Next up was CommVault. I spoke with Michael Marchi, the VP of product and segment marketing. They are clearly not making friends within the de-duplication community, going head-to-head with the likes of Data Domain, Sepaton, and Falconstor with their own software-based de-duplication. Here CommVault and HDS are in agreement -- de-duplication will just become a feature either implemented through software or through a virtualization appliance like USP. While I am sure that Data Domain and Sepaton will have something to say about that, it interesting to see this stance being taken.
For an existing CommVault customer, this certainly makes sense. The fly in the ROI model will be in the rest of the accounts that don't have CommVault. Will customers really change out their backup applications to get de-dupe and other capabilities, especially in this economy? Or will they try to fix and tweak the edges of the environment without doing a major overhaul?
Virtualization of the storage infrastructure and de-dupe in backup are here to stay -- how it will be utilized and where it is going to be implemented is still hotly debated. Most likely there will be room for many different implementations based on what the customer needs and what the IT budgets allow.
11:20 AM -- Today and tomorrow, Byte and Switch and I will be trying an experiment of sorts. I will be providing live updates from Storage Networking World in Orlando. Between the two days, I have 27 briefings scheduled and, of course, time set aside to walk the exhibit hall as well as bounce into a few of the presentations. Then there are the best meetings, the ones where you tackle people in the hallway and get the real information.
Today's cast of characters -- I mean meetings -- starts with Hu Yoshida, CTO of Hitachi. Hu and I have been having an interesting conversation about virtualization in my other blog on Information Week, a sister site to this one. Then it is on to Commvault, where they will explain to me how a single application is going to take over the world and solve all our problems. Third up is Riverbed, which is going to explain how the primary storage de-dupe product is coming along. Then EMC is going to beat me up -- I mean, meet with me -- about their disk backup and de-duplication plans. Then I have been invited to lunch with Symantec's new CEO, Enrique Salem.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
