Blog Archives
The Cloud Is Getting Crowded
By Judy Mottl | February 29, 2008One of the things I love about covering technology is that people are always creating different names for the same things. Some even create unique verbs to describe the latest and greatest tool.
This popped into my head while reading about yet another 'storage in the cloud' company, that lets users store everything from music files to work documents online.
Michael Robertson (who started MP3.com, Linspire, and Gizmo5) is launching [SyncWizard](http://us.ajax13.com/apps/syncwizard/content/index.html), a free service that grabs "most valuable personal data" and offers encrypted storage on a Web site.
As 'online storage' isn't too sexy a phrase, we got 'storage in the cloud.'
And now Robertson says people can 'cloud up.'
But I think what he means is back-up (again not very sexy), but yet not accurate since 'clouding up' isn't an actual verb action, and back-up is taking a snapshot of what's on a server or workstation at a particular moment and housing that snapshot somewhere else.
In my view, 'clouding up' means copying documents and files to a Web site.
I'm not picking on Mr. Robertson, or his technology.
The idea of 'clouding up' intrigued me so much I figured I'd try SyncWizard out.
It's clearly still in beta, and since Zoho (you need an account there) wouldn't let me create an account even after doing its authentication process eight times, I didn't get too far.
I do plan to 'cloud up' as soon as possible though.
Are Better Cell Service Days In Our Future?
By Judy Mottl | February 28, 2008If you think your users are frustrated with the cell service in play, don't take it personally.
The aggravation of using a cell phone has reached all the way to the hallowed halls of our legislative bodies where a house subcommittee focused on telecom issues held a hearing this week on user rights while Congress considers a consumer rights bill.
My take? What the heck took them so long? It's not like cell service just started tanking. It's been tanking for years.
But I can guess why it's taken so long. The lobbyist group for the telecom industry is likely quite powerful and I'm assuming it has worked very hard to avoid even whispers about enacting such a law.
My hope? That this bill moves fast and furious into fruition.
I'm tired of the poor cell service, the lock down on contracts, the fees. I'm guessing more than a few other business mobile device users are as well.
Where Hype Starts And Reality Ends
By Judy Mottl | February 22, 2008News of a startup in the ever-competitive storage market is as common as vendors claiming they have "industry-leading" technology. But one new player isn't taking this route as it introduces its offering of efficient data access for high-performance computing.
Atrato, a Colorado-based company once known as Sherwood Information Services, is staying quiet about its technology though it's letting people know who's funding the effort.
While Atrato CEO and co-founder Dan McCormick offered only general information when I asked him about his products, he was more willing to talk about how Atrato has grabbed $18 million in venture capital in six months and who's raising money for the company.
The venture capital roster includes former StorageTek CEO and founder Jesse Aweida; Tom Porter, an ex-Seagate CTO and IBM leader; Dick Blaschke, an IBM and EMC veteran; and Gary Gentry, former Seagate senior vice president.
The company's product, Atrato, is a high-performance storage platform designed to solve issues with high-speed, high-volume data access.
The startup's lone press release issued a week ago offered insight on the venture capital roster but is generic in terms of technology specifics. And McCormick isn't eager to provide further detail.
"We've come out of stealth mode to execute on our vision that data storage isn't about how to store information but how to efficiently access that information," McCormick said.
One industry analyst said a close look at the company's management team and its expertise could provide some insight on the company's technology.
Along with McCormick, the team includes a second former executive from Xiotech and Seagate, Atrato's co-founder Jonathan Hall.
Another member, Tom Ruwart, is chief scientist at HPC solutions and an expert on individual disk drives for peta-scale supercomputer-class storage systems.
Also on the team is principal software architect Sam Siewert, who currently teaches a program in real-time embedded systems at the University of Colorado and has several patents related to ASIC debug and CPU scheduling.
Karl Whiting, principal hardware architect, co-founded Idealogy and served as the president, principal engineer and engineering manager. He has helped customers such as Cisco and Nortel with their ASIC developments.
"From what I can see is that Atrato might have created some kind of flash technology or similar technology that they're tweaking for their customer needs," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. King said Atrato's quiet announcement is interesting given the timing.
"This is following EMC's news about its own flash drive technology and other HPC I/O announcements," King said, adding that Atrato's technology seems to be aimed at a "corner" of the storage market.
"It's not something everyone needs," he said. "Companies with extremely high performing database-enabled applications are likely looking for this kind of solution."
McCormick didn't comment on specific inquiries about the Atrato device but said the company has 150 patent claims on its "innovative" application that lets users cut connectivity costs by 90 percent and reduce rack and cooling costs by 80 percent.
What McCormick would talk about is his market strategy, saying that the company is targeting "two main buckets" of users. The first are content delivery service providers, which includes cable companies, Web 2.0 operations and cellular and television services providers.
The second "user" bucket comprises HPC environments in the government and oil and gas industries.
Although McCormick declined to provide pricing information, he explained that Atratro's value proposition is competitive pricing in what's clearly becoming a very crowded vendor space. He would only describe pricing as "on par" with mid-tier storage vendor products.
But analyst King found that description difficult to believe given that flash technology, while declining about 50 percent in price every 18 months, is still expensive for the intended marketplaces.
"If this is flash-based then it's going to be a very expensive system. Flash cost will come down but it will never reach parity with disk costs as those costs continue to come down as well," says King, noting that even EMC, which has clearly embraced flash technology, doesn't intend to plug it into its Centera line anytime soon due to cost issues.
Something For The Ultimate iPhone Addict
By Judy Mottl | February 21, 2008If you think you paid alot for that smartphone in your pocket you likely didn't pay what the snazziest iPhone is going for these days. It only costs $180K.
The Apple iPhone Princess Plus boasts 138 princess-cut diamonds and 180 brilliant-cut diamonds...combining for 17.75 carats.
Three Hours Of No Email: Priceless
By Judy Mottl | February 13, 2008BlackBerry users went without email for three hours Monday and by some news account you'd think Armageddon had it North America. Really, how big a deal is it to go without email?
Just imagine being told by your boss not to launch your email application for a full day. Instead you're told to rely on that shiny black instrument to the left of your monitor, and those two things tucked under your desk, for communication purposes.
Yes, I mean the phone and your feet. You can pick them both up to interact with people who can give you information in what's typically a quicker fashion and much more efficient fashion. Walking over to another's office to get information is actually mobility in its truest form isn't it ;)
I mean, realistically, if someone emails you and you don't respond, and it's truly important they don't usually give up right? You'll get pinged on IM or a text on your phone, or your phone will actually ring.
After all, it's not like we're ever completely out of reach these days.
Dell In The Smartphone Business?
By Judy Mottl | February 08, 2008Yes. You read that right. Dell and smartphone development. That's just one of the many rumors swirling around the smartphone industry these days. Another is that Google's going to come clean about what it's up with its mobile platform Android. (Meanwhile it's Google that Dell is supposedly working with on a cell phone product.)
Given next week is Mobile World Congress (with Robert Redford headlining..) you gotta hope something big gets pushed out. With Apple grabbing a spot among the top three popular smartphones, you know Google has to be panting hard to push the iPhone off its lofty perch.
Love, The Wireless Way
By Judy Mottl | February 05, 2008Luxurious and sweet, chic, sleek and pink, and of course
elegant and worldly. All espouse the virtues of women, or possibly even one
woman. Think again.
Those phrases and words are being used to describe
the virtues of Verizon's wireless devices in its marketing gimmick for lover's
day, February 14th.
"From fun and flirty, to chic and sophisticated, Verizon Wireless has
an assortment of wireless treats in an array of say-it-with-love colors this
Valentine's Day."
Color me azalea blue, or green with nausea but I just think marketing stretches
a bit too far sometimes.
A Bounty For A Linux Port
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008As I reported yesterday Drobo, the robotic storage device, has a sibling providing NAS functionality, the DroboShare.
Now it seems the company is "offering up":http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5172137196.html $2,000 to the developer who can build a port of its "Dashboard" Drobo configuration application to Linux, according to LinuxDevices.com.
A Few Disturbing Data Tidbits
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Don't think those bucks spent on data security and protection are paying off?
Just consider these few factoids about computer data loss from Data Deposit Box:
- A hard drive crashes every 15 seconds
- 32% of data loss is caused by human error
- 25% of lost data is due to the failure of a portable drive
- 44% of data loss caused by mechanical failures
- 1 in 5 computers suffer a fatal hard drive crash during their lifetime
- The overall average failure rate of disk and tape drives is 100% - all
drives eventually fail
A New "Wave" In Data Storage
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008TechWorld's Chris Mellor reports that a new start-up--so new there's nothing on the Web except a light data sheet--is launching data centers on the high seas. Well actually in ports.. not out on open water.
It's an intriguing idea as it does seem to be more environmentally friendly. But given homeland security issues you have to wonder if it's a good idea. I mean we've read about data centers in remote locations but a pier right in San Francisco bay? It's the first of 50 that International Data Security has slated for around the US coastline.
A SAN Tutorial Resource
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Educating the business side about storage and options is a continual task for tech people. That's why I wanted to share a neat YouTube tutorial video I came across recently.
It's worth bookmarking for the next time you need to explain storage and all the important aspects that come into play.
A Storage Freebie
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008In a quest to hook up new customers Open-E's offering up a free lite version of its Data Storage Solution (providing 2 TB of data and just online forum support) for the next week and a half. The free trial opportunity ends on January 31st.
You just download the software to a USB memory key and then you can morph any PC into a NAS--pretty neat. It's a great way to see whether Open-E's option is a good fit for your storage needs.
Are You A Magic Maker?
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Nope, this post has nothing whatever to do with data storage.
But it does have everything to do with big dreams. And hey, everyone, even if they don't admit, has big dreams.
CareerBuilder.com is helping Disney find its first ever Disney Chief of Magic (CMO).
No kidding here. Just check out the job description:
A simple dreamer won���t do. If you���re selected, you���ll wear an
official costume, and you���ll get some interesting coaching from a bunch of
characters. But you���ll have to play the part up to eight times in a 12-month
period beginning May 1, 2008 during The Year of a Million Dreams
celebration in 2008.
The Chief Magic Official will be tasked with helping create magic
for guests, including appearances at Walt Disney World�� Resort in Florida and Disneyland�� Resort in California.
Here are the 'skills' they're looking for in applicants:
- Able to make magical ���decrees���
- Able to create magic experiences
- Good interaction with guests
- Able to make special appearances
- Can spread magic and inspiration
Woowee. Can you make the magic happen? If so, grab the video cam and get your audition tape in by Jan. 27th.
How Much Is Too Much?
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Seriously, the quest we humans have to store files might be getting into the ridiculous.
Consider these facts from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner:
An iPod classic can now hold up to 160 gigabytes of data (about 40,000 songs)
Some laptops can store 600 GB of data (about 160,000 songs)
If those two statistics don't blow your collective minds, here's one more:
Hitachi says by 2011 it will be able to produce hard drives that store up to 4 terabytes of
information.
That's about 1 Million songs.
I mean come on people! How much music can one person listen to in a lifetime?
And no, I have no clue what the Huddersfield Daily Examiner is. I'm guessing some English publication. Thank goodness for Google new alert crawls ;)
How Smart Do Smartphones Have To Be?
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Ok, I admit I could use GPS tracking and location technology pretty much on a daily basis.
I do forget where I've parked my car after three hours in the mall with my 15-year-old daughter. Heck, I probably couldn't even tell you what kind of car I own after one those mother-daughter experiences so yes, having GPS on my phone would be handy.
The thing is I'd have to remember to take the phone out of the car dock before heading into the mall.
That's how Garmin's first, and surely not last, smartphone works. As Cliff Pemble, Garmin's president and COO describes it, the Nuvifone is "an all-in-one device offering unmatched integration of utility and
function in a single mobile device."
Whew, say that three times fast.
But really folks, where does a smartphone start and end?
As one very smart analyst shared with me this week you can't be good at everything--(he meant a smartphone not 'me' per se ;) )
There is just so little room to fit components, and so little battery power to suck on, so jamming everything into one device typically means mediocrity all around, he said.
My friend the analyst has got an incredibly valid point. Given the competitive landscape and more phones hitting market every day I think it's going to be those who astound at one or two features that grab marketshare. Don't you?
I mean face it, if there was one phone and one carrier who could provide crystal clear transmission of just voice and connectivity on a 99.99.99% SLA basis at any given moment in a 50-mile radius of our homes or work we'd all dump our phones and buy that one, wouldn't we? Even if it wasn't pretty or sparkly or quirky.
Ok, yes maybe we'd want a little push email and a browser. And, well a camera can come in handy (having a photo of my car would be useful at times while I'm roaming the parking lot looking for it).
Interesting Stats...
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Some quick numbers that came in this morning:
Virtualization On The Rise?
On average 50% of storage production environments at Fortune 1000 organizations will be virtualized by 2009, according to new research
from TheInfoPro. According to TIP's Wave 10 Storage Study -- which details technology adoption
trends and timeframes, management techniques, and vendor performance data for
the storage industry -- virtualization has risen to being the fourth most common storage initiative. Someone should let VMWare know I'm thinking.
As our own Larry Barret reports, VMware shares tumbled $21.86 a share, or 26 percent, to $61.14 Monday as
investors punished the virtualization software company for falling short of
analyst revenue estimates in its fourth quarter and offered
less-than-scintillating guidance for 2008.
HTC Losing Its Footing?
Taiwan's High Tech Computer (HTC) is supposedly losing its top spot as
the world's leading vendor of Windows Mobile based smartphones (excluding
touch-screen models). According to internal data from Microsoft seen by
DigiTimes, the company has dropped to third place, behind Motorola and
Samsung. Motorola is leading the contest with a small margin, the data
showed.
Previous data indicated that HTC topped the segment with a market share of
over 50% in Microsoft's fiscal 2007 (from July 2006-June 2007).
Data, Data Everywhere
Seagate Technology expects a four-fold rise
in data storage by 2012 and claims homes will soon overtake business as the
biggest producers of digital data. It expects the annual rate of
data storage to increase to 374 exabytes in 2012, or
440 percent more than the total amount of data stored in 2007.
It's All What You Ask
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Ok so when I talked to Hitachi back on Jan. 4th, about its decision to can their smallest HDDs, I specifically asked if the business decision was tied to an some alleged deal to sell off its HDD division and they said no.
Maybe what I should have asked was if they're planning to spin off the HDD division as reports from several news organizations are running amok with the rumour that Hitachi is chatting with Toshiba and Fujitsu about a new
joint-company focused on just hard drives and other storage systems.
No one's going on record anywhere and media outlets are quoting "inside sources" and anonymous ex-Hitachi execs. But it does make sense when you remember that Fujitsu also dropped plans to push
out a new line of 1.8-inch hard disk drives.
Jonathan's Take On How Sun Got MySQL
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Speculation abounds, rumors persist...even conspiracy theories about how and why Sun acquired MySQL will continue for weeks, months, probably years.
If you want Jonathan Schwartz's take, just check out his blog. He took time Saturday to post a full explanation. No it won't stop the conspiracy theories but it's an interesting read that's for sure.
Hopefully the next blog post will explain what Sun's been doing, or what it's not doing, with StorageTek ;)
Put One Foot In Front Of Another...
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Ever get a song in your head that you can't stop hearing. Since Christmas, when my kids replayed Santa Claus Is Coming To Town a trillion times, the lyrics to 'put one foot in front of another' have been reverberating in my head (it's a scene where Winter is embraced as a friend if you recall...)
Anyway, and yes this does have something to do with storage. I'm just taking the long way ;)
Every day I get dozens of story items, blog blurbs, news bits, and trend bytes in the mailbox. One blog item mentioned how an online storage vendor was closing down. Now usually online storage companies are starting up right?
Then the name got me: Ewedrive. So what the heck, I clicked through. And then kept clicking around (putting one foot in front of another... see the connection ;) ) the site which is pretty damn cute. I tried to sign up but got the 'closed for business' note.
So I emailed the site operators. I just wanted to know what was up since Ewedrive was shutting down. By this time I was pretty intrigued. The service cost was very reasonable, the site seemed incredibly user friendly and the darn lamb puns were entertaining (ewe know what I mean).
CEO Paresh Morjaria wrote me back that day (another good business indicator in MHO.):
We have decided to close the Ewedrive service itself for a couple of
reasons really. The primary being that all the features of Ewedrive will
be incorporated into the relaunch shortly of our Desktop On Demand
service which has been in Beta over the past year.
However there is also the fact that as 'online file storage/backup'
companies seem to be all the rage at the moment (and with GDrive
seemingly on the horizon) we have been considering how we can stand out
from the crowd and an amalgamation within our DOD service looked ideal
(particularly since a lot of Ewedrive was born out of DOD in the first
place).
If you need any further information please let me know.
Regards
Paresh Morjaria
CEO, Defuturo Ltd
(The Home of Desktop On Demand and Ewedrive)
Now I'm back at Ewedrive looking for Desktop On Demand and see no link or connection. So I Google and the first two entries (another amazing business indicator) is the official company site and then a Wikipedia entry that lists the 'official Desktop On Demand Web site" link to Morjaria's company!
So now I'm going to keep an eye on Desktop On Demand as I think it's a great example of how companies that are nimble and responsive can compete in what is clearly becoming a very busy storage in the cloud environment.
Smartphones: The Gift That Gets Returned
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Guess what was the number one returned electronic gift item this past holiday season?
The answer is the 'smartphone.' According to a report from Opinion Research Corp. about one-fifth of those who got a smartphone device (21%) has already returned the item citing it was too hard to setup.
FYI, the BlackBerry and the iPhone were not included in this study.
As I'm one of those few cell owners remaining whose phone doesn't even boast a camera or email capability I can see usability and feature float still remaining as big issues with gadget adoption.
Technology Walks The Walk
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Call me naive, go ahead, but I'm still blown away by what technology is providing people these days. Take the story of a man who lost both legs in the Iraq war. Bluetooth technology is helping him walk using prosthetic legs -- yes the same technology that's revolutionizing hands-free phone calling.
Here's the scoop but take time to read the entire CNN.com story:
<i>Computer chips in each leg send signals to motors in the artificial joints so
the knees and ankles move in a coordinated fashion.<p>
Bleill's set of prosthetics have Bluetooth receivers
strapped to the ankle area. The Bluetooth device on each leg tells the other leg
what it's doing, how it's moving, whether walking, standing or climbing.</i>
The 'Definition' Of A Smartphone
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008Have a chuckle to start your week off good.. check out this cute toon about what today's 'smartphones' are all about.
The Art Of Human Verification
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008We've seen the traditional email verification box: the one where letters are scrabbled a bit in some wacky font and you have to decipher and type it in another box if you're trying to forward a Web page or email.
Most times I get it right though there have been times I haven't been able to figure out what the second or third letter is thanks to the slash or graffiti-like design. When I'm denied due to poor typing, or illiteracy in reading the scrambled letters, I take it personally. I mean it's all about determining if I'm human or some bot right?
So that's why I am so excited to see a Web site using a different approach--one that asks me to add numbers to determine if I'm human. And it's simple math thankfully, like 16+9 or 7+4 ... the math I know and love well. The math that actually has helped me during life ;) though I have to admit one of my college statistic courses has come in handy too over the years.
Will All Your Bits & Bytes Come Back Together?
By Judy Mottl | February 04, 2008I've talked to a few enterprises this week, mostly SOHO and SMBs, who've made a leap from tape disk to other options including online storage services and even a cool tool that lets you tap unused workstation drive space to build an internal LAN-based mini SAN of sorts.
Want to know the one thing each had in common?
Well no one had actually tried recovering or retrieving housed data. And I know they're not alone--pundits repeatedly talk about clients who never go the full mile in testing data storage and disaster recovery programs and technology. They shove valuable docs into a shiny vault, the files are sliced and diced and dispersed, and everyone's feeling good.
But what if pulling those chunks of data back together doesn't work as smooth as expected? What if a few chunks have gone missing? If you couldn't sleep due to concerns that the tape broke overnight, how the heck will you get any zzz's if you don't test your new fangled storage tool.
I mean, yikes.
