire...or mirrors? To see what I believe, watch my video blog by clicking below. In roughly 4 minutes I'll cover whether the obvious value of solid state is actually sufficient value to ensure it a place in any future 'History of Data Center Storage' book....and give 3 reasons why I think it is. Of course, it will have to be in the chapter entitled 'IO' rather than the one entitled 'Capacity'. At least for a few years....
It seems that every day these days I'm talking about, being asked about, or writing about solid state storage. That's fine - I'm very bullish about the technology. Where I get a little frustrated is when people (not YOU of course....but, you know, 'people') just don't seem to get the fact that paying a little extra for performance might be conceivable. I've spent hours on napkin explanations of the storage hierarchy; days working out the true cost of an IO off solid state compared to that off disk; and months railing against the fact that 'people' don't seem to understand that if you only use a few percent of your disk (short-stroking) then your effective price per GB goes up...a lot. Well, maybe I've actually only spent a short time on all this but it seems so obvious that I get frustrated anyway (I am definitely at the 'grumpy old man' stage of life...).
And then it hit me - the quick way to get 'people' to understand that paying for IO-ability is something they already 'get' is to walk them into pretty much any data center. In terms of storage there'll be plenty of disk for sure; but in many, many places there'll still be a whole bunch of tape too. And, surely, if price per MB/GB/TB were really the only determining factor in storage decisions (as in "Oh no, I can't buy solid state because it's more expensive per MB/GB/TB than spinning disk") then shouldn't we still use tape for everything? I'm not suggesting solid state for everything (although there was a great presentation at SNW from a user doing just that), but don't stick your head in the sand - instead stick your head into a data center and wonder why you chose disk over tape on many occasions?
So, while we all wait to see what will transpire with the Sun/IBM talks, I've been wondering what happens if the deal doesn't go through? I mean, while the diverging share prices in the last few days and the latest industry gossip - not to mention my boss - are currently all questioning the very likelihood of the whole deal, you could also interpret the recent layoffs as part of a grandiose scheme. En route to 'letting go' (I've always hatedthat euphemism...) of an announced 5-6000 people, Sun confirmed this week the names of another 1500 or so. Within that are a significant number of sales and support personnel (both channel and direct sales, whole teams in places) and you have to wonder whether it's in anticipation of the Big Blue machine doing the selling instead?
Sure, it would be jumping the gun....although that assumes we all know the extent of what's been going on anyhow, which we probably don't. But, what happens if this deal, or a deal, doesn't go through? Sun has some excellent products as we all know, but you still need people to sell and support them. My mind drifted to the Black Knight - hopefully many of you will know to whom I refer, but for the uninitiated the Black Knight is a Monty Python character, a medieval, sword-swinging geezer whose bravado is only matched by his inability to retain his limbs in a fight with King Arthur. As he loses his vital extremities his exhortations grow more tragically unlikely - thus, as he loses his left arm "Tis, but a scratch"....with both arms gone he claims it's "Just a flesh wound"....having removed one of his foes legs, Arthur asks the still-beligerent Knight "What are you going to do, bleed on me?"....and with both his legs gone the Black Knight offers to call it a draw and shouts "I'll bite your legs off!"
Sun, too, apparently remains fully committed to their fight, stating that it "...remains committed to its strategy with a consistent focus on providing innovations that enable customers to address their business needs. We continue to see great opportunities for our technologies globally and are focused on our customers and partners." There are parts here to laud strongly - Sun does indeed have a raft of great technologies, customers and partners. And I know of some simply stunning announcements coming soon - but without 'feet on the street' (not to mention arms and legs!!) how do they plan to win the battle? Whether it's Sun or the Black Knight, and whether it's IT users or a medieval forest, it's hard to win battles if all you can do is bite.
One of my earliest recollections when I joined this industry back in the 80's is of sitting in a dark, dusty, heavily carpeted (yes, even non-branded!) hotel near Heathrow Airport. I was being taught what a disk drive was, and discovering that reel-to-reel tape drives had a purpose aside from being the backdrop to 'Q' in every James Bond movie. There was lots about contention (it's funny what you recall)....and, overarching everything, was the magnificent simplicity of the (drum roll please....) Storage Hierarchy. As triangles go, it was absolutely splendid - the problem was, and indeed has been for many years since, that all it did was describe a static state. This made it great for spreadsheets, yet all-but-useless operationally.
But - as with clothes and pop music - if you wait long enough most things become relevant again - and the Storage Hierarchy (now cunningly including a dynamic element) is back with a vengeance. Indeed, it was always a smart concept, but now you can actually use it! Click on the video blog link here to get the story of the return of this industry icon in a fraction under 3 minutes....
Just the other day I was off to see my friends at LeftHand Networks to see how things are going now that their company is a small cog in the giant machine that is HP ['pretty good' seems to be the answer by the way, thanks to an enlightened approach by their new parent]. Anyhow, en route I was caught at a railroad-crossing for what seemed like an inordinately long time. I don't recall day turning to night, but it certainly felt like it. With my engine off, window down, fresh air - it was time for day-dreaming...
Rather than my mind drifting to think about what would be for dinner, or whom the Broncos should acquire in free-agency, I actually started watching the freight carriages lumbering by....and began to view them as a representation of some of the things we end up continuing to do in IT, when we get stuck to the rails. You know the scene - most of the train appeared to be empty, it was going at an increasingly - indeed, achingly - slow speed and no doubt using more diesel than optimal. Meantime of course, the road traffic wasn't going anywhere at all. It seems to me that sometimes we let IT act in the same way....things (processes and activities) are hooked together and done in the same order irrespective of whether it makes sense, whether or not resources are well applied, or whether there's anything useful being moved. Myriad backups of identical data is a prime example; there's little or no added value, while other network traffic is stalled. In my exhaust-fume-enhanced mind (not everyone was being good and turning off their engines!) the dozens of empty trucks being pushed by multiple behemoth engines began to look like masses of thickly-provisioned, potentially-fast disk drives sucking power and delivering heat, but not much more. And exactly how many identical, empty cabooses does one freight train need!? Someone please sell the railroad company a de-duplication application!!
This particular train was crying out for some consolidation, some virtualization, something. And my imaginery IT train needed a similar overhaul. Moving air along parallel lines is no doubt a skilful business (!?) - much like running barely-used servers and three-quarter empty storage systems, it sure removes the pain of organization. Of course, trains run on tracks and the various parts of the train itself need to be physically moved to the appropriate place at any given time. I appreciate that makes things just a little tougher. The choices are far more limited. IT, however, does not have to have those constraints. You can get off the rails, unhook, re-combine and stack the carriages, trucks, engines and cabooses! Then you can mix, match and apply what you need for any given workload. That will allow everything to work more effectively and enable a more efficient use of resources. Not to mention that the crossing gates won't need to be holding up other traffic so much! And then I won't have to be late for my appointment, discussing virtualization at LeftHand!
Semantics are so important in the IT world. Sometimes you could argue that they are even more important than understanding what is being discussed - so we can all nod sagely and avoid (just for instance of course!) clouding an issue. But at other times, semantics can play a crucial role in enabling things to actually get funded, be understood, and happen. A word here and there can make all the difference. "Green" has been a pretty important word of late - but, is orange the new green? What does that even mean? Take a look at my video blog to find out.
