I have been intrigued by the recent Dilbert comic strips highlighting social media. The piece below was particularly amusing and got me thinking about social media and corporate strategy. The comic shows the conflict between social media adoption and corporate culture and portrays a situation that happens all too frequently. Many companies desire to engage in social media, but when they recognize the commitment and ensuing open discussions back away.
Category: Marketing
Click for larger view – Comic courtesy of xkcd.com
Via Beth Pariseau from TechTarget.
Last Sunday I thoroughly enjoyed watching the hard fought Super Bowl between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. It was a close game until the very end when the Saints made a critical interception. Interestingly, one of my lasting memories from the game relates to social media.
I watched the first half of the game with my friends with no thought of social media. The half time show was headlined by The Who, and as the band started, my first thought was, “these guys are unimpressive; I must tweet about it.” I retrieved my Blackberry, starting tweeting with SocialScope and engaged in a lively discussion with my twitter comrades about the merits of the band. As the second half started, the topic moved to the game and the performance of the two teams. It was great seeing a diverse range comments and perspectives.
In summary, my Twitter interactions improved my Super Bowl viewing experience. Some people are skeptical about the value of social media and this scenario is a microcosm of the benefits of the new medium. Where else can you create relationships with people with a common interest that transcends geographic boundaries? I continue to be impressed with the many smart people I meet on Twitter and suggest that my readers try it out. You can find my full Twitter profile here.
I attended multiple keynote and breakout sessions at SNW last week, but my busy meeting schedule conflicted with many of the morning sessions. I was able to attend to Data Domain’s talk given by Frank Slootman and wanted to provide some commentary.
The bulk of the session was boring and included what appeared to be a standard corporate slide deck which I am sure any salesperson could present in their sleep. The presentation could be summarized with Data Domain’s usual message: inline deduplication is good and everything else is bad, and, of course, Data Domain’s deduplication is the best. I was definitely hoping for something more interesting and was sorely disappointed; however, things changed when it came to the Q&A.
Just to provide a bit of background, my experience with SNW is described here. There were a large number of end users in attendance both at the expo and the keynote sessions and I estimate that many of the show’s 900 end users were in attendance for this talk. At the end of the planned remarks, Slootman opened the floor to questions.
SNW Recap
I returned from SNW in Phoenix last night and wanted to recap the event. I had 10+ meetings at the show and there were multiple sessions and so am providing my perspectives on the event in general and the sessions I did attend.
Deduplication remains hot and still confuses many
I attended 5 different sessions on deduplication. The content overlapped quite a bit and yet all but one of them was full. The presentation in all cases focused primarily on deduplication and data protection. I heard that there was a great panel discussion on primary storage deduplication which I unfortunately missed. Clearly, primary storage dedupe was not ignored, but it appeared that data protection remained the focus of the dedupe sessions.
Anecdotally, the most common deduplication question related to the difference between target and source deduplication. It also appeared that deduplication adoption was limited. When asked who was using some form of deduplication about 50% of the audience raised their hand, but when queried about system size, hands went down rapidly at around 10-15 TB.
The key takeaway is that deduplication remains a strong point of interest. It appears that end users are still trying to understand the technology and how to implement it on a larger scale.
Marketing Odds and Ends
It has been a particularly busy week here at SEPATON HQ with limited blogging time. Instead of a technology oriented post, I thought that I would highlight some marketing items from this week.
Upcoming speaking event
I will be speaking at the Storage Decisions Deduplication Seminar this Tuesday, 8/25 in Hartford, CT. This free event is open to end users and W. Curtis Preston will be speaking as well. If you are in the area, visit this URL for registration and location information.
University of New Hampshire press release and case study
SEPATON issued a press release on August 19 highlighting UNH and their deployment of an S2100-ES2 with DeltaStor technology. UNH is an example of a customer who experienced the challenges with physical tape that I addressed in Streaming LTO-5 and The Fallacy of Faster Tape. The customer struggled to stream his tape drives and did not want to multiplex because of the impact on recovery times. The SEPATON solution enabled him to dramatically accelerate backups and recoveries and prevented shoe-shining. Download the case study to read more.
InfoStor article
InfoStor recently posted openBench Lab’s review of SEPATON’s S2100-ES2 with DeltaStor deduplication. openBench tested an S2100-ES2 and DeltaStor with virtual server backups and provide a detailed analysis of the performance and reduction ratios. The full report will be available on our website shortly and I will update this post with a link when available.
First, AboutRestore.com was recently nominated as a top storage vendor blog over at StorageMonkeys, and there is an open vote to decide the winner. Here is a link to the voting page and I encourage my readers to participate.
Second, I attended the Storage Decisions Data Deduplication Virtual Tradeshow a couple of weeks ago. The last time I attended a virtual trade show was about a year ago and it was interesting to revisit this medium.
Now on Twitter
For those of you unfamiliar, Twitter is a micro-blogging application with posts of 140 words or less. It is a great forum for discussion and interaction with others in the industry. I particularly enjoy the real-time updates from various analysts and members of the press. You can view my profile here and see my posts in my new sidebar widget.
I am curious about Twitter usage and created the small survey below.
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About a week ago, Curtis posted on his blog that he is joining TechTarget as an Executive Editor which essentially means that he will continue to present at various events. He is still an independent consultant and can keep working on his other projects including his Mr. Backup Blog and BackupCentral.
In my opinion, this is a great outcome for both TechTarget and Curtis. The Backup/Deduplication schools will benefit from Curtis’s continued tenure as a featured speaker. He is an engaging presenter and provides a balanced perspective. It is also beneficial for Curtis because he is free to pursue his personal and business interests.
A big congratulations to both TechTarget and Curtis!
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.