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Clouds Cannot Be Contained In A Box
November 28, 2011 1:45 PM
A big part of the value proposition of cloud is to ensure that you have continuous access to your data, and that you've moved beyond the physical limitations of a single box or a single data center or a single geography. While the move to the cloud can allow greater leverage of compute servers and storage, it also provides the ability to move away from aging, monolithic storage and servers, and gives cloud customers access to their data irrespective of any technical issues that may be going on and irrespective of their physical location. Cloud is supposed to be always on, with resources available on-demand, 24 by seven. However, how do you deliver all of this with a cloud that's been imprisoned in a box? Clouds cannot be contained in a box.
IBM SONAS On Life Support As BlueArc Goes To HDS
September 09, 2011 5:12 PM
You may have heard of an oddly named storage product from IBM called SONAS. It stands for Scale-Out NAS. I’m concerned that, like with so many other monolithic products, SONAS may be out of gas--as Hitachi Data Systems fills up its tank with higher octane from BlueArc. As always, there’s more to the story of the BlueArc acquisition than meets the eye.
Health Care Providers Shifting to the Cloud
July 26, 2011 5:37 PM
With the unstoppable growth of medical imagery, many health care providers are realizing that trying to do a data migration to a new storage system every few years is becoming next to impossible. Some providers I spoke with say that unless they shift to the cloud, they'll never be able to even fathom catching up with their data growth as they'll be stuck in a never-ending cycle of rebuying their next storage system and migrating data.
Monolithic Scale-Out NAS Is Out Of Gas
June 03, 2011 2:00 PM
The cloudwashing that’s running rampant throughout the storage industry has clearly got to stop. My latest observation is that traditional monolithic scale-out NAS vendors are so aggressively selling their offerings for the cloud that their claims are completely out of control.
Building A Sustainable Cloud (And More Predictions)
May 13, 2011 2:20 PM
I thought that the cloud was supposed to be about the aggregation of thousands of low-cost servers and disk drives, integrated together with a web services layer and a robust object store, all accessed as a pay-as-you-go service. Wasn't that how cloud service providers were supposed to make money--by using commodity components with their own "secret sauce" software on top? High-cost legacy infrastructure products are not congruent with building a long-term sustainable cloud.
Iron Mountain Digital Steps Out Of Cloud Storage; Nirvanix Steps In
April 12, 2011 8:49 AM
Well, it appears again that companies that are good at one thing won't necessarily be good at trying other things. Iron Mountain Digital, the public cloud offshoot from Iron Mountain--the company that stores papers in caves and giant vaults and drives around in vans all the time--has collapsed.
Forecast: Shakeups Looming in the Cloud
March 18, 2011 11:28 AM
There are a number of rumblings in the cloud. One IT behemoth is believed to be eying a strategic acquisition of a powerful cloud software and storage offering, another seems to be repositioning an existing product, and VCs sharpen their focus on what really adds value in the cloud. There are a number of pivotal events that I believe will transpire over the next year in this rapidly changing and expanding market. From start-ups to behemoths, there will be significant changes that will shake up the cloud.
Could EMC Become The Amdahl of Cloud Storage?
February 11, 2011 5:59 PM
There is no doubt that EMC has shipped some Atmos storage since its introduction. Yes, EMC has Atmos. And the company claims that Atmos is specifically designed for the cloud. However, I believe that there are fundamental issues with the way EMC sells Atmos to customers. First of all, if Atmos is cloud storage, then it should be sold on a usage basis. Customers should be charged only for what they use--not for petabytes of capacity up front. After all, isn't that the whole premise of cloud? Lowering your capital expenditures and shifting to a utility model? It makes me wonder if EMC is slowly becoming the Amdahl of Cloud Storage.
Nirvanix Gains Increased Market Traction With Triad Of Cloud Solutions
January 14, 2011 1:18 PM
I blogged about Nirvanix here on Network Computing back in November, and opined that the time to execute with cloud offerings is now. I have been following Nirvanix closely since then, and speaking candidly with its customers. It is clear that the company is executing well, providing substantial value to its existing customers, gaining new customers and fine-tuning offerings in order to take the competition head on. Nirvanix has its sights set on the high end of the competitive spectrum. The company is making gains in market traction and turning prospects away from stalwarts like EMC and IBM.
Correlsense Makes Finding A Needle In A Haystack Easy
December 21, 2010 5:52 PM
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Correlsense, a business transaction management company, along with one of its customers, GAINSCO Insurance. We discussed Correlsense's product, SharePath, which monitors and tracks all of an application's transactions in real time, and can rapidly deliver root-cause analysis and display where transactions are slowed or stalled. In fact, SharePath can pinpoint transaction bottlenecks spanning from the discrete user client to the IT infrastructure to the number of bytes read, or written, at the disk storage level. In my opinion, this makes finding a bottleneck in real time--or the needle in a haystack--easy.
Dell And Others Still Shopping For Storage
December 15, 2010 9:00 AM
On Dec. 13, Dell announced it has "entered into a definitive agreement for Dell to acquire Compellent ... " Dell also said it expects the transaction to be accretive to Dell non-GAAP earnings in its fiscal year 2012. There is no doubt that I, along with others in the industry, have blogged and written quite a bit on this topic over recent days. There has been no bidding war, no firing of shots across the bow from one vendor to another, and no soaring stock price in this quickly executed company acquisition. In my opinion, Compellent as a brand gets a big boost now, and Dell has bolstered its storage line up. So what's next for the Compellent brand as it integrates within Dell, and is Dell finished with storage vendor acquisitions?
The Win-Win-Win Scenario Of A Compellent And Dell Merger
December 13, 2010 9:26 AM
On Dec. 9, Compellent and Dell announced that they "are engaged in advanced discussions regarding a possible business combination involving the two companies." I blogged about Compellent here on Oct. 8 and one day before the joint Compellent-Dell announcement. Some voices in the industry, not associated with Network Computing, have raised thinly veiled arguments that question the sense, and value, of an acquisition of Compellent by Dell. In my opinion, Compellent will be a strong addition to both the Dell Virtual Information System (VIS) architecture and Data Center Solutions (DCS) capabilities. Should it come to fruition, this potential acquisition is a win-win-win for customers, Compellent and Dell.
Compellent - Taking On The Enterprise Challenge
December 08, 2010 7:00 PM
On Nov. 22, Compellent announced the newest release of StorageCenter version 5.4, new Live Volume software, new Enterprise Manager multisite tool capabilities, and next-generation hardware that is faster, stores more data and connects to FCoE and 10GbE iSCSI. Back in October, I wrote that Compellent was rising to the enterprise challenge. With this announcement, it's clear to me that Compellent is taking on the enterprise challenge and may be swinging the acquisition pendulum in their direction.
Nirvanix Success Attracts Funding And New Executive Leadership
November 10, 2010 9:53 AM
Today Nirvanix announced that it has secured additional funding of $10 million dollars and has appointed Scott Genereux as President, and Chief Executive Officer. These developments are designed to fortify the company's competitive position and expand the market penetration of its Storage Delivery Network (SDN) on a massive global scale. Genereux's successful track record of building business value propositions around storage solutions bodes well for Nirvanix as the company starts to penetrate new markets and attempts to take market share from traditional storage vendors and other cloud storage providers.
NetApp Takes On EMC With Future Ready Infrastructure
November 09, 2010 5:23 PM
Today NetApp announced new high-end and mid-range storage systems, support for 2.5 inch disk drives and Solid State Disks (SSD), Data ONTAP 8.0.1, unified connectivity for FCoE, CIFS, NFS, and iSCSI, along with the OnCommand Management Suite, and FlexPod for VMware which is a pre-sized and validated data center infrastructure solution. NetApp is clearly targeting the burgeoning Virtual Machine opportunity and is building the path to a future-ready infrastructure. In my opinion, today's announcement by NetApp represents the big bet that the company can provide storage, software, and connectivity technology that provides the infrastructure foundation for shared storage in both virtual and physical server environments.
Now We Know What Dell Will Do
October 29, 2010 10:07 AM
Back on September 29th, Dell announced new capabilities and services to its Virtual Integrated System (VIS) architecture. A few days before VMworld I met with senior Dell representatives in San Francisco where they explained VIS and how well the overall architecture and combined Dell services have enabled their customers to heavily leverage virtual technologies. Dell customer Black Board attended this meeting providing testimonial on the implementation of the VIS architecture and that they are accelerating their ability to meet SLA's and deliver compute capabilities that are enhancing their business growth. My last blog on Dell asked What Will Dell Do Now? in consideration of HP winning the bidding war for 3PAR. Now we know what Dell will do as they begin soaring ahead into the virtual era with VIS.
Compellent: Rising To The Enterprise Challenge
October 08, 2010 9:30 AM
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Compellent and spend some time talking with them on a few hot topics. High on my list to talk about was getting their impression of the bidding war for 3Par. We discussed that subject and much more. I have been meaning to blog about Compellent for some time, taking a deeper look at their Auto Tiering capability, which is leading Compellent into enterprise opportunities. It appears the time is right to provide a glimpse into a storage company that has started to take on the enterprise challenge.
QLogic Launches New Attack On Network Convergence Landscape
October 07, 2010 1:24 PM
QLogic's announcement today of their Adaptive Convergence strategy is the equivalent of a nuclear blast across the converged networking landscape, metaphorically leveling the competition in its wake. As I have predicted in the past, QLogic is seriously committed to the converged networking sector and is innovating at a rapid pace, gaining material market share and bringing fundamentally new technologies to market that will benefit cloud service providers and highly virtualized environments. This new attack on the network convergence landscape is again bringing the fight, and the pain, to its competitors.
What Will Dell Do Now?
September 08, 2010 1:00 PM
For a company that prides itself on listening to its customers and delivering more than just what meets requirements, EMC received the message loud and clear from Dell about what the company is looking for in an enterprise class storage product: like a 3Par InServ. Can EMC deliver an enterprise storage array for Dell? Will Dell select a new acquisition target? Now that HP has won the bidding war, what will Dell do now?
FalconStor VDI Solution: Economics And Performance
September 08, 2010 8:00 AM
On August 24th, FalconStor announced their new NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware Virtual Desk Top Environments, and Network Computing covered it here. FalconStor briefed me on this solution prior to their announcement, and I was impressed with it. FalconStor has been developing some highly creative storage solutions, and I thought it time to take a closer look at this one and spend some time talking with someone who is using it. To say that I was even more impressed with the FalconStor solution after my conversation is an understatement.
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