This regular series features highlights from the week.

• Tech Field Day related
  • One of the biggest announcements at Tech Field Day was Druva, launched at our event. Their presentation drew quite a bit of attention! Can Druva succeed at mobile backup?
  • The delegates wanted to share their advice for presenters: How To Give an A+ Presentation at Tech Field Day and Presenting at Tech Field Day
  • Another hit presentation was Drobo’s new business products: Tech Field Day #5 wrap-up – Day 1 – Drobo and Drobo – My visit from Tech Field Day
  • Then there was Xangati, which had a shortened presentation. TFD5: Xangati – Stepping stone to Skynet or datacenter “DRS”
  • The big kick-off was Symantec: Impressions of Symantec from Tech Field Day
  • Gestalt IT Tech Field Day #5 Experience
  • HP StoreOnce – the basics of HP deduplication
  • The HP coffee machine was a hit, too: Introducing Chai Field Day and Joking around with the HP EBC coffee machine
• Other great posts
  • I’ve been a proponent of the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive. But not everyone is happy: Users frustrated with Seagate’s next-gen hybrid drive
  • I talked to Sonia Lelli about SAN management in virtual environments. Wanted: SAN management tools for a virtualized environment
  • A great Steve Duplessie piece: Why is Everyone so Fired Up About Big Data?
  • Greg Ferro is right on (as usual): Your Cloud Future Is In China
  • Great news for Greg Knieriemen, Marc Farley, and company: Infosmack Podcast to be distributed by The Register
  • I was glad to have Matthew Norwood’s help with this: Wrapping My Head Around The Nexus1000v – Part 1

Subscribe to my Google Reader feed or follow me on Twitter to see these in real-time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, February 18, 2011
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.

• The MacBook Air was a major topic of discussion, but I focused on the storage side of things (predictably)
  • Apple Replaces Operating System DVDs with the Software Reinstall Drive
  • Unconventional SSDs: PCI Express Mini Card (Mini PCI-E)
  • Apple’s Unconventional New MacBook Air SSD
  • Apple signals disk free notebooks way to go
  • HDDs’ Burgeoning Capacities: Aspiring To Cut Off SSDs At The Knees (a counterpoint)
• Iomega is back with an external USB 3.0 SSD: Iomega Bundles Capacity and Performance in New External SSD Drive
• Chris Evans is tackling some serious enterprise storage “as a service” concepts. This week it’s Billing:Enterprise Computing 4 Pillars – Billing for Tiered Storage
• HP is showing some serious interest in attracting enterprise IT pros, and Greg Ferro tackles it in HP ExpertONE certifications announced
• Mark Bowker questions conventional wisdom regarding server virtualization in A Virtual Reality Check
• And finally, Steve Duplessie points out the amazing circumstances that made storage the talk of the town in Hey Baby, Wanna See My LUN?

Subscribe to my Google Reader feed or follow me on Twitter to see these in real-time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, October 22, 2010
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Everything, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Enterprise IT

• Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle Your Reliance On Backup Tapes – What’s wrong with backup tapes? They’re inaccessible, making them unsuitable for most applications. My latest post for my Enterprise Storage Strategies blog.
• Is Licensing Turning vSphere Into Vista? – A group post for Gestalt IT suggesting that VMware’s tiered licensing strategy for the vSphere 4 family might cause anguish for customers
• Infosmack Episode 2 – EMC, David Donatelli and Non-Compete Agreements – I joined the StorageMonkeys Infosmack podcast to discuss EMC, Dave Donatelli, and con-compete agreements with Greg Knieriemen, Marc Farley of 3Par and StorageRap, and Tony Asaro of the INI Group
• IT utilities, the biggest game in town – Chris Mellor of The Register suggests that the biggest IT vendors are positioning to lock up the IT market.
• The Non-Compete Clause Debate….. - Steve Duplessie muses on the pros and cons of non-compete agreements and what they mean for the IT industry
• Who’s the pot & who’s the kettle? - W. Curtis Preston reacts to the skirmishes between Tony Asaro and the EMC bloggers
• The Only VMware-certified NAS in its Category: Why the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200r Will Resonate with Small Businesses - Jerome Wendt expands on the Iomega StorCenter Pro ix4-200r
• Don’t focus too much on costs, cloud computing is about business agility - CapGemini reminds us that cloud computing isn’t just about reducing costs
• What we talk about when we talk about cloud computing - The Google Enterprise blog lays down some of the hard facts about building a cloud on your own
• Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System - Chris Evans provides one of the best reviews yet of Sun’s Amber Road open source-based storage systems
• Brocade Pokes Cisco in the Eye, Switches for IBM - A great headline and solid reporting by Om Malik on one of the first reactions to Cisco UCS
• TheInfoPro: Analysis or Marketing? - StorageMonkeys continues their probing of the storage analyst community
• A “Tweeterview” with Stephen Foskett, Nirvanix Consulting Director - Sunshine interviews me about Nirvanix, storage, and my new role

Apple

• Achieving Email Bliss with IMAP, Gmail, and Apple Mail – A deep, long post on GMail, IMAP, Mac OS X Mail, and how to get all three to play nicely together.
• Monitor Your Mac Remotely With iStat for iPhone - I love iStat for Mac OS X and the iPhone and had been meaning to write a review. This AppleBlog post is just about what I might have written!

Life

• There Goes Chrysler – NPR’s awesome Planet Money blog reported the breaking news of Chrysler’s bankruptcy
• The Venture Capital Math Problem and The Venture Capital Math Problem (continued) – Fred Wilson points out that there can be no such thing as unlimited venture capital
• Is it time to cut the Ethernet access cable? – Has pervasive wireless Ethernet made wired ports unnecessary?
• Interview with Micah Baldwin, Father of FollowFriday – Micah calls me out as someone who is doing interesting things on Twitter!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Content From the Week of May 2, 2009
This post was categorized as Everything. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I will be wearing two hats at the show as usual:

1. I’ll be attending as press, representing this blog and Gestalt IT and learning about all of the new storage technology being launched. I’ve got some questions for quite a few companies, too, and look forward to covering their products here in the future.
2. I’ll also be introducing my new Nirvanix Consulting practice, and probably fielding lots of questions about what exactly that means.

I’ve got a full roster of meetings, both informal and scheduled, over the next three days. Along with many, many marketing reps, I’m looking forward to meeting tons of storage bloggers, some old friends and some for the first time: George Crump, Steve Duplessie, Carter George, Howard Marks, Beth Pariseau, Dave Simpson, Jerome Wendt, Hu Yoshida, IDC, ESG, and The Wikibonners, I hope I didn’t miss anyone, but I’m sure I did. Greg? Mark? Marc?

Traveler's unicorn: A 3 oz tube of toothpaste! Why did it take so long for a TSA-approved tube?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Spring Storage Networking World 2009, Here I Come!
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.

This got me thinking: The real distinction is between buyers and sellers of products and services. There is a spectrum on the sell side between being an independent and a company man, but we are all vendors. Our credibility comes from who we are, not where we work.

The Business of Consulting

Consulting is a simple and perilous business, and it is governed by a simple formula: Billing rate times billability is gross revenue, everything else is overhead. You keep what’s left over.

Only three elements matter to a consulting business, and all are variable

There are really only two reasons a customer hires a consultant:

1. They need specific skills or knowledge
2. They need focus or manpower

The consulting business rests on these simple elements, and we all try to make the best of them. But at the end of the day, a company that has to make its money selling services has to decide what it wants to be:

• Strategic and professional services (PS) organizations focus on maximizing rate by specializing in a special area of skill and take shorter-term engagements.
• Body shops or outsourcers focus on maximizing billability by providing low-rate manpower in long-term engagements.
• Subcontractors focus on reducing overhead by running lean and outsourcing services to non-employees (typically self-employed “1099″ consultants).

I’m using common jargon here, and most consulting businesses wouldn’t want to be classified into one of these buckets, but the business speaks for itself. For any given consulting shop, ask yourself one question: Which of the three factors in the equation is being maximized?

This simple math deeply affects the life of the consultant. Some decide to go it alone, happily risking a steady income for a higher rate as a 1099 subcontractor. Others choose to stick with the steady life of the outsourcer, accepting a lower pay but knowing where they’ll work each day. Personally, I always gravitated towards the strategic and PS roles because the focus on skills made me feel special.

Who Are You?

Let’s step back to that continuum of supply-siders for a moment. In my field of specialization, enterprise data storage, one can immediately identify some positions along the spectrum:

• PR people relentlessly and (sometimes) creatively push their clients. They are among the most vendor-focused folks out there because that’s their job!
• Marketing communications folks have to be creative to create a product-centric point of view, so you can expect solid vendor-angled messaging from them.
• Product marketing people tend to be much more technical and tend to truly believe in the virtues of their product, since they helped shape it.
• Subject-matter experts in the vendor and reseller community know the plusses and minuses of the products inside and out and love to get into deep technical discussions.
• Analysts present their opinions in a balanced way, but the topics they focus on are driven by the vendors they work with.
• Consultants vary in focus depending on the aims of their company, but tend to be more utilitarian, asking “what does this do for a customer?”

I have great affection for folks in every category on this list. Take Sunshine Mugrabi, for example, a PR pro who has taken that job to a whole new level of relevance with her work for Ocarina Networks. Or Marc Farley, who works somewhere in 3PAR marketing but still manages to crank out hilarious videos and thoughtful commentary. Or Chad Sakac, whose knowledge of VMware and storage makes him credible as much more than “an EMC guy”. And what about storage analyst extraordinaire, Steve Duplessie? This list could go on and on, so please accept my apologies, but I could not possibly include everyone I respect.

What’s the common denominator that makes someone credible? Simply that they rise above their positions to protect and project their personal reputations. Yes, they all work for vendors and they all deliver sales, but their work benefits the community well beyond that.

Credibility

The net is simply that we each build up or tear down our own credibility in life. Consultants, analysts, and pundits do not corner the market, and simply being in one of these fields does not make one especially independent or trustworthy. What matters is what we do with whatever soapbox we have. Do you trust me?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Consulting Is A Perilous Business But Credibility Is What Matters
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.

Storage magazine: seven years' proof of excellence

All things must pass, but it is with a heavy heart that I note that TechTarget‘s excellent Storage magazine has shipped its last issue. No official word has been posted by the company, but it is now widely reported. All print publications are feeling squeezed by a move to online readership which robs print of advertising revenue with its quicker turnaround and lower cost. Like its ancestor, Byte, and PC Magazine, Storage will continue online at searchstorage.com as well as through a controlled-circulation PDF newsletter. I do not yet know which of the excellent staff (writers, illustrators, and editors) of Storage will remain with these online efforts.

A History of Excellence

The final issue of Storage magazine was recently mailed - I grabbed a few extras if you want one!

Storage magazine was launched in March of 2002 to be “the best magazine dedicated to storage,” in the words of Editor in Chief, Mark Schlack, and it was. It stood out from the crowd right away, with square “perfect” binding and high-quality printing and design. Inside that first issue, one was greeted by fresh and engaging layout and artwork that was both clever and humorous. These would become the trademark of the magazine.

But content was king at Storage, and this is the area with which I am most proud to have been associated. The very first issue featured insightful pieces by Steve Duplessie, Rich Friedman, Richard Scannell, Dennis Martin, Darryl Brooks, and others. They were joined by a who’s-who of the industry, including Jon Toigo, Marc Farley, Alan Radding, Jerome Wendt, W. Curtis Preston, Jim Damoulakis, Tony Prigmore, Marc Staimer, Randy Kerns, and Tom Halfhill, and that was just in the first year! Just about every independent voice in the industry was represented over the next six years.

It was precisely that independence that brought credibility to the magazine. Although they eventually ended their provocative Behind the Firewall insider-tips page, they never allowed the magazine to become an advertorial. Like the companion Storage Decisions conference and seminar series, TechTarget managed both to remain editorially independent and to gather strong support from the industry. No doubt it was the wisdom and experience of the editorial staff, Schlack, Friedman, and Rich Castagna, who ensured balance rather than cheerleading or FUD to dominate the pages. They received recognition, as well: Just look at TechTarget’s award page for a list of “bests”!

My Own Experience

Storage impressed with its design, illustrations, and photography as well as its editorial excellence

Storage even found a place for yours truly in their pages: I wrote the Integration column every other month for two years before moving to the Best Practices column through 2007. I also contributed almost a dozen feature articles over the years, the last of which just missed the final issue. I was proud to be listed as a Contributing Editor for all of those years as well, and gave everything I could to keep Storage “the best,” including quoted commentary in many issues.

Every one of my interactions with Storage magazine was positive. The editors always knew how to edit my work to bring out the best. Although I am not truly a journalist, I have learned many things from Mark, Rich, Rich, and the others. And I remain honored to be listed alongside the luminaries whose work appeared next to mine.

I also want to call attention to the standout look of the magazine: I talked to many of the photographers featured on the pages, having had my own photo taken a few times as well as my editorial subjects, and they were truly professionals, drawing out the best in us. The illustrations that graced my columns and articles deserve repeated praise, too, always amazing me with their clever twists on what I wrote.

Storage magazine deserves its place in the enterprise storage industry, as well as the publishing world in general. But more importantly, it earned a place on my bookshelf, and it will remain there. I cannot praise it higher. Thanks for seven great years, and I look forward to working with TechTarget and the excellent staff of Storage in the future!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Remembering Storage Magazine
This post was categorized as Computer History, 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.

I arrived in beautiful Chicago today for the Storage Decisions show at the Hilton here.  What a great event this is – loads of interested and committed storage users and some of the best minds in the business get together to talk about how we all do this thing we call storage!

I was glad to see Jon Toigo here – while I may not always agree with him, he certainly has vast experience in the storage industry.  And I appreciate his role as the iconoclast of storage.  We both agree that the real action in the industry happens at a whole different layer than just storing and moving bits.

Before sitting down with Jon, I was pleased to chat with my good friends, Curtis Preston and Bill Peldzus, both of whom have, over the years, proved themselves advocates of end user concerns.

I’ll also be looking for Greg Schulz, Mark Staimer, Arun Taneja, and Steve Duplessie and his crew from ESG.  See what I mean about the best minds in the industry?

Of course, the hotel is crawling with TechTarget’s staff, including Rich C and Rich F from Storage magazine, Dave Raffo from SearchStorage.com, and Amy, Lindsey and the folks who run the show.

If you’re here, please do come up and introduce yourself.  If not, there are three more shows scheduled for this year!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Hello from Storage Decisions Chicago
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.