All Blogged Up

Since I've started this blog, I have been amazed to discover just how many storage blogs are out there. Now, I know most of you don't write them out of the goodness of your hearts but I do appreciate that many of them do write them in your own time.

Now a lot of them are full of marketing stuff but a lot of it is educational, interesting and often entertaining. They can get a bit confrontational at times but at least you are showing passion for the companies you work for and the products you sell. Actually some of you show far too much passion and I wonder about some of the induction regimes you go through!

And then, there are the mad independants. Of course, we all have our reasons for doing it; I suspect most of us like our own little soap-box to pontificate, I know I do. I also hope that we bring a little bit of balance to what are sometimes quite heated debates! We often have the real world experience of the products that you may be pushing or trashing, we know that things are very rarely black or white. There is no perfect storage product!

Can I ask one thing of the vendors please? I don't expect you to be experts on the opposition's product, certainly not how they might work but you should really be careful about features. Nothing looses credibility more in my eyes than when a vendor says that a competing product can't do x, y or z? And it can. Do your competitive analysis well and if you don't know for sure, ask someone. Ask me; if I know, I'll give the answer if I can (I'm pretty good on ESS/DS, SVC, DMX, Clariion and OnTap). I might even ask for you if you are too embarassed. Now I won't disclose NDA stuff, well not sober anyway 😉

BTW, I'm trying to come up with some more analogies after the success of the 'WAFL is a Platypus' (that would make such a good t-shirt) and it's a pity that Accelerate was cancelled; I would have loved to Kostadis get up and do a talk about WAFL entitled 'WAFL is a Platypus'.