Good Guys can be bad, sometime!

Anybody who served in armed forces and fought on behalf of country is a good guy in my books. So Hu Yoshida, you may be voted by me as worst corporate blogger but you are still a good guy.

My criticism was due to the impression your blog entries gave out - Recipe of typical industry white papers:

Half to two-third technology + Rest product = Technology White Paper by a Vendor

My feedback: Let your personality shine in your blog entries, and you have good one according to industry journalists! The blog is as much about you and what is in your head instead of just rowing HDS boat.

Reading Where should intelligence reside? reminded me of a SNIA conference call four years ago, where storage vendors were bickering about virtualization, host vs. storage vs. switch vs. appliance, in-band vs. out-of-band, file vs. block, blah ... blah ... blah.

In last three years, I talked to lot of companies (up and down the food chain) and I have the opinion that in general (exceptions rule sometime):

Sales focuses on what is coming down the pipeline next quarter

Marketing focuses on what is coming down the pipeline next year

Product management focuses on what is coming down the pipeline in two years

C-executive focuses on what may happen in three years and beyond.

So, Mr. Yoshida, I rather read your thoughts about how the Seagate-Maxtor merger changes the market dynamics of data storage industry and your visions of where the industry is heading. Let your marketing people chime on "Where virtualization should reside" and "VMware works better with HDS than EMC storage".

On the topic of Seagate-Maxtor merger, actually I would really like to read thoughts of NetApp's Dave Hitz as he is big fan of Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma and whether he sees it as continuation of established threatened by emerging in disk drive industry.

I am really looking to generate discussion on where storage virtualization should reside. Perhaps you can post your position. Comment by Hu Yoshida

Why would you want to re-hash an issue that has been beaten to death already and most probably better addressed by HDS marketing department by now?

I think anyone, who believes virtualization with in storage infrastructure resides at any one specific location only, should quit smoking whatever they are smoking. In my opinion, storage virtualization is just a cog in larger infrastructure wheel that supports "Information any where, any time, any way" aka Information Virtualization. Anything that resides between information and its users will be virtualized eventually.

He shines some light on aspects of the technology that us journalist types skipped in school. A message by Terry Sweeney, Byte & Switch in response to my blog entry .

Terry, they still don't teach this stuff in school. May be Hu Yoshida should consider encouraging other HDS folks to blog and address such issues and let him address larger picture.

I am familiar with your work and follow your blogs. Comment by Hu Yoshida

Hey, thanks for the comments and reading my blog ... I didn't know I have readers in upper echelon of the kingdom!

Have Title, Let Marketing Will Blog

This morning, I read Terry Sweeney's blog entry Have Title, Will Blog (Side note: It is great to see industry rag getting into blogosphere, but B&S, you picked a lousy blog format).

He wrote:

"Actually, this is a trend I welcome. It gives customers a bit more insight into the culture of their existing or prospective vendors. It's also a chance to step outside the turgidity of press releases … typically stripped of its life and personality …."

I have to question Terry's definition of "stepping outside" because when I read these storage blogs, I get the same 'marketing' feeling that I get while reading White Papers and other marketing materials from storage vendors. It may be me just being Blog Dinosaur (having started writing Web Log in 2003) as mentioned by Bill Bowerman in his Blog comment. Or may be I am reading too much marketing material. I don't mind blogs being used for marketing (See how Riya CEO and VC Investor used blog successfully as marketing strategy) but, in my opinion, some of these storage blogs are too slick to classify as "stepping outside."

In last couple of years, I have seen several storage blogs come alive and die. Somehow, storage people are finding difficult to keep their blogs interesting or maintaining their interest in blogging. Even, time to time, I have been on hiatus too.

Anyway, I created a separate category of Storage Blog Links under my Favorite Blog Links. If you have a storage blog, you would like to have included, write a comment or send a message.

Storage Certification Material

Since I wrote about storage certifications in my previous blog entry "Storage Training, Certification & Large Archive", I received several messages requesting training material for the SNIA certifications. Unfortunately, I am unable to distribute the training course materials, I use in my sessions. It is not fair to course developers and training providers to distribute such material freely without permission.

In my previous blog entry "Training Feedback", I mentioned several resources that will help in preparing for SNIA Storage Networking Foundations exam. The same material can also be used to gain basic knowledge in data storage for people working in other technology area.

Using the SNIA Storage Network Foundations (S10-100) Exam Description (PDF file) as roadmap, I will try to cover some basic aspects of different data storage topics in my future blog entries.

Topic: Basic Storage Technology
Section: Identify Standards Organizations

Some industry organizations active in Data Storage industry that you need to be aware of:

Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)

An association of producers and consumers of storage networking products whose goal is to further storage networking technology and applications, as listed in SNIA dictionary. Basically, it is an industry trade association formed by data storage vendors to cooperate and promote data storage technologies and solutions through standards, best practices, knowledge exchange and education.

SNIA Storage Security Industry Forum (SSIF)

It is SNIA forum working on developing best practices, technologies and promoting storage networking security.

Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA)

An association of manufacturers, systems integrators, developers and vendors of Fibre Channel (FC) based storage products.

Infiniband Trade Association

Some Standards Organizations and Committees active in developing and ratifying data storage standards are:

American National Standards Institute (ANSI)

The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standrads (INCITS) committees related to storage networking are:

Technical Committee T10 responsible for SCSI I/O Interface
Technical Committee T11 responsible for Fibre Channel (FC) Interface
Technical Committee T13 responsible for ATA Interface

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

The standard body responsible for IP (Internet Protocol) based Storage Networking protocols such as iSCSI, FCIP, iFCP.