Notes from Europe

SNW Europe is an excellent show. I didn't attend Storage Expo in London this year, but heard that was also superbly done. In Frankfurt, which I no longer consider the "Springfield" of Europe, the show was very well done. I was in and out in less than 48 hours, but during my stint I made some observations – in no specific order.

Europeans dress much better than Americans. Ties were the norm, not the exception. The good news is I'm back on a tie kick.

Frankfurt has done a nice job turning itself into an interesting city instead of a cold, grey boring town that made me wish I were in Albany. Tony Prigmore and I ate two outstanding German meals. Granted, we are fans of deep-fried anything, but we found two different out of the way German restaurants, complete with indoor picnic tables and a bar built in 1687 and ate enormously satisfying meals of mashed up, deep fried meat and potato's. I especially enjoyed the fact that while Tony and I were the first and only patrons at the second restaurant (we needed to be there early as we had an event to attend) and not a sole spoke English, our foreign status quickly became a non-issue as 28 Japanese folks came streaming in. You don't see that very often in Frankfurt, I suspect. We did have to walk back in a bit of rain, and had little idea where we were, but that was OK as we stumbled through the Frankfurt Sex district – which is always good fun from a translation perspective.

I was astounded at how many members of the media were present. I spoke at an HP launch the day prior to the show beginning and there were at least 40 international media members present. I don't think there are 40 media members in North America, let alone those who cover IT and Storage stuff. I was later told the show had about 100 media folks registered.

I met a lot of really interesting users. Europe is far ahead of us at things we think we invented as Americans, such as privacy laws and "Green" IT. As opposed to hype and jargon, I went hunting for those who lived in that world, and boy did I find them. I hosted a panel of users to talk about the Green thing. Opinions were loud and varied, which made for decent entertainment, but agreement was had on one key point – Green is money. The environmental impact of IT is nice to talk about, but no one is taking any real action based on that alone – there has to be a money play. That makes sense, but it was nice to hear from real people.

Arguably the most entertaining, articulate, and intelligent IT professional I've ever had the pleasure to spend time with is Steve O'Donnell from British Telecom. A big, bald, Scott (and yes, I did say articulate) with an even bigger opinion, Steve lives in a land most of us only read about. He has 7,000 data centers around the planet to deal with, lives and dies with every regulation, and is always looking for ways to take technology advancements and turn them into operational efficiency improvements. He said that globally, IT has the same or larger impact in terms of carbon offsets as the Airline industry. Wow. I don't know if he made that up but he sure sounded credible. He was also aggressive in his position to his peers – telling them to stop sniveling and get on with it, if you will. Apparently he is pushed by BT to spread the word, so he speaks frequently. If you get a chance he is worth hearing.

Overall, the content was great and people seemed to like it. I didn't see much vendor fluffy garbage presentations on the agenda – if it were a vendor oriented thing it was done as a case study and presented by a user, which made it more valuable and real.

Because the show ran into Halloween, we were forced to get up at 4AM to catch a 7AM connection to Milan in order to get back to Boston in time for our kids to ravage the neighborhood for candy. No one should get up at 4AM. Of course that is the only time there is no traffic, no line at security, and nothing open in the airport so time moves slower than traffic on the 101 at rush hour. The good news is that most German magazines have lots of semi-naked women them. I think I was reading Die German Paint magazine, which was loaded with visually appealing advertising. The Milan airport is classic Italy – you can buy an espresso from a super-model then head next door and spend half a years' salary on a pair of shoes. I love that.

The Relational File System

Last week I went down to Washington, D.C. where I was invited to speak to a semi-secret society of Pharmaceutical researchers trying to understand and prepare for an onslaught of new data being generated, taxing already overtaxed systems (note the geographic pun), with an ever increasing requirement to mine value out of all data faster than ever before.

While there are plenty of specific Pharma requirements, in general, the high level issues are the same as they are in the media business or in the wild wacky world of Web 2.0. - How to deal with massive, unknown volumes of fixed digital content.

There are really two issues – the first is dealing with the existing issues of how to cope with endlessly growing data in an already wounded IT world, and the second is (gasp!) – How to actually derive value from the data we have at some point in the future.

The first issue has been talked about a lot – stop doing things the same way as always, reevaluate what you want to happen and when, and start managing information based on the new world of fixed content as opposed to treating everything like it just came out of transactional system. The second issue is the really tough one.

Most data created will never be accessed after the first 30 days of its life. Why? It is not that the data can't tell us new things in the future, it's that getting at it in any reasonable time frame, in any reasonable format, and being able to manipulate it to answer questions we had never even considered in the past is at best impractical and really impossible.

The answers are found when you recognize the realities of both issues, and combine those realities into a common answer.

1. Stop thinking about data "life" in terms of structured, unstructured, or semi-structured – that is only the state in which is was created. Those are "birth" terms.
2. Changing data is "dynamic", persistent data is not. All dynamic data eventually becomes persistent. Whether you keep it or throw it away is a different discussion.
3. Recognize that there is a distinct difference between dynamic and persistent data – dynamic data changes, persistent doesn't. By default that would imply that each would have a different set of criteria for things such as performance, protection, access, etc.
4. Set policies that are based on the type of data and whether it is dynamic or persistent. They should not be the same in most cases.
5. Build an infrastructure capable of supporting all types of dynamic and persistent data – that means you'll have multiple tiers of storage, network, and server capabilities and capacities – and plan on being able to move data up and down that infrastructure fluidly as access requirements avail themselves.
6. Unify your ability to find relevant pieces of data no matter what state it is in or where it physically resides. Having one access portal to all data, no matter what type or structure, solves half of the logistical problems we face.

So, that's easy enough to comprehend, but how does one "manage" the data itself? The key to the second problem – being able to find and mine relevant information – is in the application of intelligence to the data itself. We talk about this in terms like indexing or categorizing but what we really mean is we wrap data with meta-data, which we can then search against in the future. The richer the meta-data, the richer the query potential, and the richer the opportunity to find new value from an old asset. That's where the relational file system concept comes into play.

A relational database is superb for being able to find things. It is highly structured and as such relatively simple to organize. So why not put everything into a relational database? Because those databases were not designed to contain ridiculously large data sets. They are also complicated animals, and require intense specialist knowledge to keep them going. They are also enormously expensive. File systems, on the other hand, can house huge amounts of data without issue, can be managed by systems administrators without the need for DBA specialists, and tend to cost next to nothing. The problem with file systems is being able to find those individual nuggets of value inside of them. Crawling an entire petabyte file system to find something is no fun. Doing a query against a petabyte database is less fun, and more expensive.

What we seem to need is a hybrid of both – a fixed-content database, if you will. We need to be able to do structured queries on data sitting in a file system – that may even have been born as transactional!

I'm not talking about archiving. I'm referring to a living, breathing repository that combines all the benefits of structure with none of the limitations.

Many database records are stuffed with "events" – things born as fixed content. Log files, web analytics, alarms, and many more things are examples of one-time events that often reside in a relational database. Why would you put a data object that is fixed at birth such as an event into a relational database? Because you might want to be able to run queries against those events. U.K. company Coppereye lets you put event data directly into their repository and run all queries your little heart desires against it – but it doesn't sit in an RdB, it sits in a flat file, eliminating the cost and complexity of housing huge volumes of data within the database. When the European Union changed the retention rules for cell phone records last year, every player was forced to triple the amount of customer call data that had to be available on line to customers. Call data is born fixed – it is an event. If I told you that you have to triple the size of your already large database in 90 days, would you be happy? That was the only realistic way to solve the problem for these folks until Coppereye showed up and let them stuff ALL of that event data into their system – which sits in front of anybody's NAS.

ESG Research Director John McKnight tells me 40% of large company's average 1TB per month of security log data! That's another perfect example of event data that shouldn't ever be in a database. By sticking it in a hybrid repository, you can keep it forever and when you have an epiphany next year and want to query that data set it is no problem! Wouldn't that solve the Bio-IT issues as well? They do this stuff referred to as High Content – where they might take a zillion images or videos of a set of tests or reactions of different compounds – generating tons of data – and then it has to sit somewhere in case a researcher wants to query against it. What about in 8 years when you find out that some test you just ran shows similarities of another test from the past, and when you instantly called it up it took you no time to realize that Viagra also cures hair loss?

In summary, we need to reconsider our definitions of data as well as the treatment of those data types. Bridging the structured and unstructured worlds of data management is not entirely new – SharePoint does the same thing by adding structure to documents. By eliminating the expense and complexity of housing gigantic data sets while maintaining the ability to find the needle in the haystack, a hybrid data management system seems destined to win.

End of an Era….

What is more surprising to you, that MTI quietly went belly up in October after 1100 years, or that they didn't go belly up in 1995 as you thought? They may not mean anything to you, but they represent a weird set of feelings to me.

MTI was one of those classic industry fairy tales – one of the many offshoots of then storage kingpin System Industries. Steve Hammerslag and co. got Ray Noorda, founder of Novell, to invest big in MTI – and then got richer, poorer, and finally dead. I'm not suggesting that the MTI ride killed him; he was 82 or so after all. "Hammer" left System Industries to start MTI, while Jack Egan left the same to join his pop at EMC. Those paths would cross again later.

MTI began as one of those companies everyone hates – stuffed with young, testosterone filled males whose sole mission in life was to get paid. They were the brash west coast version of EMC, actually. And like EMC, they began with humble engineering intellect and violent sales execution, each with almost cult-like cultures. I could tell tales of debauchery that would make you blush – from either camp. Boys will be boys – and boys with money and machismo without any practical experience to realize sometimes things change can be downright dangerous.

MTI built a company by selling Exabyte 8mm tape drives – arguably the worst quality devices in history – on to VAX clusters. If I'm not mistaken, they charged about $38,000 for a 2GB tape drive connected to an HSC (you young punks can skip ahead). Note: I and a few other ESG'ers were at another "what not to do/MBA" company at the time, and we also used the EXB-8200 tape drive – and had very close to a 100% failure rate if I recall correctly. Anyhow, MTI's killer sales force made the company a ton of dough – because of course DEC couldn't figure out how to plug a SCSI tape drive into their own equipment – and went public for a nice meteoric rise. I would have loved to have seen the options dating practices during that era. The cult got crazier. The leadership challenged the youth to step it up, take no prisoners, and pledge allegiance. "Hammer, Hammer" chants were regularly featured at sales meetings, apparently.

I recall meeting either the VP of sales or the Eastern Regional somebody or another (a pal's boss) – a very tall, athletic, good-looking, pompous jackass I immediately hated. Maybe I was jealous. Mostly he was a pompous jackass. I knew their time would come. They had zip to fall back on, and no technology to defend. But they did survive for way longer than I would have ever thought possible.

They bought a company called SF2 – who really was one of the first ever RAID companies. They build the first giant RAID box – billed as fault-tolerant – and sold them for hundreds of thousands of dollars all over the place. Of course they never really worked that well, but they did have a patent that ended up being a lovely cash cow for many years.

Hammer and many of the boys went away eventually, the company struggled with its identity for many years, and the stock plummeted to de-listing territory time and time again. When they seemed to finally be on their last legs, out of nowhere old friend Jack Egan and co. surfaced to resuscitate MTI – effectively getting access to that RAID patent and turning MTI into an EMC VAR/Service company. They re-capped the company and while a fraction of their glorious self, they continued to hang around. There were a few guys who were there from beginning to end. I think they are crazy, but I respect the commitment.

My pal was a sales guy in Boston there for quite a while, back in the day. He tells a hysterical story of having a big prospect in to corporate for a tour, and having a giant tape library (robotics by Odetics, I believe) fire tapes at the customer like a machine gun while he dove to safety behind a row of dishwasher sized RA-60 disk drives. Good times.

So, with absolutely no fanfare (I found out yesterday), MTI filed bankruptcy, shut down the US operation, and sold their European assets to somebody. If you go to www.mti.com you end up in France, I believe. You need to specifically pick out the US site (www.us.mti.com) to get the story.

So rest in peace my friends. You were one to hate and one to envy at the same time. The early arrogance and stupidity certainly isn't restricted to MTI, but the fact that like a cockroach, they just kept on living through vast environmental changes makes me respect their endurance if nothing else.

You Thought I Was Kidding About The Gun Rack?

Equallogic's founders Peter, Paula and Paul……Stay away.

Dell Just Bought N.H.’s Tech Sector

On Friday afternoon I was talking with Tony Asaro about the interesting phone call he'd been on for the previous hour or so. Michael Dell had given Tony a jingle to talk all things storage – and do a little fishing. Tony was impressed that Michael had such deep knowledge of the players, the products, and the market – which makes sense considering he was about to spend $1.4 Billion bucks on Equallogic. Plus, the guy is worth more than most countries, and you don't get that way without being in the know generally.

First, let me just say how glad I am for those crazy New Hampster folks. Before they even had a name for their venture, the three founders – Peter Hayden, Paula Long, and the CTO whose name I can never remember but he looked an awful lot like the Unabomber, came on in to ESG and told me their tale. New Hampshire people are not like Massachusetts nor Silicon Valley people. They didn't know all the answers yet. They were still learning. They were all former DEC engineers who felt they could re-invent the way storage worked – breaking the 20 year old "two controllers and disks in a box" principal that still dominates the industry. They were honest, nice, and naive. I liked them immediately, loved the story, and didn't think they had a chance in hell of pulling it off.

The big E is one of the very, very few companies that have crossed my threshold who seemingly hit every milestone they put on the table. I still have their original presentation, and it's shocking how consistent it still is. From engineering to business execution, every time they said they were going to do something, they did it. While most others "re-invented" themselves every quarter, the Live Free or Die (apparently nice and honest also comes with a gun) bunch stuck to their original plan – iSCSI super-scalable storage with dramatically better economics capable of being operated by monkey.

Equallogic is a great IT example of a Blue Ocean – they do things differently. The product is different but more importantly, the go to market strategy was different. The E team was perhaps the first storage player to figure out that VMware was the train to ride – and they mastered the play such that by the time others woke up E had huge momentum with the VMware channel, which has been a tremendous success.

Maybe the best part of the whole deal is that E doesn't have to go public. They don't have to ride the treadmill that never stops inside of a fish tank with Wall St. just waiting for a hiccup. No lock ups, no vesting most likely, and at $1.4B there is plenty of cash to go around. It will be interesting to see a bunch of bearded, flannel clad folks mounting gun racks to their new Maserati's.

$1.4 is nice high bar. All the other storage system plays either in registration to go public, or about to be, have to be almost as psyched as their investment bankers are.

I suspect you'll hear how EMC doesn't view this as competitive and that all is well with Dell. They both know the possibility – and probability – for competition is inevitable, but neither wants to screw up what has been a golden goose for both. Dell will say that they have always had non-EMC systems (the 3000i is not EMC, for example) and that is proof that it will work out. If Dell starts to get any market momentum at all with this stuff, the EMC sales force will shut down relations faster than Sarkozy did on his 60 Minutes interview. It doesn't matter what corporate says, the EMC sales force will violently protect their customer base. I can't get my brain around how this will play out without bloodshed eventually. Dell didn't spend $1.4B in cash to not go after the market.

I'm a tad surprised that something along these lines didn't happen earlier. Dell wanted EMC to give them this kind of product, but EMC chose not too. I can understand both sides – EMC wants to protect their core systems business and feels that providing high-function, low cost systems through a huge volume channel like Dell will only serve to drag down margins across the board. Dell, the high volume channel, wants lower cost, high function systems to attack the SMB market – which is still up for grabs. It was only a matter of time before Dell made a move. I don't know this, but am guessing that Dell Storage mucky muck Darren Thomas has his fingerprints all over this deal. Darren came back after beating cancer with a whole new zeal, and he's been effective at getting the other mucky mucks to start challenging themselves and start getting aggressive. It's hard to imagine a company that already sells billion of dollars of storage as not aggressive, but he is right – Dell rides in this space, they aren't making a market. The SMB space is wide open, so maybe this is a sign of how they are going to violently attack that opportunity. If successful, the financial implications for Dell go way beyond storage. Darren recognizes more than most that time is short, and being along for the ride isn't as satisfying as creating your own destiny. I hope they kick some ass.

EMC could have bought Equallogic years ago, for pennies on the dollar. While it is true that you can draw semi-clear lines of demarcation between the Equallogic market and the EMC markets, those lines get fuzzy eventually. We talked with a huge EMC shop who bought an Equallogic box just to "keep EMC honest". They had no intention of really using Equallogic for anything "real". They started with 2TB, and parked it front and center in the main window of the data center. Six months later they had over 100TB because "it really was amazingly easy to add-on to and anyone could manage it".

After all this time, who would have thought the storage industry would be interesting again?