Welcome to the tape summit resources and tape summit resources micro site with links for those who are interested in magnetic tape for backup, archive, BC, DR, big and little data
For being a declared dead or zombie technology (here, here or here) tape remains very much alive however its role is changing. There is no disputing that hard disk drives (HDDs) are continuing to expand their role for data protection including backup/restore, BC and DR where tape has been used for decades.
What is also occurring is that tapes role is changing from day to day backup to that of longer term data preservation including archiving with more data stored on tape today than in past history at a lower cost. In fact the continued reduced cost per tape and improved capacity as well as utilization has worked against tape from a marketing competitive standpoint. For example if you look at a chart showing tape (media and drive) revenues you see a decline, similar to what was seen a couple of years ago for HDDs.
What is not shown on some charts are how many units (drives or media) shipped with more capacity for a given price (again what was reported for HDDs a few years ago) when net capacity had increased. Vendors of tape technology have also had a rather low profile particular for those with other technologies that have received more marketing resources (people, time, money). After all, if a product is on a plateau of productivity and profitability why spend time or effort on extensive marketing or promotion vs. directing resources to get new items into the market.
As a result, for those looking to make a case that tape is on the decline based on revenues to convince customers to move away from that technology should have a marketing freebie. Recently Oracle announced a new large capacity tape drive and media following on previous announcements of enhanced LTO roadmap and future 35TByte tape capabilities announced January 2010 by Fujifilm and IBM.
For those who are interested following are some links to various topics including how SSD, HDD and tape can coexist complementing each other for different roles or functions. As to those who do not like tape, feel free to read if you like as there is also material on SSD, HDD, dedupe, cloud, data protection and other topics.
Something tells me we will be hearing, reading or watching more about tape being alive in the months to come.
Nuff said for now
Cheers gs
Thanks for visiting tape summit resources and tape summit resources micro site with links for those who are interested in magnetic tape for backup, archive, BC, DR, big and little data
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Based on the trusted computing group (TCG) DriveTrust and OPAL disk drive security models, SEDs offload encryption to the disk drive while complimenting other encryption security solutions to protect against theft or lost storage devices. There is another benefit however for SEDs which is simplifying the process of decommissioning a storage device safely and quickly.
If you are not familiar with them, SEDs perform encryption within the hard disk drive (HDD) itself using the onboard processor and resident firmware. Since SEDs only protect data at rest, other forms of encryption should be combined to protect data in flight or on the move.
There is also another benefit of SEDs in that for those of you concerned about how to digital destroy, shred or erase large capacity disks in the future, you may have a new option. While intended for protecting data, a byproduct is that when a SED is removed from the system or server or controller that it has established an affinity with, its contents are effectively useless until reattached. If the encryption key for a SED is changed, then the data is instantly rendered useless, or at least for most environments.
Learn more about SEDs here and via the following links:
Self-Encrypting Drives for IBM System x
Trusted Computing Group OPAL Summary
Storage Performance Council (SPC) SED and Non SED benchmarks
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What do VARs and Clouds as well as MSPs have in common?
Several things it turns out:
Some Value Added Resellers (VARS) (links to VAR related content and comments here, here and here) sell cloud services or solutions
Some VARs are also cloud or managed solutions providers (MSPs) themselves, thus some cloud or MSPs are VARs
Some VARs, cloud and MSPs compete on lowest or cheapest price
Some VARs, cloud and MSPs have diverse product offering portfolios
Some VARs, cloud and MSPs compete on value (e.g. not price)
Some VARs, cloud and MSPs value is in the trust, security and peace of mind that they provide to their client
For some, the value of a given VAR, cloud or MSP is the ability to shop around for a resource to get the lowest price.
For others, the value of a given VAR, cloud or MSP is the ability to get the best value which may not be the lowest price rather the most effective overall cost per services with trust, security, experience and peace of mind provided.
Value to often is confused with being cheap or lowest cost.
Value can also mean a higher price that includes more thus providing a better effective option (e.g. super size it).
On the other hand, higher priced should not be confused with always being a better product, service or solution.
You may find that the initial low cost requires other add on fees or activation charges, surcharges for use or activity along with optional services to make the solution useful all resulting in an overall higher amount to be paid.
Lowest cost may result in a bargain now and then if that fits your needs.
Value can also mean a better option providing an improved return on investment if a solution or service meets and exceeds your needs and expectations.
As an example, I recently switched from a cloud backup MSP (Mozy) not due to cost (costs would have gone down with their recent service plan announcement) rather I needed more value and functionality. With my new cloud backup MSP I get more functionality and capability that I can continue to grow into even though the price per GByte is higher than with my previous provider. What made the change of positive is what I get in the higher fee per GByte that in the end, actually makes it more affordable, not cheaper, just better value and return on investment.
For some low cost is value while for others, value is more than lowest cost including what you get for a given fee including trust, security, service and experience among other items. Different people will have different requirements or needs for what is or is not value.
If you do not like the term value, then try price performer.
Bottom line for now, with VARs, MSPs and Cloud (Public or private) dont be scared, however look before you leap!
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Doing research in several different areas as well as working with clients on various project activities, many of which that are NDA.
Getting some recently finished content ready to appear on the main web site as well as in the blog and other venues.
Attending vendor events and briefing sessions on solutions some of which are yet to be announced.
Enjoying the cold and snowy winter as best as can be (see some videos here) while trying to avoid cold and flue season.
In addition to the above, I have been trying to stay very focused on is getting my new book which is titled Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC) wrapped up for a summer 2011 release. This is my third solo book project that is in addition to co writing or contributing to several other book projects.
Im doing the project the old fashioned way which means writing it myself as opposed to using ghost writers along with a traditional publishing house (CRC, same as my last book) all of which takes a bit more time. For anyone who has done a project like this you know what is involved. For those who have not it includes research, writing, editing, working with editors and copyeditors, subject matter experts doing initial reviews, illustrations and page layouts, markups, more edits and proofs. Then there are the general project management activities along with marketing and rollout plans, companion presentation material working with the publisher and others.
Anyway, hope you are all doing well, look forward to sharing more with you soon, now it is time to get back to work…
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Simple, I use it myself to keep a list of companies, firms or organizations that are involved with data infrastructures (servers, storage, I/O and networking, hardware, software, services) that I have come across and worth keeping track of that I also feel worth sharing with others.
Still interested, all you need to do is the following:
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The other day NetApp announced that it was planning on doing another acquisition following on their recent purchase of Bycast (policy based storage and management software).
This time, NetApp is doing yet another software acquisition of Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) as well as End to End (E2E) cross technology domain management and Storage or Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) startup Akorri which also builds on its past acquisition of SRA solution Onaro.
Is this a good move by NetApp?
Assuming they got a good price, yes, this has very potential for NetApp assuming they can assimilate the solution as well as articulate where it fits complimenting its other management tools including SANscreen (aka Onaro).
Is Akorii a good product?
Yes, most of the customers and var partners of Akorri that I talk to have great things to say and having looked into the technology, it has lots of good potential for NetApp. However, there is a common theme around Akorri that has been its high price, something that was also heard from Onaro customers before NetApp did that acquisition. If NetApp can leverage its direct as well as partner touch to reduce the cost of sale for Akorri as well as rationalize the pricing or at least better articulate the value proposition to make it a must have vs nice to have, they can do well.
The importance of E2E awareness of IT resources across different technology domains (or focus areas) is that you can not effectively manage what you do not have timely access or visibility into. Hence the theme of session being You cannot effectively manage what you do not know about in a timely manner. I recently did a couple of Industry Trends and Perspectives webcast events around the topic and themes of End to End (E2E) awareness and cross domain (or technology) management insight for cloud, virtual and other abstracted as well as physical IT environments.
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What records will EMC break in NYC January 18, 2011?
In case you have not seen or heard, EMC is doing an event next week in New York City (NYC) at the AXA Equitable Center winter weather snow storm clouds permitting (and adequate tools or technologies to deal with the snow removal), that has a theme around breaking records. If you have yet to see any of the advertisements, blogs, tweets, facebook, friendfeed, twitter, yourtube or other mediums messages, here (and here and here) are a few links to learn more as well as register to view the event.
Click on the above image to see more
There is already speculation along with IT industry wiki leaks of what will be announced or talked about next week that you can google or find at some different venues.
The theme of the event is breaking records.
What might we hear?
In addition to the advisor, author, blogger and consultant hats that I wear, Im also in the EMCs analysts relations program and as such under NDA, consequently, what the actual announcement will be next week, no comment for now. BTW, I also wear other hats including one from Boeing even though I often fly on Airbus products as well.
Other hats I wear
However, how about some fun as to what might be covered at next weeks event with getting into a wiki leak situation?
A no brainier would be product (hardware, software, services) related as it is mid January and if you have been in the industry for more than a year or two, you might recall that EMC tends to a mid winter launch around this time of year along with sometimes an early summer refresh. Guess what time of the year it is.
Im guessing lots of superlatives, perhaps at a record breaking pace (e.g. revolutionary first, explosive growth, exponential explosive growth, perfect storm among others that could be candidates for the Storagebrain wall of fame or shame)
Maybe we will even hear that EMC has set a new record of number of members in Chads army aka the vspecialists focused on vSphere related topics along with a growing (quietly) number of Microsoft HyperV specialist.
That EMC has a record number of twitter tweeps engaged in conversations (or debates) with different audiences, collectives, communities, competitors, customers, individuals, organizations, partners or venues among others.
Possibly that their involvement in the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) has resulted in enough savings to offset the impact of hosting the event making it carbon and environment neutral. After all, we already know that EMC has been in the CDP as in Continual or Constant Data Protection as well as Complete or Comprehensive Data Protection along with Cloud Data Protection not to mention Common Sense Data Protection (CSDP) for sometime now.
Perhaps something around the number of acquisitions, patents, products, platforms, products and partners they have amassed recently.
For investors, wishful thinking that they will be moving their stock into record territories.
Im also guessing we will hear or see a record number of tweets, posts, videos and stories.
To be fair and balanced, Im also expecting a record number of counter tweets, counter posts, counter videos and counter stories coming out of the event.
Some records I would like to see EMC break however Im not going to hold my breath at least for next week include:
Announcement of upping the game in performance benchmarking battles with record setting or breaking various SPC benchmark results submitted on their own (instead of via a competitor or here) in different categories of block storage devices along with entries for SSD based, clustered and virtualized. Of course we would expect to hear how those benchmarks and workload simulations really do not matter which would be fine, at least they would have broken some records.
Announcement of having shipped more hard disk drives (HDD) than anyone else in conjunction with shipping more storage than anyone else. Despite being continually declared dead (its not) and SSD gaining traction, EMC would have a record breaking leg to stand on if the qualify amount of storage shipped as external or shared or networked (SAN or NAS) as opposed to collective (e.g. HP with servers and storage among others).
Announcement that they are buying Cisco, or Cisco is buying them, or that they and Cisco are buying Microsoft and Oracle.
Announcement of being proud of the record setting season of the Patriots, devastated to losing a close and questionable game to the NY Jets, wishing them well in the 2010 NFL Playoffs (Im just sayin…).
Announcement of being the first vendor and solution provider to establish SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, DaaS and many other XaaS offerings via their out of this world new moon base (plans underway for Mars as part of a federated offering).
Announcement that Fenway park will be rebranded as the house that EMC built (or rebuilt).
Disclosure: I will be in NYC on Tuesday the 18th as one of EMCs many guests that they have picked up airfare and lodging, thanks to Len Devanna and the EMC social media crew for reaching out and extending the invitation.
Other guests of the event will include analysts, advisors, authors, bloggers, beat writers, consultants, columnist, customers, editors, media, paparazzi, partners, press, protesters (hopefully polite ones), publishers, pundits, twitter tweepps and writers among others.
I wonder if there will also be a record number of disclosures made by others attending the event as guests of EMC?
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I recently did a couple of Industry Trends and Perspectives webcast events around the topic and themes of End to End (E2E) awareness and cross domain (or technology) management insight for cloud, virtual and other abstracted as well as physical IT environments.
The importance of E2E awareness of IT resources across different technology domains (or focus areas) is that you can not effectively manage what you do not have timely access or visibility into. Hence the theme of session being You cannot effectively manage what you do not know about in a timely manner.
Here is the abstract for the webcast:
Virtualization, clouds and other forms of abstraction help IT organizations enable flexible and scalable services delivery. While abstraction of underlying resources simplifies services delivery from an IT customers perspective, additional layers of technology along with interdependencies still need to be tracked as well as managed. A key enabler for IT organizations is having end to end (E2E) situational awareness of available resources and how they are being used. By having timely situational awareness across various technology domains, IT organizations gain insight into how resources can be more effectively deployed in an efficient manner.
Join independent IT industry analyst, author and blogger Greg Schulz as he looks at common challenges as well as opportunities for leveraging E2E situational awareness to remove blind spots from efficient effective IT services delivery. Greg will look several scenarios including among others cost reduction, maximize resource usage, shrink migration and data consolidation times for cloud, virtual and traditional IT environments while maintaining or enhancing IT services delivery.
If you are interested in IT Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) of servers, storage, IO networking, virtualization, cloud, backup or restore, optimization as well as cloud or legacy environments and metrics, I invite you to view the following web cast.
Click on the above image to access the BrightTalk web cast from their recent Virtualization Summit series (may require registration)
If you are interested, here is a link to a previous post I did on E2E management, SRA (systems or storage resource analysis) and management insight along with a recent related white paper sponsored by SANpulse that you can access here.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Despite having been repeatedly declared dead at the hands of some new emerging technology over the past several decades, the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) continues to spin and evolve as it moves towards its 60th birthday.
More recently HDDs have been declared dead due to flash SSD that according to some predictions, should have caused the HDD to be extinct by now.
Meanwhile, having not yet died in addition to having qualified for its AARP membership a few years ago, the HDD continues to evolve in capacity, smaller form factor, performance, reliability, density along with cost improvements.
Back in 2006 I did an article titled Happy 50th, hard drive, but will you make it to 60?
IMHO it is safe to say that the HDD will be around for at least a few more years if not another decade (or more).
This is not to say that the HDD has outlived its usefulness or that there are not other tiered storage mediums to do specific jobs or tasks better (there are).
Instead, the HDD continues to evolve and is complimented by flash SSD in a way that HDDs are complimenting magnetic tape (another declared dead technology) each finding new roles to support more data being stored for longer periods of time.
What the importance of this is about technology tiering and resource alignment, matching the applicable technology to the task at hand.
Technology tiering (Servers, storage, networking, snow removal) is about aligning the applicable resource that is best suited to a particular need in a cost as well as productive manner. The HDD remains a viable tiered storage medium that continues to evolve while taking on new roles coexisting with SSD and tape along with cloud resources. These and other technologies have their place which ideally is finding or expanding into new markets instead of simply trying to cannibalize each other for market share.
Here is a link to a good story by Lucas Mearian on the history or evolution of the hard disk drive (HDD) including how a 1TB device that costs about $60 today would have cost about a trillion dollars back in the 1950s. FWIW, IMHO the 1 trillion dollars is low and should be more around 2 to 5 trillion for the one TByte if you apply common costs for management, people, care and feeding, power, cooling, backup, BC, DR and other functions.
IMHO, it is safe to say that the HDD is here to stay for at least a few more years (if not decades) or at least until someone decides to try a new creative marketing approach by declaring it dead (again).
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.
I recently did an interview with the folks over at Infortrend (a RAID storage company) discussing various industry trends and perspectives including RAID, data footprint reduction (DFR) as well as Green IT including how the Green Gap.
The Green Gap is the disconnect between common messaging around carbon and environment vs. IT and business productivity sustainment challenges that continues to result in confusion along with missed opportunities.
RAID is alive however it continues to evolve as well as leveraged in conjunction with other techniques
Here is the link to the first of a two part series where you can read my comments on how many organizations are missing out on economic as well as business sustainability benefits due to confusion and the Green Gap among other topics.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Over in Eden Prairie (Minneapolis Minnesota suburb) where data storage vendor Compellent (CML) is based, they must be singing in the hallways today that it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.
Sure we had another dusting of snow this morning here in the Minneapolis area and the temp is actually up in the balmy 20F temperature range (was around 0F yesterday) and holiday shopping is in full swing.
The other reason I think that the Compellent folks are thinking that it feels a lot like Christmas are the reports that Dell is in exclusive talks to buy them at about $29 per share or about $876 million USD.
Dell is no stranger to holiday or shopping sprees, check these posts out as examples:
Now some Compellent fans are not going to be happy with only about $29 a share or about $876 million USD price given the recent stock run up into the $30 plus range. Likewise, some of the Compellent fans may be hoping for or expecting a bidding war to drive the stock back up into the $30 range however keep in mind that it was earlier this year when the stock adjusted itself down into the mid teens.
In the case of 3PAR and the HP Dell budding war, that was a different product and company focused in a different space than where Compellent has a good fit.
Sure both 3PAR and Compellent do Fibre Channel (FC) where Dells EqualLogic only does iSCSI, however a valuation based just on FC would be like saying Dell has all the storage capabilities they need with their MD3000 series that can do SAS, iSCSI and FC.
In other words, there are different storage products for different markets or price bands and customer application needs. Kind of like winter here in Minnesota, sure one type of shovel will work for moving snow or you can leverage different technologies and techniques (tiering) to get the job done effectively the same holds for storage solutions.
Compellent has a good Cadillac product that is a good fit for some SMB environments. However the SMB space is also where Dell has several storage products some of which they own (e.g. EqualLogic), some they OEM (MD3000 series and NX) as well as resell (e.g. EMC CLARiiON).
Can the Compellent product replace the lowered CLARiiON business that Dell has itself been shifting more to their flagship EqualLogic product?
Sure however at the risk of revenue cannibalization or worse, introduction of revenue prevention teams.
Can the Compellent product then be positioned lower down under the EqualLogic product?
Sure, however why hold it back not to mention force a higher priced product down into that market segment.
Can the Compellent product be taken up market to compete above the EqualLogic head to head with the larger CLARiiON systems from EMC or comparable solutions from other vendors?
Sure, however I can hear choruses of its sounding a lot like Christmas from New England, the bay area and Tucson among others.
Does this mean that Dell is being overly generous and that this is not a good deal?
No, not at all.
Sure it is the holiday season and Dell has several billion dollars of cash laying around however that in itself does not guarantee a large handout or government sized bailout (excuse me, infusion). At $30 or more, that would be overly generous simply based on where the technology fits as well as aligns to the market realities. Consequently, at $29, this is a great deal for Compellent and also for Dell.
Why is it a good deal for Dell?
I think that it is as much about Dell getting a good deal (ok, paying a premium) to acquire a competitor that they can use to fill some product gaps where they have common VARs. However I also think that this is very much about the channel and the VAR as much if not more than it is just about a storage product. Servers are part of the game here which in turn supports storage, networking, management tools, backup/recovery, archiving and services.
Sure Dell can maybe take some cost out of the Compellent solution by replacing the Supermicro PCs that are the hardware platform for their storage controllers with Dell servers. However the bigger play is around further developing its channel and VAR ecosystems, some of whom were with EqualLogic before Dell bought them. This can also be seen as a means of Dell getting that partner ecosystem to sell overall, more dell products and solutions instead of those from Apple, EMC, Futjisu, HP, IBM, Oracle and many others.
Likewise, I doubt that Mr. Dell is paying a premium simply to make the Compellent shareholders and fans happy to create monetary velocity to stimulate holiday shopping and economic stimulus. However, for the fans, sure, while drowning your sorrows in egg nogg of holiday cheer that you are not getting $30 or higher, instead buy a round for your mates and toast Dell for your holiday gift.
The real reason I think this is a good reason for Dell is that from a business and financial perspective, assuming they stick to the $29 range, it is a good bargain for both parties. Dell gets a company who has been competing with their EqualLogic product in some cases with the same VARs or resellers. Sure it gets a Fibre Channel based product however Dell already has that with the MD3000 series which I realize is less function laden then Compellent or EqualLogic; however it is also more affordable for a different market.
If Dell can close on the deal sticking to its offer which they have the upper hand on, execute including rolling out a strategy as well as product positioning plan. Then educate their own teams as well as VARs and customers of what products fit where and when in such a manner that does not cause revenue prevention (e.g. one product or team blocking the other) or cannibalization instead expanding markets, they can do well.
While Compellent gets a huge price multiple based on their revenue (about $125M USD), if Dell can get the product revenue up from the $125 to $150 million plateau to around $250 to $300 million without cannibalizing other Dell products, the deal pays for itself in many ways.
Keep in mind that a large pile of cash sitting in the bank these days is not exactly yielding the best returns on investment.
For the Compellent fans and shareholders, congratulations!
You have gotten or perhaps are about to get a good holiday gift so knock of the complaining that you should be getting more. The option is that instead of $28 per share, you could be getting 28 lumps of coal in your Christmas stocking.
For the Dell folks, assuming the deal is done on their terms and that they can quickly rationalize the product overlap, convey and then execute on a strategy while keeping the revenue prevention teams on the sidelines you too have a holiday gift to work with (some assembly will be required however). This also is good for Dell outside of storage which may turn out to be one of the gems of the deal in keeping or expanding VARs selling Dell based servers and associated technologies.
For EMC who was slapped in the face earlier this year when Dell took a run at 3PAR, sure there will be more erosion on the lower end CLARiiOn as has been occurring with the EqualLogic. However Dell still needs a solution to effectively compete with EMC and others at the higher end of the SMB or lower end of the enterprise market.
Sure the EqualLogic or Compellent products could be deployed into such scenarios; however those solutions are then playing on a different field and out of their market sweet spots.
Lets see what happens shall we.
In the meantime, what say you?
Is this a good deal for Dell, who is the deal good for assuming it goes through and at the terms mentioned, what is your take?
Who benefits from this proposed deal?
Note that in the holiday gift giving spirit, Chicago style voting or polling will be enabled.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Robin said to pass along this information about the Timberland Friends and Family Event, Share the savings that starts Thursday December 2nd through Monday December 6th.
Like many of you, I get tons of promotion material or spam. This however came from someone I have meet face to face who also happens to be one of SANtas IT elfs, not to mention that Im also an existing customer of theirs (that was a disclosure BTW…).
With the current holiday shopping season coupled with a common IT theme of stretching budgets, doing more with what you have or less as well as reducing costs, those also seemed like good reasons for sharing this info.
Best that I can tell, you will not be finding any of Timberlands servers, storage, networking hardware or software involved in the sale other than supporting the transactions, however it is a good opportunity for other items at their online or traditional stores.
Here is how it works, quite simple actually.
Go to for example the online store, select the items you are looking for, add them to your virtual shopping cart, then when you go to check out, you will see a box
where you will enter jsaEJ8M3pjK to receive up to 40 percent off on the online or 30 percent at stores.
Want to see the additional details of what was sent to me, read below (note I redacted Robins full name and contact so that he does not get spammed and placed his note in italics).
All,
Here is the official email with the promotional code.
If you are hesitating to pass it on, not wanting to take advantage, banish the thought! Once again there is a competition going on here to see whose code is used the most, so if you know other people who may be interested in this discount, by all means share!
Happy Holidays to all –
Robin (One of SANtas IT elfs at Timberland)
From: Shop Timberland Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 9:51 AM To: SANtas IT Elf aka Robin Subject: Timberland Friends & Family Event. Share the savings.
Use my personal event promo code to save: jsaEJ8M3pjK
Online at timberland.com use MY PERSONAL EVENT PROMO CODE (above) for savings. To redeem in store – Print the email or show to a store associate on your mobile phone. Coupon Code: 500064
Shop early for best selection. Share this special discount with your friends & family.
Find a store near you or call 1-888-802-9947 to redeem this special offer. Or take advantage of special hours in our company store located at 200 Domain Drive, Stratham, NH. Stratham company store hours: Monday – Thursday: 9 – 5:30 Friday/Saturday: 9 – 5 Sunday: 12 – 5
If you received this email from a friend and would like to subscribe to our email list, click here.
* 40% off at Timberland® Specialty Stores and at timberland.com in the US only. Expires December 6, 2010. Must redeem at time of purchase. Valid on in-stock merchandise only; not valid on prior purchases. Excludes boot style #10061, 15551, 10025, custom footwear orders, Gift Cards, Timberland Boot Company® Elite Collection, Abington Collection, and non-Timberland branded merchandise. See website for details. Cannot be combined with any other coupon or discount offers. Void where prohibited. We reserve the right to limit quantities. Timberland reserves the right to cancel orders arising from pricing, promotions, or other errors. Free ground shipping on orders of $150 or more not valid in Alaska or Hawaii. Free returns not valid on custom footwear orders.
** 30% off at Timberland® Factory Stores offer valid through December 6, 2010 in the US only. Must redeem at time of purchase. Valid on in-stock merchandise only; not valid on prior purchases. Excludes boot style #10061, 10025, Gift Cards, and non-Timberland branded merchandise. Cannot be combined with any other coupon or discount offers. Void where prohibited.
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Welcome to the Fall 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the August 2010 edition building on the great feedback received from recipients.
You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions. Click on the following links to view the Fall 2010 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.
Is vendor lockin caused by vendors, their partners or by customers?
In my opinion vendor lockin can be from any or all of the above.
What is vendor lockin
Vendor lockin is a situation where a customer becomes dependent or locked in by choice or other circumstances to a particular supplier or technology.
What is the difference between vendor lockin, account control and stickiness?
Im sure some marketing wiz or sales type will be happy to explain the subtle differences. Generally speaking, lockin, stickiness and account control are essentially the same, or at least strive to obtain similar results. For example, vendor lockin too some has a negative stigma. However vendor stickiness may be a new term, perhaps even sounding cool thus it is not a concern. Remember the Mary Poppins song a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down? In other words sometimes changing and using a different term such as sticky vs vendor lockin helps make the situation taste better.
Is vendor lockin or stickiness a bad thing?
No, not necessarily, particularly if you the customer are aware and still in control of your environment.
I have had different views of vendor lockin over the years.
These have varied from when I was a customer working in IT organizations or being a vendor and later as an advisory analyst consultant. Even as a customer, I had different views of lockin which varied depending upon the situation. In some cases lockin was a result of upper management having their favorite vendor which meant when a change occurred further up the ranks, sometimes vendor lockin would shift as well. On the other hand, I also worked in IT environments where we had multiple vendors for different technologies to maintain competition across suppliers.
As a vendor, I was involved with customer sites that were best of breed while others were aligned around a single or few vendors. Some were aligned around technologies from the vendors I worked for and others were aligned with someone elses technology. In some cases as a vendor we were locked out of an account until there was a change of management or mandates at those sites. In other cases where lock out occurred, once our product was OEMd or resold by an incumbent vendor, the lockout ended.
Some vendors do a better job of establishing lockin, account management, account control or stickiness than compared to others. Some vendors may try to lock a customer in and thus there is perception that vendors lock customers in. Likewise, there is a perception that vendor lockin only occurs with the largest vendors however I have seen this also occur with smaller or niche vendors who gain control of their customers keeping larger or other vendors out.
Sweet, sticky Sue Bee Honey
Vendor lockin or stickiness is not always the result of the vendor, var, consultant or service provider pushing a particular technology, product or service. Customers can allow or enable vendor lockin as well, either by intent via alliances to drive some business initiative or accidentally by giving up account control management. Consequently vendor lockin is not a bad thing if it brings mutual benefit to the suppler and consumer.
On the other hand, if lockin causes hardship on the consumer while only benefiting the supplier, than it can be a bad thing for the customer.
Do some technologies lend themselves more to vendor lockin vs others?
Yes, some technologies lend themselves more to stickiness or lockin then others. For example, often big ticket or expensive hardware are seen as being vulnerable to vendor lockin along with other hardware items however software is where I have seen a lot of stickiness or lockin around.
However what about virtualization solutions after all the golden rule of virtualization is whoever controls the virtualization (hardware, software or services) controls the gold. This means that vendor lockin could be around a particular hypervisor or associated management tools.
How about bundled solutions or what are now called integrated vendor technology stacks including PODs (here or here) or vBlocks among others? How about databases, do they enable or facilitate vendor lockin? Perhaps, just like virtualization or operating systems or networking technology, storage system, data protection or other solutions, if you let the technology or vendor manage you, then you enable vendor lockin.
Where can vendor lockin or stickiness occur?
Application software, databases, data or information tools, messaging or collaboration, infrastructure resource management (IRM) tools ranging from security to backup to hypervisors and operating systems to email. Lets not forget about hardware which has become more interoperable from servers, storage and networks to integrated marketing or alliance stacks.
Another opportunity for lockin or stickiness can be in the form of drivers, agents or software shims where you become hooked on a feature functionality that then drives future decisions. In other words, lockin can occur in different locations both in traditional IT as well as via managed services, virtualization or cloud environments if you let it occur.
Keep these thoughts in mind:
Customers need to manage their resources and suppliers
Technology and their providers should work for you the customer, not the other way around
Technology providers conversely need to get closer to influence customer thinking
There can be cost with single vendor or technology sourcing due to loss of competition
There can be a cost associated with best of breed or functioning as your own integrator
There is a cost switching from vendors and or their technology to keep in mind
Managing your vendors or suppliers may be easier than managing your upper management
Vendors sales remove barriers so they can sell and setting barriers for others
Virtualization and cloud can be both a source for lockin as well as a tool to help prevent it
As a customer, if lockin provides benefits than it can be a good thing for all involved
Ultimately, its up to the customer to manage their environment and thus have a say if they will allow vendor lockin. Granted, upper management may be the source of the lockin and not surprisingly is where some vendors will want to focus their attention directly, or via influence of high level management consultants.
So while a vendors solution may appear to be a locked in solution, it does not become a lockin issue or problem until a customer lets or allows it to be a lockin or sticky situation.
What is your take on vendor lockin? Cast your vote and see results in the following polls.
Is vendor lockin a good or bad thing?
Who is responsible for managing vendor lockin
Where is most common form or concern of vendor lockin
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.
