The Human Element

People used to read trade magazines and scour conference halls to uncover product and technology gems, but this kind of research is better done online today. The other day, a friend-of-a-friend tweeted a request to suggest “NAS storage in the $3k to $5k range.” Knowing I would have some suggestions, my friend retweeted the request and I fired back a list of suggestions. Since we were on Twitter, my reply included links to the companies that made the products in question. Back in the old days, this product search might have lasted weeks or months, but I bet jjx had her research done in hours.

EMC World airport bus interview: Karl Lewis of UofM from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

So why go to a trade show if not to discover products? It’s all about the people. Increasingly, trade events like EMC World and Storage Networking World are becoming venues to meet people who were previously mere online avatars. They are for building friendships, business development, and cementing real connection and community. A look at my recent trade-show videos on Vimeo will reveal that most of my own interaction is personal, and the relationships built there could never be forged online.

David Scammell talks SNW and SpiceWorks from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

The new people I have met, like Karl Lewis and David Scammell, will become part of my own community, and I will become part of theirs. We would have never met without the Internet (Karl recognized me from my blog, and David spotted me on Twitter), but we would never have become friends without real human interaction.

Devolving the Conference

Tech Field Day Overview (Short) from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

The same can be said of the Gestalt IT community. We were friendly before we met, but our interactions at Tech Field Day cemented a surprisingly strong bond, especially between the delegates and presenting vendor staff. We are much more a community now than before these events. This is the main reason we will continue the Field Day event series: It brings a new kind of community to life! This kind of interaction might have happened at old-school conferences, but the specific (some might say peculiar) nature of the Field Day (invite-only, independent, and blogger-centric) makes it unique.

Another event I really look forward to is Greg and VaNessa Duplessie’s BD Event. It’s like the Field Day in that it distills a single element from the old trade show days to its purest form. In this case it is the business-to-business back-channel discussion that gets the focus. The BD Event is all about business development, and every part of it is designed to foster the sharing of ideas and opportunities between business people. I love the concept, and I hope I will see a tremendous crowd at the Boston event next month!

Watch live video from The Cube LIVE from EMC World 2010 on Justin.tv

Even traditional conferences are changing. EMC World had a tremendous blogger lounge set up, including an amazing live video setup. SiliconAngle brought us “The Cube“, a live webcast that brought the social elements of the blogger lounge to a massive online audience. My hat is off to NiceFishFilms for their technical expertise, yet it was the human element, getting such diverse people together in the same place, that made it all work.

Stephen’s Stance

The Internet will certainly change many elements of the traditional trade show, but it will never kill the need for real interaction. I look forward to the next clever twist on the conference, complementing Gestalt IT’s Field Day, the BD Event, and The Cube, but do not worry that we will all some day remain in our secluded caves. We are social people, and nothing beats meeting someone face to face.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Nothing Beats Meeting In Person
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.

So I set out on a personal quest, asking the sponsors of the gimmickiest stunts to explain what point they were trying to make. Why did McAfee have two Ford GT’s? Why did Xirrus have boxers? And why wouldn’t that robot shut up?

Interop Las Vegas Show-Floor Booth Gimmicks from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Note: No booth babes are included in this video, though they were all over the show floor. I have a problem with companies using booth babes and chotchkies, but it might not be what you think!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Interop Show-Floor Gimmicks: What’s the Tie-In?
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.

Back in the old days, vendors used to give away Harley Davidson motorcycles and Mercedes-Benz cars (no kidding!), but even in these days of waning investment, conferences still have some expensive goodies. I decided to take a walk around the show floor at the April 2010 Storage Networking World (SNW) in Orlando, checking out the loot.

So we’ve got some solid prizes here, with a definite Apple bias. The score:

1. Amazon Kindle x4
2. Apple iPad x3
3. Apple iPod Touch x3
4. Cisco Flip x3
5. HP Mini netbook x2
6. Dell Mini 10
7. Beats Headphones
8. Flo TV
9. Apple iPod Nano
10. Spy Robot (!)

Folks were most excited about the iPad giveaways, and there were at least five other iPads given away off the show floor. But NetApp wins my award for creativity: The “spy robot” was a clever choice amid a sea of book readers, cameras, and music players!

Prizes like these really did draw a crowd. The smartest companies had second- and third-prize drawings as well, and some had simple tests on the form to judge knowledge of their products. I still don’t like chotchkies, but these prize drawings pass my sniff test.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Conference Loot: SNW Orlando 2010 Edition
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There is still time to register and attend the Expo, and I’d love to meet up with readers and new friends. I’ll also be in New York on Saturday May 16th and London on Wednesday May 20th. Drop me a line! Sadly, this schedule means I’ll be missing everyone at EMC World, but I think they will get along without me somehow!

The Benefits of Cloud Storage

The demand for storage has increased, placing significant stress on “in house” storage infrastructures and costly overcapacity build-outs Factoring in our current economic state and the pressures of power, space, capital expenditures, global performance, and availability issues, companies are faced with an exploding challenges and costs. Cloud storage platforms enable Enterprises to cut-cost and focus on more important aspects of business, but with many competitors in the marketplace it’s hard for businesses to decide which option is best. This session will teach attendees about the uses of cloud storage within Enterprise levels of deployment and shed some light on the current solutions available today. (Monday, May 18, 5:05 PM)

How Does Virtualization Change Storage?

The virtualization of servers destroys everything that storage folks thought they knew about I/O and throws in a new layer of abstraction to boot. Creating storage for virtualization is not the same as storage for most other apps, and storage virtual servers on a SAN or NAS is not the same as using internal disk. There is synergy between the two fields, though, if we look for it. This sesskion will walk through what virtualization changes about storage, the various storage options, pros and cons, and what the future looks like with FCoE, UCS, 10 GbE, and VMware vStorage APIs. (Tuesday, May 19, 6:30 PM)

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Preparing For Cloud and Virtualization Expo in Prague
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.

My presentation on Monday evening focuses on the emergence of cloud storage in the enterprise space: Why it’s important, what it is, and how to act on it. I start by talking about the drivers, including the unexpectedly high cost of storage and the failures of tiered storage so far. I then suggest a new paradigm for the enterprise, leveraging solid state disks and the cloud. I reality check this against McKinsey’s recent cloud model and demonstrate some TCO goodness. Finally, I talk about the reasons folks might be concerned about bringing cloud storage into their environments.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | My Cloud Slam Topic: Enterprise Storage (Predictable?)
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I'm pleased to have been invited to write and speak on storage topics for a decade

I’m pleased to announce that I will be presenting at all four of TechTarget’s excellent end user-focused 2009 Storage Decisions conferences in North America! I’m also very excited to be developning two entirely new sessions for the show:

1. Tools and Tricks to Manage Capacity – Knowing how much disk capacity you have allocated, how much is actually being used, and what remains are basics for disk storage management. But it can be difficult to measure and describe storage capacity and make smart and effective decisions. In this session, we’ll cover the tools and best practices that are key to managing disk capacity.
2. Radical Tiered Storage to Reduce Cost and Expand Service – “Do more with less” is the slogan of the year, but storage pros have been doing exactly this for years. From HSM to tiered storage, data is moving away from simple disks and landing on flash memory, tape, and cloud services. Adopting an expansive tiered storage policy will not only reduce costs but can also improve performance and introduce new capabilities.

The 2009 show dates have been released, with more information at the official Storage Decisions site. Admission is free for qualified attendees, so register now for the session near you!

• Chicago – June 1-2, 2009
• Toronto – June 16, 2009
• New York – September 22-23, 2009
• San Francisco – November 17, 2009

Long-time readers of this blog know that both topics are top of mind for me, and I’ll be updating this blog and Gestalt IT with content on both capacity management and tiered storage over the coming year as I progress through the development and presentation of this content.

I spent the last two years presenting on the topics of storage virtualization and email archiving, and previously presented a two-hour “storage 101″ session. Although I loved that content, I’m never satisfied with my own work, so I’ll be happy to develop these two new presentations from scratch!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Two New Storage Decisions Sessions for 2009: Capacity Management and Radical Tiered Storage!
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If this sounds good to you, then now is the time to register for the Chicago show, coming up from May 13 through 15.  If you can attend, I strongly recommend coming in the day before the show so you don’t miss the kickoff on Tuesday morning.

As for me, I’ve got two sessions at the show this year, both on Wednesday the 14th.  Come in the morning for my Deep Dive Into Email Archiving Products, incorporating lots of the ideas I got from my Storage Magazine article and Webcast on the subject.  That afternoon, I’ll be presenting a shortened version of my Storage Virtualization Seminar, covering everything you wanted to know about virtualization technology in an hour instead of a day!  I’ll also be at the Ask the Experts Booth on the show floor on Tuesday evening if you’d like to come up and introduce yourself.

If you can’t make Chicago in May, how about Toronto in June, New York in September, or San Francisco in November?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Chicago in May? Perfect for Storage Virtualization and Email Archiving Talks!
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.