Jan 28

George Crump: Seven10’s (Indirect) Evangelist

Marketing No Comments »

Here’s something I don’t understand and perhaps someone can clarify it for me. George Crump, analyst for Storage Switzerland and prolific blogger for Network Computing and InformationWeek, recently authored an article on the Storage Switzerland Web site entitled, “Backups: Band-Aids or Solutions.” He remains fairly neutral throughout the piece only mentioning Iron Mountain, the sponsor of the article, a few times.

Now – how exactly did that work? If Iron Mountain paid for the article, did they draft it with their messaging and hand it to George to publish? Does George truly believe what’s written in the article, or is the Storage Switzerland Web site a forum for Iron Mountain to publish their messaging with an analyst’s name attached?

PLEASE NOTE: This post is not a criticism, but a curiosity. I’m a fan of both Iron Mountain and George Crump. Iron Mountain is a well-run company, and we have awesome relationships with a bunch of guys over there. George Crump is a good guy, very down-to-earth. Seven10 briefed George a couple months ago and we had a great conversation.

As for the actual article itself, it’s as if it were ripped straight out of a Seven10 brochure. I don’t mean that George plagiarized us; I mean that we agree 100% with the article’s messaging.

I would bullet out some key takeaways that we agree with, but what I should really do is simply copy and paste the whole article. Don’t worry George; we won’t do that.

If you want to know Seven10’s opinion on back-up, dedupe, and archiving, all you need to do is click here. How easy is that?

For all Seven10-related questions, please see:          crump_george70x70

(Only because it’s scary how humor can be lost on people, please don’t badger George with Seven10 questions. You can ask us directly.)

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Jan 25

Storage Hardware: Less is More

Management No Comments »

The debate between the merits of hardware and software in the storage industry is always on-going. Here’s Seven10’s two cents.

Intelligent software will dramatically redefine the current way of doing business in IT over the next 2-3 years. The transition will happen quickly once industry pros realize that the accelerating rate of hardware purchases isn’t sustainable.

Today’s data center is built from stacks and stacks of hardware, since disk proliferation leads to massive investments in back-up infrastructure. This “pack-rat” mentality of buying and holding onto hardware has been 15 years in the making. Big Iron is doing nothing to curb the current thinking of “throw more disk at it.”

How long has it been since Big Iron has promised to be more software-centric, yet most of their software management platforms remain the “brown-headed step child” (I am a red head) of the company. At the end of the day, the reality is this: Too much hardware has caused billions of dollars in mismanaged data.

In the next decade, the Global IT department needs to think radically in their approach to data management and focus on software solutions that will help reduce mismanagement, minimize storage obsolescence, and increase accessibility.

This approach will undoubtedly reduce the amount of hardware purchased, impacting revenue growth and forcing Big Iron into build vs. buy decisions that will eventually change the landscape of the storage industry forever.

- Bobby Moulton, President of Seven10

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