Competitive Business Lessons – and Did I Forget To Mention….

….the childish embarrassing moves by IDC at SNW Europe?

As you know (or should by now), I never bother to trash a competitor, even when they are not really competitive, but this was too good to pass up not only because of the sheer stupidity and immaturity (god I love being able to say that about someone else), but because it's a fantastic example of one of my most ardent business arguments. Allow me to do my mea culpa's and qualifications first:

First, I like IDC. I'm jealous of their amazing success model, and I think Pat McGovern is one of the smartest and most visionary business people ever. I do not say that lightly. That's a guy with ADD that has used it to grow a stupendous empire. I don't feel like ESG has ever competed with IDC – we don't do market share data and we don't do tracking research – the two things they dominate. I consider myself a personal friend of former IDC storage GM John McArthur. In my entire career I've never had a problem with him or anything he did at IDC or beyond. He's a good, smart human being. I say the same for Claus Egge, IDC's long time European storage guru. I don't know him as well, but we've dined and drank and compared notes on occasion – and I can tell you that he is an honorable, intelligent man. A great friend and former IDC and ESG employee is Tom Lahive, who never say's a bad word about either entity (as far as I can tell!). As a matter of fact, until now, I can't say I've ever had an issue whatsoever with anyone I've known from IDC. Alas, I can no longer say that for some others that we ran into at SNW Europe.

Second, let me tell you that I more than most realize that all is fair in the big bad world of competitive business. Sometimes ESG steals budget from the likes of IDC or Gartner, but not all that often. IDC dominates a space as Gartner does. We share some customers, and some budget buckets, but none of us does the same thing. At the end of the day, all one really wants is a chance to compete for budget bucks where we can show how our value to organization X is potentially greater than what another guy's value is. We, however, never do that head to head – i.e. we never want to be say "we do the same thing cheaper" because while 90% of business is done that way – 90% of the value/spend goes to the leader. It's dumb to be in the 90% copycat business.

I'd be not only a buffoon but also a hypocrite to chase IDC where they dominate (tracking and share research) if for no other reason than I spend my business life telling anyone who will listen that if you are not going into a blue ocean you are sniffing the backside of a market leader – which not only stinks but is pointless. How many definitive market leaders ever get toppled by a competitor versus themselves? Very, very few is how many. There are many followers who do things better, but it rarely matters. Established leaders are just that – leaders. They don't follow, and they rarely lose unless they screw something up badly or their market goes away. It almost never happens because some upstart dope builds a better mousetrap. It has nothing to do with having the "best stuff" – it has everything to do with understanding your customer. A successful market lead almost always begins with having something different that solves a real problem or lends real value to a current, sustainable market dynamic – that has yet to be addressed. Then maintaining leadership is all about actually listening to your customer and doing the right things – which may not necessarily mean doing the "best" things. Cisco does not have the "best" stuff across the board. Nor does EMC or Netapp. Nor does Data Domain or Riverbed. Guess what? It doesn't matter. Where they lead, they will continue to do so. EMC never killed Netapp nor vice versa. Huawei has better stuff than Cisco. Whoopdie doo. Cisco won't kill Riverbed. Everyone has "better" de-dupe than Data Domain, or so they say, but none of it matters. Without a monumentally disruptive market force the natural inertia of a growth market will continue to propel the leader – end of story.

I'm not saying there isn't great business being number 2, so to speak, as there clearly is – there just is futility in firmly established leadership markets if your success requires the leader to fail. If you want to pick up the (often formidable) crumbs of a market, go right ahead – the world needs alternatives – but make your goals legitimate and not fantasy. As soon as someone tells me their stuff is so much better than Microsoft (and ends it there) that they can't help but win, I know they are toast.

So, back to IDC. At SNW Europe we were just making our presence known – something we've been slowly doing for many years. ESG will be in Europe because what we do is required in Europe – the same way it is required in China. We were a bit different than most – we had nothing to sell. We were there to continue to reinforce our brand and what it is that we do – that is far different from most. In this case, we were exhibiting the ESG Lab – more successful than any other before us without question – we wanted to begin to educate the European market as to what the Lab was all about and what we are up too.

In a nutshell, ESG Lab, run by Brian Garrett, tests stuff, finds out what something can do and what it can't, and then tells folks where what it can do is applicable. We've done over 115 of them, and suffice to say that when staunch and sometimes violent competitors such as EMC, HDS, Netapp, IBM, and HP all use ESG Lab to test their stuff, we feel that we're doing a pretty fair job. Brian won't say this, but the dude owns 9 patents, has 6 pending, and knows more about how to test a product and then apply real-world analytics to why the results matter (or not) than anyone in this industry – bar none. If the guy who runs engineering at HDS, EMC, Netapp, etc. can't argue with a competitive products Lab results, methodology, or analysis, then we think we've done a pretty fair job representing what's real. We don't hide anything – we publish the methodologies, the configurations, etc. It's been one of ESG's most successful offerings and clearly has benefited users as well as the vendor community – since both want to shorten the sales cycle. Are ESG Lab's perfect? Of course not, but they are close as it gets.

At SNW Europe, Brian had two tutorials where he presented ESG Lab's methodologies for creating a test plan and executing on it. As nice folks, we gave away our test methodologies and all of the workload generators Brian and team have developed over the years – something we'll continue to evolve and continue to give away. We are not moron's – giving away a few zillion man years of workload generators will absolutely help anyone who wants to do real world product testing in their specific environments, but by doing so, ESG continues to propagate our Lab brand – and by default will continue to garner even more market influence which will equate to even more Lab validation business. We are altruistic capitalists, and damn proud of it.

So imagine the absurdity of me finding out that on at least 2, and most likely 3 or more occasions, IDC Europe people came to the ESG booth – with badges turned over, hiding their names/company, as if we were 19 years old again – to inquire about such things as "how can you be independent"? They even did it to Brian himself (which is bad because A: he is mega-brained engineer so it simply didn't compute for him, B: his integrity is above reproach and once he figured out that they were actually questioning his integrity, he was totally bummed out and C: once totally bummed out, I think he might have concocted a demonic plan to have said perpetrators end up naked in front of the Louvre somehow), who of course didn't understand and simply answered the questions.

I suppose had it only been to Brian, I wouldn't have gone out of my way to point out the 8^th grade antics of people clearly far below the intellectual and moral standard of a quality company such as IDC, but they really pissed me off by doing it to Taya and Noelle – who when having no idea what was being asked of her suggested that they speak to me, as I was walking up the isle – actually ran away. Who runs away from me? Running away earned my wrath. Standing there would have perhaps incurred my wrath, but it would have gone no farther presuming the amateur recanted.

Silly, silly people.

Observations from the Rhineland (Rheinland)

The only planes that ever arrive early are "red eyes", which of course are the only flights you don't want to arrive early. I came to Frankfurt via Dublin, on Air Lingus, for no good reason at all. That's a red eye that arrives early and only gets you ¾ of the way there. In perhaps the dumbest architecture decision making process ever, Air Lingus decided that if there were to be a full row of empty seats that someone such as myself could dive into in order to lay down and pass out upon, they would make the experience painful (literally) by making sure the arm rests only extend 45 degrees – thus making the row defensible in case of a marauding force attack, but almost impossible to sleep upon without serious risk of organ injury.

To make matters worse, it was approximately 30 below zero (Celsius or Fahrenheit) both outside and inside the airport.

Germany is the same as usual. It is rainy, cloudy, and cold. The schnitzel is good, if you like crushed meat deep fried. I do. The apple wine/cider is odd but you get used to it. The red wine, as in China, stinks.

SNW had good attendance. The show is normally good anyway in my opinion, as it's a much lower pressure version of the U.S. shows. I also enjoy smart Germans speaking in English. That would make me nuts.

The rock star of the show? Moshe Yanai. Brian Garrett told me it was standing room only, with lines out the door. The XIV founder and Symmetrix inventor had a huge following of folks listening to him, which is sort of hard to do as he has a brutal Israeli accent to begin with, and combined with his super-size engineering brain makes him almost indiscernible at times. Apparently the Germans got it though, as Brian said if Moshe wanted to stand there all day people would have stayed and worshipped him.

Best show booth utilization award goes to Pillar. They had more of their own people per square meter than all others combined. Unfortunately, that left no room for non-employees, but that's why there are hallways.

Best line of the week came from journalist Torben Sorensen – and the O is supposed to have a line through it. Torben is a Dane, and I've always been fascinated with O's with lines though them ever since Monty Python did the "moose" graphics in the beginning of the Holy Grail. It seems the Dane's have 3 extra vowels than no one else has – and the O with the line is one of them. When I asked why they felt they needed extra vowels he said "because Danish is a mumbled language" meaning that Dane's mumble, so consonants get lumped together and sound the same, thus they needed extra vowels to make things that sound like words instead of grunts. Genius.

He also explained that "may I have a beer" in Danish is "ol" (also with the line), and that is why you can find absolutely polluted drunk Dane's laying on their back somewhere still able to order their next beer. I need to spend more time in that country.

By far the best personal moment came when a couple arrived to speak to me regarding, well, I'm still not sure. They were right out of central casting, so much so I really thought they may have been professional actors hired by the show to screw with people like me, but that would require a sense of humor and Germans are not exactly known for such wit normally. She was roughly 5'5" tall and just as wide. She clearly was drunk when applying pink lipstick over 70% of her face. She had a beehive hairdo that looked strikingly similar to Cosmo's mother on Fairly Odd Parents, for those of you with little ones. Her teeth were the color of Coke Light. She giggled repeatedly, and never actually said anything germane to any of the painful conversations occurring, except that she was from South Africa. What she was doing in Germany, I do not know. Her boyfriend/husband/other was a small, thin man, with an outstanding comb over hairdo and perhaps the longest nose hair I've ever witnessed. Noelle suggested he could have easily used gel and styled it. I thought I could see it move towards me, like an alien. Upon exiting – after a solid 10 minutes, she almost took down the booth.

Those were the only truly bizarre people at the show, which as most of you know, ain't bad. There was the guy with the Bee Gee's hair and beard with the electric blue tee-shirt and matching overalls, but I didn't get to speak with him. Otherwise, people were utterly normal.

I did host a panel with some interesting folks – a Brit from the Cornwall (UK) police department, a guy from O2 – the German mobile phone company, the IT director of a large automotive research company, and the European IT head for a company who provides chicken parts and hamburger to McDonalds. It was quite an eclectic crowd. It was obvious to me that the guy selling Russian hamburger to McDonalds is happy in a global recession – if you have no money, you eat at McDonalds. I was surprised however that the other folks we not slowing spending – in fact most were talking about accelerating spending in IT – and basically suggested that as long as you aren't a complete idiot and you have your ROI story together, they are able to get funding for projects as easily – if not more easily – now than ever. The public service (police) representative realized that since revenues are tax based that this could be a one year thing, so he intends to solve as many problems as he can right now, so they are in a position to deal with their own economic trickledown effect next year.

Overall, the mood was far better than I would have expected, which makes me happy. The vendors I spoke with at the show were genuinely positive overall, and some outright bullish. Misplaced optimism perhaps, but it definitely is not as bad as we tend to make it seem.

The overall consensus for Europe regarding the U.S. political situation is A: it can only get better, no matter who wins, and B: it's probably best if Obama wins because at least American's will be able to get off a plane in a foreign land without being hated upon arrival, if for no other reason than it will give international folks a reason to now engage with an American prior to hating him/her, which is nice. It is funny how the whole world has decided that Bush and the republicans are responsible for everything bad – like the financial mess, simply by "associative hatred". They don't care that democrat (Massachusetts own Barney Frank) led the charge that caused the subprime meltdown. It's sort of like O.J. Simpson spending life in jail for stealing his own football trophies and not for chopping his wife's head off. I guess nature has a way of leveling things off eventually.

Dankeshein.

Mao’s Revenge

Sorry for the delay, I have so much more to tell, but have spent the last week in bed or the can, suffering terribly from the lingering effects of being in China a bit too long. I still owe you information on:

• My "Green IT" keynote in Beijing, which was very well attended and clearly a very popular subject, followed by me rushing to a plane in my dark suit, red tie lugging my 100lb bag. Upon arrival I watched a commercial for something that was clearly about being "green", environmentally conscious, etc. I thought, "hmm, these folks are really living this post Olympics – good for them – only to find that landing in Yi Chang all I could see was smog, and when I made it to the boat on the Yangtze to spend 3 days with a bunch of global PhD's yapping about trusted computing, I happened to look down, and the river may be the most disgustingly polluted bodies of water ever. On a positive note, the water was green – literally.
• I was in the front of the bus on my flight to Yi Chang for some reason, and was all alone, so the three stewardesses' were outrageously attentive, to the point of annoying. I gave in an ordered a beer and declined what I think was an offer for a foot rub. The beer never had more than a sip out of it and was immediately filled. There are worse things. In order to attempt to avoid conversation, I had the laptop opened and blared tunes via my iPod. I was listening to an eclectic mix of Pete Yorn, the Stone Roses, Ra Ra Ra, and the Stones when one of my perennial favorites came on – the Blackjacks. The Blackjacks were a great Boston band in the early 80's that I loved in the Del Fuego's, Mission of Burma, Till Tuesday era. The nice stewardess felt compelled to ask if she could listen to the song right as Johnny Angel was doing the Blackjack Manifesto, who for those of you who don't know, uses a chorus of "Motherf&$8r's". I panicked, but figured best to let her listen rather than appear rude, and hope for the best. All was fine as she clearly didn't know what a "mother%7&$3r" was, until she asked. "What is Mother&6y843^$?" I told her it was a song about my X-wife and put the headphones back on.
• The boat trip – 3 days on a "luxury" cruise line through the 3-gorges with PhD's from the planet who spend time thinking about trusted computing as researchers. This needs much more detail, but know that A: it was right out of Apocalypse Now, and B: research is fascinating. Being the only non-Dr. on the boat was intimidating, until I let them all know I was the only actual smart one. Things seemed to get better from there. Yikes. My best line of week – when listening to pointless debate regarding Grid vs. Cloud definitions, was tremendously in the moment, or so I thought. "A cloud can be comprised of a grid, and a grid can be comprised of clouds", to which there was much rejoicing. I still don't know why anyone cares.
• Ten years ago there were 1 million cars in China, all Buicks. Now there are 1 Billion cars in China, mostly Buicks. There are no new roads, apparently no tests required to operate a car, no education as to how one should operate a car, and very limited common sense that I can see. It would be as if you woke up in the middle of Montana one day and there were cars everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Each car would be going in and out of other cars, horses, cows, bikes, buses, and pedestrians. Cars would drive on the sidewalk to garner an 11 inch advantage for 4 seconds, if necessary, though there is no where that car could go. And the Chinese are very, very happy to use their horns, to the exact same overall effect as a NY cab driver.

 

I'm in Germany, more to follow. Bitte.

China vs. Dallas

Ni Hao, Ya'll.

While most of the ESG squad is in Dallas for the semi-annual OEM love fest, I am a tad more east.

This is going to be a long one so I'll make it a series. This initial entry will have little or nothing to do with some of the amazing business and economic discoveries I have made, as those will follow. Instead, this blog will have nothing to do with anything other than things I have found interesting. Feel free to skip it.

As I write I'm heading from Beijing to Yi Chang, which is somewhere far away because everything is far away in China. This is one giant country.

I came to Beijing on Saturday, on what is arguably the most awful flight one can take. I don't care what class you are in, flying that long anywhere stinks. Trips like this are the only time in life I feel really bad for those with the misfortune to be tall.

Landing in Beijing, I'm stuck by a few things immediately. First, the airport is roughly the size of Guatemala. I land at the new Olympic terminal, in a bit of a fog, and proceed to walk well over 14 miles to end up on a train packed with other zombies, hoping to end up at baggage claim. Second observation – a 12 hour time difference is brutal. The whole "night is day and day is night" thing sounds good, but it isn't. Watching the Red Sox lose at 9AM is no fun. Watching the Pats get crushed at 9:30 is worse. When you are old like me your body sort of just says, "are you kidding me?" once 8pm hits. Third observation, for the first two days in Beijing, there is nothing but spectacular blue sky. The Chinese actually can control the weather after all. Don't assume, I tell myself.

There are 16 million people who live in Beijing. There are another 10 million or so who show up in the city every day. I think there are 16 million people in Canada. This city is ridiculously large. It looks fantastic, I might add. The Chinese are single minded and focused when they put their collective mind to something. They wanted their city and country to shine to the world for the Olympics, and judging by the look of the place, they succeeded – perhaps literally.

This may be my favorite country. Partially because it is so foreign, in almost every conceivable respect, but also because when you get through your preconceived ideological issues and perceptions, this might be the most friendly, hard working, educated, and supremely powerful but unassuming country on the planet. This is one vibrant place. Maybe it's the never ending giant buildings that make Chicago look like a cute little suburb. Maybe it's seeing "IT Town" or seeing Google written in Chinese on a giant building next to EMC/VMware and every other Silicon Valley player in a row – and knowing that the power brokers of our most important industries are just one of a zillion here.

There is no good Chinese food in America. There is no bad Chinese food in China. There is bizarre food, and unfortunately the more "guest of honor" ish you appear the more bizarre the offerings.

The ESG-Sino team is awesome. This is the first time I've met most of them. Kim Wang has a squad of 7 who apparently never have to sleep. I'll show photo's later, but for those of you used to seeing me in my Napoleon ego moments stomping around with my fabulously spectacular six-foot blonde wife Jess on my right and the equally lovely six-foot blonde Taya on my left would get a kick out of the Chinese version. Kim and Heidi (which of course is not her actual name – I'm not sure why the Chinese feel compelled to take on English names – Chong wants me to call him Tony) are each approximately 4'10" and weigh slightly less than my backpack – combined. With the blondes I am a fire hydrant between the twin towers (or a "short man sandwich" as a patron of the Pats/49ers game belted out last week in San Francisco), but in China I'm the tall guy with the two tiny Asian women. Both situations make me look better than I am, I just show up faster in the Chinese version. One might assume that the Chinese eat every 3-4 days since they are generally outrageously thin people, but I can put that myth to rest. These lady's eat more than anyone I've ever seen, and I'm no stranger to a fork. It's true the Chinese tend to not eat the garbage we Americans do (though I swear KFC is single handedly attempting to destroy millions of years of Chinese culture), they eat lots of veggies and don't use all the gross oils, but man, these 92lb. women would give an NFL offensive lineman a run for his money. Perhaps it is because they never sleep. I would like to see the science on this.

As good as the food is, the wine really sucks. That is a problem for me. I really don't drink much beer anymore because A: it makes me pee twice as often as normal which is bad because B: I already pee 11 times an hour. You can't drink the water, which means you can't use ice. That rules out all the good booze. I'm not sure how the Chinese survive this particular issue actually.

There was some kind of international Navy thing happening at my hotel, where I was one of about 9 non-Asians as I counted. Apparently everyone in China can speak English significantly better than I can. As I waited for my car – yes, my car, which means a vehicle driven by someone else because anyone who attempts to drive in China should have their head examined, another car pulled up and out came the Royal Naval Admiral of FubuWubu, or some country I've never heard of. It was right out of a movie. Chief big Admiral had 856 medals on his 5 foot 2 inch frame, and more gold braids than Carol Burnett in her famous Rhett Butler skit. His trusty aid was an 8 foot tall hunchback who was 90% bald with a long beard, a brown version of the uniform, half the braids and medals, and violent smokers cough. I fully expected women to appear out of nowhere to toss rose pedals on the ground. Mutt and Jeff could not have possibly been part of a legitimate Navy of a legitimate country, but the Chinese were doing their thing and making them feel like they were the power brokers of the world. I saw the Dutch Navy represented, so I know it was a legitimate event, but these guys might have actually been the entire Malawali Navy. I will never know.

96% of Chinese males over the age of 5 smoke. They also smoke everywhere and anywhere. Nothing is off limits apparently – elevators, restaurants, taxi's, you name it. I have not seen a female smoke in China, though I suspect they must. Perhaps the worst thing about it, and maybe the worst thing about China, is since they all smoke, they are forever hacking up monstrous gobs of phlegm – and launching said gob wherever they happen to be. It is disturbing, but I'm the only one who seems to notice so I try to not hurl. If that's the worst they have, I can live with it. My wife probably would not have been so forgiving.

98% of Chinese drive, at the same time, in Beijing. The Chinese love Buicks. I have no idea why, but Buick must have 75% of the market wrapped up. All Chinese cars have model numbers that look like this: 87MDLR876RZ5L3C98E – no kidding. Right on the back in shiny plastic chrome. I don't think I saw a car with less than 11 characters describing it. A lot of Audi's as well. Audi must have the number two spot behind Buick.

As we pulled into the Beijing Airport to board this flight, there was a Ferrari 430 out front with approximately 600 people around it. Unfortunately about 100 of them were cops. I have no idea what he did but I bet speed had something to do with it. That's a $300,000+ car and Kim tells me they are all over Beijing. Anywhere there are tons of Ferrari's has got to be an OK place. That's sort of my own international law. Do with it as you will.

The Beijing airport is fantastic. However, if you are in need of a casual shirt to wear on the boat you are heading too, I advise you to plan in advance. I just paid $200 bucks for a Hugo Boss shirt I'm quite certain would have been $18 at Marshall's in Franklin, MA. I bet my wife rolled over and smiled in her sleep. Isn't China supposed to be cheap? Does the dollar work anywhere anymore?

Last night we had dinner with the CEO and Number Two (I made that up, but I like it) of a Chinese manufacturer and Systems Integrator named Soul. They didn't get my Starsky and Hutch reference. As you are probably aware, weird things happen to me in my travels. Over the years I have learned to ignore the weird meetings with people in weird parts of the world where folks know things about me that can only mean that they really try to know things about me. It used to freak me out, but now I just sort of go with the flow. Some might remember the story of the guy in Israel who waited for me at my hotel all night until I arrived, knew who I was, and then wanted to tell me how Larry Ellison sent him on a mission. Last night, after a brutally long and tiring day, I went to dinner with these nice guys, Mr. Zhang (just like my Lily) and Mr. Ma. Mr. Zhang owns the place, and has done well for himself. He speaks about 25 words of English (I'm up to 5 Chinese words myself), so imagine my surprise (horror, initially if I can be honest) when during our walk he blurts out of nowhere – "Your wife – Jessica", followed with – "Your dog – Abby". The 60 seconds that followed that were the most intense 60 seconds I can remember, post college drug experimentation. I didn't have any idea what to say or do. I'm pretty sure I just stared at him, and might have drooled as I'm sure my mouth hung open. It's weird when an Israeli knows you – when he doesn't really know you, but for some reason my brain just sort of accepted that as "well, this is Israel, and he must be the Mossad" or something. I would not have been any more taken back had it come from a random guy on the streets of Zimbabwe. Turns out he has been an avid blog reader, and not a crazed psychopath, so all is well. It does make me stop to consider that my writing style may have some issues in translation, but if my pals in Scandinavia and China keep reading, I probably shouldn't screw with it. Pretty flattering, in a creepy, "you people do know I'm really not very smart, right?" kind of way.

I don't know how to say goodbye, so I'll use thank you instead.

Xie Xie

The Silver Lining

Yeah, Wall St. has collapsed. Yeah, I can't retire, again. Yeah, things are crappy. Therefore, I feel it my responsibility to point out some less than crappy things, if for no other reason than I'm doing it while on a plane to China, waiting for the next bout of a stomach bug to hit me. It's sort of "find a bright side or take 48 sleeping pills" moment, not that they would last long enough inside of me to do anything.

If you have built a business on selling to the cool cats on Wall St. and looked down your noses at the requirements (and validity) of the real world, you are currently bumming out. If you have either been forced, or were smart enough, to look elsewhere then things probably don't seem as bleak.

Data Direct Networks has been waiting for the public market to come back so they can get out. The market isn't exactly cooperating, so instead of feeling bad for themselves, they have instead recorded never-ending positive growth and profitability. In the middle of the financial meltdown they had another record quarter – to the tune of $40 plus million bucks – and I'm pretty sure none of the 23 Petabytes this quarter were sold to Wall St.

Silicon Alley is the new Wall St., at least from a "who buys lots of stuff" perspective.

Glasshouse is in the exact same boat. Their S1 filed long ago, they just keep on executing. Wall St. firms are "too smart" to use them usually, so they have had to build what is now a big, smart business by selling services to real companies, who need real help, especially when times are tight. Smart companies use belt tightening to get better at their operations. Dumb ones believe their own b.s.

Ever hear of InMage? Most haven't. The crazy little company founded years ago by Brocade founder Kumar Malivali and friends is a quiet player in the mid-market disaster recovery/CDP software space and without anyone seeming to notice, is about to finish the year north of $10M – in software. That's fantastic.

This sounds absurd, I know, but Microsoft even gets kudos' here. Hyper-V is going to change the world – at least in terms of making boring interesting for the next decade. Virtual desktop consolidation is going to dwarf the overall size of the VMware boondoggle of the last few years, and who better to reap the rewards than the Redmondians – who get paid on churn no matter what. There will be a lot of folks who ride the turbulence and make a pile of dough while this one takes off.

In the collapse of 2000 IT people were forced to learn how to make wine out of water – and they did. In 2008 they will have to be alchemists, but I'm confident this is really just another evolutionary necessity and we'll come through it.

Which reminds me – things like this are not new and should not be so surprising. Evolution is real, no matter what Sarah Palin thinks. It happens all the time. Seeing it has been mankind's issue. We think that what is will always be. The dinosaurs' lived only under water for a few million years, until one crawled out onto the beach and stayed. Looking back we separate those eras's as hard delineated times, each lasting zillions of years. Fast forward a few minutes and we see empires that lasted thousands of years (not millions), from the Chinese to the Romans. Those ended too – and not in a bang. They just evolved away. Fast forward again to the French revolution, which seemed like a long period, but was a speck on the timeline of history. The American "revolution" or the industrial revolution were not instant meteoric moments, though in retrospect they seem that way. They were evolutionary. No one saw things changing in the moment. The Soviet Union? The Berlin Wall? Wall St.? Nature has a way of washing out imbalances of power.

Like always, those who can see outside of their own way inside an evolutionary revolution are the ones who end up on top of the next wave. This will be no different. If you are an IT person, the changes have been happening right in front of you for almost 20 years. Distributed computing and that little thing called the Internet have made massive changes in our worlds – and change never stops. Data is changing because people are changing the way they use it. Insisting on forcing new data types and uses into old operating strategies is why Wall St. now sounds like the Black Knight in Monty Python yelling "but I'm Invincible!!" with no arms nor legs.

There are more species on earth today than ever before in history. Adapt or perish, baby.

 

 

Video Rant - Oracle and HP's Interesting Coupling

I rambled, on video, and here it is. 

The Red Sox and IT

I love the Red Sox this time of year.  Not because they are a legit team who has won 2 series lately and who are again a legit contender.  I love them because for 1,546 years they weren't.  The Red Sox are the team that always broke my heart.  They got to the stage and the cosmic comedy began.  I was 11 in 1975 during the Pudge Fisk waving the arms home run thing, Luis Tiant actually getting key hits and running his fat little Cuban body around the bases as comfortably as Sarah Palin answers foreign policy questions, and Bernie Carbo mashed a monster walk-off homerun.  And then we lost.  I was 3 in the 1967 dream team year, which again, we lost.  I was 22 when Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson's names became indellibly etched upon my soul. 

Bucky freaking Dent.

October 16th, 2003 started out as a typical day - I awoke early and had my wife drive me to the doctor, where I enjoyed the please of having a small Isreali perform a vascectomy upon me in what appeared to be his supply closet.  While attempting to focus on anything other than what was actually happening to me, during one of his trips north of my waist, I asked Dr. Fun to look at a weird little lump on my neck that didn't hurt at all, but was weird.  He did.  He suggested it was nothing at all but gave me a card of someone I should call "just to be safe".  Fate, my friends, is a powerful thing.  Dr. Fun had just come back after beating cancer.  I didn't know that.

That evening, I sat on a bag of frozen peas in blissful ignorance as the Red Sox were 6 innings into finally beating the dreaded NY Yankees in a playoff series.  It was 4-2 after 7 and Pedro Martinez was done for the night, and the series was over - we win.  The bullpen formula was automatic - the Yankees didn't have a single run against our pen all series.  The Sox added a 5th run in the top of the 8th.  It was over, baby. Then fate and it's awful sense of humor intervened.  Grady Little did the unimaginable - he sent Pedro back out for the 8th.  As dumb as that was, it was ok - we had a three run lead.  Then two.  Then one.  Did he take him out then?  Nope.  Sat there like a cosmic "deer in the headlights" and did nothing.  Zip.  Tie game.  You know what happens next right?  It was destiny.  Bottom of the 11th - Aaron freaking Boone.  Game over.  Yankees win game 7.  I get cancer. 

The point?  The Red Sox have one of the largest global fan bases because misery is bizarrely attractive.  I can't explain it.  It's why we are in IT.  We accept that we are destined to fail.  We are weird.  We like this stuff.

Like many projects we undertake in IT, Red Sox fans knew we would fail.  We knew, but we still did it.  It is some kind of sickness.

On a positive note, the team Red Sox nation grew up with ripping our hearts out year after year somehow dissapeared.  The conversion from joke to superpower was subtle - started with the "clowns" that were fantastic, but we all thought for sure it was just dumb luck.  Then they did it again - with different folks.  Now they are in position to do it yet again - with kids.

IT can get through all this.  It will take kids.  The next generation doesn't know about not being able to do backup or scale systems or all the other things we've gotten so used to not being able to make work inside organizations who have no faith in us and who aren't really interested in doing the right things.  Dustin Pedroia is 3 feet tall and way to young to know he was supposed to fail.  Why? Because his boss is just as young.  The next generation isn't as hung up on what was or why it wasn't - and that's our hope.

The next 10 years of commercial IT will end looking absolutely nothing like it began.  We are that close to being cool again people, hang in there. 

HP buys LeftHand and Quantum Wins Data De-Dupe Suit with Riverbed

HP buys LeftHand - brilliant, and cheap.  $360M cash - not the $1B plus they wanted post Equallogic, but still a good deal.  Why?  It's all software - HP can use it for all their billion legacy server installations with direct attached storage, all their existing storage platforms, and all their new servers.  The fact that LH can run as a hardware free virtual machine application makes it pretty unique.

Interestingly enough, they would have got more money if they had dumped the hardware that goofy Wall St. bankers told them they needed to keep selling in order to have a bigger top line.  Silly Wall St.

It's cool stuff for sure, and HP can leverage it nine ways from Sunday.  It gives them scale-out across their portfolio, and a big advantage specifically to VMware implementations - since they can make DAS work without new storage if necessary.

Quantum settled with Riverbed.  Q gets $11M and they agree to stop suing each other.  Could be Riverbed just tossed them a bone instead of fighting, but that patent Q got from RockSoft seems to be holding up well.  RVBD didn't need to hassle as they are now in the market with their own de-dupe type functions, so the $11M could have been a "go away" play.  Gag orders abound so we'll never know - until the booze starts flying that is.  On second thought, who cares?  Lawyers make me nuts.  Get on with it people.