Category: IT Industry Activity

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Removing complexity and cost to drive return on innovation the new ROI

Storage I/O trends

Removing complexity and cost to drive return on innovation the new ROI

There is no such thing as an information recession however there the realities of economic challenges in IT data centers also known as information factories.

Likewise, people and data are living longer with increased dependency on information being available and reliable when needed. Hence the need for data infrastructures that protect, preserve and serve information in a cost-effective productive way.

Return on innovation, the new ROI, doing more with what you have without compromise
Driving return on innovation (the new ROI) to support growth

A common challenge for organizations of all size is how to support business and data growth while working within budget constraints without compromising on customer service expectations. Simply cutting cost at the price of reliability, availability, serviceability or performance is not an option for most environments.

Driving data center and data infrastructure sustainability

The solution is to find and remove complexity and thus remove costs. How to carry out the above goal is to leverage various tools and techniques to streamline IT and data infrastructures in creative ways.

Cloud, virtual and traditional computing building blocks image, servers, storage, networking hardware and software
Core IT building blocks (servers, storage and networking, hardware and software)

With data storage along with servers, networks and associated software management tools being the fundamental building blocks for traditional, virtual and cloud environments, it makes sense to apply some focus there.

How you use different tools and technologies to address various challenges while enabling your organization to be more effective and productive will decide your return on innovation, the new ROI. The new ROI is a companion reflecting qualitative business benefits vs. traditional black and white quantitative spreadsheet numbers based indicators.

garbage in, garbage out roi tco
Watch out for Garbage In, Garbage Out ROI and TCO analysis

Return on innovation reflects how various tools and technologies, joined with different processes, procedures, and best practices and people skills are combined to address a problem or challenge and enable some benefit. An example is deploying storage optimization techniques to support growth by finding and removing complexities, boosting effectiveness (as well as efficiency) without negatively affecting productivity.

Where financial based ROI looks at a number that may show impacts to customer service, return on innovation highlights the business benefit (e.g. perhaps non-financial) such as getting more work done in same amount of time or keeping customers satisfied.

Keep in mind, that when you can find and remove complexity, cost savings are the usual benefit vs. finding and moving or masking problems that end up costing more over time.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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StorageIO data infrastructure industry vendors links page updated with over 1,200 entries

Storage I/O trends

StorageIO data infrastructure industry vendors links page updated with over 1,200 entries

Is your company, organization or one that you are a fan of, or represent listed on the StorageIO industry links page?

The StorageIO industry links page has been updated with over thousand different industry related companies, vendors, vars, trade groups, part and solution suppliers along with cloud and managed service providers. The common theme with these industry links is information and data infrastructures which means severs, storage, IO and networking, hardware, software, applications and tools, services, products and related items for traditional, virtual and cloud environments.

The industry links page is accessed from the StorageIO main web page via the Tools and Links menu tab, or via the URL https://storageio.com/links. An example of the StorageIO industry links page is shown below with six different menu tabs in alphabetical order.

storage I/O and data infrastructure cloud, virtual and software defined links

Know of a company, service or organization that is not listed on the links page, if so, send an email note to info at storageio.com. If your company or organization is listed, contact StorageIO to discuss how to expand your presence on the links page and other related options.

Visit the updated StorageIO industry links page and watch for more updates, and click here to learn more about the links page.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Part II Until the focus expands to data protection – What to do about it

Storage I/O trends

Part II – Until the focus expands to data protection – What to do about it

This is the second of a three-part series (read part I here) about how vendors are keeping backup alive, however what they can and should do to shift and expand the conversation to data protection and related themes.

Modernizing data protection and what to do about it

Building off of what was mentioned in the first post, lets take a look at what can be done including expanding the conversation around data protection in support of business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), high availability (HA), business resiliency (BR) not to mention helping backup to actually retire (someday). Now when I backup retire, I’m not necessarily talking about a technology such as hardware, software or a service including clouds, rather when, where, why and how data gets protected. What I mean by this is to step back from looking at the tools and technologies to how they are used and can be used in new and different ways moving forward.

People convergenceStorageIO people convergence
Converged people and technology teams

All to often I see where new technologies or tools get used in old ways which while providing some near-term relief, the full capabilities of what is being used may not be fully realized. This also ties into the theme of people not technologies can be a barrier to convergence and transformation that you can read more about here and here.

Whats your data protection strategy, business or technology focused?

expand focus beyond tools
Data protection strategy evolving beyond tools looking for a problem to solve

Part of modernizing data protection is getting back to the roots or fundamentals including revisiting business needs, requirements along with applicable threat risks to then align application tools, technologies and techniques. This means expanding focus from just the technology, however also more importantly how to use different tools for various scenarios. In other words having a tool-box and know how to use it vs. everything looking like a nail as all you have is a hammer. Check out various webinars, Google+ hangouts and other live events that I’m involved with on the StorageIO.com events page on data protection and related data infrastructure themes including BackupU (getting back to the basics and fundamentals).

data protection options

Everything is not the same, leverage different data protection approaches to different situations

Wrap up (for now)

Continue reading part three of this series here to see what can be done (taking action) about shifting the conversation about modernizing data protection. Also check out conversations about trends, themes, technologies, techniques perspectives in my ongoing data protection diaries discussions (e.g. www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/).

Ok, nuff said

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

 

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Until the focus expands to data protection, backup is staying alive!

Storage I/O trends

Until the focus expands to data protection, backup is staying alive!

This is the first of a three-part series discussing how and why vendors are keeping backup alive, read part two here.

Some vendors, Value Added Resellers (VARs), pundits (consultants, analysts, media, bloggers) and their followers want backup to not only be declared dead, they also want to attend (or send flowers) to the wake and funeral not to mention proof of burial so to speak.

Yet many of these same vendors, VARs and their pundits also are helping or causing backup to staying alive.

Sure there are plenty of discussion including industry adoption and customer deployment around modernizing backup and data protection that are also tied to disaster recovery (DR), business continuance (BC), high availability (HA) and business resiliency (BR).

On the other hand the usual themes are around talking about product or technology deployment to modernize backup by simply swapping out hardware (e.g. disk for tape, cloud for disk), applying data footprint reduciton (DFR) including archiving, compression and dedupe or, another common scenario of switching from one vendors tool to another.

How vendors are helping backup staying alive?

One of the routine things I hear from vendors among others is that backup needs to move from the 70’s or 80’s or 90’s to the current era when the John Travolta and Oliva Newton John movie Saturday Night Fever and the Bee Gees song "Stayin Alive" appeared (click here to hear the song via Amazon).

Stayin Alive Image via Amazon.com

Some vendors keep talking and using the term backup instead of expanding the conversation to data protection that includes backup/restore, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR) along with archiving and security. Now let’s be that we can not expect something like backup to be removed from the vocabulary overnight as its been around for decades, hence it will take time.

IMHO: The biggest barrier to moving away from backup is the industry including vendors, their pundits, press/media, vars and customers who continue to insist on using or referring to back up vs. expanding the conversation to data protection. – GS @StorageIO

Until there’s a broad focus on shifting to and using the term data protection including backup, BC, DR and archiving, people will simply keep referring to what they know, read or hear (e.g. backup). On the other hand if the industry starts putting more focus on using data protection with backup, people will stat following suit using the two and over time backup as a term can fade away.

Taking a step back to move forward

Some of the modernizing backup discussions is actually focused on take a step back to reconsider why, when, where, how and with what different applications, systems and data gets protected. certainly there are the various industry trends, challenges and opportunities some of which are shown below including more facts to protect, preserve and service for longer periods of time.

Likewise there are various threat risks or scenarios to protect information assets from or against, not all of which are head-line news making event situations.

data protection threat risk scenarios

Not all threat risks are headline news making events

There is an old saying in and around backup/restore, BC, DR, BR and HA of never letting a disaster go to waste. What this means is that if you have never noticed, there is usually a flurry of marketing and awareness activity including conversations about why you should do something BC, DR and other data protection activities right around, or shortly after a disaster scenario. However not all disasters or incidents are headline news making events and hence there should be more awareness every day vs. just during disaster season or situations. In addition, this also means expanding the focus on other situations that are likely to occur including among others those in the following figure.

data protection headline news and beyond

Continue reading part two of this series here to see what can be done about shifting the conversation about modernizing data protection. Also check out conversations about trends, themes, technologies, techniques perspectives in my ongoing data protection diaries discussions (e.g. www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/).

Ok, nuff said

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Part III Until the focus expands to data protection – Taking action

Storage I/O trends

Part III – Until the focus expands to data protection – Taking action

This is the thrid of a three-part series (read part II here) about how vendors are keeping backup alive, however what they can and should do to shift and expand the conversation to data protection and related themes.

Modernizing is more than simply swapping one technology for another

As I have said for a couple of years now, modernizing data protection, or data protection modernization if you prefer is more than simply deduping or swapping out media, mediums, tape, disk, clouds, software or services like a recurring flat tire on an automobile. If you keep getting flat tires, instead of treating the symptom, find and fix the problem which means for backup, taking a step back and realizing that what is really being done is protecting data (e.g. data protection).

Granted the security people may not like sharing the term data protection as some of them prefer to keep that unique, just like some of the compliance people want to keep archiving exclusive to their focus areas, however lets move on.

On the other hand, data protection also means that, protect, preserve and enable data and information to be accessed and served when and were needed in a cost-effective way with consistency and coherency.

Sure there is still the act of making a copy or a backup at time intervals (frequency) with various coverage (how much gets copied) to multiple locations (copies) with versions kept for different amounts of time (retention) to support RTO and RPO, not to mention SLA and SLO for ITSM (how’s that for some buzzword bingo ;).

Buzzword bingo

This means using copies, sync (or rsync), snapshots, replication and CDP, discrete copies such as backups along with all the other buzzword bingo enabling tools, technologies and techniques (e.g. Agent or Agent less, Archive, Availability zones. Not to mention Bare metal, virtual bare metal, Block based, CDP, Compression, Consolidation, Deletion, Data management, Dedupe, eDiscovery, durability, erasure coding/parity, file level, meta data and policy management, replication, snapshots, RAID, plugin, object storage, NAS, VTL, disk, tape, cloud, virtual among others). In addition to taking a step back, this also means rethinking why, how, when, where data (and information) gets protected to meet various threat risks as well as diverse business requirements.

Storage I/O toolbox
No tools in the toolbox (physical, virtual or cloud)

Part of the rethinking is expanding the focus from what are the tools, who makes what’s, how do they work, their features and functions to how to use the tool or technology for different things.

Storage I/O backup and data protection tools
Various tools (hardware, software, services) for different physical, virtual and cloud tasks

This is like going into a store like Lowe’s or Home Depot and talking to the sales people their (ok, associates or team members) who can tell you everything thing there is to know about the tool or technology, however they can’t tell you how to use it.

Sometimes you can get lucky and there will be somebody working at the tool (hardware or software) store who will ask you what you are trying to do and give you advice based on their experience of a different approach with another tool or tools and some supporting material or parts and supplies.

Does this sound familiar to data infrastructure or IT in general, not to mention server, storage, backup and data protection among other areas of interest?

If all you have, or know how to use is a hammer, then everything or situation starts to look like a nail. Expand your toolbox with more tools AND learn how to use or apply them in new and different ways. Align the right tool, technology and technique to the task at hand!

Expand from talking new technology to using new (and old) things in new ways

In addition to focusing on new tools and technology along with their associated terminologies across physical, virtual and cloud environments, it is also time to expand the discussion and awareness to using new (and old) things in new ways. This also means expanding the terminology from backup/restore to more comprehensive data protection as part of modernizing your environment.

For example some people (and vendors) use the term or phrase "Modernizing Data Protection" to mean swap out tape for disk, or disk for cloud, or one cloud for another cloud, or upgrade from one software version to another, or simply swap one vendors software or tool for another, yet continue to use it for all practical purposes in the same way.

Sure, moving from hourly or daily copies to tape over to direct to disk and then either redeploying tape where it is better suited (streaming large amounts of data, powering off to save energy, e.g. deep cold archive). This also means leveraging fast random access to small files that need to be recovered (usually within first hours or days of being protected).

technology alignment
Aligning tools, technologies, techniques to various threat risk scenarios

Modernizing data protection (also known as transformation) also means recognizing that not everything is the same in the data center or information factory regardless of size, and that there are also different and evolving data access patterns. Another reason and trend to consider is that there is no such thing as an information recession and that people plus data are living longer as well as getting larger.

Expand your awareness and focus beyond simply knowing what the tools are and who makes them to how, when, where, why along with pros/cons of using them to discuss different situations. This means having multiple tools in your data protection toolbox as well as knowing how to use different tools for various tasks instead of always using a hammer. – GS @StorageIO

data protection continuum
The data protection continuum, more than tools and technoligiues

Call to action, stop talking about it, start walking the talk

If you or somebody else is tired of hearing about backup, then stop complaining about it and take some action. Following are some things to expand your thinking, awareness, discussions and activities around modernizing data protection (and moving beyond traditional backup).

  • Take a step back and check the basics or fundamentals of data protection which when enabled, allows your organization to move forward after a small or big incident (or disaster).
  • Start thinking beyond backup tools and technologies (hardware, software, services) particular how its been done, to why it needs to be done, how can it be done differently.
  • Revisit why you are protecting different things, realize that not everything is the same, so does that mean you have to protect everything the same way?
  • Learn about how to use different tools and technologies which is different from learning about the tools, features and functions.
  • Also keep in mind that a barrier is often people and process (along with organizational politics) that also result in new (and old) technologies being used in old ways.
  • Think about using different tools and technologies in different e.g. hybrid ways.
  • This means start using new (and old) tools, techniques, techniques in new ways, start to apply your return on innovation by using things to discuss issues, vs. simply using them for the sake of using them.

In addition to the above items, here are some added links on various topics and themes mentioned here:

BackupU – Vendor and technology neutral series of on-line webinars, Google+ hangouts, book chapter downloads and other content (Sponsored by Dell Data Protection Software, that’s a disclosure btw )

Via StorageIOblog – Only You Can Prevent Cloud Data Loss,
Cloud conversations: confidence, certainty and confidentiality,
Modernizing data protection with certainty,
More Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) Material,
More modernizing data protection, virtualization and clouds with certainty,
EMC Evolves Enterprise Data Protection with Enhancements and Data protection modernization, more than swapping out media.

Via StorageIO Reports/Resources Page – backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving available here including presentations and book chapter downloads

Via Internet evolution – People, Not Tech, Prevent IT Convergence.

Closing comments (for now)

Now having said all of that, It would be unrealistic to think that we can simply overnight drop the term backup and switch to data protection, after all, we need backwards compatibility. However until the industry which means from vendors, their pundits (analyst, bloggers, consultants, evangelists), press/media, vars, investors and customers start thinking and speaking in the broader context of data protection, life beyond backup, guess what, we will still be talking about backup. Start calling it (e.g. backup) data protection and perhaps within a generation (or sooner), the term backup will have been ILM, compressed, deduped, tiered, spun down, put into deep cold archive storage to take a long REST on object storage with a NAS interface in a software defined hybrid virtualized cloud ;).

Watch for more data protection conversations about related trends, themes, technologies, techniques perspectives in my ongoing data protection diaries discussions (e.g. www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/).

Ok, nuff said

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Data Protection Diaries – My data protection needs and wants

Storage I/O trends

Blog post: Data Protection Diaries – My data protection needs and wants

Update 1/10/18

Rather than talking about what others should do or consider for their data protection needs, for this post I wrote down some notes using my Livescribe about what I need and want for my environment. As part of walking the talk in future posts I’m going to expand a bit more on what I’m doing as well as considering for enhancements to my environment for data protection which consists of cloud, virtual and physical.

Why and what am I Protecting?

live scribe example
Livescribe notes that I used for creating the following content

What is my environment

Server and StorageIO (aka StorageIO) is a small business that is focused in and around data infrastructures which includes data protection as a result, have lots of data including videos, audio, images, presentations, reports, research as well, file serving as back-office applications.  Then there are websites, blog, email and related applications, some of which are cloud based that are also part of my environment that have different availability, durable, and accessibility requirements.

My environment includes local on-site physical as well as virtual systems, mobile devices, as well as off-site resources including a dedicated private server (DPS) at a service provider. On one hand as a small business, I could easily move most if not everything into the cloud using an as a service model. However, I also have a lab and research environment for doing various things involving data infrastructure including data protection so why not leverage those for other things.

Why do I need to protect my information and data infrastructure?

  • Protect and preserve the business along with associated information as well as assets
  • Compliance (self and client based, PCI and other)
  • Security (logical and physical) and privacy to guard against theft, loss, instrusions
  • Logical (corruption, virus, accidental deletion) and physical damage to systems, devices, applications and data
  • Isolate and contain faults of hardware, software, networks, people actions from spreading to disasters
  • Guard against on-site or off-site incidents, acts of man or nature, head-line news and non head-line news
  • Address previous experience, incidents and situations, preventing future issues or problems
  • Support growth while enabling agility, flexibity
  • Walk the talk, research, learning increasing experience

My wants – What I would like to have

  • Somebody else pay for it all, or exist in world where there are no threat risks to information (yeh right ;) )
  • Cost effective and value (not necessarily the cheapest, I also want it to work)
  • High availability and durability to protect against different threat risks (including myself)
  • Automated, magically to take care of everything enabled by unicorns and pixie dust ;).

My requirements – What I need (vs. want):

  • Support mix of physical, virtual and cloud applications, systems and data
  • Different applications and data, local and some that are mobile
  • Various operating environments including Windows and Linux
  • NOT have to change my environment to meet limits of a particular solution or approach
  • Need a solution (s) that fit my needs and that can scale, evolve as well as enable change when my environment does
  • Also leverage what I have while supporting new things

Data protection topics, trends, technologies and related themes

Wrap and summary (for now)

Taking a step back to look at a high-level of what my data protection needs are involves looking at business requirements along with various threat risks, not to mention technical considerations. In a future post I will outline what I am doing as well as considering for enhancements or other changes along with different tools, technologies used in hybrid ways. Watch for more posts in this ongoing series of the data protection dairies via www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Welcome to the Data Protection Diaries

Updated 1/10/2018

Storage I/O trends

Welcome to the Data Protection Diaries

This is a series of posts about data protection which includes security (logical and physical), backup/restore, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), business resiliency (BR) along with high availability (HA), archiving and related topic themes, technologies and trends.

Think of data protection like protect, preserve and serve information across cloud, virtual and physical environments spanning traditional servers, storage I/O networking along with mobile (ok, some IoT as well), SOHO/SMB to enterprise.

Getting started, taking a step back

Recently I have done a series of webinars and Google+ hangouts as part of the BackupU initiative brought to you by Dell Software (that’s a disclosure btw ;) ) that are vendor and technology neutral. Instead of the usual vendor product or technology focused seminars and events, these are about getting back to the roots, the fundamentals of what to protect when and why, then decide your options as well as different approaches (e.g. what tools to use when).

In addition over the past year (ok, years) I have also been doing other data protection related events, seminars, workshops, articles, tips, posts across cloud, virtual and physical from SOHO/SMB to enterprise. These are in addition to the other data infrastructure server and storage I/O stuff (e.g. SSD, object storage, software defined, big data, little data, buzzword bingo and others).

Keep in mind that in the data center or information factory everything is not the same as there are different applications, threat risk scenarios, availability and durability among other considerations. In this series like the cloud conversations among others, I’m going to be pulling various data protection themes together hopefully to make it easier for others to find, as well as where I know where to get them.

data protection diaries
Some notes for an upcoming post in this series using my Livescribe about data protection

Data protection topics, trends, technologies and related themes

Here are some more posts to checkout pertaining to data protection trends, technologies and perspectives:

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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IT and data center sustainability, the other convergence zone

Storage I/O trends

IT and data center sustainability convergence

Recently Hailey Lynne McKeefry (@HaileyMcK), Editor in Chief over at Data Center Acceleration (@DataAccelerate) reached out for a conversation about well, data center themes and topics. Given Hailey’s background in covering technology as well as business supply chain we somehow ended up talking about business, IT and data center sustainability. Hailey wrote a piece about Driving for Datacenter Sustainability and in addition I was honored to be an invited guest for a live on-line chat yesterday (you can view the conversation here).

Excerpt from Haileys piece:

Too often, sustainability efforts in the datacenter are written off as feel-good, public relations efforts. In reality, green is about economics — and done well, it can save the datacenter tons of cash.

"You mention green, and datacenter managers run or cringe and roll their eyes, because there’s been so much green washing done in the past few years," said Greg Schulz, founder of IT consultancy StorageIO. "It’s really about green economics, though, and getting more work done with the same budget."

Read more of Hailey’s piece here

Many different faces of IT and data center sustainability

Granted, when you here the term sustainability, IT and data centers you may think of different things depending on your view or area of focus.

For some it will be Green or environmental focused such as use of renewable and EH&S themes, recycling among others Related to the previous item some will see sustainability as being tied to energy, either tied to cost, availability/accessibility, standby or alternative and renewable Yet for others, it will mean business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), business resiliency (BR), high availability or reliability availability service (RAS) among others Then the economics concerns of keeping the business running to discuss top and bottom line concerns.

Otoh, if your focus is on one of the above or a subset of one of them, you might not view the other areas as being tied to sustainability.

It data center sustainability

Likewise, you might even want to not be included in another other, let alone share your area with others. For example if your focus is on security you may not want to see or hear that data protection is part of sustainability, not to mention backup/restore, bc, dr and so forth.

Learning, education and knowledge sustainability

Part of sustainability is also continuing to learn about new things not only in your field or focus area, also in adjacent spaces.

Keep in mind that there is more of a data center or information factory than just a building or facility with power, cooling as there are the technologies, tools, people, process, delivery/distribution network, warehouse for storing raw and finished material, metrics and management that all go into delivering the product which is information services.

Hence there are many aspects to IT and data center sustainability and thus think more pragmatically about sustaining information factories, however lets also be realistic and not jump the shark by declaring everything as sustainable ;).

Check out the live talk chat that we had yesterday over at Data Center Acceleration by clicking here.

Some related more reading:
Green IT, Green Gap, Tiered Energy and Green Myths
The new Green IT: Efficient, Effective, Smart and Productive
Saving Money with Green IT: Time To Invest In Information Factories
PUE, Are you Managing Power, Energy or Productivity?
Green IT deferral blamed on economic recession might be result of green gap
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) – Intel Recommended Reading List
Driving for Datacenter Sustainability
Live Chat 01/23: Building the Sustainable Datacenter

Ok, nuff said

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2014

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Lenovo buys IBM’s xSeries aka x86 server business, what about EMC?

Storage I/O trends

Lenovo buys IBM’s xSeries x86 server business for $2.3B USD, what about EMC?

Once again Lenovo is new owner of some IBM computer technology, this time by acquiring the x86 (e.g. xSeries) server business unit from big blue. Today Lenovo announced its plan to acquire the IBM x86 server storage business unit for $2.3B USD.

Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and Armonk, New York – January 23, 2014

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have entered into a definitive agreement in which Lenovo plans to acquire IBM’s x86 server business. This includes System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations. The purchase price is approximately US$2.3 billion, approximately two billion of which will be paid in cash and the balance in Lenovo stock.

IBM will retain its System z mainframes, Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power-based Flex servers, and PureApplication and PureData appliances.

Read more here

If you recall (or didn’t’t know) around a decade or so ago IBM also spun off its Laptop (e.g. Thinkpads) and workstation business unit to Lenovo after being one of the early PC players (I still have a model XT in my collection along with Mac SE and Newton).

What this means for IBM?

What this means is that IBM is selling off a portion of its systems technology group which is where the servers, storage and related hardware, software technologies report into. Note however that IBM is not selling off its entire server portfolio, only the x86 e.g. Intel/AMD based products that make up the xSeries as well as companion Blade and related systems. This means that IBM is retaining its Power based systems (and processors) that include the pSeries, iSeries and of course the zSeries mainframes  in addition to the storage hardware/software portfolio.

However as part of this announcement, Lenovo is also licensing from IBM the Storwize/V7000 technology as well as tape summit resources, GPFS based scale out file systems used in SONAS and related products that are part of solution bundles tied to the x86 business.

Again to be clear, IBM is not selling off (or at least at this time) Storwize, tape or other technology to Lenovo other than x86 server business. By server business, this means the technology, patents, people, processes, products, sales, marketing, manufacturing, R&D along with other entities that form the business unit, not all that different from when IBM divested the workstation/laptop aka PC business in the past.

Storage I/O trends

What this means for Lenovo?

What Lenovo gets are an immediate (once the deal closes) expansion of their server portfolio including high-density systems for cloud, HPC as well as regular enterprise, not to mention also for SME and SMB. Lenovo also gets blade systems as well as converged systems (server, storage, networking, hardware, software) hence why IBM is also licensing some technology to Lenovo that it is not selling. Lenovo also gets the sales, marketing, design, support and other aspects to also expand their server business. By gaining the server business unit, Lenovo will now be in a place to take on Dell (who was also rumored to be in the market for the IBM servers), as well as HP, Oracle and other x86 system based suppliers.

What about EMC and Lenovo?

Yes, EMC, that storage company who is also a primary owner of VMware, as well as partner with Cisco and Intel in the VCE initiatives, not to mention who also entered into a partnership with Lenovo a year or so ago.

In case you forgot or didn’t’t know, EMC after breaking up with Dell, entered into a partnership with Lenovo back in 2012.

This partnership and initiatives included developing servers that in turn EMC could use for their various storage and data appliances which continue to leverage x86 type technology. In addition, that agreement found the EMC Iomega brand transitioning over into the Lenovo line-up for both domestic North America, as well as international including the chinese market. Hence I have an older Iomega IX4 that says EMC, and a newer one that says EMC/Lenovo, also note that at CES a few weeks ago, some new Iomega products were announced.

In checking with Lenovo today, they indicated that it is business as usual and no changes with or to the EMC partnership.

Via email from Lenovo spokesperson today:

A key piece to Lenovo’s Enterprise strategy has always included strong partnerships. In fact today’s announcements reinforce that strategy very clearly.

Given the new scale, footprint and Enterprise credibility that this server acquisition affords Lenovo, we see great opportunity in offering complimentary storage offerings to new and existing customers.

Lenovo’s partnership with EMC is multifaceted and stays in-tact as an important part of Lenovo’s overall strategy to offer customers compelling solutions built on world-class technology.

Lenovo will continue to offer Lenovo/EMC NAS products from our joint venture as well as resell EMC stand-alone storage platforms.

IBM Storwize storage and other products are integral to the in-scope platforms and solutions we acquired. In order to ensure continuity of business and the best customer experience we will partner with IBM for storage products as well.

We believe this is a great opportunity for all three companies, but most importantly these partnerships are in place and will remain healthy for the benefit for our customers.

Hence it is my opinion that for now it is business as usual, the IBM x8x business unit has a new home, those people will be getting new email addresses and business cards similar to how some of their associates did when the PC group was sold off a few years ago.

Otoh, there may also be new products that might become opportunities to be placed into he Lenovo EMC partnership, however that is just my speculation at this time. Likewise while there will be some groups within Lenovo focused on selling the converged Lenovo solutions coming from IBM that may in fact compete with EMC (among others) in some scenarios, that should be no more and hopefully less than what IBM has with their server groups at times competing with themselves.

Storage I/O trends

What does this mean for Cisco, Dell, HP and others?

For Cisco, instead of competing with one of their OEMs (e.g. IBM) for networking equipment (note IBM also owns some of its own networking), the server competition shifts to Lenovo who is also a Cisco partner (its called coopitition), and perhaps business as usual in many areas. For Dell, in the mid-market space, things could get interesting and the Round Rock folks need to get creative and beyond VRTX.

For HP, this is where IMHO it’s going to get really interesting as Lenovo gets things transitioned. Near-term, HP could have a disruptive upper hand, however longer-term, HP has to get their A-Game on. Oracle is in the game as are a bunch of others from Fujitsu to SuperMicro to outside of North America and in particular china there is also Huawei. Back to EMC and VCE, while I expect the Cisco partnership to stay, I also see a wild card where EMC can leverage their Lenovo partnership into more markets, while Cisco continues to move into storage and other adjacent areas (e.g. more coopitition).

What this means now and going forward?

Thus this is as much about enterprise, SME, SMB as it is HPC, cloud and high-density where the game is about volume. Likewise there is also the convergence or data infrastructure angle combing server, storage, networking hardware, software and services.

One of the things I have noticed about Lenovo as a customer using ThinkPads for over 13 years now (not the same one) is that while they are affordable, instead of simply cutting cost and quality, they seem to have found ways to remove cost which is different then simply cutting to go cheap.

Case in point about a year and a half ago I dropped my iPhone on my Lenovo X1 keyboard that is back-lit and broke a key. Calling Lenovo after trying to find a replacement key on the web, they said no worries and next morning a new keyboard for the laptop was on my doorstep by 10:30Am with instructions on how to remove the old, put in the new, and do the RMA, no questions asked (read more about this here).

The reason I mention that story about my X1 laptop is that it ties to what I’m curious and watching with their soon to be expanded new server business.

Will they go in and simply look to reduce cost by making cuts from design to manufacturing to part quality, service and support, or, find ways to remove complexity and cost while providing more value?

Now I wonder whose technology will join my HP and Dell systems to fill some empty rack space in the not so distant future to support growth?

Time will tell, congratulations to Lenovo and the IBMers who now have a new home best wishes.

Ok, nuff said

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

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Securing your information assets and data, what about your storage?

Storage I/O trends

Securing your information assets and data, what about your storage?

Recently I did a piece over at the site Information Security Buzz title How Secure Is Your Data Storage? that takes a cursory look at securing your digital assets from a storage perspective. Keep in mind that data protection can mean many things to different people from various focus or technology domain perspectives. Likewise there are various threat risks to protect against and, not all of them are head-line news making events.

data protection threat risk scenarios

Protecting data and data protection

Protecting your data or data protection is a diverse topic and not exclusive to just backup/restore, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), high availability (HA), durability, archiving, privacy and compliance (PCI, Hippa, High-tech, Sarbox, etc) or security (logical [encryption, access control, identity management] and physical).

In the broader scope and context of information infrastructures and data infrastructures, think of data protection as part of or enabling protect, process, preserve and serving of information in an effective way that does not introduce complexity or compromise your digital and physical assets.

Following is an excerpt from the piece over at Information Security Buzz:

The usual belief is that information behind firewall’s and on storage attached to servers that have rights access control and find access, all is safe; hence no need to encrypt the real storage device.

There is a couple of other usual comments or statements that people make to me about encrypting storage devices that it is too difficult due to lack of good key management, and the other is that people say the encryption algorithms are no good. Both can be valid points, particular given what we are hearing with the NSA and other government activities. My usual response is a) have spare keys placed in safe trusted locations and b) do you lock the doors and windows on your home as somebody who really wants to get in probably can, hence need for multiple rings of security, however the encryption will deter the casual or more typical adversary.

Click to read more

Additional data protection topics and links

In addition to the above, also check out the following related items on the many difference faces or facets of data protection.

Various StorageIO tips and articles from different venues: Via StateTech Magazine – 5 Tips for Factoring Software into Disaster Recovery Plans and Via the StorageIO fall November 2013 news letter, Cloud and data protection perspectives.

Also via StorageIOblog: Data protection modernization, more than swapping out media and Cloud conversations: Has Nirvanix shutdown caused cloud confidence and data protection concerns? along with In the data center or information factory not everything is the same plus Securing data at rest and fast secure erase with SED’s.

Also check out BackupU (www.software.dell.com/backupU) series of webinars and Google+ hangouts that I’m involved with about modernizing and rethinking data protection. Note that while Dell is the sponsor of these events, they are also vendor and technology neutral, that’s a disclosure btw fwiw ;) ).

Closing perspective, for now…


Only you can prevent data loss as it is a shared responsibility!

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-201

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Book review: Rethinking Enterprise Storage by Microsoft/Storsimple Marc Farley

Storage I/O trends

Book review: Rethinking Enterprise Storage – A Hybrid Cloud Model by Marc Farley

The O’Reilly @oreillymedia media folks (oops, excuse me, Microsoft Press) sent me out (that’s a disclosure btw) an real soft cover print copy of Rethinking Enterprise Storage – A Hybrid Cloud Model by Marc Farley aka @MicroFarley of Microsoft/Storsimple that features a forward by Martin Glassborow aka @Storagebod.

Rethinking Enterprise Storage - A Hybrid Cloud Model

Topics and themes covered in the book

  • Understanding scale storage architectures (hmm, great way of saying hybrid ;)
  • Rethinking data protection including disaster recovery (DR) best practices
  • Enhancing data protection using cloud snapshots beyond traditional backups
  • Deterministic thin recovery capabilities while dynamically expanding capacity to the cloud
  • Implement data footprint reduction (DFR) including archiving digital documents to the cloud
  • Insight and awareness into keep performance indicators along with various use cases

Rethinking Enterprise Storage book Details

Publisher: Microsoft Press
Author: Marc Farley
Paper back
Features: Many diagrams, figures, index, glossary
Pages: 101
ISBN: 978-0-7356-7990-3
Published: 2013
MSRP: $9.99 USD

Sample pages of rethinking enterprise storage
One of the many books many figures on the right, on the left i needed to hold a page down ;)!

What’s inside the book

Make no mistake that this is a Microsoft and Storsimple themed book, however IMHO Marc (aka Farley) does a great job of making it more relevant than just another vendor product book (JAVPB). While it is a Microsoft focused book around enabling hybrid cloud storage for various applications, the premises presented could be adapted for other environments or implementations. The book at 101 pages including table of contents (TOC), index, appendix, glossary and other front matter is a very easy and fast read while providing more information or coverage than what might be found in a "Dummies" type themed book.

Looking inside Rethinking Enterprise Storage by Marc Farley
Start thinking outside the box (or cloud), imagine what you can do with a Hybrid cloud!

Summary

Overall I found the book to be good and not just because I know Marc or that the O’Reilly folks sent me a free copy (I had actually previously received the electronic ebook version), rather that it is timely and does a nice job of conveying the topic theme and setting up the conversation, time to rethink storage for enterprise and other environments. IMHO the question is not if hybrid cloud storage is in your future, rather when, where, why, for what, how, with whom and related conversations. While you can buy a copy of the book at various venues, it shouldn’t take a lot of effort to get your own printed soft cover copy, or an ebook version.

Btw, here’s a pod cast discussion with Marc Farley from spring 2013 at SNW, as well as a link to a hybrid cloud and object storage post he did over at Microsoft Technet.

To summarize and quote Marc Farley "Hey now…."

Ok, nuff said

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2013 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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IoD, IoT, IoE, IoS, IoP, IoU and IoX are in your future

Storage I/O trends

IoD, IoT, IoE, IoS, IoP, IoU and IoX are in your future

Have you figured out the new buzzword trend for 2014 that starting ramping up in 2013?

Yup, its Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Devices’s (IoD)

Assuming that IoT, IoD and other variations catch on which looks like they will, this could bring relief and rest for the over-worked Big Data and Software Defined "X" buzzword bingo bandwagon usage.

Buzzword bingo

Introducing IoX?

For those not familiar with Software Defined "X", simply replace "X" with your favorite term such as Data Center (SDDC), Networking (SDN), Storage (SDS), Marketing, (SDM) among others.as the new IT (and beyond) industry term might just take some pressure from the over-worked software defined "x" usage (you pick "x" such as data center, networking, storage, marketing, etc).

This is good news as we now have IoX where "X" can be leveraged from Things (IoT) and Devices (IoD) to People, Places, Protocols or Platforms (IoP), not to mention APIs, Applications and Apple (IoA).

How about Internet of Items (IoI) or Internet of Objects (IoO)?

We are already seeing Cisco with Internet of Everything (IoE) from CES and rest assured the Big Data folks will want to get all over IoBD while storage folks serve up Internet of Storage (IoS), granted that might be a little close to Apple’s OS for comfort of some.

Of course this should also prompt the question of if instead of Internet of Things (IoT) or IoX as being public, then would a Intranet of Things or other items (e.g. IoX) be considered private?

And if you just said or thought, what hybrid, sure, why not, its 2014 after all…

Here’s my point

There are many other variations particular if you apply some cloud and virtual based Big Data analytics with some software defined marketing creativity.

So what’s your take on IoT, IoD, IoP and other IoX, is it all IoH (Internet of Hype) and Internet of Marketing (IoM), something new to get excited about for those who suffer from technology buzzword ADD?

What say you?

Ok, nuff said

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Goodbye 2013, hello 2014, predictions past, present and future

Storage I/O trends

Good by 2013 and hello 2014 along with predictions past, present and future

First, for those who may have missed this, thanks to all who helped make 2013 a great year!

2013 season greetings

Looking back at 2013 I saw a continued trend of more vendors and their media public relations (PR) people reaching out to have their predictions placed in articles, posts, columns or trends perspectives pieces.

Hmm, maybe a new trend is predictions selfies? ;)

Not to worry, this is not a wrapper piece for a bunch of those pitched and placed predictions requests that I received in 2013 as those have been saved for a rainy or dull day when we need to have some fun ;) .

What about 2013 server storage I/O networking, cloud, virtual and physical?

2013 end up with some end of year spree’s including Avago acquiring storage I/O and networking vendor LSI for about $6.6B USD (e.g. SSD cards, RAID cards, cache cards, HBA’s (Host Bus Adapters), chips and other items) along with Seagate buying Xyratex for about $374M USD (a Seagate suppliers and a customer partner).

Xyratex is known by some for making the storage enclosures that house hard disk drive (HDD’s) and Solid State Device (SSD) drives that are used by many well-known, and some not so well-known systems and solution vendors. Xyratex also has other pieces of their business such as appliances that combine their storage enclosures for HDD and SSD’s along with server boards, along with a software group focus on High Performance Compute (HPC) Lustre. There is another part of the Xyratex business that is not as well-known which is the test equipment used by disk drive manufacturers such as Seagate as part of their manufacturing process. Thus the Seagate acquisition moves them up market with more integrated solutions to offer to their (e.g. Seagate and Xyratex) joint customers, as well as streamline their own supply chain and costs (not to mention sell equipment to the other remaining drive manufactures WD and Toshiba).

Storage I/O trends

Other 2013 acquisitions included (Whiptail by Cisco, Virident by WD (who also bought several other companies), Softlayer by IBM) along with various mergers, company launches, company shutdowns (cloud storage Nirvanix and SSD maker OCZ bankruptcy filing), and IPO’s (some did well like Nimble while Violin not so well), while earlier high-flying industry darlings such as FusionIO are now the high-flung darling targets of the shareholder sock lawsuit attorneys.

2013 also saw the end of SNW (Storage Network World), jointly produced by SNIA and Computerworld Storage in the US after more than a decade. Some perspectives from the last US SNW held October 2013 can be found in the Fall 2013 StorageIO Update Newsletter here, granted those were before the event was formal announced as being terminated.

Speaking of events, check out the November 2013 StorageIO Update Newsletter here for perspectives from attending the Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent conference which joins VMworld, EMCworld and a bunch of other vendor world events.

Lets also not forget Dell buying itself in 2013.

StorageIO in the news

Click on the following links read (and here) more about various 2013 industry perspectives trends commentary of mine in various venues, along with tips, articles, newsletters, events, pod cast, videos and other items.

What about 2014?

Perhaps 2014 will build on the 2013 momentum of the annual rights of pages refereed to as making meaningless future year trends and predictions as being passe?

Not that there is anything wrong with making predictions for the coming year, particular if they actually have some relevance, practicality not to mention track record.

However that past few years seems to have resulted in press releases along with product (or services) plugs being masked as predictions, or simply making the same predictions for the coming year that did not come to be for the earlier year (or the one before that or before that and so forth).

On the other hand, from an entertainment perspective, perhaps that’s where we will see annual predictions finally get classified and put into perspectives as being just that.

Storage I/O trends

Now for those who still cling to as well as look forward to annual predictions, ok, simple, we will continue in 2014 (and beyond) from where we left off in 2013 (and 2012 and earlier) meaning more (or continued):

  • Software defined "x" (replace "x" with your favorite topic) industry discussion adoption yet customer adoption or deployment question conversations.

  • Cloud conversations shifted from lets all go to the cloud as the new shiny technology to questioning the security, privacy, stability, vendor or service viability not to mention other common sense concerns that should have been discussed or looked into earlier. I have also heard from people who say Amazon (as well as Verizon, Microsoft, Blue host, Google, Nirvanix, Yahoo and the list goes on) outages are bad for the image of clouds as they shake people’s confidences. IMHO people confidence needs to be shaken to that of having some common sense around clouds including don’t be scared, be ready, do your homework and basic due diligence. This means cloud conversations over concerns set the stage for increased awareness into decision-making, usage, deployment and best practices (all of which are good things for continued cloud deployments). However if some vendors or pundits feel that people having basic cloud concerns that can be addressed is not good for their products or services, I would like to talk with them because they may be missing an opportunity to create long-term confidence with their customers or prospects.

  • VDI as a technology being deployed continues to grow (e.g. customer adoption) while the industry adoption (buzz or what’s being talked about) has slowed a bit which makes sense as vendors jump from one bandwagon to the new software defined bandwagon.

  • Continued awareness around modernizing data protection including backup/restore, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), high availability, archiving and security means more than simply swapping out old technology for new, yet using it in old ways. After all, in the data center and information factory not everything is the same. Speaking of data protection, check out the series of technology neutral webcast and video chats that started last fall as part of BackupU brought to you by Dell. Even though Dell is the sponsor of the series (that’s a disclosure btw ;) ) the focus of the sessions is on how to use different tools, technologies and techniques in new ways as well as having the right tools for different tasks. Check out the information as well as register to get a free Data Protection chapter download from my book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) at the BackupU site as well as attend upcoming events.

  • The nand flash solid state devices (SSD) cash-dash (and shakeout) continues with some acquisitions and IPO’s, as well as disappearances of some weaker vendors, while appearance of some new. SSD is showing that it is real in several ways (despite myths, fud and hype some of which gets clarified here) ranging from some past IPO vendors (e.g. FusiuonIO) seeing exit of their CEO and founders while their stock plummets and arrival of shareholder investor lawsuits, to Violins ho-hum IPO. What this means is that the market is real, it has a very bright future, however there is also a correction occurring showing that reality may be settling in for the long run (e.g. next couple of decades) vs. SSD being in the realm of unicorns.

    • Storage I/O trends

  • Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Devices (IoD) may give some relief for Big Data, BYOD, VDI, Software Defined and Cloud among others that need a rest after they busy usage that past few years. On the other hand, expect enhanced use of earlier buzzwords combined with IoT and IOD. Of course that also means plenty of questions around what is and is not IoD along with IoT and if actually relevant to what you are doing.

  • Also in 2014 some will discover storage and related data infrastructure topics or some new product / service thus having a revolutionary experience that storage is now exciting while others will have a DejaVu moment that it has been exciting for the past several years if not decades.

  • More big data buzz as well as realization by some that a pragmatic approach opens up a bigger broader market, not to mention customers more likely to realize they have more in common with big data than it simply being something new forcing them to move cautiously.

  • To say that OpenStack and related technologies will continue to gain both industry and customer adoption (and deployment) status building off of 2013 in 2014 would be an understatement, not to mention too easy to say, or leave out.

  • While SSD’s continue to gain in deployment, after the question is not if, rather when, where, with what and how much nand flash SSD is in your future, HDD’s continue to evolve for physical, virtual and cloud environments. This also includes Seagate announcing a new (Kinetic) Ethernet attached HDD (note that this is not a NAS or iSCSI device) that uses a new key value object storage API for storing content data (more on this in 2014).

  • This also means realizing that large amounts of little data can result in back logs of lots of big data, and that big data is growing into very fast big data, not to mention realization by some that HDFS is just another distributed file system that happens to work with Hadoop.

  • SOHO’s and lower end of SMB begin to get more respect (and not just during the week of Consumer Electronic Show – CES).

  • Realization that there is a difference between Industry Adoption and Customer Deployment, not to mention industry buzz and traction vs. customer adoption.

server storage I/O trends

What about beyond 2014?

That’s easy, many of the predictions and prophecies that you hear about for the coming year have also been pitched in prior years, so it only makes sense that some of those will be part of the future.

  • If you have seen or experienced something you are more likely to have DejaVu.
  • Otoh if you have not seen or experienced something you are more likely to have a new and revolutionary moment!
  • Start using new (and old) things in new ways vs. simply using new things in old ways.
  • Barrier to technology convergence, not to mention new technology adoption is often people or their organizations.
  • Convergence is still around, cloud conversations around concerns get addressed leading to continued confidence for some.
  • Realization that data infrastructure span servers, storage I/O networking, cloud, virtual, physical, hardware, software and services.
  • That you can not have software defined without hardware and hardware defined requires software.
  • And it is time for me to get a new book project (or two) completed in addition to helping others with what they are working on, more on this in the months to come…

Here’s my point

The late Jim Morrison of the Doors said "There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.".

The doors via Amazon.com
Above image and link via Amazon.com

Hence there is what we know about 2013 or will learn about the past in the future, then there is what will be in 2014 as well as beyond, hence lets step through some doors and see what will be. This means learn and leverage lessons from the past to avoid making the same or similar mistakes in the future, however doing so while looking forward without a death grip clinging to the past.

Needless to say there will be more to review, preview and discuss throughout the coming year and beyond as we go from what is unknown through doors and learn about the known.

Thanks to all who made 2013 a great year, best wishes to all, look forward to seeing and hearing from you in 2014!

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Small Medium Business (SMB) IT continues to gain respect, what about SOHO?

Storage I/O trends

Blog post: Small Medium Business (SMB) IT continues to gain respect, what about SOHO?

Note that in Information Technology (IT) conversations there are multiple meanings for SMB including Server Message Block aka Microsoft Windows CIFS (Common Internet File System) along with its SAMBA implementation, however for this piece the context is Small Medium Business.

A decade or so ago, mention SMB (Small Medium Business) to many vendors, particular those who were either established or focused on the big game enterprise space and you might have gotten a condescending look or answer if not worse.

In other words, a decade ago the SMB did not get much respect from some vendors and those who followed or covered them.

Fast forward to today and many of those same vendors along with their pundits and media followers have now gotten their SMB grove, lingo, swagger or social media footsteps, granted for some that might be at the higher end of SMB also known as SME (Small Medium Enterprise).

Today in general the SMB is finally getting respect and in some circles its down right cool and trendy vs. being perceived as old school, stodgy large enterprise. Likewise the Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO) gained more awareness and coverage a few years back which while the ROBO buzz has subsided, the market and opportunities are certainly there.

What about Small Office Home Office (SOHO) today?

I assert that SOHO today is getting the same lack of respect that SMB in general received a decade ago.

IMHO the SOHO environment and market today is being treated with a similar lack of respect that the larger SMB received a decade ago.

Granted there are some vendors and their followings who are seeing the value and opportunity, not to mention market size potential of expanding their portfolios, not to mention routes to markets to meet their different needs of the SOHO.

relative enterprise sme smb soho positioning

What is the SOHO market or environment

One of the challenges with SMB, SOHO among other classifications are just that, the classifications.

Some classificaitons are based on number of employees, others on number of servers or workstations, while others are based on revenue or even physical location.

Meanwhile some are based on types of products, technologies or tools while others are tied to IT or general technology spending.

Some confuse the SOHO space with the consumer market space or sector which should not be a surprise if you view market segments as enterprise, SMB and consumer. However if you take a more pragmatic approach, between true consumer and SMB space, there lies the SOHO space. For some the definitions of what is consumer, SOHO, SMB, SME and enterprise (among others) will be based on number of employees, or revenue amount. Yet for others the categories may be tied to IT spending (e.g. price bands), number of workstations, servers, storage space capacity or some other metric. On the other hand some definitions of what is consumer vs. SOHO vs. SMB vs. SME or enterprise will be based on product capabilities, size, feature function and cost among other attributes.

Storage I/O trends

Understanding the SOHO

Keep in mind that SOHO can also overlap with Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO), not to mention blend with high-end consumer (prosumer) or lower bounds of SMB.

Part of the challenge (or problem) is that many confuse the Home Office or HO aspect of SOHO as being consumer.

Likewise many also confuse the Small Office or SO part of SOHO as being just the small home office or the virtual office of a mobile worker.

The reality is that just as the SMB space has expanded, there is also a growing area just above where consumer markets exist and where many place the lower-end of SMB (e.g. the bottom limits of where the solutions fit).

First keep in mind that many put too much focus and mistakenly believe that the HO or Home Office part of SOHO means that this is just a consumer focused space.

The reality is that while the HO gets included as part of SOHO, there is also the SO or Small Office which is actually the low-end of the SMB space.

Keep in mind that there are more:
SOHO than SMB
SMB than SME
SME than enterprise
F500 (Fortune 500) than F100
F100 than F10 and so forth.

Here is my point

SOHO does not have to be the Rodney Dangerfield of IT (e.g. gets no respect)!

If you jumped on the SMB bandwagon a decade ago, start paying attention to what’s going on with the SOHO or lower-end SMB sector. The reasons are simple, just as SMBs can grow up to be larger SMBs or SME or enterprise, SOHOs can also evolve to become SMBs either in business size, or in IT and data infrastructure needs, requirements.

For those who prefer (at least for now) look down upon or ignore the SOHO similar to what was done with SMB before converting to SMBism, do so at your own risk.

However let me be clear, this does not mean ignore or shift focus and thus disrupt or lose coverage of other areas, rather, extend, expand and at least become aware of what is going on in the SOHO space.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved