This week, Chris and Martin reflect on changes in the storage industry and the ways in which vendors can make money from storage hardware and software. It's been a tough time for storage vendors of late and the discussion starts by looking at the challenges of making money in a market where components are commodity and decline in price each month. How should vendors adapt … [Read more...]
#119 – Storage Hardware is Back!
This week, Chris and Martin catch up with some of the storage hardware on show at Flash Memory Summit 2019. FMS is essentially a trade show and so there are lots of technologies on display that haven't quite made it to the enterprise. Technology vendors are selling to other vendors and this year there were some interesting hardware solutions to see. Flash has been on the … [Read more...]
#107 – Should IBM Quit the Storage Hardware Business?
IDC recently released their latest quarterly storage sales figures. The data shows, yet again, that IBM sales continue to decline. In this week's podcast, Chris and Martin discuss the state of IBM's storage business. Is it time for IBM to quit? IBM has an embarrassment of riches in storage software and hardware (or a nice portfolio as Martin puts it). Many of these … [Read more...]
#102 – May Midrange Madness with Chris Mellor
This week Martin, Chris Evans and Chris Mellor discuss Dell EMC's plans for merging the three current midrange storage platforms marketed by the company. This is a follow-up to the article Chris recently posted on https://blockandfiles.com that discusses Project Trident. There are a lot of moving parts to consider when merging storage platforms. Customers have spent time … [Read more...]
#99 – Dell Technologies World 2019 in Review
This week, Chris and Martin discuss the announcements from Dell Technologies World 2019, held in April/May 2019 at the Sands Convention Centre in Las Vegas. Chris attended as a guest of Dell Technologies, who covered flights and accommodation. Dell Technologies made a range of announcements, including improved capabilities on the Unity XT and Isilon storage platforms. A … [Read more...]
#93 – Myspace Loses 12 Years’ of Music
This week, Chris and Martin discuss the issues at Myspace, which recently disclosed that 12 years' worth of user content had been lost during a (failed) server migration. The once-mighty Myspace was the largest social networking site from 2005 to 2009 (according to Wikipedia) and had estimated revenues of $109 million in 2011. So, how could a company with such as large … [Read more...]
#91 – Storage Field Day 18 in Review
This week, Martin leads the conversation as Chris discusses the vendors presenting at the recent Storage Field Day 18 event. SFD18 is part of the Tech Field Day series delivered by Stephen Foskett and GestaltIT. We last spoke with Stephen in April 2018 - an episode on why storage isn't boring. Although there's no official theme for SFD events, the companies presenting were … [Read more...]
#85 – Storage for Home and Homelabs
This week Chris and Martin discuss the subject of storage for home and homelabs. With so much content being personally generated these days, is it better to store data on local hardware or use the public cloud? It turns out that many of the home storage devices we're familiar with are pushing more to SMB and enterprise-class features. Alternatively, if you're like Martin, … [Read more...]
#82 – Storage Predictions for 2019
The idea of this episode was to put some structure around a set of enterprise storage predictions for 2019. As you will hear from the dialog, that's not quite what we achieved! However, Chris Evans, Chris Mellor and Martin Glassborow do raise some interesting points on the direction of the industry in 2019. The conversation starts with a look at media. QLC flash is likely … [Read more...]
#81 – Storage or Data Asset Management?
This week Chris and Martin talk about the evolution from storage management to data management. This follows from recent vendor events where data management featured highly, but still seemed to focus on infrastructure products. Is there a definition that can bridge the gap - something like Data Asset Management? The team start by trying to get a handle on what storage and … [Read more...]