I’m pleased to be heading back to Interop this spring with two sessions on enterprise storage. Although significantly changed from the old “Networld + Interop” days, the event is enjoyable and technical, with many interesting sessions and speakers. And the New York show at least had plenty of end user attendees!

Interop Las Vegas is April 25-29, 2010, and registration appears to still be open. Let me know if you’ll be there!

My two sessions:

State of the Art Thin Provisioning

Wednesday, April 28 10:15 AM–11:15 AM

The concept of thin provisioning is not new, but the state of the art has advanced, adding awareness between the operating system and storage device for enhanced efficiency. This session introduces the value proposition and concept of thin provisioning, covers the technology of the major thin storage vendors (3PAR, BlueArc, Compellent, Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp, Pillar) and operating system integration layers (Symantec, VMware, and T10), and presents novel approaches from Data Robotics, Apple, and cloud storage systems. We will present the pros and cons of these various approaches in the context of enterprise storage management.

The Right Approach to Cloud Storage

Wednesday, April 28 11:30 AM–12:30 PM

Enterprises are now leveraging cloud storage services at a rapid pace and are looking for qualified answers on how using a cloud platform can increase efficiency and ROI simultaneously. The old model of purchasing expensive storage systems or using large amounts of tape are prehistoric, adapting a new approach to storage is necessary in today’s tough economic climate as budgets continue to be slashed and performance upkeep is critical. This session will enable users to learn about the benefits and economies of scale as it relates to developing/implementing a cloud storage solution, a focus will be placed on performance, cost-effectiveness, user experience, and customer service/satisfaction.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Thin Provisioning and Cloud Storage: My Interop 2010 Topics
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

When Apple announced the iPad, I was puzzled that Microsoft Exchange email support was not listed. Sure, the iPhone has fairly good Exchange ActiveSync support, but not all iPhone features will be included in Apple’s tablet.

Considering the high profile Exchange enjoys in the iPhone details page and the exhaustive list of supported mail servers on the iPad page, the absence of Exchange was notable. I wondered aloud if perhaps Apple would release a corporate option pack with Exchange ActiveSync, VPN, and other enterprise features.

Yes, the iPad supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync

Happily, this appears not to be the case. Apple updated the iPad site contents while announcing pre-ordering of the device, and Microsoft Exchange is now included. This is a relief – I suspect many would be very disappointed if they couldn’t use their new toy at work!

VPN support still is not listed anywhere on the iPad site, however. But since my fear of an enterprise option doesn’t look to be coming true, I’m going out on a limb and suggesting that this will be in the package on April 3 as well.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Yes, the iPad Supports Microsoft Exchange
This post was categorized as Apple. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

One of my favorite features of Apple’s Mac OS X is the clean and simple media players bundled within. QuickTime and Front Row are so much easier to use than Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, and Front Row presents a “10 foot” interface complete with a remote control. But I often find myself wanting to watch a movie without my remote in hand, and was distressed to see that Apple implemented entirely different keyboard shortcuts for the transport controls in QuickTime 7, QuickTime X, and Front Row.

Here’s my simple cheat sheet to Apple’s various media players.

	QuickTime 7	QuickTime X	Front Row
Play/Pause
Chapter Rewind	+
Chapter Forward	+
Rewind		+	Hold
Fast Forward		+	Hold
Slow Rewind	Hold
Slow Forward	Hold
Step Rewind
Step Forward
Volume Up
Volume Down

For a company that prides itself on user experience and consistency, these controls are maddening. The only consistent control is the space bar as a play/pause toggle, and that’s pretty much universal in media players.

The mix of rewind and forward transport controls is just insane!

• The arrow keys are easy and obvious to press, yet they are mapped to a generally useless feature (step or frame rewind/forward) in QuickTime 7 and X! Why not use them for rewind and fast forward?
• Why doesn’t QuickTime 7 have a nice easy rewind/fast forward control, Apple? Command-arrow plays forward or backward, a totally useless feature.
• Front Row has the most intuitive (to me) control set, and includes a nice graphical indication of the three levels of fast reverse/forward offered by holding down left or right arrow.
• QuickTime X’s fast reverse/forward is a two-key combination with Command and arrow, making it difficult to remember and execute. I keep mixing it up with the chapter controls (which use Option and arrow) and losing my spot in the video.

I have seen lots of lists of QuickTime and Front Row keyboard shortcuts, but many seem wrong. Perhaps Apple eliminated some commands over time? For example, OS X Daily claims J, K, and L are rewind/fast forward transport commands for QuickTime 7, but these don’t seem to work in Snow Leopard.

Note that Final Cut Pro uses another different set of transport controls. J, K, and L are rewind, pause, and forward, and multiple presses change the speed. It uses the arrow keys for frame advance, too, but adds a 1 second advance with shift-arrow. So an Apple power user has to learn four different transport command sets? Give me a break!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Apple QuickTime and Front Row Keyboard Shortcuts
This post was categorized as Apple. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

HP recently commissioned Tolly Group to benchmark their BladeSystem c7000 against the Cisco UCS 5100. The short report focuses on two results, and reads like so many competitive benchmarks in the IT industry: Tolly focuses on metrics that highlight the strength of HP’s solution and the weaknesses of Cisco’s. I do not dispute the accuracy of these results, and HP and Tolly are doing exactly what tech companies do. But what’s the real value of pinpoint maximum-performance benchmarks like this?

0-100-0

Automotive media like Car and Driver and Top Gear frequently test the maximum performance of cars, racing to 100 mph or beyond, sliding around a skidpad, and slamming on the brakes. These tests can be enlightening when it comes to high-performance cars, and the punishing 0-100-0 test is especially impressive. But what’s the point of hammering an economy car or pickup truck like this? Maximal acceleration and cornering are entirely irrelevant to buyers of commuter cars and work vehicles.

Even though a given test can be conducted, it may not be enlightening. The Tolly report demonstrates two key findings:

1. Although 4-blade configurations perform the same under maximum stress, Cisco UCS performance declines with 6 blades while HP’s remains steady.
2. When using a shared blade uplink, Cisco UCS performance fell by half.

These are not startling results. Cisco blades sometimes need to share one I/O channel, and this can’t match the performance of an HP blade with dedicated I/O. Would it shock you to learn that a one-gallon bucket requires twice as many trips to the well as one that holds two gallons? Does it shock anyone to learn that a V6-powered Toyota RAV4 accelerates quicker than a four cylinder Honda CR-V? HP’s c7000 is bigger than Cisco’s UCS and offers more I/O channels, so HP beats Cisco whenever larger configurations with more I/O are tested.

Innocent Benchmarks

Greta examines the marks on an 18th century cooper's bench

I’ll leave the deeper commentary on blade performance to experts like Kevin Houston and Martin Macleod, but these maximum-utilization benchmarks are only half the story. I’m much more interested in how the different approaches to I/O impact everyday (20%-40% load) performance and how oversubscription impacts performance as more blades are installed and workloads are moved around. In automotive terms, I’d like to know how well a car handles in the snow or how economical it is with three or four passengers. These real-world scenarios are much more telling than a test of a few blades under 100% load!

Clearly, HP wanted to call attention to specific shortcomings of a competitor’s product, and it was wise to do so with objective numbers instead of mudslinging and name-calling. I hope that future tests and releases include real-world workloads and logical configurations, not the extreme situation used in this report. The same lesson applies to all tech companies: Simple, objective tests of maximum performance are welcome, but customers need many more metrics!

Note: Along with 9 other independent bloggers, I attended HP’s Blades Tech Day in Houston on February 25 and 26. Most of my travel and living expenses were paid for by HP, and the company provided a small gift bag (pictured here).

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Innocence, Fairness, and Technology Benchmarks
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I really dislike non-disclosure agreements, but NDAs are a fact of life in the IT industry. Even folks like me that actively avoid NDAs sometimes have to sign the paperwork to gain access to people or information, and employers regularly require such an agreement as a condition of employment. I suspect most folks try to respect and uphold the agreements they do sign, but this doesn’t stop slip-ups. So let me take a few minutes of your time to pass along my top five tips to avoid violating NDAs!

Leaking confidential information can sometimes land you in hot water - avoid trouble by keeping your ears closed!

1 – Avoid signing NDAs

The best way to avoid breaking an NDA is simply not to agree to one in the first place. Asking for a non-disclosure agreement is part of standard practice in business, but it’s not always necessary. Politely ask if the NDA is really necessary and suggest that really secret information shouldn’t be shared in the first place. I don’t want to know the long-term product plans of every IT supplier since this is the very topic I love to speculate and write about. Knowing the roadmap ruins the fun of guessing, and companies don’t always stay on course anyway!

Trap Tip! Ask your corporate counsel (or your boss) about any NDAs your company may have in place with its partners, suppliers and customers. You may find that you are covered by an NDA that you never heard about!

2 – Ask for embargoes instead

Many companies will allow you to forego the NDA and still give you the heads-up on near-future releases under embargo. If you’re proven your responsibility, you can often get a sneak peek, prepare yourself for the release, and get your ideas straight on day one without having an NDA in place. I much prefer embargoes since they’re easy to keep straight in my head – “don’t say anything about the product XYZ until next Monday, but everything is wide open then!” But make sure you’re careful about exactly when you can talk, including the time and timezone of the release!

3 – Limit the scope

If you’re dealing with a larger company, ask if you can limit the scope of the NDA to just one product or technology area. This it unusual and unlikely to fly, but at least shows that you take such agreements very seriously. Assuming this is nixed, limit what you hear. Ask in writing to keep your briefings confined to a certain area and stop speakers who want to say too much. None of this affords much legal protection, but it helps you to keep your head straight and avoid temptation to spill the beans.

4 – Follow the leader

If you’re under NDA and want to talk about something private that was shared with you, wait until an official source announces it first. One great aspect of the social web is the rapid spread of information from official blogs. If the Microsoft product team talks about something on their official TechNet blog, I assume it’s fair game. The same goes for corporate documentation posted at TechNet. Certainly employees can leak information and violate NDAs too, but information posted on corporate web sites, even in obscure corners, can’t really be considered confidential. Hold off on sharing information leaked by unofficial sources, though. You don’t want to be a trailblazer when an NDA is in place!

5 – Ask permission

When in doubt, it never hurts to ask. If you believe you should be able to write or speak about information shared under NDA, send an email to corporate PR or media/analyst relations specifying what you intend to cover. They will review it and let you know what you can and can not say. You can also raise your hand during presentations and inquire about the confidentiality of the information being covered. Don’t rely on “confidential” tags on slides and handouts, though – they’re often placed inappropriately or forgotten.

The NDA Changes The Game

NDAs are necessary but no fun. They can land you in hot water, even when you’re not trying to reveal information. And they put you in a subservient position relative to the companies you think, write, and speak about. Who wants to ask permission and wade through corporate bureaucracy just to blog? This is why the best way to avoid trouble is to avoid the NDA in the first place. But chances are you will be covered by such agreements at some point, so you had better figure out a strategy to live with them.

Note: Remember that each agreement and jurisdiction is different. I am not a lawyer and am not trying to give legal advice. I’m simply trying to help my friends and readers keep out of trouble!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | 5 Tips To Avoid Violating NDAs
This post was categorized as Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

It’s fun to bash Microsoft. It’s easy, too, with Apple solidly conquering the high end of the PC and mobile markets and Google’s command of the Internet. But how fair are these articles skewering Microsoft, such as “Microsoft’s chronic lack of innovation” published today at Techworld? I suggest that Microsoft innovates as well as, if not better than, any other massive company. But no one innovates like an outsider.

Note: I am a Microsoft MVP in the area of File System Storage and will be on the Redmond campus all week as part of their Global Summit for MVPs. I am not a Microsoft apologist or sycophant and have been both harshly critical when the company deserved it and full of praise at other times. Mostly I just focus on the value of enterprise information technology and try to give all companies and products equal skepticism.

Run Versus Change

Large businesses tend to group projects into two categories:

1. Run the Business projects focus on maintaining the status quo, keeping the money flowing in, and satisfying the demands of existing customers.
2. Change the Business projects are far trickier, attempting to innovate and add new products or services to keep up with the competition.

This methodology has come about through years of experience balancing efforts that either upset the apple cart or let the apples rot. Look at the history of business and you will find that most successful businesses strike a balance between run and change. Those businesses that have failed have done so because they did not strike this balance, either ignoring their current needs in an attempt at reinvention or stifling change in the name of risk management.

One of the criticisms leveled against the American automakers is that they focused too heavily on serving core markets and too little on innovating into new ones. Thus, the average age of Cadillac, Buick, and Lincoln drivers shot upward and no young person would be seen in one of their cars; Dodge, Ford, and Chevrolet derived nearly all of their profit from massive pickup trucks and stopped developing more economical cars; all of the Big Three relied too long on still-profitable older designs while their competitors developed newer, better-performing ones. In short, the American auto industry nearly collapsed because they put all their energies into running the business and very little into changing it.

High tech businesses often have the opposite focus. Companies like Yahoo and AOL allowed successful existing businesses to wither while they tried unsuccessfully to expand into new markets and take on new competitors. Yahoo Mail accounted for more than one third of that company’s traffic last year and remained the dominant webmail platform even after half a decade of challenge from Gmail and more from Microsoft Hotmail. But Yahoo spent that time thrusting this way and that into every conceivable business with little success. One can see the same pattern at eBay, Motorola, 3COM and many others.

Microsoft’s Balance

It would have been very easy for Microsoft to fall into this trap over the last decade, and indeed they have often made this sort of change-over-run move. Consider the massive money Microsoft invested or wasted (depending on your perspective) on unprofitable and perhaps even quixotic mobile, online, and gaming properties: If a constant stream of revenue from Windows, Server and Tools, and Office was not available to balance this, Microsoft would have had a shareholder revolt on their hands. As I mentioned last week, Google is in a similar position, deriving nearly all of their revenue from advertising even as they try and fail to innovate in other areas.

Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer and Kamelia Angelova presented this chart of Microsoft's profits on Feb 10, 2010

One school of thought is that Microsoft has simply milked the Windows and Office cash cows rather than innovating, but others might criticize the company for trying to establish a presence in too many areas instead of focusing on their core products. The fact that these two opposite viewpoints are widespread indicates a third option: Microsoft is trying to balance innovation and consistency both inside and outside their core areas of competence.

Consider Office, Server, and Windows: The combined effect of Microsoft’s monopoly power and sheer inertia would not keep the company dominant in these two areas forever if they did not keep innovating. There have been many points over the last 20 years where Microsoft has been vulnerable on the desktop. The 32-bit transition from Windows 95 to Windows XP was long and painful, and Microsoft is repeating this with Windows 7. The company must innovate to the very core of the operating system to make these transitions, though most of these improvements go unnoticed. Monopoly or not, I cannot comprehend a successful Microsoft desktop strategy if “Windows 2010″ was a simple evolution of Windows 95.

But Windows Server’s storage components are the core of my expertise, and Microsoft deserves much credit for innovation here. The creativity and originality of Windows Server storage features is lost on most, but that doesn’t mean they are any less innovative. I’ve written about the iSCSI initiator, MPIO, and VSS before, but there is much more than that. The peer-to-peer system used in BranchCache is startlingly creative, for example, but the pundits probably never heard of it. Under-the-covers innovation to support and continue a company’s success deserves credit, too.

Even Microsoft’s “branching out” activities are starting to see some success. Bing is much more impressive than many (including me) would have guessed, and users are beginning to notice. And the Xbox gaming platform, which has finally begun turning a profit, is a dominant player in that market. Indeed, many young people know Microsoft more as a gaming company than anything else.

Applauding Innovation

This kind of success in a new area is not unprecedented, but many companies have failed the test. In 1960, General Motors introduced one of the most innovative automobile platforms in history to take the small-car market head on. Every one of the so-called “Y-body” cars featured innovative features and industry firsts, from the Corvair’s rear-mounted aluminum flat-6 engine to Oldsmobile’s first production use of a turbocharger. Amazingly, most of these innovations flopped, and GM’s replacements were much more conventional. Innovation does not always succeed, especially when applied to a new market, so one should especially applaud when it does.

So is Microsoft innovative? Although the company has a reputation for bullying, monopolizing, and destroying competitors with “me too” offerings, a deeper look reveals true creativity both in core and speculative products. A massive company like Microsoft must be of two minds: Focused on continuing their core business while branching out into new areas. Success in either of these endeavors demands innovation, and Microsoft has undoubtedly succeeded.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Microsoft’s Overlooked Innovation
This post was categorized as Computer history, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Although “don’t be evil” isn’t Google’s official corporate motto, the company and its admirers have embraced the concept implicitly and explicitly. But pride goeth before a fall, and the buzz around Google isn’t just about their new social networking feature: Cynicism and disillusionment with Google is growing.

Why Do They Hate Me?

Last week I wondered out loud about this: When did everyone get so cynical and disillusioned with Google? It’s ironic that answers rolled in on Twitter and FriendFeed even as Google was stomping into their turf with Buzz. What response did I get?

1. Google’s corporate censorship moves, especially in China, look pretty evil to some
2. Google’s lack of innovation outside search, especially its repeated attempts to “take over” social media, soured many
3. The poor and informal customer support provided by Google is notorious
4. Many just don’t “get” Google’s mission anymore – are they a search engine, an advertising platform, a software or hardware vendor, or what?

Companies are going to make mistakes, especially massive and aggressive ones like Google. It is inevitable that their compromised position on freedom of speech in China (and India) would raise hackles, but the company apparently decided it was acceptable to gain entry there. But many of Google’s other moves are more troubling to some.

Paved With Good Intentions?

Almost every penny of Google’s prodigious revenue comes from personalized advertising. Google plainly states this in their annual reports: “Advertising revenues made up 99% of our revenues in 2006 and 2007 and 97% of our revenues in 2008.” The company spends about 13% of this revenue on research and development, 9% on sales and marketing, 7% on administration, and 5% on stock-based compensation. I imagine many of these numbers will come as a shock to average Internet users, many of whom probably assumed Google was less dependent on advertising revenue and spent much more money to employ and house so many great software developers.

Google’s stated mission may be “to organize the world’s information,” but that’s not what the company actually does. It runs a massive collection of Internet properties which serve to collect personal information and serve advertisements. Many of Google’s employees seem to be genuinely interested in making the world a better place, or at least organizing the world’s information, but good intentions don’t pay the bills. Shortly after launching its eponymous search service, Google began gobbling up the lucrative advertising market it now dominates.

Not everyone is bothered by this. Many, including myself, are happy users of Google’s excellent products, including search, Gmail, Reader, News, and Maps. I’ll knowingly put up with targeted ads to subsidize these services because I trust that Google really is anonymizing and protecting my information. I’m sure most users don’t really think much about privacy and freedom when searching the Internet or sending an email, but even those that do have been content with Google.

Yet even Google fans have to admit that not every product is excellent. Many, like Wave, seem half-baked while others, like Orkut, seem more like misfires. Google almost missed the boat on the social web and now seems desperate to catch up. Core technology like PubSubHubbub is heading in the right direction, but Google has been unable to stitch it all together. Perhaps Buzz will be able to ride Gmail’s coattails to success, but we have seen so many failures before.

What Is Google?

I think the core criticism of Google is more fundamental than concern about censorship, advertising, privacy, or failed products. Instead, alarms are ringing at Google’s repeated and well-funded attempts to be much more than an organizer of information.

In 2008, the company tried and failed to muscle in on wireless spectrum, a move many thought was a carefully executed trick to force open the United States mobile phone market. They then introduced their own mobile phone operating system, Android, putting themselves in direct competition with Symbian, Microsoft, and especially Apple. This intensified with the Google-branded Nexus One, the removal of CEO Eric Schmidt from Apple’s board, and the launch of multi-touch features. Google seems to be stepping up to directly challenge Apple for dominance of the new mobile computing world.

The company is also moving into fixed broadband, offering temporarily-free Wi-Fi at major airports and announcing a plan to give free gigabit fiber optic service to communities in the United States. They are becoming a telecom company with Voice, and some have suggested a buyout of T-Mobile or the launch of Google-branded phone service. Google is also a cloud computing company, a hosting provider, and even an electric power company.

Even if all of these moves are taken as support of the company’s core mission, they do lead one to question Google’s corporate mission. If their advertising business wasn’t the limitless cash cow it has historically been, I’m sure Google’s investors would be asking some hard questions. What business does an advertising company have supporting blimps, gene sequencing, and electric cars?

Even if you are not worried about the money or the wisdom of these investments, it begs the question, “what is Google?” I believe this is the source of Google’s buzz-kill. In dominating the Internet, Google has tapped into a vein of confusion, concern, mistrust, schadenfreude, and downright hostility. I suppose it comes with the territory.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Google’s Evil Buzz Is Building
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer history, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

My presence at Storage Expo NL may have been cursed, but my presentation went off without a hitch thanks to the creativity and flexibility of the VNU staff and Expo volunteers like Ilja Coolen. In my session, I talked about the shortcomings of traditional tiered storage as a way to advance the Noble Goals of Storage Management and proposed a solution: Although merely using different disk types will never deliver the goods, adding flash and cloud to an integrated, automated solution will be truly revolutionary. I look forward to the day when all of today’s buzz-worthy technologies (flash, cloud, thin provisioning, automated tiering, post-RAID) are mixed together to form a really revolutionary storage system.

I went ahead and recorded the entire presentation and posted it on Vimeo for anyone to see. But I just realized I never posted it here to my blog. So without further ado, I give you “Extreme Tiered Storage: Flash, Disk, and Cloud!”

Stephen Foskett on Extreme Tiered Storage from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

By the way, in case you were wondering, I used BoinxTV to create this video.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Extreme Tiered Storage: Flash, Disk, and Cloud
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The new Jawbone Icon is the best iPhone headset yet (and I need to check my email and voicemail more often)

With my Cardo Scala abandoned in a New York taxi and my Motorola H800 falling apart, I decided it was time to pick up a new BlueTooth headset. As luck would have it, I decided to buy on the very day that Aliph released their next-generation Jawbone headset, the ICON.

The Jawbone Backstory

The Jawbone series has emerged as the most-hyped headset around, with a devoted user base that swears to its effectiveness. They praise its “Noise Assassin” technology, which uses special software and a nubbin that senses the motion of your jaw bone when you talk (thus the name!) But they complained about the proprietary charging cable, the lack of a physical on/off switch, and the “we are the Borg” look of so many business folks sporting headsets identical except for color.

The ICON moves everything forward. It comes in a variety of design themes with different colors and textures. It uses the same industry-standard micro-USB plug as my Motorola. It has a real power switch. The company even claims advanced noise reduction capability. Plus, the ICON is cheaper than its predecessors, though $100 is still pretty pricey.

My ICON

I picked up my Jawbone ICON at an Atlanta Best Buy store. It was the first one they had sold; the guys had just put them on the rack and weren’t sure what the price should be! But I was willing to drop $106.99 (including tax) to take my iPhone call quality to the next level.

Unboxing revealed a stubby headset, a wide variety of rubber ear attachments, some tiny manuals, and a USB charger with the world’s shortest micro-USB cable. The headset fired right up and paired easily with my iPhone, not even requiring a ridiculous game of enter-the-useless-0000-PIN.

This is apparently the first headset, other than the now-discontinued Apple model, that reports its battery status back to the iPhone for display. It also integrates nicely with the voice dialing features of the Apple wonder-phone, though I can’t understand why “call” is not a synonym for “dial”.

The Fitting Room

I was immediately impressed by the Jawbone Icon, but this wore off quickly. Although it ships with no less than eight different ear attachments (including a hook that can be added to any of the seven pads), I was unable to get a good fit. The default pad-plus-loop (shown in the images and video above) just wasn’t snug enough, and the little jawbone nub didn’t touch my cheek securely. Without this, my smooth-talking voice kept cutting in and out, irritating the party on the other end of the call.

I switched to the small circular pad, which fit nicely into my ear but didn’t hold the headset securely. So I added the hook, which kept my new $100 toy from hitting the floor but was too small for my ear. That ear hook is impressive, with a ball-type connector allowing near-infinite positioning, but it doesn’t hold the headset securely either, allowing it to “fall away” from my face whenever I look up or down. No dice.

I finally tried out the largest pad-plus-loop without the hook. Lo and behold, this last-ditch attempt worked, holding the headset securely, correctly applying the nub, and allowing me to speak clearly. But it feels a tad too big in my ear, becoming a pain after an hour or so. I’m not one of those “ear mullet” folks who leaves my headset in all the time, but I do get on long conference calls quite often. Although I now have a functional Jawbone Icon, I’m still not 100% satisfied.

Headset Apps!

The final cool new feature of the Jawbone Icon is MyTalk. “Apps” are the buzzword of the moment, thanks to Apple and the iPhone, and Aliph isn’t left behind: The Jawbone Icon can run apps! Apparently, one can log into Aliph’s MyTalk web site and download different voices for the headset and even special apps that allow it to do nifty things.

I can’t tell you how cool MyTalk and the Jawbone Apps are. No, seriously, I can’t tell you. See, I don’t have access. MyTalk is in beta and, although Aliph allows folks to register for beta access, I guess I didn’t make the cut. I held off this review for a few weeks, even after posting the first unboxing video on YouTube, but still have had no response from Aliph about access.

So I’m going to make stuff up. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could get Lt. Uhura from Star Trek to be the voice in the Icon Ear Mullet? Or Marvin the paranoid android from the BBC dramatization of Hitchhiker’s Guide? And I’d love it if I could tap and hold the button for 15 seconds and have Starbuck’s deliver a grande green tea latte with no syrup! Maybe it’ll have voice control so I can even order a venti nonfat cafe mocha with two pumps and no whip? Naah, that’s crazy talk! You’d definitely need to set a voice command macro to get a Hoffacino!

Seriously, I have no idea what MyTalk is all about. But I guess it’s cool. Maybe the Aliph bouncer will let me in once they read this review…

Update: Aliph approved me a for a MyTalk Beta account right after this went live. Look for a review soon!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | iPhone Review: Aliph Jawbone ICON BlueTooth Headset
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

CommVault is bringing a new dish to dinner: Cloud storage!

If your family was like mine, Thanksgiving was a two-tiered affair: The adults sat at the fancy dining room table while the kids had to sit in the kitchen, some even using a card table and folding chairs. You knew you were grown up when you moved up to the adult table. I guess this American coming-of-age ritual is pretty common with other rituals, too. There’s no formal ceremony, but everyone knows when little Johnny becomes just-plain John.

We see similar things happen in IT. New technologies and ideas are often given a pat on the head, a pinch on the cheek, but then sent to the kids table in the kitchen. Only mature technologies are taken seriously and granted equal status when enterprise architectures are defined!

One sure-fire way of determining when a technology is ready for prime time is when it is integrated with a major enterprise product. Sure, lots of products will support this or that, but thoroughly integrating a new technology requires serious effort. Not just any technology gets this kind of focus!

That’s why I’m pleased to see today’s announcement that CommVault has completely integrated API-driven public cloud storage with Simpana, their impressive data protection and archiving suite. It reminds me of that point when the backup products of yore finally adopted disk-based technology. Now there are three equal backup targets: Tape, disk, and cloud.

CommVault calls their new integrated cloud storage "Farline" - as opposed to "Nearline", get it?

CommVault’s reputation in the storage industry is like BMW’s in cars: They’re an engineering-driven company and focus on offering the best technology. There’s no way CommVault would cut corners when it came to a fundamental technology. So they applied considerable engineering resources and delivered a really advanced product.

I’ve previously noted that cloud storage is not backup, but that the combination of cloud storage with a solid backup platform makes a killer data protection value proposition. This is exactly what CommVault is delivering. Plus, Simpana’s integrated encryption and data deduplication technology work to reduce cloud-related angst. And CommVault will be supporting just about every public cloud provider, beginning with Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, and Nirvanix (where I spend my days), and I hear Iron Mountain and EMC Atmos are on the way, too.

Read more over at Network World, DGIC, or check out my Nirvanix blog about CommVault’s cloud integration.

Note: Yeah, that’s a Tofurkey-brand vegetarian turkey in the photo above. Yum!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | CommVault Gives Cloud Storage A Seat At The Adult Table
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