Storage Effect

Keeps your data “somewhere between New York and London” so it’s safe and cheap to manage

Leave the urban data center hosting problems of high energy cost, aging infrastructure and complex regulation behind.  Start fresh in the wilds of Canada…at an undisclosed location called “Dataville“. 

Bastionhost seems to be having success with this colorful business plan. It seems their customers don’t care where their data is, as long as it’s given the respect it deserves - and they can get to it.  All the better if the data center can get really cheap power and use groundwater-based cooling. 

Ya gotta love a truly unique idea!  Looks more like a cold war missile silo than a data center, but that’s OK.

Copying a page from their PC strategy for x86 servers and storage

Newsweek’s Roger Kay makes a convincing case for Dell as a serious contender in the server space.  And they’re doing it Dell Style - coming up from below, more direct in many ways than HP.

They’ve got a lot of momentum:

• Strong success supplying Microsoft’s datacenters
• A filled-out server line up
• Services that help customers adapt Dell servers to their applications
• Data Center Services (DCS) - a cloud-building unit with Yahoo, Facebook and Baidu as customers

Why is this important to a historically PC-centric company?  Roger sees it: 

Desktops tend to yield gross margins in the 8% to 12% range, and notebooks hit 12% to 18%; servers come in at a much fatter 18% to 26%.  

Add to the server success their Equallogic acquisition and an aggressive move into 2.5″ SAS storage, and Dell is looking well positioned in the fast-growing SMB IT space.

First order for “black box” storage takes it beyond demoware

Xiotech was the Belle of the Ball at Storage Networking World with their demo of ISE technology.  Much more significant is that customers are starting to do more than kick the tires.  Evidence: an honest-to-goodness order for ISE-based Emprise systems from Argus Information & Advisory Services.

I saw some early private screenings of this technology.  It’s special because it breaks the conventional rules of storage devices and systems.  That allows Xiotech to create the “how did they do that?” specs and support commitments that have been generating such a buzz. Not to mention the benefits of its simplicity.

Let’s see how they do with the next major milestone: volume production.

Anyone out there considering Emprise?  Fill us in on your thought process.

Video production’s not just for Hollywood anymore

I had the opportunity to tour Boston Scientific’s internal media center last week.  It’s yet another example of digital content inserting itself in the mainstream business process.

Craig Davies and Tom Torborg showed me around their sound stage, editing workstations and storage systems that produce the surprising amount of video and audio content needed to market and sell medical products. 

For example, instructional videos that are critical to users of their products.  Video and audio pieces that are key teaching tools for doctors as well as their sales force. They’ve produced two programs that have been broadcast on television - one a documentary on heart failure that’s appearing nationally on cable TV.  They’ve even been nominated for an Emmy!

The facility is state of the art, buried in the basement of their corporate facility.  That makes it ultra quiet - great for filming without interference from rumbling trucks or thunderstorms.

Their setup:

• 2 video editing workstations using Avid technology
• A 3.2 TB array for each workstation with 10K 300GB FC Cheetah drives in a RAID 0 configuration.
• An additional 10K FC storage array for an encoding station (to convert video for distribution)
• Extensive use of external drives for “nearline” storage - their archive of past projects.  They have a 2 TB storage device at each video station and at their audio station.
• Sony AIT tape for long-term backup.

Lessons learned for their business:

• HD adds a lot of time and cost.  Tom says that going to HD processing slows video processing (rendering, etc) down by about 10 years, and quadruples the storage needed per minute of video.
• Legal requirements are an integral part of their production process.  Due to the life-and-death nature of their products, the legal team has a say in what they produce, and stringent archiving requirements.
• Audio content is a productive and practical way to communicate with their time-starved sales force.

What’s most interesting to me about Boston Scientific’s media center is that it exists.  In-house, full-fledged, professional video production, a necessary part of Boston Scientific doing business.  Look in the basement of a surprising number of even smaller companies and you’ll find the same thing.

Video production isn’t just for Hollywood anymore!

Compellent’s success is about more than their technology

My first clue that Compellent is different came in the lobby bathroom.  In their LEED-certified corporate HQ (the first in Minnesota), the urinals use no water.

Compellent is getting rave reviews from their fast-growing customer base, not just for their storage solution, but also for their “thin provisioning” approach to delivering and supporting their solutions.  I had an eye-opening visit to Compellent and talked with Larry Aszmann, their CTO. 

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Whatever the media, storage marches on

Here’s a fun read from Maximum PC: David Murphy’s interview of Seagate’s Bill Watkins.   He tells it like it is - which is a refreshing change from your average CEO.  Bill covers a lot of ground - worth the time if you’ve got it.

Takeaways for solution providers

• 1 TB sounds like a lot of storage, but it’s no larger than 5 MB was in 1979.  Like then, people will surprise themselves with how easily they fill it up.
• Your biggest storage opportunity is helping your customers use all of their data - not just what’s on their PC. 
• Your customers don’t care if it’s flash or disk or optical or green goo from Mars - they want storage that works for them.  Don’t get distracted. 
• DVDs and CDs are dinosaurs.  Electronic distribution is the new species, and demands lots of storage to enable it.

Answer the question “How much storage do you need?”

Seagate has a simple tool on seagate.com (under Useful Links on this page) that helps you figure out how much storage you or your customers need for desktop PCs, notebooks and home servers.  Plug in your content usage, and out pops some recommendations. 

Give it a try and report back on how much storage YOU need.  Also, any feedback on the tool?  What could make it more useful?

They also see storage demand resisting the recession 

Storage Soup reports that Compellent believes their great results are partly due to the disturbance in the partner status quo caused by Dell’s acquisition of Equallogic. 

Equallogic has great products, and they gain lots of leverage as part of Dell.  But in this innovation-rich market, there’s a downside to change in the channel.  Hungry companies with good products get a shot at previously loyal customers. 

Any Compellent customers out there that care to comment?  How about Equallogic loyalists?

Widespread video consumption will bring the next billion within five years 

It’s a proud day for Seagate. 

Today the company announced it has shipped its one billionth disk drive. There’s a fun video stroll through the 29 years of Seagate’s existence on the website.  I was in high school for drive #1- it seems like just yesterday!

More amazing: the 2 billionth drive will ship within 5 years.  How can that be, given how capacious drives are today? 

One word: video.  There are several interlocking trends driving the sustained explosion in content needing to be stored in our world, but video rises above all else in explaining it.  I posted on this not too long ago.

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Potential risk for IBM competitors currently using Diligent’s product

Byte and Switch  is referencing Israeli media reports that IBM has acquired Diligent for $200M.  The deal’s been talked about in the blogosphere, including here, for a few weeks now. 

Deduplication is an important enabling technology for the data center. Diligent, EMC’s former Israeli lab, is a dedupe leader.  It’s not clear what this will mean for IBM competitors HDS, Sun and Overland that are licensing Diligent’s technology today.

There may be a bit of scrambling as the music stops on the dedupe round of techno musical chairs.

Digital Rights Management requires rock-solid data security in the infrastructure

Atrato’s been making waves with their innovative approach to performance for content serving applications.  Now they’ve announced that they are working with Seagate to add full disk encryption (FDE) to provide compelling data security to the solution. 

Secure data is a clear need for customers in the business of content distribution.  Their product is basically bits and bytes.  Without bullet-proof security, these guys risk a “pay if you want to” message to this developing market. 

The rules of engagement for Digital Rights Management are still taking shape.  Atrato’s capabilities will be a valuable tool for those trying to influence the future to carve out a profitable and sustainable business model in this space.

Comments?  Is this a killer product for media companies or just interesting technology?