Kevin Komiega's Storage Blog Archives for September 2009

September 24, 2009 -- Some interesting tidbits from the small and medium-sized business (SMB) world. It would make sense that SMBs are a prime target for cloud computing services – storage included. But a new survey reveals that while SMBs are using the cloud in some way, most plan to keep their data in-house.

Spiceworks, a company that targets SMB users with free, ad-supported network monitoring and management software, recently released a market research report on current technology purchasing, usage and staffing trends among SMBs across the globe.

The company polled 1,130 SMB IT managers found that while 57% use one or more cloud computing service, 75% plan to store data on premise.

In fact, most SMBs are turning to the cloud for security and e-mail services. Among the aforementioned 57%, the three most popular cloud computing services in use or on the purchase list include anti-spam (43%), hosted email (25%), and online backup (20%), according to the report.

On the storage front, 25% of respondents are planning backup and recovery purchases within the next six months. Of these, 75% plan to store data on premise and 25% plan to utilize cloud-based storage solutions. In addition, 4% of SMB data will be stored on NAS or SAN devices, with 38% in DAS, 7% offsite and 13% on tape or other media.

The full Spiceworks report can be downloaded from the company's website.

Keep track of the latest cloud storage news in InfoStor's Cloud Storage Topic Center. There you will find a new analysis piece by Evaluator Group managing partner Russ Fellows, in which he outlines the technology hurdles that need to be resolved before cloud computing and cloud storage become a common part of the IT landscape.

September 18, 2009 -- Apologies for the blog title, but the recent tsunami of Beatles media hype has Abbey Road rattling around in my head. All puns aside, TheInfoPro (TIP) just released some interesting research regarding the organizational dynamics in the data center. The most interesting bit may be that most users believe there is an upside to maintaining separate data and networking management groups.

It's interesting to me because experts have predicted that different management groups within IT will eventual merge as the lines between the server, storage and network domains blur. But, as technologies such as server virtualization and unified networking emerge, end users seem to be taking an opposing view.

In its first "Organizational Dynamics Study," TIP looked at the structural issues facing IT organizations. According to the firm, "the study gives insight into the impact that technology and financial considerations will have on the evolution of storage organizations and shows ranges and optimal cost levels of support staffing."

Some snapshots of the research reveal:

• 54%of study respondents see a significant or major impact on addressing storage needs because of server virtualization.

• 78% of respondents said they do not expect storage and networking teams to combine.

• 77% said they do not have a separate virtualization group.

• 60% of respondents said their organization sees major operational benefit in having a separate data management group.

Myron Kerstetter, TheInfoPro's Managing Director of Organizational Studies says: "Looking toward the future, we found that important shifts in the organizational structure will occur in the next three to five years, particularly in the larger storage groups. But despite the hype, many organizations did not expect the creation of formal virtualization teams or the merging of storage and networking groups."

We'd love to hear your take on the topic. Shoot us an e-mail with your opinions.

More information on TIP's latest research can be found on their website.

September 11, 2009 -- Growth in the storage software market is still on the decline, as are factory revenues for the worldwide external disk storage systems market, but there are some bright spots in both sectors, according to the latest research from International Data Corp. (IDC).

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker shows another year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2009 (2Q09) with revenues of $2.8 billion, representing –9.8% growth over the same quarter one year ago. But Michael Margossian, research analyst for Storage Software at IDC, says the storage software market is showing signs of recovery with positive growth over the first quarter of this year.

In addition, the replication market grew 5% compared to 1Q09 led by NetApp, which has been refocusing its efforts and grew 20% from the previous quarter, according to Margossian.

IDC puts EMC atop the overall market with 22.4% revenue share in 2Q09, followed by Symantec, IBM, NetApp and CA.

On the hardware front, things are revenues continue to slip with worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posting a year-over-year decline of 18.3% in the 2Q09, totaling $4.1 billion, according to the IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker.

In a statement from IDC, Liz Conner, research analyst for Storage Systems, said, "The enterprise storage systems market continued to feel the impact of current economic conditions, posting its third straight year-over-year decline. However, certain sweet spots in the market continue to thrive. iSCSI SAN and FC SAN both showed strong year-over-year growth of 57.2% and 66.8%, respectively, in the entry level price bands as customers continue to demand enterprise level network storage at a more economically friendly price point. Similarly, midrange NAS enjoyed solid year-over-year growth of 20.7% as file-level data generation continues to be a hot topic for many customers."

IDC's data shows that EMC claimed the number one spot in the external disk storage systems market with 21.5% revenue share in the second quarter, followed by IBM and HP with Dell and NetApp in a statistical dead heat for the number four position.

EMC also led the way in market share in the total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) with 26%. The network disk storage market declined 15.3% year over year in the second quarter to more than $3.2 billion in revenues.

In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, IBM and HP finished the second quarter in a statistical tie with 17.3% each followed by EMC with 15.7% market share.

September 1, 2009 -- The EMC acquisition machine has been busy this week. The company has inked two acquisition deals in as many days, snapping up FastScale Technology and Kazeon Systems.

Today EMC announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held eDiscovery software Kazeon. EMC plans to integrate Kazeon's technology into the EMC SourceOne product family. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2009.

The full Kazeon announcement can be found here.

The Kazeon deal came fresh on the heels of yesterday's acquisition of FastScale Technology. EMC's press release states:

"Designed from the ground up to accelerate the journey from physical to virtual to private cloud, with the addition of FastScale, the EMC Ionix portfolio will simplify end-to-end management and maximize the performance, density and efficiency of applications and software deployed on unified infrastructures."

EMC also beefed up the Ionix software portfolio via an extended partnership with VMware. EMC and VMware announced a new reseller agreement whereby EMC is now reselling VMware's vCenter AppSpeed as part of the EMC Ionix portfolio.

August 31, 2009 -- EMC and VMware kicked off this week's VMworld conference with news of an expanded business and technology alliance that will have EMC reselling VMware's vCenter AppSpeed software and will tighten integration between VMware's vCenter product family and EMC's Ionix IT management software.

The pair is teaming up to nudge customers down the path toward migrating tier-one applications to VMware's vSphere 4 cloud operating system by using their respective software products to streamline configuration and compliance management and automate IT processes.

EMC will sell VMware's vCenter AppSpeed – a tool for monitoring application performance and dependencies across different tiers of virtual and physical infrastructures – as part of the EMC Ionix IT Management portfolio.

EMC reorganized its IT management software family last month by bringing all of its Smarts, nLayers, Voyence, Infra, ControlCenter and Configuresoft technologies together under the Ionix brand.

The Ionix software family consists of four main product sets. The first, EMC Ionix for Service Discovery and Mapping, identifies applications and their physical and virtual dependencies in support of Configuration Management Database (CMDB)/Configuration Management System (CMS) population, change management, and application troubleshooting. It also maps servers and applications prior to data center moves, consolidations, and virtualization migrations.

The second, Ionix for IT Operations Intelligence, provides automated root-cause and impact analysis and monitors services across both physical and virtual environments. The software allows users to view the relationships between virtual machines (VMs), the VMware ESX Servers they reside on, and the network.

The third is Ionix for Data Center Automation and Compliance. Aimed at compliance management across servers, storage, application dependencies and networks, Ionix for Data Center Automation and Compliance tracks configuration compliance against regulatory, best practices, and internal governance policies, including VMware vSphere 4 deployment guidelines and helps users remediate compliance violations across physical and virtual infrastructures.

The fourth and final product set, Ionix for Service Management, allows customers to deploy IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) service management. Customers can use Ionix for Service Management to build a federated CMDB that is auto-populated with physical and virtual and dependencies.

The companies also announced new physical-to-virtual migration services offerings. The services will make use of VMware Capacity Planner, EMC Ionix Application Discovery Manager, and VMware vCenter AppSpeed to speed the vSphere migration process.

The specific offerings related to VMware vCenter AppSpeed include: Enhanced Candidate Selection for VMware vCenter AppSpeed, VMware vCenter AppSpeed Jumpstart, and VMware Infrastructure Performance Health Check.