Please release me, let me go...

After the announcement last week that the Govt are spending over the odds on IT due to what was termed an "oligopoly" of vendors and suppliers, infrastructure decision-makers may now feel obliged to look at their options. On the topic of hardware which, in many cases, is one of the most expensive parts of any project, virtualisation technologies have enabled choice. But not, it would seem, in the storage industry.

Storage seems to be one of the last remaining bastions of quasi-compulsory vendor lock-in – something  that is no longer the case with desktops or servers. If we take desktop virtualisation as an example, the main proponents provide the opportunity to access a hosted desktop with whatever device you like, whether that be a desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone or whatever. In fact diversity is positively welcomed with Citrix being amongst the leaders in the “BYOD” (Bring Your Own Device) initiative and the embracing of what is often described as the consumerisation of IT.

Equally VMware revolutionised the server hardware industry and enabled customers to rationalise their antiquated server purchasing routines, which generally consisted of buying new boxes very cheaply and very often. This was neither green nor cost-efficient and the success of the hypervisor has provided choice of both manufacturer and technology. The old 3-year hardware lifecycle, in this economic climate, has all but disappeared in some verticals and IT admins are being increasingly forced to “sweat their assets” for longer. This is now possible because the hypervisor takes care of software advances during that time.

Storage appears to be different. Companies still seem to grudgingly accept they are locked in to one vendor, regardless of whether that vendor is right for them, both in terms of their products as well as their price. Need a second site for DR? Great – but you’ll pretty much need to buy the same, often very expensive, manufacturer as your primary site, despite the fact your DR site may never even be used! Had enough of vendor A and want to migrate to vendor B? Good luck!

DataCore is the “Switzerland” of storage if you will. We act as a hypervisor for the storage infrastructure, giving customers the choice, both of vendor and of technology. We can often provide zero-day ROI just on hardware savings alone, let alone all the soft cost-savings and increased performance and manageability we offer. When customers have a choice, they can buy what’s right for them, when it is right for them to do so. It also then gives them the option to take ruthless advantage of end of quarter deals throughout the year from whichever hardware vendor or distributor happens to be slightly shy of target.

Cisco recently announced what they see as the top 10 technology trends and number 2 on the list was the unstoppable tsunami of data. Apparently, we're creating a zettabyte of data globally every year and this will only accelerate. All this data needs to be stored and managed so surely performance and enablement of disk choice must be top of the list of critical factors? Not all of that data is needed all of the time but frequently accessed information requires fast disk. Fast disk is not cheap. Added to that, legislation and insurance companies are now demanding secure data archival with realistic accessibility timeframes (i.e. not tape).

With such disparity in data requirements, customers need flexibility to ascertain what’s right for them. There are plenty of smaller storage hardware companies out there that have fantastic solutions at a fraction of the cost of premium label kit. Surely this is therefore now the time for customers to embrace storage virtualisation as they did with server and are now doing with desktop and finally realise some of the cost-savings that can be achieved by avoiding vendor lock-in?

This piece formed the basis of an interview with CRN in the UK, the result of which you can read here.

And, for those of who still remember the title of this post and are partial to some cracking 80's mullets and moustaches, here's Engelbert for you. Nice.

I'm back...

I know, I know, it's been a while - almost a year in fact - since I last posted any thoughts on here. I never went away but a few things have certainly changed and, for a while, I had neither the time nor the inclination to continue writing this blog if I'm honest. All that is different now though, I have a new motivation and energy - a change is as good as a rest, as they say - and a new area of IT to get my teeth into.

In March, I moved on from my role at COMPUTERLINKS, where I was looking after the Citrix franchise for 5 years and, latterly, getting a newly-formed virtualisation division on its feet. COMPUTERLINKS and Citrix parted company at the end of 2010 and, for the few of you who have followed this blog since its inception (for which I am extremely grateful!), you may expect me, at this point, to go into great detail on my thoughts around that decision. I have though, for better or worse, changed my attitude slightly since then. The controversy that I have unleashed in the past (which occasionally got me into scrapes with various figures of authority!) is now all but gone. As a result, whilst continuing to try and air my views honestly and openly, I will refrain from making comments that might get me into trouble! Maybe I have just grown up and the angry little man has disappeared...

My new working life is quite different. I am now in the promised land of "vendor-dom". I work for DataCore Software - still virtualisation (so I can retain the title of this blog for now), just this time it's storage, rather than servers and desktops. Life as a vendor is very different from distribution. You feel you have a lot more control over your own destiny, rather than continually being crunched from both sides - the resellers and the vendors. Having said that, distribution gave me an invaluable grounding in what the channel needs and, more importantly, doesn't need and I hope I can bring some of my experience to bear now.

DataCore makes fantastic technology, the equal of which is pretty much non-existent. We are a hypervisor-type layer that sits above an organisation's storage infrastructure and virtualises their disk arrays, regardless of what type of disk it is and which hardware manufacturer made it. More on our company and technology in later blogs.

Anyway, I'll make some sort of attempt to keep this as up to date as I can. News comes thick and fast in the IT industry and Twitter just doesn't cut it sometimes. I would love to read the odd reaction from time to time too, so please do comment.