the storage anarchist

2.013: a dr. who blast from the past

For those of you who remember Prime Computer, I'm proud to acknowledge that cut my teeth on high tech pre-sales support, performance engineering, and product marketing there in the late 70's and early 80's.

Back in those days the "Route 128 High-Tech Beltway" was the east-coast precursor of Silly-Con Valley, where the long-haired preppies hippies cut their hair, donned suits and ties, and collectively laid the foundation for the technology transition from the monolithic mainframe to the departmental computer and eventually to the desktop PC.

Back then I had as customers likes of Polaroid Corporation who used the Prime 300 RTOS to monitor the self-contained instant film packaging machines (Polaroid was the largest manufacturer of batteries at the time – go figure!). I also supported Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston of Software Arts, inventors of VisiCalc – inarguably the "tipping point" application to bring desktop computing out of the denizens of home hobbyists and word processors and onto the desktop of knowledge workers worldwide (few know that Dan and Bob used a Prime system to develop and maintain VisiCalc – Bob also introduced me to the first port of Emacs to the Prime platform).

I also helped bring to market the Prime 50 Series, complete with the first-in-the-industry green LED "power on" lamp. All the LEDs on most every minicomputer were red prior to that (mostly because red was the cheapest – or only – color). At my suggestion (which was based on my experience as a computer operator in Prime's IT department) beginning with the 50 Series, green LEDs came to mean "all good," red meant "serious problem" and yellow indicated "caution" (as in, remote access enabled). From then on operators could tell at a glance the state of their systems.

Those were the days, my friend.

This past week we have witnessed the passing of three great icons of the 80's: Michael, Farah and Ed McMahon, and these events caused me pause to reminisce about my life back then. Coincidentally, a fellow co-worker from Prime sent me this link to a series of Dr. Who television ads that Prime had developed for the Australian market, and this post was borne of that inspiration.

They just don't make 'em like that anymore.

If you're not a Dr. Who fan, getting Tom Baker to do adverts for your product back then was huge, as the show was insanely popular in the UK and Australia. Cult-like popular, even – the longest running science fiction television show in the world, according to Guinness World Records.

Thanks for the memories...

P.S.: I'm still looking for the videos of the Prime Australia "Keep Computers Confusing" campaign which featured a "robot" named Dr. Primestein. Leave a comment if you have a link.

 

technorati tags: Prime Computer,Dr. Who,1980's,Dan Bricklin,Bob Frankston,VisiCal,Software Arts

2.012: how to mind the future of a mission-critical world

A couple of weeks ago, in the midst of Hitachi's recent green eggs and HHAM announcement, HDS bloggers Claus Mikkelsen and Michael Hay teamed up to assert that I have nothing better to do with my time than to comment on their blogs. Michael even went so far as to comment:

Claus I agree with your approach here, and I do wonder if our Boy Wonder, Barry, is a full time blogger for EMC without anything else to do.

After that slap-in-the-face, both Claus and Michael have has chosen to censor my comments on their respective blogs his blog, and it appears that Christophe Bertrand will no longer publish my comments either. [UPDATE 21 June 2009: Although he obviously agreed with Claus’ decision to censor me, Michael now says he hasn’t received any of my comments on his blog- I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt – for now.]

Was it something I said? 

Fortunately, the storage anarchist does have a day job.

In fact, the latest issue of the EMC.now magazine includes an article about how the Symmetrix Product Group stays closely connected with the requirements and future vision of its customers and prospects, and provides some insight about what I really do here at EMC. If you're interested, the article is How to mind the future of a mission-critical world and it can be found on page 18 of the on-line version or on page 10 of the PDF version of the EMC.now magazine.

In fact, this close customer interaction that the Symmetrix management team maintains is the real reason why the words "from a unique perspective" is included in my blog's masthead. I get to see the future of storage technology through the eyes of customers dealing with the here and now.

Customer insight is also why I can ask EMC's competitors the tough questions so quickly and precisely whenever they make an announcement – I actually DO live and breathe customer requirements for storage, and it really IS part of my job to understand if, when and how competitors are addressing the customer requirements I learn about daily. So as irritating as my questions are, I know that the competitors are getting these same questions from their prospects. And their bloggers have come to know that  that I won't hesitate to call them out on a BS answer – especially when they make stuff up or misrepresent the facts.

And if that makes me persona non grata, so be it. Anarchy cannot be censored!

By the way, there are lots of other interesting articles in this issue of EMC.now. Whether you are an EMC customer, partner, prospect or competitor, I encourage you to give it a thorough read. And if you'd like to discuss any of the content, feel free to post your thoughts and questions here.

I promise you won't be censored, even if I might not be able to answer all of your questions.

 

This is another post from the storage anarchist.

technorati tags: EMC,strategic planning,Symmetrix,V-Max,EMC.now,voice of the customer,TCE,mission-critical,storage strategy,HDS censorship

2.011: i guess making sh*t up just comes natural for hds

Sad, but true.

Carrying over the theme from my last post, it seems that it isn't just HDS bloggers and competitive marketing teams who like to make stuff up. In fact, it seems to come straight from the top, as Beth Pariseau found when she dug into assertions being made by HDS's vice president of corporate marketing Eric-Jan Schmidt:

IDC: HDS market share numbers not accurate

Caught 'em red-handed.

The fundamental error in the whole discussion is that IDC does not report revenues by product or platform – their quarterly data only reports revenues by end-user vendor bucketed into several different price bands.

Mr. Schmidt apparently used the IDC buckets US$300,000 and above as the cut-off for "enterprise storage," but the reality is that there are indeed "enterprise" array sales below that mark as well as "mid-tier" sales above it. That shouldn't come as a shocker when the list price for an entry-level Symmetrix is around US$240,000, and CLARiiON systems can scale as large as 960 disk drives.

But then again, as I have been observing here for several years now, Misleading Marketing (and Hitachi Math) are hallmarks of HDS PR.

 

This is an original post from the storage anarchist.

technorati tags: Hitachi Math,IDC,storage market share,HDS,Hitachi,EMC,Symmetrix,CLARiiON,Beth Pariseau

2.010: pity the fool

V-Max sure has gotten under the skin of the HDS and their bloggers.

Not only has the pitiful HDS marketing machine rushed out yet another overhyped and underwhelming (green eggs and HAM) announcement, but every HDS blogger seems determined to take as many uninformed pot-shots of FUD at a product they clearly have not even yet begun to comprehend.

And it’s not just the bloggers who clearly don’t get it: a customer recently told me about some Hitachi marketing materials he has seen that attacked V-Max based entirely upon a Hitachi “suspicion” about the architectural utility of the Virtual Matrix. Seems based on that (mistaken) “suspicion” Hitachi’s conclusion is that V-Max simply cannot work. PERIOD.

When you don’t understand how something works, I guess all you CAN do is make sh*t up!

The latest blatantly uninformed attempt to discredit V-Max comes from HDS’ Christophe Bertrand as he delves deep into the FUD-bucket. In his latest post he tries to cast aspersions against V-Max while trying to deflect several of my very, shall-we-say, PESKY observations about the limitations of TSM – especially when it comes to relocating volumes that are being replicated.

Historically, Chris tends to mislead through incompletely reasoned logic and abject blind bias (I’ve suggested to him on more than one occasion that he is insulting the intelligence of his audience, but he still persists with his blissfully ignorant attacks). And he doesn’t fail to follow form with his latest…

In fact, it’s almost as if Christophe is Mr. T reincarnated (remember THOSE silly adverts?)!
 

2.009: claus censors the anarchist's ham inquiries

By his own admission, Claus Mikkelsen over at HDS has censored a list of questions that I had the AUDACITY to post on his HAM blog posts.

Seems Claus (and HDS) don't want to answer any tough questions about HAM.

What are they hiding?

 

2.008: all's fair . . .

This news surely isn't going to be appreciated by our pals over at NetApp:

EMC Proposes to Acquire Data Domain for $30.00 Per Share in Cash

A cool $1.8 billion in cash, immediate tender offer.

How do you like THEM apples?

 

Here's a quick rundown of early discussions:

• Chuck Hollis has posted a thought provoking commentary on the counter offer.
• Stephen Foskett opines over at Gestalt IT.
• Steve Duplessie explores the ulterior motives on his blog.
• David Vellante draws parallels to the Steinbrenner wars over at Wikibon.

Like Chuck said – Never a Dull Moment!

 

technorati tags: EMC,Data Domain,NetApp,Joe Tucci