A Conference Report by Graeme Thickins
Notes from the Buzz Fest:
SNW/Orlando...
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A collection of observations for clients & friends
from
Storage Networking World, held October 27-30, 2003, at
the JW Marriott Grande Lakes Resort, Orlando, Florida
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Good news: it was an upbeat tech event! Even more upbeat than
expected, many sources told me.
It was the largest ever, this 9th SNW (an event held twice a year),
with some 2500 registered. It featured 109 sponsors and exhibitors --
"virtually the entire industry," said a breathless Ron Milton,
EVP of Computerworld, in his opening remarks.
The event had 115 scheduled sessions with 122 speakers. The exhibit
area again featured an Interoperability Lab (orananized by cosponsor
SNIA), this time featuring 8 themes, 39 vendors, and 25 demos --
with the major buzz being the new SMI-S standard.
Though it's likely that 50% or more of attendees were from vendor
companies (sponsors and exhibitors) -- and the total count probably
included the busboys -- estimates were that something approaching
1000 were real users, also a record said officials.
The mood was upbeat, and as analyst Mike Karp said, at least it
shows *travel* budgets are easing, if not more. Press and analysts
surely numbered more than 100, and reporters I spoke with seemed
busy with all the news to cover.
The first audience keypad response in the general session brought
a bit of a surprise. When asked what their company size was, 23%
of attendees said $1-10B in revs, and 29% said $10B+. The big
companies were out in force. So, maybe it won't be just the
"SMBs" that are spending going forward??
Herewith, some of my notes from key sessions I attended, in
chronological order from the opening bell on Tuesday morning,
October 28th....
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Major General Dale Meyerrose, CIO and
Director of Architecture & Integration
US Air Force, US Northern Command:
Advice to IT execs from this keynote speaker...
"Think big, start small, scale fast."
A piece of wisdom he offered regarding working with vendors:
"You can't buy an answer, you must develop a solution."
"Maybe this should be a data-action conference instead
of a storage-networking conference."
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Another keynoter, Jerry McElhatton, President,
Mastercard Operations:
"Transforming data into information
is what makes your company smart."
"We transfer $6 billion between banks on
an average day, and have 320 terabytes
of online storage (up from 68 terabytes
in 1999)."
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Mark Canepa, EVP, Network
Storage Products Group, Sun:
"Customers are increasingly saying,
'this is too complex'."
"In '95-'00, we were in the age of connectivity,
now in '03 we're in the age of efficiency. By
2005, we'll be entering the age of data services."
From a chart he showed called "Next-Generation
Data Services"....it had "Content" at the top,
with Storage, Compute, and Network below it
and feeding in.
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Comments from the "User Executive Roundtable":
- Steve Duplessie, ESG: "You ALL will soon be in a
regulated, record-retention environment."
- John Kelley, CEO, McData: "Business continuity and
disaster recovery is pre-eminent in *everyone's* mind."
- Duplessie: "9/11 caused a lot of talk about disaster
recovery, but few did anything."
- Kelley (when asked, "What about interoperability?"):
"Applications will drive it. The Homeland Security
effect is coming. It could be a driver of interop."
- Christine Wallis, SVP, Hitachi Data Systems: "Problems
get solved when the real pain is there. I think we're
there now in storage."
- Duplessie: "How do you separate the noise?"
- Mike Luter, CTO, Cancer Therapy & Research Center:
"It's no longer about 'customer relationship.' Now,
it has to be a *partnership* -- an alliance or trust."
One audience question afterward: "Is HBA pricing
coming down?"
- Duplessie: "It'll be cut in half in 18 months!"
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Cisco's "User Case Study"...comments from
Lance Perry, VP, IT Infrastructure:
"We currently manage 1.6 petapytes of raw storage,
about 1.1 of which is DAS/SAN...and storage has been
more than 50% of our IT budget."
"Data center space is at a premium...Underutilization
of storage is a problem, even at Cisco, creating
enormous ROI potential."
"Industry averages for utilization are only 40%
for DAS, 60% for NAS, and 85% for SAN."
"Cisco is focusing on a consolidated storage utility...
Our vision is offering storage as a utility-like
service...which has a significant ROI and lower TCO."
"We formed a dedicated storage team in early 2002,
and went global with it a few months later."
"Our storage TCO has been about .10 per megabyte,
for DAS and small SAN island architectures, and .05
for NAS...but we're out to drop that by 20% per year
through improved utilization."
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From a presentation by Rick Belluzzo, CEO of Quantum,
on "New Imperatives in Data Protection":
"This is the most exciting part of storage."
"We're in a period of transition...I believe the industry
fell behind in the last 5-10 years in data protection,
and we're now at an inflection point....tape and disk
will overlap."
"I see two key challenges: data growth averaging 50-75%
a year, with email at 90%, and aging IT infrastructure --
an average of 3.5 years, which is the highest since 1986."
"There are now more than 4000 regulations covering record
retention...and don't forget -- they don't just require
retention, but the ability to quickly *recover", too."
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(SMI-S is the SNIA's energing standard, "Storage Management
Initiative Specification"):
- Richie Lary, Storage Guru & Consultant: "With no standards,
customers judge a vendor by its weakest link. With standards,
they buy your strongest piece."
- Lary: "What is SMI-S? Basically, it's managed objects."
- John Blackman, Technology Strategist & Architect, Wells
Fargo: "Our storage environment has more than 20 different
vendors, and mutiple 'people factions' internally. What
SMI-S means to us is better use of people...API-swapping
did us no good -- it kluged things further, made it harder."
- Marty LeFebvre, VP-Technology Strategy, Nielsen Media Research:
"It means we can focus more on managing storage -- not on all
the various tools. Different people have to know all the
different tools."
- Blackman: "SMI-S helps startups, because it allows customers
to drop in their solutions. It's about data center simplification --
that's what we're trying to do."
- Audience question: "What about vendor differentiation?
Doesn't this standard just reduce everything to the lowest
common denominator?"
- Lary: "We left room for differentiation. That's something
we planned for."
- Blackman: "Differentiation comes from service and customer focus."
- Moderator (John Webster, Founder, Data Mobility Group):
"Don't developers have a big advantage writing to fewer APIs --
less cost and support?"
- Lary: "The cost is high to develop custom, nonstandard
storage management software -- a hundred thouasnd lines of
code just to get started! SMI-S opens it up to a whole
bunch more companies, at the lower end of the market, too."
- Blackman: "It goes beyond storage, into the server."
- Lary: "There are at least three companies now with SMI-S
frameworks, one of them open source...SMI-S is now moving
from the concept of 'interoperability' -- where if and A and
B don't work together, it's nobody's fault -- to 'compliance'.
And that puts the real onus on each vendor."
- Moderator question: "What can users do to make sure
SMI-S happens?"
- LeFebvre: "Tell the vendors. Make it part of your
vendor selection/evaluation process...Storage user
groups are now growing around the world."
- Blackman: "Users are the only way this is going to happen."
- Lary: "Some companies I know are placing big bets on
SMI-S products. Meaning products that only work with SMI-S."
--------
Factoid: one of many audience-keypad questions yielded this
result -- 34% are not currently doing any mirroring at all.
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A break for a news conference, wherein Invio was announcing
its "Storage Practice Manager," which is the first process
management software to provide storage on demand, according
to the company. Not another policy engine, they say, it
"fits management workflow to the organization," and removes
repetitive tasks from the administrator's workload. The next
day, a storage manager from Hudson's Bay Company presented
his firm's results using the product (which unfortunately I
missed, as I was climbing onto a plane). Chris Hyrne, VP
marketing, told me later that "It was encouraging to see the
'light go on' in so many faces about the impact of improving
process in storage operations like provisioning and ILM."
That latter term, for those of you living under a rock, is
Information Lifecyle Management...which won the overused
buzzphrase award -- it was everywhere at SNW.
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My notes from the 3-hour-plus IDC Briefing Wednesday
morning,
"The State of the Storage Market, 2004 and Beyond":
- Robert Gray, IDC Research VP, Storage Systems
"Budgets are up....In our latest survey, 55% of companies
said their spending would increase. Only 26% said their
budgets were down." (a marked difference from previous surveys)
"Storage hardware investment will be slower, but software
investment will be up in 2004."
"The strongest markets for storage companies look to
be countries like China, Australia, and India -- where
spending will be up 80%."
"Data protection, including rapid restoration and disaster
tolerance projects, are finally on the front burner."
"Time to restoration is clearly a driver in 2004.
Companies will be buying fewer tape drives."
"Everyone now classifies their data by how fast
it must be recovered."
- Charlotte Rancourt, IDC Storage Systems Research
Director:
"The largest opportunities are in software and services.
Hardware CAGR will be less than 4%."
"Spending in the U.S. is definitely increasing, and
is the beginning of a wave of increase globally."
"Storage spending increased 1.9% in 2003 over 2002.
That may not sound like much, but consider the two
previous years, when spending was *down* 15 and 23%."
"IT managers are really service providers, and their
clients are getting even more demanding. They need *data*
and often their pay is tied to performance. They don't
care about IT pain."
"On the other side is the boss. He doesn't care about
IT wizardry. He just wants to stay flexible enough to
address things like headcount reductions or increases
and other business imperatives."
"What customers need today is threefold: reduced costs,
increased quality of service, and to match the data
delivery method with the value of the information."
"All data is not created equal. The IT manager's job
is basically managing a huge inventory of data --
data with varied access, value and importance."
"What's needed is a 'tiered storage solution' --
which is really a data inventory strategy."
"That's always been done with storage arrays, with
different capacity and speed drives. Now, whole
arrays are designed for specific performance."
"These may be lower cost arrays, but they're revenue
opportunities nonetheless."
"We see it as a services-led opportunity, partnering
with the customer....The tiered-storage opportunity
is not about hardware, but a services-led customer
solution."
"It may sound simple, but it's quite complex....
It has been done in the mainframe environment."
"New opportunities for arrays include disk-to-disk-
to-tape and online storage of fixed content."
"Things vendors should do: (1) disrupt yourselves
now: low-cost drives will be part of arrays -- if
you don't have them, you're late; (2) integrate
your competitors' products into your platform; and
(3) leverage your internal consulting expertise."
- Rick Villars, IDC VP Storage Systems:
"Storage networking is the fastest-growing portion
of the storage market...By 2005, SAN storage spending
will be as much as *all* storage was in 2003."
"But the network buildout is still at an early stage.
Networked storage is going network."
"Capacity-oriented storage arrays, like NetApp's
NearStor, are reshaping the storage environment.
By 2007, they will be 40% of all storage."
"With low-cost storage, customers also want low-cost
connections. One exmaple is the no-frills switch.
Products like QLogic's Stackable Switch, which offers
an expandable-port, stackable environment, are a trend."
"In the director switch category, the focus is on
port density, and easier managability."
"The iSCSI opportunity will initially be in the server
world, then storage. By 2005, we'll see a convergence
inside arrays of internal and external architectures."
"Nobody's budgeting for 'virtualization' per se, but
they are for managing storage and data protection."
"What's coming is 'inter-SANs', not bigger SANs. Think
routing -- like what happened when so many LANs were
proliferating. It's 'internetworking'."
"Trends to watch include embedded fibre channel
(internal/external convergence), 4G fibre channel,
iSCSI, and network storage controllers."
"There will be expanded use of FC technologies within
array and server architectures...including opportunities
at both the chip and system level, such as "fibre down"
and embedded switches. But can you be in both the chip
and systems business? The latter is more customer focused.
These are two worlds, with different needs and requirements."
"The reality is that the market is moving to 4G FC, with
first products by 2005. It's driven by the value the
customer perceives, exactly like the 1 to 2G transition."
"iSCSI adoption was slowed by Microsoft's delays in
getting testing kits out. Delivery of products was
slowed, but customer interest is still there....We'll
see it first in stranded servers, iSCSI to FC."
"The 'networked storage controller' market (IDC's term
for blade sitches) is being driven by data migration,
replication, and storage consolidation...We advise
customers to focus on the tactical before moving to
grand visions like Information Lifecycle Management."
"But there are questions of how to take this to market --
the type of product and format. The industry hasn't
answered those questions yet. So, path to market is
a major issue."
"We recommend that vendors stay serious about cost
management. Plan for $200 per port by 2007. Think
Ethernet trends....We're bringing routing to SANs...
But the biggest hurdle remains -- interoperability."
"Redirect your partner strategies. The new opportunities
are less interesting to traditional partners. Go to
the software and services people in your existing
partner companies. And establish relationships with
resellers and integrators."
- Bill North, IDC Program Director, Storage Software:
"We're seeing all the signs of a maturing market in
storage software. The market dynamics have been hectic
lately, with many acquisitions and mergers."
"One thing blade servers do is compress the number
of software licenses."
"Intelligent storage networks are changing the way
to think about where management should be."
"We're seeing data protection and disaster recovery being
re-emphasized...And for fixed content, low-performance,
capacity-optimized solutions have arrived...New hardware
suggests new software requirements."
"Serious challenges remain before Information Lifecycle
Management can be implemented. The first one is the
classification of data....It's an incredibly complex
problem, but a laudable goal."
"There's significant interest in policy-based storage
automation, from companies of all sizes. But the large
companies are the first to do it."
"Storage software will see a 8.7% CAGR from 2002 to
2007, with the highest growth in the storage resource
manangement category. Overall market size will grow
from $5.7 billion in 2002 to $8.7 billion in 2007."
"More price competition is coming."
"Seven vendors control 75% of this market."
"In Q1 of 2003, storage software was down 8%. But in
Q2, it was up 7.3%. For the full year 2003, we're
forecasting $6.04 billion, which is up 5.2% over 2002."
The largest segment is backup and archiving, which
accounts for 44% of the total."
"All segments are up in 2003. And new segmnets like
fixed content and content-addressable storage are
driving more market growth."
"The prospects for 2004? Much more growth."
- Doug Chandler, IDC Program Director, Storage
and Data Management Services:
"My presentation is about 'Storage as a Service' --
or when customers don't want to buy or manage
products anymore."
"'Storage utility' is the term I use, but there are
many terms being thrown around. Basically, my definition
is when a customer has an agreement with a suuplier
for storage capacity at a price per megagbyte."
"In surveys about outsourcing, storage management is
typically near the top. It was number-three in our
recent survey."
"The early adopters of storage as a service are the
largest customers. But the greatest benefit may be
in the small to midsized category, the SMBs."
"They're the least equipped to manage IT infrastructure,
and they're not going to build it internally. They're
already outsourcing -- for their web site, for example.
And the costs savings mean they get access to apps
they couldn't otherwise afford. For them, storage
as as a utility is generally delivered as part of
a larger services suite."
"How big is this market? About 1000 terabytes are currently
being delivered this way, where the provider owns the
storage. Often, it's sold as part of web hosting. We
estimate the market size now at $250 million."
"Look for activity further down the retail chain --
from players such as Yahoo, eBay, brokers, cable companies,
HMOs, Kodak, banks, credit card companies, and more.
All these companies will need help from infrastructure
firms."
"Who is delivering this to the marketplace? The big
IT 'utility engines' are of course IBM, EDS, and CSC.
But, for SMBs, we're seeing 'utility aggregators' as
a developing trend. Firms like ADP and eBay, as well
as VARs. But it also could be Microsoft, GE, Dell, the
cable companies, even the telcos. The latter have been
attempting IT services plays for a long time, with
not a great record."
"Key inhibitors in this market are insource inertia,
the culture/political agenda, fear of single-vendor
lockin, data privacy and security, and suppliers don't
see a future in the 'brand-agnostic' IT utility model
(i.e., commoditization). Another one is the service
provider's ability to scale."
"Our recommendations for storage technology firms is to
be 'arms providers' to the storage utility providers.
For the providers, the outsourcers, leverage your ability
to scale and manage heterogeneity. And look out -- there
will be a price war. For the channels, look for packages
you can sell to SMBs."
Questions from the audience at the close of the IDC
Briefing:
Q (mine): How does IDC account for software delivered
in a box -- the trend toward more appliances?
A (Bill North): I account for the software portion in
my software numbers, and the value of the hardware is
tracked by that analyst.
Q: Is there a coming commoditization of HBAs?
A (Rick Villars): The Windows distribution model
changes things. iSCSI is more price competitive today.
But the big thing is HBAs is that they'll be embedded.
And the differentiation in HBAs is now the drivers...
We're also seeing a sense of commoditization in
NAS. But vendors are trying to delay that in the
mid and high end."
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I hope the sharing of my notes was valuable for you. It's
always great to get feedback from my colleagues and friends,
so please do let me know your reactions and questions.
best regards,
Graeme Thickins
*Minneapolis *Southern California
http://www.gtamarketing.com/GraemeThickins.html