January 29, 2012

European Trip: SNW Europe, Storage Expo NL, and Storagebeers

I am looking forward to many happy beers in Frankfurt, Utrecht, and Amsterdam this week!

I never skip a chance to travel to Europe, and I’m really looking forward to my trip to Storage Networking World (SNW) in Frankfurt tomorrow. As always, the great folks over there are organizing a Storagebeers event, and it will be wonderful to see all my European friends once again. First thing Thursday morning I’ll be on a train to Amsterdam and Storage Expo NL.

Storage Networking World (SNW), Orlando

SNW still attracts a great audience

Storage Networking World is a fixture in the enterprise storage industry. It’s like it’s always been there, and I’ll be there once again for SNW Fall on October 10-12. I look forward to a hectic few days of briefings and conversations with companies new and old as well as a blurry few nights reconnecting with old friends. Drop me a line if you’d like to meet up!

Huawei Symantec Enters The United States Storage and Security Market

Huawei Symantec recently introduced their SAN, NAS, and security offerings for the United States market

Surprise! Huawei Symantec has arrived in the United States, ready to take on the midrange storage and network security market with a line of devices that have proven their worth in the international market for three years. I sat down with the company’s management at Storage Networking World and quizzed them on their plans and aspirations for growth.

Nothing Beats Meeting In Person

The Internet is responsible for the demise of many “meatspace” industries, from magazine publishing to CD sales, but there are some things it’ll never do: No matter how much time you spend interacting online, meeting in person is something else entirely. I’m not trying to advocate a return to the old world of tech conferences and user groups. Rather, I envision a new breed of connected events that reinforce online communities with real face-to-face communication.

FCoE Symbolism

Fibre Channel plus Ethernet equals FCoE

Visitors to the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) booth at Storage Networking World in Orlando were greeted by a strange symbol, but what is the symbol exactly? I was amused to get some puzzled looks (and no correct answers) when I polled a number of industry insiders.

Conference Loot: SNW Orlando 2010 Edition

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I’ve never been a fan of the junky, wasteful side of conference attendance. I railed about “booth babes and chotchkies” last year, and tried to make my presentations qualitatively different. But there is another class of giveaway at conferences: Solid, pricey loot.

My 2009 IT Industry Predictions

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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.

Spring Storage Networking World 2009, Here I Come!

I’m off to Orlando this morning for Storage Networking World (SNW) Spring 2009. It will be great to see all of my friends in the industry again, though EMC will be quiet in the run-up to EMC World and the DMX-5 “Tigon” launch mysterious April 14th announcement! I will be wearing two hats at the [...]

Is the FCoE Starting Pistol Aimed at iSCSI?

The pistol shot heard this week was the starting gun for FCoE, not the execution of iSCSI

To hear this week’s storage industry news reports, one might think that Wagner’s fat lady came to Storage Networking World (SNW), singing her song as the iSCSI world collapses. Storagebod wonders what iSCSI’s death will look like. Chris Mellor at The Register says “Game Over” as NetApp, QLogic, Emulex and VMware join EMC and Cisco in singing the [...]

Compellent Does Enterprise SSD Right

Yes! Compellent has just announced at Storage Networking World that they’ll be adding enterprise solid state drives (SSDs) to their excellent fully-virtualized storage arrays. Why is this worth shouting about? Simply because their automated block-based tiered storage architecture ought to be able to really take full advantage of the performance offered by SSDs. If you’ll [...]