The debate over whether disk or tape is the better solution for backup has been going on for some time now, and it seems the answer you get typically depends on who is responding to the question

I just returned from the spring 2013 Storage Networking World conference (SNW), and I was amazed at how much smaller the conference is now compared to just a few years ago. The vendor booth areas were especially scaled back. The good news is the speakers were all great, and the content was stimulating and thought-provoking as usual, which is important since the storage industry is evolving faster than many other areas of information technology.

Hey, backup guys. How would you like to finally get some respect and become one of the go-to data management experts for your company?

In the pursuit of optimized IT models, chief information officers (CIOs) need to carefully evaluate their existing IT infrastructures and make choices that cut costs and streamline processes.

A major push for chief information officers (CIOs) in 2013 will be the development or refinement of a new end-state vision for IT that anticipates the challenges of the rapid growth of data and identifies how new applications can leverage big data assets.

At the end of every year, I try to look back at the predictions I made in the prior 12 months to assess what was hot and what was not.  It's that time of year again, so let's look back at my 2012 predictions, Top 10 Storage Trends for 2012, to see how I did, and then look forward to see what will be the most relevant trends in 2013.

The acceptance of server and storage virtualization has enabled a paradigm shift in how data center infrastructure is purchased and deployed.

As I sat in the dark waiting for Hurricane Sandy to rip the roof off my house, the light from my laptop calmed my nerves. My extended-life laptop battery seems to last forever, so I decided to get some work done. Technology is great when it works, isn’t it?

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak at the Data Center World conference in Nashville, Tenn. What I found is that almost all the vendors at the conference were pushing their products as part of the new data center infrastructure management (DCIM) paradigm for data center management.

Anywhere you look these days, it seems you can find a news story in which some poor IT guy explains how his company’s systems were hacked and its data stolen. These cyber crimes run the spectrum from teenage kids trying to recreate a scene from the movie “War Games”, to something more sinister, like the hacker group Anonymous trying to bring down the U.S. economy.