Sick of Storage

Who would have thought that I would think about disk storage every day of my life?  I think about it when I wake up in the morning.  I think about it during the day.  Yes, I lie in bed and think of storage before falling asleep.  Weekends too.   When I go to the movies, I think about which vendor got the storage deal for this project.  And I love it.  As sad as that sounds I think storage is great.  I really, really enjoy what I do.  I get to be involved in a wide range of cool technologies and products.  I talk to companies that have storage networks of all shapes and sizes and we talk about the problems and the challenges and the victories.  We talk about what they are doing today and the vision going forward.  I have discussions with storage vendors of every size, from the "two guys in a garage" to the multi-billion dollar guys and everyone else in between.  They share with me their new products and roadmap.  I remember one end user customer came up to me after a presentation I gave and asked me a question about a number of emerging products and technologies.  He shook my hand and said he wished he could focus on all the cool new stuff that is going on out there instead of dealing with IT problems all day.  Who could argue with that?

It's not me who's sick of storage.  It's all my friends and family who have to hear about it.  It's my poor wife who patiently listens to me tell her about this cool new storage thing I learned about that day.  The storage industry is filled with innovations and advancements.   It is chaotic and far flung.  There are so many options to choose from.  It is the wild west of technology.  And the stakes are high.  There are companies investing millions of dollars in their storage infrastructures.  One individual who works for a large media company told me that the price of their storage has to go down by a magnitude or they will go out of business.  Another person from a financial institution is radically changing their storage environment to not only drive down the capital and operation costs but also make them much more competitive.

If you think that storage is boring or that there is only one way to do something or that the old methods and approaches still apply, you need to look around and see that the world of storage is changing.   If you are sick of storage then you are truly missing out on something that is incredibly important and exciting.  Storage is everywhere and affects all of us in so many ways.  The storage industry is actually an amazing drama that only a relatively small community gets to play in.   Empires will crumble.  New ones will emerge.  No one should be complacent.  Stay tuned.

Oh and my wife, friends and family aren't really sick of storage, just me talking about it.