Earlier this week Dell announced that they were buying 3APR for $1.15B USD

As a follow up to this, this and this recent posts, I keep getting asked in different forums, venues, via email, telephone calls and in person who will or should Dell buy next, and will Dell buy Brocade, who will buy Brocade or anyone else for that matter.

Ok, first let me say that everything in this post is just a perspective based on openly (e.g. publicly) available information along with some common sense. Thus there is no NDA or confidential insight or tips from some anonymous source named blue horseshoe (remember the movie wall street?).

However I did used to work for a SAN, MAN and WAN company called INRANGE that was a supplier to server and storage vendors as well as partnered with Emulex, Qlogic as well as Adva among others. INRANGE which became OUT of RANGE (that is some SAN humor btw) when it was sold to CNT was then bought by EMC spin off McData (I left before then) which in turn was bought by Brocade. Now does any of that make more qualified than any other arm chair quarterback pundit with a keyboard and pulse to jump into the whom Dell will buy next sweepstakes to I say no.

However, let me use some experience to analyze a few things, then connect some dots. From there, I will leave it up to you to agree, disagree, bet, guess, speculate or wish upon a falling star as to whom Dell might buy, or for that matter, what others may or may not do.

First, since Brocade keeps coming up in conversations, here is a previous post I did on the topic of them being for sale or who might buy them.

I still think that Brocade can survive on their own, granted they need to kick it into gear on the switch (Ethernet, Fibre Channel and FCoE), distance extension, HBA or CNA if you prefer as well as management tools front. Brocade built their business with OEM partnerships via Dell, EMC, HP, HDS, IBM, NetApp and Oracle/Sun among many others not to mention their channel distribution programs.

Thus Brocade needs to leverage those OEMs on a go forward basis. However, that model and channel partner model also gets in the way of Brocade being bought by one of their OEMs. Keep in mind that EMC once owned McData and made a nice profit on that spin off (or spin out) while IBM sold off their networking division to Cisco, now both do good business with their OEM suppliers. Likewise, both leverage multiple suppliers as that is what their partners and customers want (e.g. choice of suppliers).

Now, keep in mind that HP has had their procurve low end Ethernet switches for some time and historically flipped some business (excuse me, partnered) to Cisco for high end Ethernet LAN networking technology. Lets also not forget about HPs recent acquisition of 3COM (read about it here).

Now with Cisco tip toeing into the server market trying to flex its muscles in the small server pool (no offense Cisco or to your faithful followers) HP and other server vendors might be wanting to flip something else at Cisco besides business. Oh oh, I think I hear the Cisco UCS truth squads knocking at the door with large amounts of truth serum (Ok, Im just kidding folks).

Lets get back to HP and 3COM.

IMHO that was partly an opportunity to pick up some additional revenue, partly to grab a brand name that also has ties into the Chinese market. Keep Huawei (here and here) in mind, you know, that sometimes Cisco nemeses networking company who had 2009 revenues of RMB149.1B or $21.8B USD. Now back to H and 3COM, that was also IMHO play to gain access to additional SMB, SOHO, ROBO and consumer market channels for a bargain price. HP is not alone as others have done similar acquisitions in part or in whole to pick up a brand name that also hade partners, channels, products and revenues. For example among many others, EMC and Iomega, Seagate and Maxtor, Symantec and Norton, CA buying, well, I think or hope you get the picture.

Now back to Brocade and Dell.

Why would Dell need Brocade for which they would have to a pay a premium price of $6-7B USD (assume 3 to 3.5x multiplier on revenue) which would get them just under $900M in debt and a couple of billion in annual revenue. Keep in mind that Dell has somewhere in the neighborhood of $9-10B in cash although while Im not an accountant, the financial people tell me they need to maintain their strategic reserves of which such a deal would put a big dent into.

However, there is more to the story which is that revenue would be in jeopardy if the other server and or storage vendors (e.g. EMC, Fujitsu, HP, HDS, IBM, NEC, NetApp, and Oracle/Sun etc) did not like Dell owning one of their suppliers. In other words, unless Cisco really upsets the server vendors which they have been doing to a lesser degree already, why would Dell want to risk a Texas size pile of cash to get a revenue stream that could blow away in a Texas size hurricane or dust storm?

Granted if Dell could talk Michael Klayko (Brocades CEO) and board as well as other investors into a low ball offer the math might virtually work. However that is also doubtful knowing that Klayko also knows Joe Tucci of EMC who knows how to drive a deal or bargain. Thus, I do not see Brocade rolling over in desperation to sell them at a discount as much as some might want you to believe that they need to do.

Thus, while anything is possible, I do not see Dell buying Brocade except for one possible scenario which could result in a bidding war not to mention utter industry chaos.

That scenario is what I refer to as MAD which is a Mutual Assured Destruction situation. In other words, an all out war or ensuing instability that throws existing OEMs, partners and business into chaos (keep in mind however in chaos or confusion there is opportunity). The MAD scenario could be triggered by Cisco finally getting truly and really serious about servers. Granted Cisco is doing their best to test their partners, OEMs and even customers as too how much they will tolerate in terms of entering the server market.

Im not convinced they are ready to be number one, two or three let alone four or five. After all, my numbers may be off, however best I can tell the number of Cisco blade servers is measured in thousands or best case a few ten thousand since its launch. By comparison, how many thousands of servers do Cisco OEMs Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle among others ship per week or month? In other words, Cisco to really get serious would need to ramp up that server business by several factors of ten, a move that would not sit well (even worse than now) with their major OEM partners.

Thus, if Cisco were to get serious and want to move up into the top two or three spot of the server market, something people always tell me that Cisco feels they have to be in a top market spot, they step all over their OEMs. This in turn would set off the MAD scenario mentioned above, kind of like a scene out of war games, perhaps what you are seeing with some of the early Cisco posturing. Sure Cisco made some moves with their UCS and their EMC alliances as well as dancing with whoever buys them a drink and sure HP bought 3COM which I guess could be seen as a warning shot if you like. Sure Cisco is the 800 lb guerrilla when compared to the networking vendors except do not forget about Huawei (read more here).

Thus for the time being, I expect Cisco to keep making noise, testing the waters, pushing its OEMs and partners. Perhaps Cisco also does some arms treaties in the form of marketing alliances as it continues to push its FCoE and unified compute initiatives. Sure they will keep pushing Virtual Desktop Initiatives (VDI) and anything else that can generate network traffic so they can support those needs. However, also keep in mind that VMwares biggest platform deployment (e.g. servers) customers or partners are HP and Dell in no particular order (I will let you rank them depending on whose data you choose).

Oh no, I have to stop now as I wanted this to be a short post.

So what does this have to do with Dell and Brocade?

Simple, why would Dell want to go down that path if they do not have to?

As to who Dell should buy, real quickly, how about a data protection (security, backup, restore, BC, DR) company or a data management or a desktop management company, how about one that fits all of those like Symantec which from a revenue standpoint is about three times that of Brocade.

Heck, if you think Dell could afford Brocade, then why not a Symantec which might actually be worth more in pieces than as a whole. Dell could sell off what they do not need or want or make that part of a deal or keep it all! As for others, how Dell buying a low end consumer, prosumer, SOHO storage play like Drobo or Snap among others.

Ok, I have to wrap up for now.

Talk to you all soon either here, or in one of the many other different venues or social media as well as traditional mediums as this story is far from being done.

Whats is your take?

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

twitter @storageio

Here are some links to read more about the above topics and themes

• Could Huawei buy Brocade?
• Acadia VCE: VMware + Cisco + EMC = Virtual Computing Environment
• Did HP respond to EMC and Cisco VCE with Microsoft HyperV bundle?
• HP Buys one of the seven networking dwarfs and gets a bargain
• Industry Trends and Perspectives: Converged Networking and IO Virtualization (IOV)
• I/O, I/O, Its off to Virtual Work and VMworld I Go (or went)
• Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage
• Data footprint reduction (Part 1): Life beyond dedupe and changing data lifecycles
• Data footprint reduction (Part 2): Dell, IBM, Ocarina and Storwize

Some results of this recent activity have appeared in blog, on my web site as well as via other sites and venues. For example, activity or content ranges from Industry Trends and Perspectives white papers, reports, blogs, newsletter commentary, interviews, Internet TV, videos, web cast, pod casts (including several appearances on StorageMonkeys Infosmack as well as Rich Brambleys Virtumania), ask the expert (ATE) questions, twitter tweets, tips and columns. Then there were the many in person presentations, key note and seminar events, conferences, briefing sessions along with virtual conferencing and advisory consulting sessions (read and see more here).

Regarding having new content appearing in different or new venues, Silicon Angle (including a video), Newstex and Enterprise Efficiencies join the long list of industry and vertical, traditional along with new world venues that my content as well as industry trends and perspective commentary appear in. Read more about events and activities here, content here or commentary here.

Speaking of books, there is also some news in that The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) is now available on Amazon Kindle (click on links below) as well as having been translated and published in China not to mention having undergone another round of printing keeping up with demand to make more copies available via global venues.

As for what am I seeing and hearing, check out the new series of Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) short blog posts that compliment other posts as well as content found on the main web site. These ITP pieces capture what I am hearing and seeing (that is of those what I can talk about that are not under NDA of course) while out and about.

Some of the cities that I have been at while out and about doing keynote speaking and seminar events as well as for other meetings have included Minneapolis, Miami, San Diego, Beverly Hills, San Jose, San Diego (again), Hollywood (again), Austin, Miami (again), New York City, Reston, Minneapolis (again), Irvine, New York City (again), Boston, Toronto, Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Philadelphia, Mountain View, Mahtomedia (Minneapolis area), Boston (again) and Indianapolis, Calgary, Jasper (Alberta), Vancouver in Canada as well as Nijkerk (Netherlands) for a one day seminar covering Industry Trends and Perspectives in addition to changing planes in Atlanta, Detroit, Memphis and Las Vegas.

The Planes should be obvious, however what about automobiles you ask? How about the following taken from my rental car while driving north of LAX on the 405 after a January storm during my trip from San Diego after a morning event to Beverly Hills to do an evening keynote.

Driving north of LAX on the 405 with a rainbow after rain storm

Another car trip a few weeks later after a different event in San Diego I had a driver from a service behind the wheel so that I could get some work done before an evening meeting. Also on the car front, after flying into Indianapolis there was a car ride to Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) to do a keynote for a CDW sponsored event in gasoline alley a few days before the big race there. While we are on the topic of automobiles and technology, if you have not seen it, check out a post I did about what NAS, NASA and NASCAR have in common.

What about trains you ask?

Besides the normal airport trams or trains, there was a fun Amtrak Acela ride from New York City Penn station after a morning event in the city up to Boston so as to be in place for a morning event the next day. Other train activity besides airport, subway or commuter light rail in the US and Europe (Holland), there was also an overnight trip on VIA Rail Canada the Canadian from Jasper Alberta to Vancouver (some business tied into a long weekend). If you have never been to the Canadian Rockies, let alone traveled via train, check this one, it was a blast and I highly recommend it.

Lake Louise and Jasper area bear family in Alberta Canada

It just dawned on me, what about any out and about via boats?

Other than the Boston water taxi to Logan Airport from the convention center where EMCworld was held and that I did an Internet TV interview along with @Stu and @Scott_Lowe, boat activity has been so far relegated to relaxation.

However, as all work and no play could make for a dull boy (or girl), I can update you that the out and about via boat fishing and sightseeing activity has been very good so far this fall even with high (then low, then high) water on the scenic St. Croix river way.

Here are some scenes from out and about on the St. Croix river including an eagle in its nest tending to its young who can not be seen in this photo as well as fishing (and catching and releasing).

In between travels (as well as during on planes, trains and in hotel rooms) as well as relaxation breaks, I have been also working on several other projects. Some of these can be seen on the news or tips and articles as well as video and pod cast pages in addition to custom research as well as advisory consulting services. I have also been working on some other projects some of which will become visible over the next weeks and months, others not for a longer period of time yet and yet others that fall under the NDA category so that is all I have to say about that.

If you are not receiving or have seen them, the inaugural issue of the Server and StorageIO newsletter appeared in late February followed by the second edition (Spring 2010) this past week. Both can be found here and here as well as at www.storageio.com/newsletter or subscribing via newsletter@storageio.com.

A question I often get asked is what am I hearing or seeing particularly with regards to IT customers as well as with vars during my travels. Here are some photos covering some of the things that I have seen so far this year while out and about.

Super TV or Visualization device at Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) in Austin

Note all of the dell servers side by side under the screens required to drive the image.




Taking a walk inside a supercomputer (left) and Texas Supercomputer (Note the horns)

Microsoft Technology Center (MTC)





View from the back of the plane (left), Airplane long haul essentials: water, food, ipod, coffee, eye shades




Boats in Holland taken after dinner before recent seminar I did in Nijkerk





Dutch Soccer (Pub) food and snacks being enjoyed after a recent seminar in Nijkerk





Airport waiting for planes in AMS (left), more airplane snacks and a map (right)

As to what am I seeing and hearing pertaining to IT, storage, networking and server trends or issues they include among others (see the newsletter):

• Tiered Hypervisors and HyperV adoption
• Tape is alive, dedupe deployments continue
• Virtual storage and storage virtualization
• I/O and networking convergence
• RAID rebuild time
• Tiered storage mediums and systems
• Public and private IT clouds
• 6G SAS and shared DAS

Whats on deck and and that I am working on?

Having had a busy fun winter and spring Im going to get some relaxation time in during a couple of week period of no travel, however there is plenty to do and get ready for. The summer months will slow down a bit on the out and about travel events scene, however not to a complete stop. In between preparing for upcoming events, advisory and consulting activities as well as researching new material and topics not to mention working on some projects that you will see or hear more about in the weeks and months to come.

For example I will be a guest on a webcast sponsored by Viridity discussing the importance of data center metrics, measurement and insight for effective management to enable energy efficient and effective data centers on July 8th. In addition, I will also be doing another five city storage virtualization series in Stamford, Cleveland, Miami, Tampa and Louisville during mid to late July among other upcoming activities including VMworld in San Francisco.

Check out the events page for more details, specific dates and venues.

What about you?

What have you been doing or have planned for your summer?

Let me know what you are seeing or hearing as well as have been doing.

In the meantime however keep these hints and tips in mind:

• Have plenty of reading material (real physical books or magazines) or virtual (Kindle or other) as well as via Internet or online to read while at the beach (make sure your computer or PDA is backed up), pool side, in the backyard or elsewhere
• Remember your eye shades (sun glasses or eye wear), hat and sun screen and if applicable, inspect or bug repellant (e.g. RAID is still useful)







• Drink plenty of liquid fluids while outside in the summer heat including non alcoholic ones that do not have umbrellas or other interesting garnish
• Have a place to backup and protect all those summer photos, videos and audio clips that you record while on your out and about adventure. However, keep in mind privacy concerns when uploading them to various social mediums. After all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and what happens on the web stays on the web!

Thanks to everyone involved in the recent events which can be seen here, as well for those who will be participating in upcoming ones I look forward to meeting and talking with you.

Until next time have a fun, safe and relaxing summer if you are in the northern hemisphere and for those down under, not to worry, spring is on the way soon for you as well.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

twitter @storageio

Follow via Google Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

Today the US Supreme Court ruled on a Nevada case involving constitutionality of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley (Sarbox) accounting regulations pertaining to appointments to the independent public company accounting oversight board.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Sarbox regulations or law remains intact, however the process or controls around the oversight board must change.

My interpretation and perspective from reading a few different reports is that Sarbox as you know and love (or hate) it is essentially still intact. However what has changed or will be is that individual board members can now be removed or at least in an easier manner. Instead of the request to strike down the Sarbox regulations, the Supreme Court instead appears to have left the regulations intact instead ruling that board members can be changed or removed.

What does this all mean?

Perhaps not much other than firms who have been making money on Sarbox now having something else to talk or consult about (Hmmm, a Sarbox stimulus?).

On the other hand, with the ability to have Sarbox board members more easily removed, perhaps we will see a new board installed that could influence the thinking and thus applicability of Sarbox activity.

Near term, I can see this as being non news for some, and for others, confusion and lets not forget that in chaos or confusion there is opportunity.

Here are some links to read more

Nuff said about this for now, whats your take?

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

twitter @storageio

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

twitter @storageio

These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, solution brief content found at www.storageio.com/reports.

The topic of this post is a trend that I am seeing and hearing about during discussions with IT professionals pertaining to how tape is still alive despite common industry FUD.

Not only is tape still very much alive with recent enhancements including LTO5 with an extended range roadmap, it is also finding new roles. In addition to being deployed in new roles, tape is coexisting and complimenting dedupe or other disk based backup and data protection approaches and vice versa.

Hearing tape is alive in the same sentence as dedupe deployments continuing may sound counter intuitive if you only listen to some vendor pitches.

However if you talk with IT customers particularly those in larger environments or with VARs that provide complete solution offering focus you will hear a different tune than tape is dead and dedupe rules. Tape is still alive however its roll is changing. Watch for more on this and related topics.

That is all for now, hope you find this ongoing series of current and emerging Industry Trends and Perspectives interesting.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

twitter @storageio

IT Data Center, Storage and Virtualization Industry Trends and Perspective

June 16, 2010 Nijkerk, GELDERLAND Netherlands

Learn about other events involving Greg Schulz and StorageIO at www.storageio.com/events

This edition follows the inaugural issue (Winter 2010) incorporating feedback and suggestions as well as building on the fantastic responses received from recipients.

A couple of enhancements included in this issue (marked as New!) include a Featured Related Site along with Some Interesting Industry Links. Another enhancement based on feedback is to include additional comment that in upcoming issues will expand to include a column article along with industry trends and perspectives.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Also, a very big thank you to everyone who has helped make StorageIO a success!.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

twitter @storageio

Technorati tags: StorageIO

Along with VMguru Rich Brambley and hosts Greg Knieriemen and Marc Farley we discussed several recent industry topics in this first show of the year which can be accessed here or on iTunes.

Heres a link to the pod cast where you can listen to the discussion including VMware Go, VMware buying Zimbra, Vendor Alliances such as HP and Microsoft HyperV and EMC+Cisco+VMware, along with data protection for virtual servers issues options (or opportunities) among other topics.

I have included the following links that pertain to some of the items we discussed during the show.

• What is the Future of Servers?
• Did HP respond to EMC and Cisco VCE with Microsoft HyperV bundle?
• HP Buys one of the seven networking dwarfs and gets a bargain
• Poll: EMC and Cisco Acadia VCE, what does it mean?
• Acadia VCE: VMware + Cisco + EMC = Virtual Computing Environment
• Comments about Vendor Alliances
• Demystifying Virtual Server Data Protection or here

Enjoy the show.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

twitter @storageio

Technorati tags: Infosmack

Since 2009 went by so fast, and that Im finally getting around to doing an obligatory 2010 predictions post, lets take a look at both 2010 and 2011.

Actually Im getting around to doing a post here having already done interviews and articles for others soon to be released.

Based on prior trends and looking at forecasts, a simple predictions is that some of the items for 2010 will apply for 2011 as well given some of this years items may have been predicted by some in 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 or, well ok, you get the picture.

Image via: http://e-tarocchi.com

Predictions are fun and funny in that for some, they are taken very seriously, while for others, at best they are taken with a grain of salt depending on where you sit. This applies both for the reader as well as who is making the predictions along with various motives or incentives.

Some are serious, some not so much…

For some, predictions are a great way of touting or promoting favorite wares (hard, soft or services) or getting yet another plug (YAP is a TLA BTW) in to meet coverage or exposure quota.

Meanwhile for others, predictions are a chance to brush up on new terms for the upcoming season of buzzword bingo games (did you pick up on YAP).

In honor of the Vancouver winter games, Im expecting some cool Olympic sized buzzword bingo games with a new slippery fast one being federation. Some buzzwords will take a break in 2010 as well as 2011 having been worked pretty hard the past few years, while others that have been on break, will reappear well rested, rejuvenated, and ready for duty.

Lets also clarify something regarding predictions and this is that they can be from at least two different perspectives. One view is that from a trend of what will be talked about or discussed in the industry. The other is in terms of what will actually be bought, deployed and used.

What can be confusing is sometimes the two perspectives are intermixed or assumed to be one and the same and for 2010 I see that trend continuing. In other words, there is adoption in terms of customers asking and investigating technologies vs. deployment where they are buying, installing and using those technologies in primary situations.

It is safe to say that there is still no such thing as an information, data or processing recession. Ok, surprise surprise; my dogs could have probably made that prediction during a nap. However what this means is more data will need to be moved, processed and stored for longer periods of time and at a lower cost without degrading performance or availability.

This means, denser technologies that enable a lower per unit cost of service without negatively impacting performance, availability, capacity or energy efficiency will be needed. In other words, watch for an expanded virtualization discussion around life beyond consolidation for servers, storage, desktops and networks with a theme around productivity and virtualization for agility and management enablement.

Certainly there will be continued merger and acquisitions on both a small as well as large scale ranging from liquidation sales or bargain hunting, to large and a mega block buster or two. Im thinking in terms of outside of the box, the type that will have people wondering perhaps confused as to why such a deal would be done until the whole picture is reveled and thought out.

In other words, outside of perhaps IBM, HP, Oracle, Intel or Microsoft among a few others, no vendor is too large not to be acquired, merged with, or even involved in a reverse merger. Im also thinking in terms of vendors filling in niche areas as well as building out their larger portfolio and IT stacks for integrated solutions.

Ok, lets take a look at some easy ones, lay ups or slam dunks:

• More cluster, cloud conversations and confusion (public vs. private, service vs. product vs. architecture)
• More server, desktop, IO and storage consolidation (excuse me, server virtualization)
• Data footprint impact reduction ranging from deletion to archive to compress to dedupe among others
• SSD and in particular flash continues to evolve with more conversations around PCM
• Growing awareness of social media as yet another tool for customer relations management (CRM)
• Security, data loss/leap prevention, digital forensics, PCI (payment card industry) and compliance
• Focus expands from gaming/digital surveillance /security and energy to healthcare
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) mainstream in discussions with some initial deployments
• Continued confusion of Green IT and carbon reduction vs. economic and productivity (Green Gap)
• No such thing as an information, data or processing recession, granted budgets are strained
• Server, Storage or Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) with event correlation
• SRA tools that provide and enable automation along with situational awareness

The green gap of confusion will continue with carbon or environment centric stories and messages continue to second back stage while people realize the other dimension of green being productivity.

As previously mentioned, virtualization of servers and storage continues to be popular with an expanding focus from just consolidation to one around agility, flexibility and enabling production, high performance or for other systems that do not lend themselves to consolidation to be virtualized.

6GB SAS interfaces as well as more SAS disk drives continue to gain popularity. I have said in the past there was a long shot that 8GFC disk drives might appear. We might very well see those in higher end systems while SAS drives continue to pick up the high performance spinning disk role in mid range systems.

Granted some types of disk drives will give way over time to others, for example high performance 3.5” 15.5K Fibre Channel disks will give way to 2.5” 15.5K SAS boosting densities, energy efficiency while maintaining performance. SSD will help to offload hot spots as they have in the past enabling disks to be more effectively used in their applicable roles or tiers with a net result of enhanced optimization, productivity and economics all of which have environmental benefits (e.g. the other Green IT closing the Green Gap).

What I dont see occurring, or at least in 2010

• An information or data recession requiring less server, storage, I/O networking or software resources
• OSD (object based disk storage without a gateway) at least in the context of T10
• Mainframes, magnetic tape, disk drives, PCs, or Windows going away (at least physically)
• Cisco cracking top 3, no wait, top 5, no make that top 10 server vendor ranking
• More respect for growing and diverse SOHO market space
• iSCSI taking over for all I/O connectivity, however I do see iSCSI expand its footprint
• FCoE and flash based SSD reaching tipping point in terms of actual customer deployments
• Large increases in IT Budgets and subsequent wild spending rivaling the dot com era
• Backup, security, data loss prevention (DLP), data availability or protection issues going away
• Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings winning the super bowl

What will be predicted at end of 2010 for 2011 (some of these will be DejaVU)

• Many items that were predicted this year, last year, the year before that and so on…
• Dedupe moving into primary and online active storage, rekindling of dedupe debates
• Demise of cloud in terms of hype and confusion being replaced by federation
• Clustered, grid, bulk and other forms of scale out storage grow in adoption
• Disk, Tape, RAID, Mainframe, Fibre Channel, PCs, Windows being declared dead (again)
• 2011 will be the year of Holographic storage and T10 OSD (an annual prediction by some)
• FCoE kicks into broad and mainstream deployment adoption reaching tipping point
• 16Gb (16GFC) Fibre Channel gets more attention stirring FCoE vs. FC vs. iSCSI debates
• 100GbE gets more attention along with 4G adoption in order to move more data
• Demise of iSCSI at the hands of SAS at low end, FCoE at high end and NAS from all angles

Gaining ground in 2010 however not yet in full stride (at least from customer deployment)

• On the connectivity front, iSCSI, 6Gb SAS, 8Gb Fibre Channel, FCoE and 100GbE
• SSD/flash based storage everywhere, however continued expansion
• Dedupe  everywhere including primary storage – its still far from its full potential
• Public and private clouds along with pNFS as well as scale out or clustered storage
• Policy based automated storage tiering and transparent data movement or migration
• Microsoft HyperV and Oracle based server virtualization technologies
• Open source based technologies along with heterogeneous encryption
• Virtualization life beyond consolidation addressing agility, flexibility and ease of management
• Desktop virtualization using Citrix, Microsoft and VMware along with Microsoft Windows 7

Buzzword bingo hot topics and themes (in no particular order) include:

• 2009 and previous year carry over items including cloud, iSCSI, HyperV, Dedupe, open source
• Federation takes over some of the work of cloud, virtualization, clusters and grids
• E2E, End to End management preferably across different technologies
• SAS, Serial Attached SCSI for server to storage systems and as disk to storage interface
• SRA, E23, Event correlation and other situational awareness related IRM tools
• Virtualization, Life beyond consolidation enabling agility, flexibility for desktop, server and storage
• Green IT, Transitions from carbon focus to economic with efficiency enabling productivity
• FCoE, Continues to evolve and mature with more deployments however still not at tipping point
• SSD, Flash based mediums continue to evolve however tipping point is still over the horizon
• IOV, I/O Virtualization for both virtual and non virtual servers
• Other new or recycled buzzword bingo candidates include PCoIP, 4G,

RAID will again be pronounced as being dead no longer relevant yet being found in more diverse deployments from consumer to the enterprise. In other words, RAID may be boring and thus no longer relevant to talk about, yet it is being used everywhere and enhanced in evolutionary ways, perhaps for some even revolutionary.

Tape remains being declared dead (e.g. on the Zombie technology list) yet being enhanced, purchased and utilized at higher rates with more data stored than in past history. Instead of being killed off by the disk drive, tape is being kept around for both traditional uses as well as taking on new roles where it is best suited such as long term or bulk off-line storage of data in ultra dense and energy efficient not to mention economical manners.

What I am seeing and hearing is that customers using tape are able to reduce the number of drives or transports, yet due to leveraging disk buffers or caches including from VTL and dedupe devices, they are able to operate their devices at higher utilization, thus requiring fewer devices with more data stored on media than in the past.

Likewise, even though I have been a fan of SSD for about 20 years and am bullish on its continued adoption, I do not see SSD killing off the spinning disk drive anytime soon. Disk drives are helping tape take on this new role by being a buffer or cache in the form of VTLs, disk based backup and bulk storage enhanced with compression, dedupe, thin provision and replication among other functionality.

There you have it, my predictions, observations and perspectives for 2010 and 2011. It is a broad and diverse list however I also get asked about and see a lot of different technologies, techniques and trends tied to IT resources (servers, storage, I/O and networks, hardware, software and services).

Lets see how they play out.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

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The following are some coverage, perspectives and commentary by StorageIO on IT industry trends including servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software, services, virtualization, cloud, cluster, grid, SSD, data protection, Green IT and more since the last update.

Realizing that some prefer blogs to webs to twitter to other venues, here are some recent links among others to media coverage and comments by me on a different topics that are among others found at www.storageio.com/news.html:

Check out the Content, Tips, Tools, Videos, Podcasts plus White Papers, and News pages for additional commentary, coverage and related content or events.

Cheers – gs
Greg Schulz – Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

Technorati tags: Green IT, Server, Storage, IO, Networking, Hardware, Software, Cloud, Virtualization, Services, Efficient, Optimization, BC, DR, Data Protection, HA, Power, Cooling, SSD