How Do We Make Sense of It All?

EMC, NetApp, 3PAR, Isilon, Compellent, Pillar Data Systems, Xiotech, Hitachi, Brocade, and Cisco. SAN, NAS, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCoE, CIFS, and NFS. Fibre Channel, SATA, SAS, and SSD. Sometimes there seems to be precious little that the storage industry spends more time on than creating new TLAs and industry terms. Some may argue that about the only thing the companies in this industry is better at doing is propagating FUD about their competitors

Often, we spend more time spreading FUD about the competition and defending ourselves from their FUD than we do educating users and helping to solve real problems. In fact, one of the benefits I brought to my employer when I switched over from the 800 pound storage gorilla, was a certain level of immunity from the FUD being spread by EMC competitors. I loved having various vendor sales teams spread some false information about the CLARiiON or the DMX and then watch their faces drop when I systematically dismantled their arguments. Of course, it also meant that the EMC sales and customer service teams knew they couldn't get away with exaggerated claims about certain capabilities of a product or denial of known issues and bugs.

However, what about those end-users who have never sat on the vendor side of the table? My colleagues were often confused and frustrated by the charges and counter charges coming from one vendor or another. Often their response was to fall back to what they knew, not because it was the best choice, but because it was the easier choice when trying to make sense of it all. The outcome is that often the only winner is the incumbent vendor and end-users are the real losers because they are discouraged from taking risks that may prove to be better solutions.

Now that I've been back on the vendor side, this time with one of those new "emerging" storage vendors, I am seeing, from a different perspective, how the incumbent storage vendors so often use FUD to paralyze end-users and to prevent them from taking worthwhile "risks." My hope with this blog, is to look a the storage industry from both sides of the vendor/end-user table and to provide some analysis that may be enlightening to all parties, even if it means sometimes hitting both over the head with my words.

Besides this blog, I am also hoping to make my presence felt on Twitter @nyc_se. Please feel free to comment and let me know how I am doing.