From The Street...
Friday, May 23, 2003
Bull Shoals Notes...
Visit to St. Louis last week. Stayed on the Hill, the Italian neighborhood, and went nuts at a
Real Italian Deli. Got things only seen "on TV" - and made some stuff when I got back. Not
a "decent" Italian Restaurant for 120 miles here. Even I am beginning to appreciate my own
- novice level - cooking....
This is the URL for Lidia Bastianich's show with Julia Child.
Lidia and Julia - Orecchiette con Broccoli di Rape and Sausages
One highlight of my previous life was a visit in NYC to L's restaurant there in the company
of several Italian colleagues - who had not been there. Expensive but memorable. Just like
the Visa ads...
Garden almost all in. Deer got at one rose plant, but others doing well. Squirrel season opens soon...
need a Daisy AirRifle. Wound and Release. Need to Make An Example Pour Les Autres...
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
David Isenberg on content
Isen.com
From a recent Smart Newsletter:
=====================================
Another Content Scenario by David S. Isenberg
The gurus of scenario planning caution that since we cannot predict the future, scenarios
always come in multiples.
In "Face the Music," I've assumed that the 'net's capacity and performance continue to grow.
But the Internet has enemies. Suppose the rollout of the 'net hits a regulatory or financial
reverse? Porter Stansberry's Investment Advisory (April 2003, for more info see pirateinvestor.com)
suggests a plausible storage-based alternate scenario.
"Areal density, the standard measurement of hard drive efficiency, has been doubling
every 11 months since the early 1990s . . . By 2010 common mass-market hard drives
will be capable of storing every movie produced since WWII (assuming 425 new movies
are made each year). Or, assuming each channel of the TV broadcasts 100 hours of new
content each week, a typical hard drive in 2010 could record every show on every TV
channel for three weeks."
This is plausible, but degenerate. Content is not dethroned. There's little or no interconversion
between content and communication. On the flip side, TV as we know it is on the verge of
disappearing given just a little more Internet development. Channels (a scarcity-based concept)
would be superceded by TVoIP, what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, direct from
the video maker, by 2010.
But even if the 'net does develop fully, a personal portable video player with the complete preloaded
Hollywood archive (or, say, the complete library of classical performances) would be quite a product.
(Note: Getting it done would be a monumental task. "Dubbing" all films to digitize them would take a
long time and a lot of storage and a lot of "management". The digital storage capacity exists, and is
growing as David and others point out. But as the content must be "ingested" in a linear form ( near
real time), lots of time and equipment are necessary - changing atoms to bits is still a mechanical
expensive process. Digital rights are another concurrent nightmare...But the idea of having it all in a
box for sale as a product, as opposed to a service on the net, is intriguing. Apple's iPod writ large. A
similar product with the complete Classical Music Repetoire would be an amazing device... JMW)
=================================
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Redistribution of this document, or any
part of it, is permitted for non-commercial purposes,
provided that the two lines below are reproduced with it:
Copyright 2003 by David S. Isenberg
isen@isen.com -- http://isen.com/ -- 1-888-isen-com
=========================================
Friday, May 02, 2003
Clayton Christensen...new book preview....
Storewidth - Part Four - Excerpts of a Report by by Graeme Thickins
=======================
'Dilemma,' For Sure -- Now, Where's the 'Solution'?
The closing keynote by Clayton Christensen was a highlight, with almost
all attendees staying on after-hours to hear the very engaging, well spoken
Harvard Business School prof give us his take on the state of disruption
and, purportedly, to offer a sneak-preview of the sequel to his best-selling
"The Innovator's Dilemma." He said the new book, "The Innovator's
Solution," will be out this fall.
The guy is good, the guy is smooth.
Here's a synopsis of his points, presented in his own words -- a clipping
of nuggets in order, as he progressed through his talk and the Q&A
following (about an hour in total):
"Creating growth is not random.
It's just not well understood yet."
"In management, most research is based on successful companies
(case studies): 'The rest of you idiots do this.' But my new book
will present useful theories, of what causes what and why."
"Some of the questions to address
in building growth companies:
- How do we beat the competition?
- Which customers do we target?
- What products will they buy?
- What should we do vs. our suppliers or partners?
- Whose money will help, whose will hurt?
- What's the role of the CEO?"
"Disruptive technologies come in 'under'
and do it cheaper."
"How do you beat a competitor? You disrupt. They're
motivated to run away from you rather than compete."
"Who's disrupting now? EBay, Amazon,
Veritas, Network Appliance..."
"TiVo is not a disruptive technology.
Neither is Starbucks -- nor are they
a sustaining technology."
"If you can cause incumbents to flee rather
than fight, you're better off."
"Non-consumers are the ideal initial market....
Sony did it with transitor radios in 1955, marketing
them to teenagers, who were delighted to have a crummy
(cheap) product. And the tube manufacturers, like
RCA, were vaporized."
"Non-consumers are the ideal platform
to build on."
"In my research (of big, established companies), 'threat'
always elicits more response than 'opportunity'. That's
why established companies always have so much trouble
marketing new products."
"The customers for new growth companies
are non-consumers."
"Lots of money is spent by companies trying to
teach people what they weren't trying to do."
"How do market segments get screwed up?
You need to define the market in terms of
jobs the customer needs to get done."
"In the computer market, it was once a great advantage
to be 'integrated'. But the tables flipped....The ability
to make money is not so much with the companies
now as with the suppliers (Intel, Microsoft)....And
it's the same for the car companies."
"VCs hire analytical MBAs, and that forces them to
go to the 'blue space' -- to get really big, really fast....
In history, one of the only successful companies has been
Sony. They've had 12 bonafide disruptive technologies,
competing against non-consumption. But the 'Walkman'
was the last one, in 1979. What happened? A Sony exec
told me that every decision used to be made by the CEO,
conferring with only five close assistants. Their policy
was to never do market research. What happened? In
1982, they hired their first MBA."
"MBAs work fine for sustaining technologies. But they
absolutely do not work in the growth or 'green' space."
A comment with his slide "The Conservation of Modularity":
"In the car industry, the subsystems became modular and
independent. And they're becoming more proprietary, while
the car is commoditized. It's a flip...The ability to make
money will stay in the value chain, but it will migrate."
"McDonald's needs a brand that's tied to the job,
a 'purpose brand' -- not one that's tied to the
consumer demographic."
"It's not wise for incumbents to try to protect
against disrupters. Best to set up a separate
company, autonomous."
The clear takeaway here for disrupters and startups? (and, one
would assume, the focus of Christensen's new book): Compete
against non-consumption. Find new customers. Create markets,
based on 'jobs' those customers need to get done. Don't go
head-to-head with the big players, the "sustaining technologies."
And Christensen left no doubt that new, more nimble companies
do the above (create markets) better than established companies.
---------
Thursday, May 01, 2003
Storewidth - Part Three
Graeme Thickins continues...
======================
Storage 'Intelligence': Another Buzzword
(and a hot-button re: where it will reside)
"The intelligence is moving to the fabric."
- Mark Nagaitis, Director of Marketing -
Storage Infrastructure, HP
"The question is, what's the right intelligence
and how should it be deployed?"
- Peter Dougherty, VP-Business Development,
McData
"We see the top of the stack being a network
intelligence framework, with automated resource
management, a policy engine, provisioning..."
- Peter Dougherty
"In the future, the performance bottlenecks
will change. There'll be more I/O, and more
requirements for intelligence in I/O."
- Mark Delsman, CTO, Adaptec
----------
Blade Servers: Hot (in more ways than one)
"Blade servers solve yesterday's problem. Future
blade servers will focus on moving data."
- Larry Boucher, CEO, Alacritech
"iWARP (a developing standard for fast data transfers
over IP networks) would mop up the floor on blade servers."
- Larry Boucher
"For the SME market, we're planning embedded switches,
and putting single-chip HBAs into blade servers."
- Skip Jones, Director of Strategic
Planning, QLogic
"By 2006, 20% of servers will be blades."
- Mike Smith, EVP-Worldwide Marketing,
Emulex
----------
Survey Says! Here's What Users and Investors Think...
What are Fortune 1000 storage professionals saying about their needs
today, and the vendors and technologies competing to meet them? A
research company in New York, The Info Pro, conducts one-hour interviews
with 190 storage professionals every six months. It presented its latest
findings at Storewidth, and what follows are some highlights.
What users most need:
- Management software
- Better interoperability
- Cost reduction
- Improved management tools
What their technology priorities are:
- Storage resource management (SRM)
- Capacity forecasting
- Business continuity
- Storage area management
- Data replication management
- SAN topology management
- Recovery management
- Storage provisioning
- Disk-to-disk backup
Storage networking technical priorities:
- Remote mirroring
- Rapid restore
- Point-in-time copying
- Fibre channel SANs
- Storage virtualization
The survey also included in-depth interviews with 42
institutional investors, and here are two key findings.
The most over-valued storage stocks:
- QLogic
- Network Appliance
- Emulex
[Editor's note: I think they may have changed their minds --
QLogic just reported surprisingly strong numbers.]
The highest rated storage-related stocks:
- Cisco
- Dell
- BMC
- IBM
- CNT
[Editor's note: Minneapolis-based CNT may a sleeper to
some, but not those professional investors. And shortly
after the conference, it announced it was acquiring
big switch player InRange Technologies.]
----------
Innovation: What Is (or Will Be) Disruptive?
"In business today, there are more acceleration
drivers in IT than ever before."
- Randy Whitehead, Sr VP-Operations,
Arsenal Digital Solutions
"Uses give many reasons to defer networked storage...
but they do appear to have a readiness for IP storage...
IP/Ethernet is a disruptive technology."
- Robert Gray, Storage Research Director, IDC
"The PC revolution has in many ways stifled innovation.
Value and profit will migrate from the PC."
- Chris Hamlin, CTO, LSI Logic
"The introduction of the microprocessor set back
hardware design 30 years. Intel is facing a tough time."
- Nick Tredennick, Editor, Gilder Technology Report
"The advent of real-time delivery systems will
provide opportunities for innovative companies."
- Chris Hamlin, CTO, LSI Logic
"This is what's holding us back (vendors' jockeying
to control a technology, lack of standards or
interoperability)...BMC was in the perfect position,
with an application database-based SRM solution,
but the CFO got control and shut it down."
- Steven Murphy, CEO, Fujitsu Softek
"Almost every player in the industry has a bunker
mentality, hunkering down...The innovative
technologies are being held back."
- Jon William Toigo, author, consultant, and storage guru
"Let's solve problems people actually have, not
just because we can build it....We tend to boil
the ocean. No one wants to rip out everything
and do an 'SAP'."
- Steve Duplessie, Founder & Senior Analyst,
Enterprise Storage Group
"Serial ATA disk is disruptive! It's five times faster
than SCSI disk, and 400 times faster than tape....
and we're seeing rapid adoption."
- Kevin Daly, CEO, Avamar Technologies
"There's already infiltration of ATA drives into
the data center. That's disruptive. EMC leads
here, with Centera and Clariion. But we'll see
more announcements from other companies."
- Richard Lary, noted storage industry guru
and consultant (Partner, TuteLary)
"Removeable media will be significantly impacted by
holographic storage...We're now working with 7 or 8
companies, like Sony, to bring products to market in
their industries...The benefits are 80% space savings
over tape, and 80% less power consumption than
videotape...Holographic storage will be mainstream."
- Kevin Curtis, CTO, InPhase Technologies
"iSCSI will make SAN benefits available to hundreds
more connecting points....But fibre channel will
remain in the data center for five years or more....
Other technologies, like Infiniband, must seamlessly
integrate."
- Steve Duplessie, Founder & Senior Analyst,
Enterprise Storage Group
"The SMB market will be the battleground for iSCSI,
NAS, serial attached SCSI, and serial ATA drives."
- Mike Smith, EVP-Worldwide Marketing,
Emulex
"Today, we have islands of SANs. But, by 2005,
we see a multi-protocol network with heterogeneous
connectivity, and a common management platform...
Drucker's 'missing link' will be those who take
out the complexity."
- Peter Dougherty, VP-Business Development,
McData
---------
$64 Question: How Does Disruption
Break Through in Such Cheap Times?
The problem is summed up very bluntly in the following abstract
for yet another conference session at a larger upcoming event,
"Storage World." ...
"Abstract: IT budgets may have shrunk, but rates of data growth
haven't. By all accounts, organizations and individuals are
generating more data than ever before. This requirement is
coalescing just at a time when IT managers are being told to
do more with less money, staff, and other resources. Times are
also tough for the vendor community, and even the big 'brand name'
storage vendors are beginning to sweat as companies turn back
leased storage equipment and shop the 'gray market' for newer
and higher capacity storage platforms at bargain basement prices.
Meanwhile, some of the best ideas coming out of the industry --
those from small, unknown companies -- are getting lost as their
developers confront a lack of venture capital and barriers to
market entry based on fear, uncertainty and doubt." (Speakers:
Jon William Toigo, Author/Columnist, and Steven Schuchart, Jr.,
Technology Editor, Network Computing)
This looks like a must-attend for startups, VCs, and corporate
M&A folks alike, if you ask me. It would appear Jon will get an
opportunity here to explore an insightful question he raised at
Storewidth, which never really got answered: "How does the startup
with innovative technology break in today?" (And nowhere on the
program at the Storewidth event were the VCs heard from -- not
a single one.) But this session, in front of real users (actual buyers!),
with a skeptical media type participating, will surely result in an
interesting discussion.
---------
The Net-Net on Disruption in the Age of Cheap
What are some succint conclusions you can draw from this event?
In my opinion, they are these:
- Innovation continues to flourish in this space -- and must, if the monstrous
complexity challenge is to be met (driven in large part by data growth).
- Opportunities for disruption are as ripe as they've ever been. And innovation
keeps happening fast in storage -- even faster than in networking, which
is naturally more evolutionary in its adoption curve.
- Storage is being elevated to a higher level, helped by a number of factors --
not the least of which is the massive push by the IT leaders toward automation
and utility computing. Storage is far from the "sleepy" industry the New York
Times referred to in the link above -- if it ever was. (But I guess when the
mainstream media finally realizes it isn't, you can rest assured it's true.)
- Startups continue to proliferate and get funding in the storewidth space, with
more than you can count on both hands and feet announcing rounds in the
past several months. Public announcements of three more follow-on financings
totaling some $36M came in just a single day, right after the event ended --
and more since. So, the VC spiggot is flowing.
- Money is not the issue, nor the lack of it. A handful of companies controls 90%
of the market -- a big, big market getting bigger -- and these leaders must step up
and lead. The onus is on them, not the VC community, to move things forward.
Think of it as a necessary new generation of corporate VC, if you will. Sitting
on laurels won't cut it for these outfits. They must work harder to find and
nurture the disruptive technologies that will advance the state of the art (which
are most certainly out there) -- or risk becoming dinosaurs. Most agree that even
the most promising startups cannot survive long on their own, build distribution,
etc. So, it falls to the leaders to figure out ways -- whether acquisition or
other -- to incubate this great source of innovation and disruption. They must
put their money and might behind developing, testing, marketing, and improving
these advancements.
The market has clearly spoken: the need is simplification, amidst continued
cost reduction for the forseeable future. And that may be the biggest challenge
yet -- for all of IT.
Next year at this time, we may very likely be looking at a different alignment
of leaders in the "storewidth industry," depending on just how well the old guard
can blend with and incorporate the new, the disrupters, into their offerings.
It's a strange mix in many ways. But a potent one.
And it will mix, because the market is saying it has to.
-----------------
Hope you enjoyed my report. Till the next time I hit the
event trail, I remain...
your ever-dedicated, continuously-learnin',
knowledge-nugget-minin' conference reporter,
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Graeme Thickins
Freelance Technology Writer
*Minneapolis *San Clemente *Anywhere
952/944-1672
graeme@gtamarketing.com, or graeme@thickins.com
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
http://www.gtamarketing.com
...25 Years Experience Writing
About Innovative Technologies,
and Never More Upbeat...
==============================
Storewidth - Part Two
Labor: The Monster That Won't Go Away
"What's driving CIOs in 2003?....One thing is that
decreasing budgets require more productive staff. It's
the driving force on the cost side of the equation."
- Mark Bregman, EVP-Product Operations, Veritas
"Storage is still manual labor."
- Steve Duplessie, Founder & Senior Analyst,
Enterprise Storage Group
"The amount of storage one administrator can manage
has expanded over the years, but 4-8 terabytes
seems to be the limit."
- Steven Murphy, CEO, Fujitsu Softek
"Throwing cheap hardware at the problem is just part
of the solution -- management is the bigger problem."
- Roger Klein, VP-Product Management, QLogic
"It's all about management -- labor.
Hardware and software can be free."
- Shaun Walsh, VP-I/O Business Development,
JNI Corp.
"Why is XML bad if storage is abundant?
Because the real cost is labor, not disk space."
- Jon William Toigo, author, consultant, and storage guru
"The objective is getting to be that anyone
can deploy storage. It's what's coming --
it has to."
- Mike Alvarado, Chair, SNIA Security Industry Forum,
and Senior Product Manager, NeoScale Systems
"CIOs are saying, 'show me how I can do more with
less, make the most of what I have'."
- Stephen Terlizzi, VP-Marketing, G-Force
---------
Storage Management: Same Initials
as Sado-Masochism for a Reason
"In storage systems, '90s features are now commodities...
Storage management, storage provisioning is the major
pain point."
- Richard Lary, noted storage industry
consultant and guru (Partner, TuteLary)
"Storage has not been designed for its consumers. Many
SANs typically don't work together. Management is static,
done mostly manually by administrators -- it's tedium."
- Eric Shott, Director of Product Development,
EqualLogic
"SANs today are just switched direct-attached storage.
Fibre channel is just a protocol, not a network!"
- Jon William Toigo, author, consultant, and storage guru
"The scalability of NAS is a problem. The first one installs
easily -- then you run out of capacity, and the second and
subsequent ones become much harder. There are two vendor
approaches to solve this: faster boxes, like BlueArc's, and
NAS aggregation, from firms like Spinnaker and Z-Force."
- Richard Lary
"Storage resource management (SRM) was one of the most
hyped technologies of 2002. What is it? Well, it's 12
things -- literally!"
- Laura Sanders, VP-Storage Software,
IBM/Tivoli
"Why can one person manage 600 terabytes in a mainframe
environment? Because the tools are there!"
- Jon William Toigo
"We're beginning to make strides in storage management,
with space optimization and, next, policy management.
We'll see similar development as in systems management
and networking management."
- Steven Murphy, CEO, Fujitsu Softek
"Policy-based management is really just a vision. NAS
is in complete control of the software, unlike SAN."
- Steven Higgins, VP-Engineering, Procom Technology
"Enterprise storage management is at the same position
LAN technology was 12 years ago -- then came standards."
- Steve Duplessie, Founder & Senior Analyst,
Enterprise Storage Group
"People need self-managing storage. IP SANs is the new
frontier. The stars have aligned -- iSCSI is everywhere.
IP storage will proliferate SANs, so solving the
management problem is more critical than ever."
- Eric Shott, Director of Product Development,
EqualLogic
"We have a 'peer storage architecture' in which the array
manages the complexity. No software runs on the host.
It's a distributed, scale-out design....next generation
storage design. It's about time we changed the formula."
- Eric Shott
And, for a sobering, skeptical view of things, consider these
comments, which occured in the discussion after one of the
hottest sessions, "IP Storage: Hype or Disruptive Innovation?":
"There are only 11,000 fibre channels SANs
in existence. It's never gained mainstream."
- Jon William Toigo
"Most companies have not aggregated SANs together.
If you have one, you have many. The market today is
primarily DAS (direct-attached storage). Unlike RAID,
which swept across the industry, storage networking
doesn't have universal acceptance."
- Robert Gray, Research Director-Storage, IDC
Will IP storage, iSCSI SANs, solve everything and sweep the
market, starting with departments and SMBs? Stay tuned...
---------
Backup: Perennial Pain Point #2
Yes, this one always comes out near the top, actually a very-close second
to management (and really part and parcel of it). What's more, adding to
the problem are recent high-profile developments like you-know-what:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/21/technology/21NECO.html?ex=1051588800&en=71c641c3e6ab234d&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
(NY Times: "New Demand Seen For Data Storage")
Thank you, SEC, FDA, et al! Government regulation gets a lot of flack, but,
in this case, many in the industry are licking their collective chops. You say
your IT spending isn't going up, bucko? Oh yes it is -- at least for data
backup, especially if your company is in financial services or healthcare.
As George Gilder exclaimed in the discussion period following the Backup
& Recovery session, "Is this an instance of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act actually
helping an industry?" Will wonders ever cease...
Earlier, consultant Rich Lary had noted, "Yes, SEC Rule 17a-4 has driven
a new technology: WORM tape." (That's write-once, read many.)
"It stores emails for four years."
Following is an additional selection of sound-bites heard at Storewidth on
this growing market segment -- meaning everything other than "primary"
storage. Some call it "secondary." Many call it "backup." But what it's
really about is "recovery" or "restore."
That is, the point isn't the backup itself -- that's drudgery. The point
is getting "back up," fast -- with streamlined storage management
techniques, tools, and processes. And, above all, with minimal labor
to accomplish the intended result.
"Backup typically involves as least 10 times as much
data as primary systems, and it can be up to 100 times.
And backed up data is going from months' to years'
worth -- even more if the SEC gets its way."
- Kevin Daly, CEO, Avamar Technologies
"Dissatisfaction with tape is significant. The failure
rate is high -- an average of 25% of them don't work.
And, moreover, 30% of data is never backed up at all."
- Kevin Daly
"Our appliance can eliminate the concept of a backup
window altogether, through remote mirroring and
electronic vaulting of the backup archive."
- Kevin Daly
"There are problems with application recovery today.
It takes hours or days to recover from tape."
- David Scott, CEO, 3Par Data
"3Par, Avamar, EMC -- all these backup solutions are proprietary!
Who will broker? Who will train people to run these solutions?"
- Jon William Toigo, author, consultant, and storage guru
"Gartner says secondary storage will be 7 to 15 times
the spend of primary storage by 2007."
- Brian Truskowski, GM-Storage Software,
IBM Systems Group
---------
'Utility Computing' and 'Storage as a Utility':
Le Buzz du Jour
Okay, pardon the French (and, trust me, I don't mean cutting the
country any slack) -- but this, friends, is the section in which I divulge
what I judged to be the hottest/hippest phrase of the event, based on
the number and importance of the speakers putting it forth on stage.
A sampling:
"We build on the the transport layer, overlaying
that with intelligent services...We're on an
evolution to the multi-service storage utility."
- Ed Chapman, Senior Director of
Product Management, Cisco
"Managing storage as a service is coming -- the analogy
is the water utility...The 'water' is always available,
and is more valuable than the pipes...The 'bill' requires
what we call 'chargeback'. No one does that yet, but
it won't be long."
- Jonathan Martin, Senior Director
of Product Planning, Veritas
"We're driving to a utility model
for the storage network."
- Mark Nagaitis, Director of Marketing -
Storage Infrastructure, HP
"This industry needs more like what Google's done...
Think of an ATM machine, where you can take money --
storage -- out wherever and whenever you need it."
- Rohit Sharma, CTO, Ciena
"We have a vision for the storage management utility...
and we're the first to deliver a utility-class platform
supporting nine storage-management apps....
(the industry's) far from being able to fully
automate storage, but it's our vision."
- Steven Murphy, CEO, Fujitsu Softek
"The storage utility is a great vision, but we
have a long way to go. I think we can all help...
Storage will be like lights."
- Laura Sanders, VP-Storage Software,
IBM/Tivoli
"We have a new category: utility storage...We're
focused in automating application recovery."
- David Scott, CEO, 3Par Data
"The Big Four have moved to a new model, utility
computing, and storage is an active part of this."
- Shaun Walsh, VP-I/O Business Development,
JNI Corp.
"Abundant storage and infinite bandwidth enable
the transition of IT to a utility."
- Mark Bregman, EVP-Product Operations, Veritas
"It's increasingly important to IT to charge customers
for what they use...In December, we acquired two
companies (Precise and Jareva) that have tools to
provision IT as a utility....we'll have management
reporting and chargeback later this year."
- Mark Bregman
"We're building a storage networking backbone
as an independent utility...The utility network
aligns changing business requirements with
appropriate storage resources."
- Tim Lieto, CEO, Sandial (a stealth company)
=========================
Storewidth Report -
An in-depth report with interesting quotes from Biggies in the Storage Market, on Gilder's 2003 Storewidth Conference, by Technology Reporter Graeme Thickins.
================================
Graeme Thickins
What follows is a collection of sound-bites from Storewidth 2003, mixed in
with some commentary, organized into what I hope are logical sections. But,
remember, it was an eclectic bunch of presenters, covering a lot of ground.
So, pearls of wisdom were flying in every direction -- maybe 'lasers of
wisdom' would be a better term. But my job, as I've chosen to accept it,
is helping you cut to the chase. ...
---------
More Quotes That Stood Out in My Book
They stood out because I especially flagged 'em in the heat of the
moment, scribbling as verbatim as my synapses could possibly fire.
And, later, I carefully reviewed my notes again (and again), highlighting
other nuggets that seemed most representative of the conference themes.
"The communications industry is so screwed up,
it's going to prolong how valuable storage is."
- Nick Treddenick, Editor, Gilder Technology Report
"The switch companies are in an incredible position now.
The move is to the backplane....I would not bet against Cisco."
- Larry Boucher, CEO, Alacritech (and inventor of SCSI, 1979)
"Storage management's not there yet -- it's just a blunt instrument.
We need application awareness....Nobody's got the secret sauce yet
for application-centric storage management."
- Jon William Toigo, storage industry consultant, guru, author, and
self-admitted "troublemaker" (in his role as IT consumer advocate)
"Storage systems are like islands -- nice to visit,
but hard to live and work on."
- Eric Shott, Director of Product Development, EqualLogic
"With the current uncertainties, no wonder the market
is in turmoil. When it's over, we'll see the market
soar up another 20-30%."
- Steve Forbes, Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Magazine
"The local loop is totally paralyzed with government regulations.
and the U.S. fell behind in last-mile connectivity....There is
massive demand for wireless broadband. And we'll fall behind again
if we allow the federal government to control our technologies."
- George Gilder, Chairman, Gilder Publishing
"Washington's way of keeping books
makes Enron look honest."
- Steve Forbes
"What do I think of the recent FCC moves regarding the telecomn
industry? The FCC shafted young Powell. It's an invitation to
paralysis. We need to pick a date --just like the securities
industry did in the '70s to do away with fixed commissions.
Call it a 'May Day' or a 'Liberation Day.' Something has
to be done to deregulate, or we've wasted billions."
- Steve Forbes
"The Moore's Law curve has been growing faster than
the demand curve....it doesn't drive the industry
anymore....We've spent 40 years looking for better,
faster transitors. We don't need 'em anymore!"
- Nick Tredennick, Editor, Gilder Technology Report
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Factoids & Predictions of Note
"We've had 250 storewidth startups in a couple of
years, with $200 billion in venture capital invested."
- George Gilder, Chairman, Gilder Publishing
"Since 1995, storage has advanced three times faster
than Moore's Law, and we've had a 170 times increase
in total deployed drives. We've gone from a 40Mb
drive for $400 to a 160Gb drive for $400 --
that's a 4000 times reduction in price."
- George Gilder
"We're in 'The Cheap Revolution' -- where Google gets
150 million page views per month from 12,000 cheap,
off-the-rack PCs....where Wi-Fi, which costs hardly
anything, proliferates, while France Telecom loses
$25 billion in a year....and China graduates many
more engineers per year than the U.S., who'll work
for $12,000 per year."
- Rich Karlgaard, Publisher, Forbes Magazine
"In the late '90s, disk drives cost more than
25 cents per megabyte. Now, we're at 3 to 4
cents per megabyte."
- Jonathan Martin, Senior Director
of Product Planning, Veritas
"Annual email message volume will hit
36 billion by 2005."
- Barbara Nelson, EVP-Corporate Marketing
and Strategy, Quantum
"I predict 2003 will be a watershed year for storage
management software....And traditional backup is
dead, because disk-to-disk technology is here.
It's now about distance mirroring and replication,
and a focus on recovery."
- Steven Murphy, CEO, Fujitsu Softek
"What's coming? In memory technology -- ferroelectric,
magnetoresistive, ovonic. Also, non-volatile and
MEMS-based memory are both interesting. We'll
see 3D chip stacking, too."
- Nick Treddenick, Editor, Gilder Technology Report
"Storage is becoming the dominant application for
MANs (metro area networks). By 2005, half of all
metro DWDM revenues -- about $1 billion -- will
come from storage networking."
- Rohit Sharma, CTO, Ciena
"IP is better architected -- you couldn't have invented
the 'Net with fibre channel. And it will displace FC
eventually. Even Brocade has reluctantly jumped on the
bandwagon. But expect a long period of coexistence."
- Richard Lary, noted storage industry guru
and consultant (Partner, TuteLary)
"2003 is the real year for IP (iSCSI) in departments --
FC is weak there. Intelligent iSCSI NICs are now available
from Intel, QLogic, and Alacritech. Enterprise iSCSI will
start happening in '03-'04, first from EMC and Hitachi."
- Richard Lary
"Users don't want to, nor will have to,
care about protocols."
- Steve Duplessie, Founder & Senior Analyst,
Enterprise Storage Group
"Enterprise storage management will be a $7 billion
industry by 2005. That's a 20% compound annual
growth rate."
- Steve Duplessie
---------
Complexity: As Bad as You Thought, Only Worse
"We're seeing the strongest growth yet in unstructured
data...and it's pushing IT to the limit."
- Jonathan Martin, Senior Director
of Product Planning, Veritas
"Some say data is doubling every year -- I've
seen reports of it doubling every 9 months."
- Peter Dougherty, VP-Business Development,
McData
"Storage today is not designed to scale or to be
managed effectively. The industry is caught up
in tech for tech's sake."
- Eric Shott, Director of Product Development,
EqualLogic
"IT today is a collection of tools and is problem
driven, rarely strategic. How do we elevate the
game beyond that sort of bunker mentality?"
- Steve Duplessie, Founder & Senior Analyst,
Enterprise Storage Group
"Storage networking is a linear solution only
today. Like a 'code monkey' -- just writing
code till the problem goes away."
- Rohit Sharma, CTO, Ciena
"For many firms, adding storage to an application
can take a week! Only top-tier administrators can
provision storage. And it's very political, as far as
when to do it."
- Richard Lary, noted storage industry guru
and consultant (Partner, TuteLary)
"What's the problem with SANs today? Right now,
they have to be homogeneous to work well, both
primary and backup. Customers are frustrated with
heterogeneity...It's getting much more complex...
not just SAN, but SAN and NAS."
- Brian Truskowski, GM-Storage Software,
IBM Systems Group
"IP alone doesn't eliminate the complexity
of SANs."
- Ed Chapman, Senior Director of
Product Management, Cisco (a major player
in the new category of iSCSI or IP storage)
"Storage provisioning is 12 steps -- how many
GUIs do you want to learn? What happens if
you make a mistake?"
- Richard Lary
"How often do you find replication going on that no one
knows about when you go into a customer?" (directing the
question to storage services firm Arsenal Digital Solutions)
Answer: "Always."
- Jon William Toigo, author, consultant, and storage guru
"The big telecom companies are completely oriented
to these enormous mazes of regulations...the entire
'Net explosion was based on the deployment of broadband,
not 'dribble band'!...but the environment we have really
doesn't encourage investment." (read: too much
government control and regulation)
- George Gilder
"All of you are underestimating (storage) capacity
growth. There are only two reasons you wouldn't keep
something online: if it's illegal or too costly.
If you could always do it, you would."
- Steve Duplessie
"Digital content -- rich media -- will grow 700%
by 2006, when it will be a third of all data."
- Sujal Patel, CTO, Isilon Systems
"The complexities in storage are increasing,
and will for quite some time."
- Randy Whitehead, Sr VP-Operations,
Arsenal Digital Solutions
"XML adds to the problem (of data storage growth).
It takes up too much space, with the envelope around
the data."
- Jon William Toigo
"The failing of the online storage industry was because
they couldn't make it simple. It's incredibly difficult
to provision storage. But it *can* be made simple."
- David Scott, CEO, 3Par Data
"The question is, can you make storage networking
simple enough that a guy can walk into a Staples,
buy two things, and put 'em together."
- Shaun Walsh, VP-I/O Business Development,
JNI Corp.
"We're about extracting the complexity of the plumbing,
so business users don't have to face that."
- Mark Bregman, EVP-Product Operations, Veritas
"Why is the convergence of SAN and NAs important?
Because consolidation drives down costs."
- Mark Nagaitis, Director of Marketing -
Storage Infrastructure, HP
"NAS is adding to the complexity problem, when you
get beyond one. How do we simplify for our customers?
It's about simplifying the infrastructure and
driving standards."
- Brian Truskowski, GM-Storage Software,
IBM Systems Group
"How will NetApp solve the complexity problem?"
(question from moderator Steve Duplessie) "The
multiple-box problem has been creeping up on us..."
- Steve Kleiman, SVP and CTO, Network Appliance
(comment immediately following)
"The only solution is going to a true
global file system."
- Mark Nagaitis, Director of Marketing -
Storage Infrastructure, HP
(another comment following)
"The 'dumbness' of the block model has allowed it
to scale, whereas the 'smartness' of NAS, the file
model, has weighed on it. The NAS gateway model
lets the app have either block or file, the way
it wants it."
- Richard Lary, storage guru and consultant
"Today's NAS falls short. It cannot scale, it causes
management headaches, and it's complex and expensive
for high availability."
- Stephen Terlizzi, VP-Marketing, G-Force
"The simple SAN? That's us. We were the first with
a single-chip HBA. And we're trying to simplify
switches....The SME market demands simplicity,
and some will even pay more for it."
- Skip Jones, Director of Strategic
Planning, QLogic
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