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The New Storage Lexicon

5:40 PM -- The latest buzzwords and catch-phrases of the marketers, spinmeisters, and verbal gymnasts of the storage industry weren't uttered for the first time at the inauguration of our new conference StoragePlus last week, but they were certainly there in full force.

A small, unscientific sampling:

  • Storage network consolidation. You know, what they used to call virtualization. That term is apparently just too squishy and intangible (not to mention poorly suited to actual spending plans). But consolidation -- that's good, right? Saves money. Cuts down on operational expenses and personnel, doesn't it? Hello? Is this thing on?
  • Application tuning. I think this one's a little more real and substantial, if only because I heard users talking about it and using the phrase a lot during the course of StoragePlus. While the term is most commonly associated with Oracle and databases, the concept of how to process records or handle app-specific backup issues makes a difference in storage operation and efficiency. Not a storage issue per se, but something you'll likely be reading about more here at Byte and Switch.
  • Data protection. Great little catch-all, most commonly referring to the security aspect of stored data, but also mentioned with regard to compliance issues, backup policies, and disaster recovery all rolled into one. With that in mind, tilting the screen of my laptop (so you can't shoulder surf) qualifies me as a data protector.
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