Month: December 2008

Categories
Marketing

RIP: Storage Magazine

I was disappointed to see this announcement from TechTarget. As one would expect, their actions are in response to the current economic situation. I can understand the cutbacks in headcount, but I am disappointed with the cancellation of the print version of Storage Magazine.

Storage is one of the best publications focused on the storage and data protection industry. The periodical contains high quality commentary from numerous industry pundits and provides an opportunity to advertise in print to a targeted audience. Personally, I think that it provided strong value on both fronts.

Those from Tech Target will argue that the content will still be available on the Web, a media that is more in line with their reader requirements. I disagree, I find strong value in physical print. The ability to take the magazine with me and read it on a plane or during a moment of downtime is valuable and that experience is not duplicated on the web. Yes, I have a “smart phone”, but the experience is still is not the same. Additionally, I believe that advertising in a physical magazine is very different from advertising on the Web. Sadly the print option is no longer available.

In short, these are tough times in the economy and I am saddened that the printed Storage has been canned. It was a great publication and its value (at least to me) will decline when it goes web-only. Of course, Tech Target needs to manage its own business and this was a business decision, , Personally, I think that it is a mistake.

Categories
Deduplication

TS7650G and Fibre Channel Drives

IBM/Diligent TS7650G uses a pattern matching approach to deduplication, which is different from the hash-based solutions used by many vendors or the ContentAwareTM approach pioneered by SEPATON.

Diligent’s technology requires Fibre Channel (FC) drives for the best performance because pattern matching is highly I/O intensive and needs the additional I/O from FC drives. FC drives in turn, negatively affect disk density, require more power and dramatically increase the price of the system.

The pattern matching technology used in the TS7650G is an inline process. Therefore, all duplicate data has to be identified before data is committed to disk. Pattern matching only provides an approximate match on redundant data and requires a byte-level compare to verify the redundancy. All byte-level compares must be completed before any data is written to disk and the next piece of data accepted. FC drives are required because they provide the random I/O performance needed to handle inline byte-level comparisons. Diligent specified a 110 disk FC array for the ESG performance whitepaper that they sponsored back in July of 2006. (Local copy of the ESG whitepaper.)  This is not to say that the algorithm will not work with SATA, but these drives will dramatically reduce performance.

If you are considering the TS7650G, you must carefully consider the associated disk sub-system. It is not clear what disk system and capacity was used when IBM/Diligent generated their performance specifications. As part of the evaluation you should also test single stream and aggregate backup performance because as previously mentioned single stream performance may be a challenge.

Categories
Deduplication Virtual Tape

Falconstor, SIR and OEMs

This article on Byteandswitch.com highlights enhancements to FalconStor’s SIR deduplication platform, but I have to wonder whether anyone cares. FalconStor was a big player in providing VTL software to OEMs; but their deduplication software has been largely ignored.

FalconStor had their heyday in VTL. They aggressively pursued OEM deals with large vendors including EMC, IBM, and Sun. EMC was the most successful with their EDL family of products. As the market moved to deduplication, you would think that FalconStor would be the default OEM supplier of deduplication software as well. You would be wrong.

Ironically, FalconStor’s VTL success was their downfall in deduplication. Their OEMs realized that they were all selling the same VTL software and did not want to repeat the situation with deduplication.  EMC and IBM, have already announced that they are using alternative deduplication providers.

Continue reading “Falconstor, SIR and OEMs”

Categories
Deduplication General Marketing

Surviving A Down Economy – A vendor Perspective

The outlook on the economy continues to be less than stellar. The National Bureau of Economic Research formally declared that we are in a recession. Thanks guys for stating the obvious! Tough times create difficulties for everyone. We have already seen vendors including NetApp, Quantum and Copan announcing cutbacks. Sequoia Capital added to the bleak forecast with their gloomy outlook slide deck. The big question is what does this mean to technology vendors?

In these difficult times, companies must focus on their bottom line. Every technology purchase will be scrutinized and the payback must be clearly quantified. As I posted previously, ROI is vital.

The good news for data protection companies is that data volumes do not go down in a recession and retention times do not shorten. The current difficulties in the financial sector suggest that we may see even stricter regulations and longer retentions. Deduplication-enabled solutions can still thrive in this environment because they provide compelling value. They reduce backup administration time and cost  while dramatically lowering acquisition cost. However, remember that not all systems are alike and you must consider future performance and capacity requirements. Adding multiple independent systems will negatively impact ROI. The result is that scalable deduplication solutions like those sold by SEPATON can provide strong ROIs and thus can weather the storm of a tough economy better than other technologies with weaker value propositions.

Recently, an independent market research firm who reviews the purchasing trends of companies of all sizes told us that their research indicates that companies over-purchased primary storage in the first half of 2008 and that the outlook for this sector was gloomy. In contrast, deduplication technology was the one bright spot. So far our experience has suggested that their analysis is accurate.

A difficult economy is a test of everyone’s staying power. Companies are scrutinizing every purchase and focus only on those technologies that provide truly compelling value. Deduplication enabled solutions are fortunate because of the value they bring. This is not to say that these technologies are immune, but rather that they will fare better than most.