Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Real Innovation

Posted on 05. Nov, 2008 by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage

All the blog talk about whether or not EMC is innovative, and indeed whether any of the major news in the industry is truly innovative, got me thinking about real innovation. What are the true turning points in enterprise storage? What are the most influential hardware and software products? And which amazing products never really made the impact that they should have?

So I’m doing what any good obsessive-compulsive would do – making a list!

Over the next few weeks, I plan to post a few “top ten in storage” lists. Here are the topics I’m focusing on right now:

1. Most Important Storage Technologies – True technological and conceptual innovations like RAID, external storage, NAS, snapshots, and indeed the hard disk drive itself!
2. Most Innovative Storage Hardware Products – Which pieces of storage gear shook and shaped our world? How about EMC’s Symmetrix, DG’s CLARiiON, IBM’s RAMAC storage, DLT tape, the Auspex array, NetApp’s Filers, and Seagate’s ST-506?
3. Most Innovative Storage Software Products – What made the biggest impact on the software side? I’d name NetWare, LAN Manager, Legato NetWorker, Microsoft’s iSCSI initiator, VMFS, and PowerPath.
4. Coolest Storage Flops – All of this got me thinking about the things that should have been, like 3COM’s 3Server, WinFS, Storage Tank and IceCube, and Revivio’s CDP.

I’d like you to participate! Please use the comment section below to nominate your favorites in these categories. Or if you’d like to help out more, drop me an email. I’d even be willing to make you a co-author so you can help me put together the lists directly!

Tags: innovation, technology, top ten