I'll be presenting at two private events and one public webinar this week!

I’ve been quite busy lately recording webinars, writing articles, and setting up speaking events. This week, I’m in Boston and New York for private speaking engagements. I’ll also be recording a webinar with an exciting new storage/virtualization company, Nutanix, and I urge you to tune in to that one!

Nutanix is Truly Innovative

Watch Nutanix present at Tech Field Day 8

It’s rare to come across a truly innovative idea in enterprise IT, but that’s exactly what Nutanix is. They’ve taken the scale-out Google Filesystem and ran with it, applying it to the core issues of sever and desktop virtualization.

My webinar with Nutanix is little bit different from the typical “give them an excuse to go through their slide deck” event. We’ve organized it as a discussion between me, Tiffany To of Nutanix, and a customer of the company. Tiffany will have a set of slides as backup, but we won’t walk through them one by one.

I’m glad to be able to shake things up a little bit, since the old webinar formula is getting pretty stale. We were able to do this thanks to the third party involved in this production: Truth in IT. They have put together an excellent webinar platform and are eager to try new ideas.

If you would like to view the recording, it is now available. You can register to view this webinar at the TruthinIT website.

Speaking Engagements in the Northeast

I’m also speaking on a couple of interesting topics this week. Today, I’m giving an overview of enterprise storage industry trends to an investment banking firm. I often get this sort of request, and am happy to develop a customized presentation. In this case, the event was initiated by an attendee at my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar.

On Thursday, I’ll be speaking at a private event in New York City sponsored by Dell and Symantec. This time, the topic is the divergent paths of performance and capacity in enterprise storage. This is another topic I’ve spoken and written about in the past, but developed some new content just for this CIO audience. I will probably be delivering similar evening speeches and events next year.

Sadly, my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar in San Diego next week has just been canceled by the organizer. I was really looking forward to this, my final seminar of the year. But I’ll be in San Diego regardless, and look forward to meeting up with some of my friends who are planning to attend. If you are around next week, drop me a line.

Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance

I’ve also recorded a webinar with Oracle last week. We talk about my favorite Oracle product: The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance. This hasn’t been posted yet, but I’ll link to it here when it appears!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Two Online Events You Should Attend (And Two More That You Can’t)
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Nine years ago tomorrow, a group of terrorists attacked the United States. Next year, a memorial will rise in New York. Many seem to be at a loss to properly mark that terrible day, and some would prefer to forget 9/11 and its aftermath altogether. But I am a realist. It happened; it affected me in a way that little else has; and it will remain with me forever. I will tell my children about it – indeed, we have already visited “ground zero” in Manhattan together.

Last year, I met the staff of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum as they began deploying Nirvanix cloud storage to support their preservation and presentation of audio, video, and photographs. I was struck by the professionalism and respect of this group, all struggling to build a fitting memorial. An iPhone app to explore 9/11 might seem odd, but as you will see it makes perfect sense.

Walk around lower manhattan and you will be struck by the sheer number of tourists who flock to pay their respects at the “ground zero” site. Although “popular” isn’t the proper word to describe it, the World Trade Center site has become a magnet for visitors from the United States and beyond. In a way, visiting the site and the temporary memorial museum is just about the only thing people can do at this point.

Although drawn to the site, most have little idea what to do once they are there. They marvel at the size of the “hole” in the skyline, they wander around the chain-link fences, but they don’t really know how to appreciate what they are seeing.

This is the purpose of the Explore 9/11 app: It is a guidebook to the site, placing it in context and bringing images, sound, and video from that day. In a way, it is a mobile museum and memorial, helping these visitors to make sense of where they are and what they are seeing.

The app has three components. The first is a walking tour of the World Trade Center site, complete with a map, directions, and narration at stops along the way. Rather than gawking at the construction, visitors will be able to follow the events of September 11 as they walk around the site. The selected audio and photos are both poignant and informative, beginning with the initial impact and continuing through the rescue, recovery, and remembrance.

Visitors to other parts of New York can also use the app, exploring photos taken from around the city. Finally, the Timeline function allows one to view photos from before, during, and after the attacks. It was very touching to me, a Connecticut native with my own memories of the towers, to see the old site as I remembered it.

The app is very New York-centric, as are most 9/11 remembrances, but there are images from the Pentagon and Pennsylvania as well. Although under-represented both here and in the final Manhattan memorial site, the events outside New York are not forgotten.

I was also pleased to see the beautiful imagery of the memorial. After such a long delay, it is gratifying to know that it will be completed in time for the tenth anniversary. I look forward to visiting the site again, paying my respects to the victims, and thanking those who worked so hard to recover and remember.

The Explore 9/11 app is free (iTunes link), and was created by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. I urge you to donate to that organization to help in construction.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Explore 9/11 – An iPhone App of Remembrance
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Although my dislike for certain aspects of trade shows (especially booth babes and chotchkies) are well documented, I’ll be trying some new ideas:

• I’ve been working on a concise overview of cloud storage for my in-stage presentation (Tuesday at 11:30 in the main ballroom)
• Being a cloud vendor, we will have a very plain booth – what better way to represent reduction in data center footprint than demoing our offering from an empty table?
• Rather than giving away some cheap flashy-light junk, we will be offering attendees a free tree. Seriously! Everyone who visits our booth will get a tree planted in their name, doing a bit to offset the massive environmental impact of the show and demonstrating the positive environmental impact of cloud computing.
• We will have three technical experts, one CEO, and two salespeople on the show floor, matching my suggested 50-50 ratio of tech and sales.
• We will be offering a free cloud computing strategy workshop to interested and qualified attendees following the show to facilitate deeper discussion.
• We are also hosting a CIO-level roundtable discussion in New York with some of the City’s top companies in October.

This is a major test, in my opinion, of substance over flash. Although cheap gimmicks might attract short-term attention, I believe that they do nothing to deliver real results. Instead, we’ll be applying our best people and ideas and demonstrating both our values and our value. Wish me luck, and I’ll see you in New York!

As many folks know, I wear two hats: I work full-time as Director of Consulting for Nirvanix, where I help customers realize the strategic value of cloud storage. In my off-hours I also write, speak, and generally gad about the industry as a sort of non-analyst. If you or your company will be at Storage Decisions New York 2009, drop me a line and let’s meet up!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | What’s All This About Cloud Storage? Ask Me At Storage Decisions
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.

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.

Some highlights from the calendar:

• The Storage Decisions conferences in New York and Chicago remain, but the third half-day has been eliminated, leaving them at two days each.
• New this year are one-day Storage Decisions Summits in San Francisco and Toronto. These are multi-track, multi-speaker events, but are more focused, with only the best speakers and topics.
• Although the one-day seminar speakers and dates have not been finalized, newly-independent industry superstar, W. Curtis Preston, appears to be heading up the lions share, with dozens of dates focused on backup and data deduplication.

I’ll post more details when they become available. But until then, check the schedule and mark your calendars. These excellent events are well worth your time!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | TechTarget Posts 2009 Event Schedule
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.

You can find my presentations here:

• Deep Dive into Email Archiving Products: 11 Essential Attributes of Email Archiving Systems
• Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Virtualization — In One Hour

See my posts on Gestalt IT for similar enterprise IT infrastructure commentary

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Storage Decisions New York 2008 Presentations Now Available
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.

There is nothing like presenting in the ballroom at the Hilton Chicago!

Storage Decisions returns to New York later this month, and I’ll be happy to be there. Although the Hilton New York isn’t as grand as the Chicago venue pictured, it’s still a great location and a better event!

This time around, I’ll have two sessions:

• Tuesday, September 23, at 1:45 PM is my Deep Dive Into Email Archiving Products, where I delve into my eleven essential attributes of email archiving and spill the beans about the real product differentiators
• Wednesday, September 24, at 2:45 I’ll be presenting Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Virtualization-In One Hour, a super-condensed version of my one-day storage virtualization seminar (just add water!)

If you haven’t yet decided to attend, please do consider applying for admission at TechTarget’s site.

On the other hand, if you’re planning to be there, please drop by and say hello! I’ll be around the exhibit hall on Tuesday evening, and will have my tail glued to an ask-the-experts chair on Wednesday through lunch.

I’ll be in Charlotte for my storage virtualization seminar in October, with another Storage Decisions in San Francisco coming up in November!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Storage Decisions New York is Right Around the Corner
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.