Bleary-eyed, the storage industry has begun to wake up from its holiday stupor. VMware has decided to go into the email business. EMC continues to vacuum up talent like a Roomba on a tear through the world’s biggest living room. Meanwhile, the jokers over at Gestalt IT are picking up the “Fake Steve Jobs” meme and running with it. Their version is actually funnier than the original — at least to this blogger, perhaps because I know the players and situations.
The increasingly crowded and competitive Storage Monkeys Top Vendor Blogs contest is about to screech to its exciting conclusion. Voting ends Friday. Front runners are EMC bloggers Chuck Hollis and Storagezilla. Third place at the moment is the HP Storageworks blog, helmed by fearless blogger Calvin Zito. This puts early front runner Marc Farley, founder of the vaunted Steering Wheel Camera Society of America in fourth place. Step on it, Marc! In fifth right now is the Storage Anarchist, Barry Burke, who is just barely edging out NetApp’s Val Bercovici. Well, it ain’t over till it’s over–these things can change fast.
So before the week is out–why not VOTE?
Speaking of which, blogger extraordinaire Stephen Foskett has started a series that delves into the whole vendor blogging question. He has two posts up on the topic, “Vendor Bloggers 1: Why Does It Matter?” and “The Spectrum of Vendor Blogs.” Mr. F cites none other than Online Storage Op as an example of a hybrid “independent-seeming official” blog, but credits us for being transparent about the fact that our parent is a company. No doubt Stephen and I will hash this out further when we give a talk on social media to a group of storage industry pros at The BD Event in Palo Alto next Wednesday.
But wait… there’s yet more news, and this is actual news:
Nexsan and FalconStor are teaming up to try to defeat rival Data Domain. It can get really interesting when two vendors come up with a combination product that serves a larger purpose than they would’ve had if they acted alone. Two pieces on the topic caught my eye this week:
Beth Pariseau, SearchDataBackup - Nexsan and FalconStor gun for EMC Data Domain with Dedupe SG 2 data deduplication backup device
Writes Beth: “Analysts say a series of updates to Dedupe SG — comprised of FalconStor’s dedupe software and Nexsan enterprise data storage systems — put it into closer competition with the 800-pound gorilla Data Domain.”
She quotes ESG’s Lauren Whitehouse, who says that the high-availability config on this combo is a poke in Data Domain’s eye. And Dave Vellante of Wikibon calls the bundle the “best of both worlds” due to the fact that it’s compatible with existing home office systems and reduces data over the WAN–though he questions how it will do in real world deployments.
Joseph Kovar, ChannelWeb - Nexsan, FalconStor Join Forces On Newest Backup Appliance
Joe, for his part talked to Greg Knieriemen at Chi Corp., which partners with both Nexsan and FalconStor who is impressed with among other things the potential inherent in its 10-GB-ethernet option. Hmm, where have I heard that name Greg Knieriemen before?
Well, that’s all for now folks. Maybe next time I talk to you I’ll be checking my zMail.
