So, I spent yesterday at the Needham Next-Gen Storage and Networking Conference. First, it was a great day. The Needham folks, especially Richard Kugele, created a fabulous opportunity to listen and speak about the storage market, technology and products. I spent all my time in the storage track, but can only imagine that the networking track was as insightful.

I wanted to point out some of my observations from the conference. I wont… Read more »

Let me get this straight, I am going to go back to my days of blogging about data deduplication? What?

The reality is that data deduplication is really one of the latest technologies to become commoditized. More and more we are hearing about “Software Defined Infrastructure” or “Software Defined Storage”. This makes sense to me especially when you have the ability to start taking the specialty storage services such as virtualization, thin provisioning, and deduplication… Read more »

At one point during my days at IBM I had the title, Storage Efficiency Evangelist. My role was to help educate folks on the host of storage efficiency technologies that are available to help stem the tide of the data apocalypse.

Technologies such as storage virtualization and thin provisioning help with storage utilization. Tiering technologies help by placing the right data set, on the right storage tier. Data compression and deduplication help to reduce the… Read more »

It’s time I get back to writing about more than just topics that surround what IBM are doing in the world of storage. For example, I am pretty passionate about data protection. Having worked for Veritas, ESG (covering data protection), Connected Corporation (sold to Iron Mountain), Avamar (sold to EMC) and EMC’s backup, recover and archive group, I have spent a good chunk of my storage career in the data protection space.

The first… Read more »

Kudos to IBM! For the first time since I can remember, they have come out, loud and proud about storage technology and capabilities that truly do trump anyone else in the industry. And they didn’t just brag about the fact they have better technology. They made it abundantly clear that this announcement is about providing significant customer value. IBM has made a very bold statement about their all flash systems and what they will… Read more »