My 2009 IT Industry Predictions
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Computer history, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage on 24. Dec, 2009 | View Comments
Predictions are perilous: Get it right and you look like a mere trend-watcher; get it wrong and you look like a fool. So I’m doing something different this year: I’m going to make predictions for 2009 now that it’s over, and reflect on just how smart I am (not) to have made them.
We Don’t Need Cloud Standards (Yet)
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 16. Sep, 2009 | View Comments
Championing “open” and calling for standards has become the first stalling action by late-movers in technology spaces. They see opportunity passing by and try to hold back progress and FUD the market by yelling about proprietary solutions, vendor lock-in, and a lack of standards. Many well-intentioned IT folks follow along: After all, who doesn’t want openness, standardization, and interoperability?
CloudStuff Versus Stuff in the Cloud
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 01. Jul, 2009 | View Comments
This world of cloud computing sure can seem cloudy. Last night at CloudCamp Columbus, I led a session outlining the incredible differences between the diverse offerings all called cloud storage. How can companies like Amazon, Nirvanix, Rackspace, EMC, and the rest use the same name for such vastly different products?
Don’t Be Jealous Of The New MacBook Pros!
Posted by Stephen in Apple on 16. Jun, 2009 | View Comments
Apple’s recently introduced mid-2009 MacBook Pros sure do look nice! I am definitely tempted to trade up my late-2007 model, leveraging the excellent resale value that Mac hardware commands. But two of Apple’s trick features for 2009 are already present on my old workhorse: An integrated SD card slot and up to 7 hours of [...]
Cloud Slam Storage Panel: This Will Be Interesting
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal on 23. Apr, 2009 | View Comments
After a successful presentation on enterprise storage in the cloud on Monday, I’m looking forward to wrapping up Cloud Slam ‘09 in style. And what better way to discuss the storage implications of cloud computing than to get just about everybody doing storage in the cloud on one panel? I’ve got an idea! How about [...]
Iomega Grows Up and Moves Out of the House
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage on 16. Apr, 2009 | View Comments
Iomega’s StorCenter Pro ix4-200r sports iSCSI and NAS plus VMware ESX support – it’s a small business or lab monster!
Iomega has been a staple of the desktop computing environment for decades, but the company’s products have never been quite at home in even small corporate data centers. That changes today with the introduction of the [...]
How Far Can You Push a Mac Mini?
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Terabyte home on 23. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
Last week I reported my progress upgrading my Mac Mini’s RAM and hard drive to extract much more performance out of Apple’s little desktop. And indeed, adding a 7200 rpm high-performance laptop hard drive did make a noticeable difference in system responsiveness.
But a question came in via email asking, will Western Digital’s killer 10,000 rpm [...]
Sun Launches Their Own Cloud, But For Which Market?
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 19. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
While the bulk of Sun-related news this week relates to reported talks of a buyout by IBM, the company took a break from negotiations to introduce their own cloud computing and storage infrastructure, challenging Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and perhaps VMware, Microsoft, and Nirvanix.
Ten-Year Trend: Mobility
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Computer history, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage on 11. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
What is the megatrend of this decade? I suggest that we are witnessing a wholesale shift from information tied to place/device to information mobility. Cloud computing, server virtualization, and even flash memory are all contributors to this massive trend, along with the user-side trends of the post-PDA mobile phone, 3G data, social web services, and connected home.
Where Will Virtualization of Data Center Infrastructure Take Us?
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 14. Dec, 2008 | View Comments
This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I am posting on Sundays.
Virtualization of IT systems decouples physical infrastructure from logical resources, hiding complexity and enabling new capabilities. However, not all potential benefits of virtualization have meaningful value outside IT circles: Too many of our discussions revolve around the very complexity that virtualization [...]
