Update your RSS readers - I've changed my blog address. The new address is http://itdependsblog.com
The new blog has a few changes:
It no longer uses TypePad, which was somewhatdifficult to use. We're making the switch to WordPress, which I hope is better. WordPress should make it easier to create comments. It also has a tag cloud and much better search capabilities. Once we launch our new ESG web site we'll be rolling out some new features that leverage WordPress - you'll hear more from Steve on that in the not-too-distant future.
Your feedback is always welcome. See you at the new site!
A couple of weeks ago my father was rushed to the local emergency room.First things first, he will be okay, but he spent a good week in the Intensive Care Unit. While he was there I really needed a diversion so the waiting and concern wouldn't consume me. Being the geek I am, I occupied my time asking attendants about the way the hospital is using new technology.Much to my delight, I learned that my local, small-town hospital has come a long way over the years.
Let’s start with digital imaging. It is not a new concept; digital mammograms and x-rays are becoming more mainstream, CT and PET scans have been around for years.What is new is that there is no longer a long wait for someone to read and interpret the images. We experienced it first hand, getting test results in the same amount of time that it took to bring dad back to the room from the imaging department.The process is outsourced to an expert who accesses the images over the Internet.I have mixed feelings about that – after all, what do I know about the person reading the image on the other end of the wire?Then I realized: what the heck did I know about the poor overworked local physicians that always used to have stacks of images in front of them, waiting to be read, with people breathing down their necks and urging them to hurry?Nothing.I just have to hope in both cases the hospital has done due diligence to screen doctors and vendors.But wow does the new process speed up diagnosis.It is a follow-the-sun model, with doctors available 24 x 7 to read images; no waiting for the on-call physician to come in, no expensive overtime.Faster and cheaper, thanks to the Internet.
Next is the technology available in the ICU.There is a now a remote camera on the wall opposite the hospital bed, and there are speakers built into the ceiling.Since there is no guarantee a doctor is available to treat every emergency in ICU, there are doctors available remotely.The ICU team can enable the system and get a doctor on the other end of the wire pretty much instantaneously.According to the ICU staff, the remote doctor has controls that allow him or her to swivel the camera, zoom in to extreme close-ups, and provide instructions to the staff that come down from the speakers like the voice of God.Again, would I prefer someone local and in person?Absolutely.But in the event of an emergency, do I want to wait until a doctor is free to treat my father?No way. The new model is cheaper than scheduling extra physicians to be on standby, and faster treatment during busy times and emergencies, thanks to the Internet.
And it’s not just the way the hospital has leveraged technology in the treatment of patients, it is how the hospital has embraced technology to make the overall experience more bearable for the family.Remember the early days of cell phones, when you could not pass through the hospital doors with your cell phone on?Not only could I use the cell phone, the hospital has a Wi-Fi hot spot.In ICU.It was just outside my father’s treatment room door.For a week I sat watch, nearby for doctor’s meetings, available when either of my parents needed me.In the old days I would have spent hours staring at the wall, trying to get lost in a book, and worrying.Work is a wonderful distraction, and while it was difficult to be very productive, I could keep tabs on what was happening in the storage world, keep up with the news, and I even took a couple of conference calls in my little ICU work area.
The sign over the chair indicates the Wi-Fi hot spot.I was about to take a picture of the camera in the treatment room when a doctor came in to discuss treatment options – common sense won out over geekiness and I never got that shot.
So thanks to the staff and team that took such good care of my father – you know who you are.And thank you Tim Berners-Lee and Vinton Cerf.I don’t think they had these uses in mind when they did all the work that led to the modern internet.This is exactly the adaptation of technology Steve was discussing in his recent blog about adapting to the future.We’re seeing new uses for Internet-enabled business every day, but those are subjects for future blogs. Are all these adaptations better than the old ways of doing business? It depends - in this case the question is: do you prefer the comfort of a face-to-face interaction or the speed of instant access? For this use case I'll take the speed every time.
We're now in the process of putting the finishing touches on a new research brief on unified storage adoption and trends. I'll share some with you here - subscribers can read the rest when the brief comes out (I'll add a link when it gets published). For the purposes of our research, we described unified storage as storage that supports both file-based/NAS and block-based/SAN storage.
Of the 338 respondents (North American and Western European storage professional in enterprise-level organizations - i.e. 1,000 or more employees) who replied to our unified storage question, more than two thirds are at some point in the process of evaluating or implementing unified storage. I am not surprised with that number - it makes sense that with the server virtualization, consolidation, and optimization efforts underway that users would also tackle storage unification and consolidation.
It is also no surprise that there is a strong correlation between storage capacity and implementing unified storage - the more capacity, the more likely to unify and move away from storage stovepipes. I do think the data that both vendors and users will find interesting is the primary approach users have taken or will take to unify storage - some 81% of users said that NAS gateways will play a role in unification.
There is always speculation about the health of both EMC and NetApp's NAS gateway businesses, especially from vendors that sell integrated unified storage. Neither company breaks out business results for gateways, but based on what we hear from users, it has been pretty healthy. A good part of the traction is that with gateways, you get to redeploy existing block-based resources in a more efficient manner. And who doesn't want more efficiency, especially nowadays?
Our research show unified storage has momentum, but it is still early. Roughly half of the users we spoke to are still in the planning stage. As over-used as the term "efficiency" is, data suggests that as a big part of the reason for implementing unified storage. And though we didn't ask about ease of use, you can bet that simplifying the storage environment is another reason.
There were two stories in the news that really caught my eye in the past week, one cautionary and the other just for fun. Nothing to do with storage, though both have social media implications, my other passion.
The first story is about a company that reportedly exploits parent's fears of online predators to install spyware on the child's computer. It is sold as a product that monitors a child's online communications and reports back to the parents anything they need to be concerned about. That's great stuff - I have no qualm with that at all. But then it sells the data it gathers about what kids are saying about assorted products and services and sells it (in aggregate) to people that want to exploit your kids. The lesson is one that you'll hear repeatedly: READ THE FINE PRINT! The fact that the company is doing this is outlined in the license agreement, but hey, who reads those? Do you? Or do you just click on "Accept" once you see how long, complex, and legalese they are?
In today's world, it's never been more important to read the fine print - we've (electronically) busted through the traditional boundaries of our homes and offices. We're all interconnected. We should be proactively trying to find out what's done with the information we share, which is now shared among anyone who searches our name on the web and with marketeers that want to get at our pocketbooks. All too often, we learn on the back end, when its reported in the news.
Enough of the soap box. Did everyone catch the story about the carrier pigeon carrying data across a 50-mile stretch of South Africa faster than the local telco could transmit it?
Most cloud storage service providers have well defined service levels that can easily be found on their web sites. The one thing they all seem to have in common is that they discuss service availability, not data availability. Take a look at some of the cloud storage vendor SLAs - I haven't found any that even discuss backup or data availability. You buy capacity, not functionality. The most you get is remote copies for DR in the event of a geographic failure - but restore of deleted files or recovery from data corruption has to be handled by the application, not the cloud storage provider. There are no point-in-time copy or versioning options.
Losing data is bound to happen at some point and creating multiple copies of data at different locations doesn't protect users from data loss that happens from acidental deletes or data corruption; it just deletes the data in multiple places and mirrors the corruption! In today’s cloud storage environment, there is not yet a concept of data protection – all that the consumer purchases is raw capacity – protecting it is typically up to the consumer. This is fine for some tiers of data, but needs to be a core consideration when deciding what can be stored in a public cloud versus building a private cloud and incorporating more functionality (at the corresponding higher price).
I understand that use of big-iron, sophisticated enterprise storage arrays was one factor that helped sink SSPs earlier this decade and that the more functionality that's added in cloud storage, the more costs add up - but costs can be made up in other ways. Steve Duplessie recently wrote about cloud economics and scarcity - in his blog posts, he makes the point that cloud is a perfect model because you only pay for what you use: you have 100% utilization rates! Take power, cooling, floor space, and storage management out of the equation, remove capital outlay for future as well as current capacity, and I'll bet that, even with enhanced functionality, cloud comes out cheaper.
Cloud strorage provider SLAs translated: you can get to the storage 99.9% of the time, but there is no guarantee the data you put on that storage still exists! While I agree with Steve in that the cloud model provides compelling economics and will eventually win out, we're still really early and offerings need to mature before the market gets there.
It has been a couple of weeks between posts because I was on vacation with my three nieces last week, ages eleven, twelve and thirteen ("tweens" - not kids, not yet teens). While the week was really exhausting, (made me grateful to be back at work!) it did provide me with an opportunity to learn how the next generation coming into the workforce is using social media.
My first surprise was that, while the eleven and thirteen year-olds are both exceptionally computer savvy and spend a lot of time on line, neither have even heard of never mind used Facebook or Twitter. MySpace isn't on their radar either. I was instead introduced to a new (to me) social media site called Deviant Art. At first I brushed this off as a site dedicated to artsy types of people, because its primary purpose is sharing art, but it also offers all of those things that are useful in Facebook - communities focused on common interests, the ability to search for and contact friends, photo sharing, live chat and attracts over 4.5 million unique users a month. No need to delve into Facebook for these kids, they have everything they need at Deviant Art. Makes me wonder how many other niche sites are out there with millions of users that will never want or need Facebook or Twitter.
My second surprise was that the very shy thirteen year old is not at all shy on line. She has an entire network of friends that share common interests in art - specifically Manga. Brag time - she is a very talented artist, so it makes sense that when given the opportunity to socialize and share with other artists she does. But I was surprised that, as shy as she is, she puts herself and her art out there for others to see and critique.
I used to feel young and hip using Twitter and Facebook until I learned that women over 50 are the fastest growing Facebook demographic. Now that I see blank looks when I talk to my niece's generation about Facebook and Twitter I feel old and out of touch. This all makes me wonder how we will communicate twenty or even ten years down the road. Are we headed for a time when little communication will take place in person, face-to-face, not because on-line is more convenient, but because we are training our children to communicate that way? On one hand, the anonymity of the web provides a feeling of safety, you can put yourself out there but still feel hidden. It helps build confidence if used in a positive light, and I see the sense of confidence it has instilled in my niece when she shows me her work - she really comes out of her shell. But I'm still pretty old fashioned and believe a handshake and an opportunity to look someone in the eye and connect on an interpersonal level builds longer, stronger business relationships.
Today LSI announced that it is jumping into the NAS market with both feet through its acquisition of ONStor. This acquisition follows closely behind HP's acquisition of clustered file system vendor IBRIX. Why all the action on the NAS front? Well, thanks to the economy, there are certainly deals to be had. In a down economy, smaller independent companies have a tough time as end-users tend to stick with the larger, more stable vendors and to reduce the number of vendors they do business with. That is creating a much tougher environment for the little guys. As a result, we start to see deal like this one.LSI is able to steal good solid proven NAS functionality for peanuts. As Mark Peters points out in his blog -LSI adds this with no real downside, and potentially some nice upside as they haven’t had any real play in this market previously. At this price, there is no real risk with this deal financially.
With the number of good deals to be had, why the NAS flurry?As I pointed out in my blog a few weeks back, archive data growth, which is a good indicator of overall data growth trends, shows file archive data is far outpacing growth of database and email archives - take a look at the comparison:
Getting into the file market is a good move for LSI - it is a growth market. The ONStor portfolio is complementary to LSI's existing storage portfolio, adding a file front end to its high speed block back end. And LSI has proven it can acquire technology and turn it into a growth business; they did it with StoreAge. They were able to make hay with a cheap investment into StoreAge and now have the likes of HP leveraging those tools. This looks similar.
This is not likely the last we'll hear on the acquisition front. With all the noise Dell has been making about acquiring to drive growth, we're all expecting it to make a move in the near future. Will it be a NAS play? Possibly - there are still deals to be had and, with the growth of file data compared to e-mail and database, it's an attractive market.
A two-and-a-half (or so) minute take we filmed last Friday with more thoughts on HP's IBRIX acquisition - for those of you who'd rather watch or listen than read!
This is a great deal for HP. It gives HP a high-performance scale-out NAS file system that scales to thousands of nodes. IBRIX’s segmented file systems and distributed metadata structure make it very complimentary to the Lefthand scale-out block storage platform. ESG Lab has done several tests with IBRIX and seen near linear scale with almost no performance degradation as the file system grows, excellent performance for both large and small files, and the systems is fairly easy to set up and manage.Complexity was an adoption inhibitor for IBRIX prior to 2008, but IBRIX tackled the issue taking the only major inhibitor off the table.The challenge for IBRIX is (was) routes to market.IBRIX is resold by EMC, HP and Dell, and has an install base of over 175 customers, but as a third party add on it didn’t get a lot of attention from any of the sales forces; the HP acquisition gives it a clean route to market and the full power of HP to continue to invest and grow the install base.Despite the route to market challenges, IBRIX has some excellent reference customers and claims to have installations supporting sustained IOPS of over a million, and clusters over 8PB and 40 billion files.
You may remember that HP bought scale-out NAS vendor PolyServe back in 2007, and has been trumpeting PolyServe as its scale-out NAS solution for HPC, media and entertainment, and cloud. The challenge with PolyServe is that it is very complex to configure and manage at scale (though with the appliancized ExDS 9100, which ESG Labs has also tested, HP has done a good job of simplifying setup, management and administration), while it can scale pretty high it caps out at 820TB (raw) and 16 nodes, it does not quite meet the multi-PB scale and performance requirements and diverse data types for HPC, media and entertainment, and cloud. So the new PolyServe position is to meet NAS requirements for capacity-optimized bulk storage – a better fit.The HP NAS portfolio now has gateways, Windows Storage Server, PolyServe for “capacity-optimized NAS” and IBRIX for performance (fast access to lots of files, massive scale, diverse data types/file sizes).
While I think this agreat deal and highly complementary to HP’s strategy of building a converged infrastructure with layered applications, software and data services, it is inevitable that there will continue to be many questions about the future of PolyServe and how it is being positioned. IBRIX can do everything PolyServe can, and a lot more. The price tag, while undisclosed, is most likely not material enough to make this big issue, but I would not be surprised if PolyServe eventually went away and those functions rolled in to the IBRIX base. In the meantime, it doesn’t really matter all that much. No matter what, HP now has some very compelling file system functionality at its disposal that is proven to add-value across a broad spectrum of their offerings.
Scale-out NAS is the future.ESG research from late 2008 showed that 75% of those surveyed – enterprise data center types – were either planning to implement scale-out NAS within twelve months or investigating the technology, and 11% had already implemented.That’s 86% with scale-out on the radar - a big opportunity for scale-out vendors.Operational savings is key – and that’s what scale-out brings to the table.And there is no scale-out incumbent to unseat – the market is wide open and a number of vendors are chasing it.This acquisition puts HP in a strong position to take advantage of the coming scale-out wave.
Opening night did well, Friday night's take topped $14M. With the strong opening night, the pundits projected a $50M weekend, but the entire weekend take barely cleared $30M. Why the tail off? According to some, it was the Twitter effect. Early Twitter reviews of the movie were, to put it mildly, not that good. In one of the articles, author Sharon Waxman claims that thanks to the speed at which word of mouth travels in social media, "the weekend box office has now shrunk to a single day: Friday." What used to take a week or so to become broadly disseminated - movie reviews - now happens in real time from real people, and the business impact is immediate. Think about it - could Twitter have actually cost Bruno's backers $20M in revenue?
We all saw an example of Social Media's impact in the storage world a month or two ago when HDS was trounced by the storage industry Twitterati as lacking depth and sufficient substance for all the buzz it was making when it announced its High Availability Manager. Many in the storage world expected a new platform or major platform refresh - so an announcement about front end clustering fell short. Thanks to Twitter, HDS was immediately placed on the defensive and was attacked from all angles. At that time, Steve blogged about the speed and efficiency of Twitter as a platform to instantly get the word out about something - anything - and the beating HDS was taking. The fact that HDS never set false expectations didn’t matter – for whatever reason, certain people expected certain things and when it didn’t happen, they found that they had an immediate means to voice their disapproval.But I don't think the full meaning of what happened really hit home for me until I saw the actual dollar impact of a stream of negative tweets, granted its based on a consumer market - movie theater revenue - but there is a lesson to be learned here about the power of instant mass communication.
Last week, we saw a more positive Twitter impact (is that a Twimpact?) when Rackspace had an outage and used Twitter as a mass communications platform to keep users apprised of the actions it was taking and the status of its data center. The bad news though, thanks to Twitter, an awful lot of people knew about the outage immediately. But Rackspace used social media to its full advantage and communicated openly, honestly, and often, probably saving thousands of dollars in avoided call center incident handling and tracking. Rackspace's transparency means a lot, it creates an atmosphere of trust. We all know that no technology is perfect, but it is not the failures that make or break companies, it is how the failures are handled that does.
The potential social media impact is unprecedented, in both a positive and negative sense: it is the telephone game on steroids. A lot of companies understand the possible impact of social media, it has become a permanent fixture in both our personal and professional lives, but we all still have a lot to learn.
