Removable disk drives create unique value and profitable business
Jon Johnson of CRU-Dataport described some of the new, high-growth applications for removable storage. We’re not talking about thumb drives. He sees removable storage re-inventing surveillance, education, and professional services applications in less-than-obvious ways.
Sound familiar? Nortech and Cor Digital both called out these markets as fertile ground for their businesses.
Consider enhancing your solution with technology that makes things easier and more productive for your customer - and sets you apart from your competitors.
High-end video distribution and a Paramount partnership
Scott Bahneman, CEO of MusicGiants and the new VideoGiants, filled me in on his business model and some solution examples. VideoGiants will follow the MusicGiants model of providing high-end content, in this case HD movies.
Paramount has signed on to provide movies. Scott and I talked to several solution partners already on board, including Envive, Olive and Logitech.
Another great example of how storage demands are accelerating because consumers are choosing higher quality experiences. Disk drives for distributing content? Go figure.
Going beyond the obvious drives growth and profits
I had a chance to talk with Nortech President David Bollig and Marketing VP Todd Swank at their Minnesota headquarters. Nortech is a fast-growing, national custom system builder that’s succeeding with a focus on vertical markets - education, high performance computing, mobility and others.
Highlights:
“Green” solutions for education markets, as much for school infrastructure as lower electric bills
The 80 Plus Initiative
Portable supercomputers - going beyond conventional solutions to create a profitable niche
400 TB servers in Milwaukee for the LIGO project
The huge mobile opportunity beyond notebooks - supercomputers, digital signage and embedded PCs
Dom Daninger gave me a tour of Nortech’s mobile cluster, a supercomputer that can go almost anywhere. It’s opening up new applications for high performance computing.
A peek into APEX IT’s data room with Jean Charles Campagnon. How APEX selects their storage, Dell support, what’s in a name? In servers, today’s Ferrari is tomorrow’s Yugo!
APEX IT is a consulting a US nationwide firm focused on Oracle implementation.
More from Jean Charles Compagnon, IT manager for APEX IT. Making deals on airplanes, Oracle demos via laptop, outfitting billable employees vs. non-billable staff, selective security.
IT is focused on enabling the core of their value: their consultants
Jean Charles Compagnon explains the role of storage in APEX IT’s business model. APEX IT is an Oracle-focused consulting firm. My apologies for the scratchy video - I’m getting a new camera for future interviews. Any recommendations?
My brother works at APEX IT. I’ve watched them steadily grow their business through years of wrenching industry change (can anyone say Larry Ellison?). Their ‘keep it simple’ approach to IT and storage seems to be working.
I’d like to interview more IT people, as well as solution providers. Let me know if you’ve got a story to tell. I’m based in Minneapolis, but do travel regularly, so let me know regardless of your location.
Distributed computing enables IT As A Service. But how do you back it up?
Stan Williamson from The Blencowe Group shared successes and challenges around thin client solutions. Their solution looks a lot like “IT as a service” - an innovative way to translate technology into ongoing service revenues.
Data protection’s been a lot of work for Stan. Who’s got ideas on how best to protect data in this kind of environment?
Cor Digital says customers want to keep it all to cover their bases.
Jack Hatfield at Cor Digital Technology, Inc. has a booming email archive business, driven by his customers’ desire to protect themselves from legal risk. Their gut reaction is to save it all - forever, if possible.
Businesses are keeping their surveillance data for up to a year
Jack Hatfield filled me in on Cor Digital Technology, Inc.’s surveillance business. They’ve been focused on this market for a while now and are seeing lots of growth. He also talks about his growing mobile surveillance business and what’s driving it.
Gotta love those terabytes!
By the way, Seagate has a three-product solution set for surveillance: SV35 drives for surveillance DVRs, Barracuda ES drives for enterprise surveillance and EE25 for mobile/rugged surveillance.
