I am in Austin, Texas for Gestalt IT’s Tech Field Day 9.
We have had breakfast, where some of the delegates – NOT me! – enjoyed Vegamite.
Now, we are at Dell HQ in Round Rock.
Yes, me at Dell! ;)
I look forward to enjoying this visit.
Stay tuned.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
Follow @johnobeto140 Characters Isn’t PR, It’s a Job Opportunity for Real Writers
You’ve may have been so busy getting Likes for your page(s) and Twitter followers you didn’t notice that management and marketing have been finding people to do your less fun job … researching and writing.
You know, the stuff that’s too much like work.
According to the latest Optus Future of Business report, social media publicists might be overrating their company impact because Optus found the base of consumers using social media to interact with organizations is very low – only 4 percent use it to connect with businesses.
It goes by derogatory names like “native advertising” or more kindly names like “sponsored content,” but good article work is being done and it’s growing.
There really are people out there to do the work because you aren’t capable, up to the task or don’t think it’s as much fun!
The industry has made a lot of progress with what Michael Lewis termed the “new, new thing” and progress is good.
Written Word
But along the way, we’ve also lost or misplaced some things like reading, sending personal notes (even emails) and creating well-researched, well-written items.
We’ve met marketing folks who say they write the releases for their publicists (which can mean a lot of things, including the fact that they don’t think their publicists use enough superlatives or sales pitches).
Publicists like to say they are hired to protect, enhance and build their company’s/client’s image through the media.
They lay claim to the idea that they can analyze the organization, find the positive messages and translate them into something a good journalist can/will use.
Social media is predicted to rank lowly in terms of customers communicating with businesses because:
a) consumers see social media as a relatively private communication tool for peers
b) many companies are using social media as a straight marketing tool
And when bad things happen – and they do to the best companies/products, they develop a sound response and minimize or eliminate the damage.
Building a Reserve
But astute management prefers to be pro-active and build up a reserve of goodwill with quality messages, quality articles.
And if publicists aren’t up to the task, there is an army of very good to excellent journalists, reporters who can deliver the content.
Remember, their regular places of work have been severely hurt by online media outlets.
In fact, many publicists gloated that now they could bypass the media and go directly to their audience so good journalistic writers were dinosaurs.
Wrong … good writing is always in demand – interesting, fun to read.
Is it unethical for journalists to consider contract writing?
They were being paid before and even today many moonlight doing pieces for companies.
No Puffery
Good sponsored content isn’t a huge puff piece; it’s a balanced educational/informational article.
Is there a home for the pieces they write?
It’s the Web fer gawd sake. There are thousands of homes for good articles.
Ad agencies/publishers already have their other advertorial profit center … custom programs.
How difficult is it to add another “service”?
Marketing and communications people all agree that word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing.
It connects with people who find it relevant and they pass it along to people of similar interest.
It really doesn’t matter who developed it, wrote it, placed it, paid for it or got paid for it.
Opening Opportunities
And as Jeff Blevins, associate professor and head of the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Journalism, reported in his presentation at the recent NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Conference, companies are gaining an increasing right to free speech in today’s electronic media world.
In his presentation, he noted that, “The court’s most recent decisions have dramatically extended power under the First Amendment and have marked a new, gilded age of free speech.”
To leverage this free speech for companies, publicists have to be prepared beyond Facebook posts and Tweets to develop content that is of interest to the reader/viewer.
If they can’t, there are plenty of good journalists who can deliver.
G. Andy Marken is founder and president of Marken Communications
Follow @johnobeto
Held yearly in June in Las Vegas, Discover is packed full of informative sessions about all things HP.
I will be embedded there within a group of independent bloggers invited by HP, and I will be bringing you all the news I can lay my mitts or ears on.
Don’t worry, for the news and sessions I miss, please follow the other bloggers listed in this intro post by HP’s Calvin Zito.
I will be posting as we go along, with quite possibly all posts after the event. I will supplement my posts with links to relevant blog posts by the other bloggers.
To Las Vegas, to Las Vegas, I go!
Calvin Zito (Twitter: @hpstorageguy) is a marketing professional at HP, and a true master of Social Media.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
I am a very simple man.
I am not the world’s biggest gamer. I mainly use the Xbox as a distraction, for cooling down, or as a tool in helping me regain my muse when I’m flaming out.
As a result, my requirements for Xbox 2013 are very few, just four in number.
No more nonsense about it being always-connected to Microsoft
This idea, if true, has got to be the stupidest idea ever to come out of Redmond!
Believe me, it is.
If Xbox 2013 has this feature, it loses this generation of consoles. It also shows that Microsoft is calling its users thieves out of the gate, an enormous measure of disrespect, and disdain for them.
I will reciprocate by staying away.
Leave 2nd-hand (previously owned) games alone
Seriously, what’s the BFD about the secondary market for games? I would think that it helps people stay loyal to the platform.
Take me for instance: I started the H.A.L.O. franchise midway, and now, I’ve gone back and acquired, and played all the titles in the series.
Would I have paid top-dollar for those old games?
No!
Allow background downloading of games & console updates
(1) You crack open a new game to play. But, Xbox 360 has to take an incredibly annoying amount of time – I only get 5Mbps symmetric in my rural town – to download a required update before I can play the friggin’ game!
How happy do you think I am?
(2) While even that may be acceptable, how does it feel when you want to get into a previously-played title, and Xbox 360 needs about 30 minutes or so to download updates for that game?
How hard could it be for the device to keep a lookup table or something and perform that download during idle times?
(3) You turn Xbox 360 on, and it HAS to download a series of updated before you can even do diddly squat on the device!
Who at Microsoft this this is ideal?
Who?
What I am getting to is simple: allow background downloads of device, system, and game updates.
Sheez!
Transfer media to Xbox or allow attached local DASD
Xbox 360 will allow you to rip music to the hard disk.
Cool!
However, Xbox 360 will, inexplicably, disallow the copying of MP3s that you already own to the device.
WTF, right?
The last time I mentioned this, some people tried to inform me of the benefits of streaming.
To them I say give me a fcuking break, bokay?
Are you freaking kidding me?
In order to play songs on the Xbox in my office, I have to send the media through the CAT-6e to the router in the basement, where it then gets beamed over Wi-Fi to the Xbox? Or, I send a command to the Proliant Microserver in the server room to initiate streaming of a song via Wi-Fi to the Xbox?
Which is less than 8 feet away from me?
This is ideal?
Who at Microsoft came up with this?
What sense does it make?
What I want to see is ether allowing the copying of media files to the Xbox, or absent space on the console, an easy, effortless way to allow users to plug in a DASD.
Simple.
Oh, and by the way, my sons would like Microsoft to remember that it is an Xbox, not the bastard offspring (my kind interpretation!) of a cable box and a TIVO.
And give them stupendous gameplay.
That’s it.
Nothing major.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited
With news that Yahoo is in talks to buy Tumblr for the rumored amount of $1.1 billion US, one has to revive the Microsoft Windows Live Spaces debacle, and rightfully excoriate Microsoft executives for giving that asset away.
To recap: Microsoft created Windows Live Spaces as a blogging platform back in the day, and it rapidly grew to over 25 million blogs despite Microsoft's silly, and IMO, stupid restrictions hobbling it. The restrictions were numerous, yet there were 25 million or so blogs. 25 million!
As an aside, you can still see signs of that madness at Microsoft today, where you cannot – cannot! – create an account on Office 365 if your domain contains the word “Windows”, as in AbsolutelyWindows.com or SmallBizWindows.com!
Whatever the case may be, in September 2010, Microsoft abruptly delivered a two-stage bombshell regarding Live Spaces: the abrupt shutdown of the service, and the inexplicable option migrating that large number of blogs to Automattic’s WordPress.
Gratis to Automattic.
Totally free.
I have always thought that was the nadir as far as Windows Live was concerned, and indeed, it turns out to be so.
Today, the Windows Live brand is dead as a doornail.
Coming back to Live Spaces, why didn’t anyone at Microsoft try to get value, some value, any value, for it?
It didn’t have to be monetary, it could have been assets, IP, a bottle of Grand Marnier, anything!
They did not.
Now, Tumble is looking at a $1.1 billion payday.
Someone at Microsoft NEEDS to be publicly flagellated for this.
I volunteer to personally horsewhip either the culprit or the fall guy/gal on the steps of the Island Club in Lagos.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
Don’t Tell Me Who You Are, I’ll Just Check Your Online Data
“Between the mind that plans and the hands that build there must be a Mediator and this must be the heart.” – Metropolis, 1927 - Universum
Governments around the globe are working hard to develop guidelines and laws that will ensure the protection of your data, your information and you.
That has to make you feel about as safe as someone coming to your door and saying, “I’m from the tax service and here to help you.”
Actually, their work doesn’t make me feel good or concerned.
My information – and yours – is already out there. And we all keep adding to it voluntarily for them.
People have said time and again:
As Maria said, “There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts.”
There’s no magic here, folks. You aren’t just giving your information to them, you’re shoveling it to them with your social media.
It’s all there in the cloud; and out the other end comes Big Data.
Thanks – It didn’t take much for social media to encourage you to give up all your information and share it with the world. Your mobile device lets you post/send your info to the cloud where it is combined with everyone else’s stuff to produce really Big Data.
Where does that stuff come from?
Your Device, Your Data
Guess it’s the 7.1B plus people on the planet and their devices:
All of us racked up social media content that even back in 2009 produced:
Today, it’s even bigger because Experian recently reported people spend an average of 27 percent of their time online in social media activities.
Where did we get all the other interesting facts?
At Your Service – The CIA’s CTO, Gus Hunt, has a lot to smile about. People can’t resist things like social media and free services so they are putting huge volumes out there in the public domain (who really owns your data once you post it to the world?), making his job so much more fun than sneaking around and digging in garbage cans.
O.K., so he doesn’t look like Bond or any spy you’ve ever seen in the movies; but the CIA’s CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt was more than happy to talk about what his organization was going to do in collecting and analyzing all of the information people put on the Internet.
Government Agencies
First, he knew you weren’t going to stop the communications, posts and tweets.
Second, he has counterparts doing the same thing in every other country around the globe.
Marie commented, “But those who toiled knew nothing of the dreams of those who planned.”
Growth – Producing, duplicating and sharing content is irresistible to people when the cost of storing in the Cloud is so cheap, free even. With people spending an average of 16 minutes out of every hour on social media, the Big Data just keeps growing.
That content mass consists of:
To make you feel better, at a tech conference he said, "You're already a walking sensor platform."
He explained that someone can know where you are at all times because you carry a mobile device … even if it’s turned off!
Hunt added that based on the phone’s sensors, you can be identified with complete accuracy by the way you walk, even if it’s someone else’s phone.
It probably works as well for your tablet, notebook/ultrabook. It must, because we now live with an Internet of things – everything is a sensor, everything is connected, everything communicates.
Those types of agencies save, analyze every digital bit/byte of human or other generated information.
All that any of the agencies have to do is say, “The critical national infrastructure—including water, electricity and gas networks—were vulnerable to hackers and the country could be hit by a cyber-9/11 or equivalent.”
And … BAM!!!!
They don’t really have to do much that is sneaky because it’s all out there, all public.
So if every government has agencies intent on gathering/using all the Big Data you put out there (there has to be a line item somewhere on their budget), what are your elected officials all up in arms about when it comes to your privacy?
Who else is watching you?
Oh yeah, businesses that get the best government money can buy.
It’s Just Business – Businesses are becoming increasingly sophisticated at checking, reviewing and using Big Data that people give them willingly. All you have to say is free and people will use their devices to fork over their information, so being sneaky about it isn’t worth the effort.
Healthcare Potential
All of that Big Data can also be used in areas such as healthcare, B2B/B2C (business to business/business to customer) commerce and traffic management (it’s tough out there right now).
In healthcare, physicians could tailor drug doses to your specific medical history/needs.
Of course, that data could also be used to deny medical procedures because of your health history.
Maria commented, “The minds that planned the Tower of Babel cared nothing for the workers who built it.”
Then too, there are companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and data intermediaries who aggregate data and process it to produce optimal sales opportunities.
They also sell that information at the speed of light from computer to computer to increase sales opportunities.
Audience Trading – Sophisticated companies have sprung up across the Web to do high-speed ad buying/selling based on key details people readily provide on social media such as marital status, political parties, devices owned, buying habits, wants/needs and more.
Using high-performance computers and sophisticated analytic tools, they can understand the data and its sales potential.
Much of the privacy issues are raised because of your buying habits and activities, what you buy, where, when, how and other information when you purchase something online or with your mobile device – even when it’s in-store research.
Government regulators constantly develop things like the commercial privacy bill of rights, application/location privacy, social media/video privacy and similar acts/legislation to protect your privacy, even as you put the information out in the public.
About the only ones we really agree with without question are those that deal with personal financial and health records, which need to be protected from every hacker, whacker, cybercriminal, bank, insurance company, legal and other questionable characters.
Looking at the situation, Maria exclaimed, “The hymns of praise of the few became the curses of the many - BABEL! BABEL! BABEL!”
Smart Home
While all of this work-in-progress is going on, people are embracing all of the benefits of smart homes.
Suddenly your home/castle increasingly has a whole lot of newer, bigger holes in it.
Unwalled Garden – It’s still sorta’, kinda’ true that your home is your castle; but with mobile devices and social media sharing, it’s extremely easy for any organization to determine what you have in your house, what you want, what you need.
For the most part, this won’t be one of your normal communications devices at work but sensors in your home designed to help control your energy usage/cost, follow your viewing/listening habits and more.
Connected, Talking – The new systems, services and capabilities that are being designed into smart homes make it easier for you to control your energy costs, entertainment and just about everything. And all of these sensors also send information to the cloud.
You’ve heard the old saying the walls have ears?
Well, maybe not your home’s walls but just about everything else in the house knows what’s going on--even when you’re not around.
We’ll bet you’ve got an app that lets you keep track of all of that information.
Smart Car
As if you didn’t have enough sensors sending information to you (and them), we’re now being offered smart cars with a whole lot of new, neat apps.
Think about it, now you’ll be able to monitor the health/well being of your auto, traffic activities, speed/good driving habits and anything you want to keep track of.
Car makers are adding data monitoring/gathering sensors in their cars that improve your driving experience and yes, it gives them information as well.
It will certainly make things easier on everyone when the industry minimizes all these and focuses on the primary source of data so they can produce optimum potential for everyone concerned.
As the man at the night club said, “For her, all seven deadly sins!”
Right now, the more data that is captured, the more that can be learned and the better you will be served … and protected.
You’ve been lugging all that information, content around too long … need to get online!
G. Andy Marken is founder & president of Marken Communications
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
At Interop Las Vegas 2013, HP’s Senior VP & General Manager of Networking, Bethany Mayer, participated in a Q&A with us after her rousing and well-received keynote.
In this session, she talks about HP’s products, winning business away from the entrenched lock-in artists, and pricing.
Listening to her, one thing is immediately evident: she may be soft-spoken, but Ms. Mayer is up to the task, and quite ready to do battle.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
The central, yet unplanned theme at Storage Field Day 3 in Westminster, Colorado last month was flash storage, and specifically, the use of flash memory in any way, shape, or form to accelerate data access.
As with any nascent technology, there are many lines of thought about how to best accomplish this, and resultantly, there is a lot of innovation around flash storage even today.
What was quite cool was watching and listening to the sponsors at SFD3 telling us about the work they were doing to get us to a mostly Flash storage world.
From what I learned over there, flash-based storage is moving from POC models, and niche, and esoteric uses to becoming very mainstream.
From hardware to software, from appliances to basic components, flash memory storage is making waves. More information on Storage Field Day, including sponsor presentations, can be found here.
This seismic shift in storage is already here, what with almost all mobile devices utilizing them. Understandable, you may say. For which I will agree, based on the smallish form factors of those aforementioned devices.
However, what about larger computing devices, those which have the enclosure volumes to contain spinning disks. What about them?
At this time, I realized I would have to get my Storage Royalty involved. And as usual, they came through impressively.
The AbsoluteQuestion
“What do you think the role of hard disk storage will be in 5 years, in
The answers, in no particular order:
Rick Schlander
Rich Schlander is a veteran of computing, and familiar with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft computing in the datacenter
I think that we will see a push to move more "long term online storage" to mechanical drives by that time. I think that within a 5 year span, we will see flash as the primary placeholder of all enterprise data with spinning disks as more of an "online vault" to be used for quick recovery and DR. I think that one of the main drivers behind this will be SaaS application delivery from PaaS platforms.
As for SMB's, I think that the move towards more SaaS based applications will be a huge driver of removing remaining HDD's from this arena. As for personal computers, I don't see much of an install base for mechanical drives by that time due to the reduced cost of flash and desktop OS's will demand faster throughput from the local storage.
Rick Schlander is a vExpert, NetApp Certified Data Administrator, and the Minneapolis & Rochester VMUG Leader
Enrico Signoretti
Enrico is a vExpert, and quite conversant with datacenter, storage, and virtualization.
In the B & C categories we will see only flash.
On the DC side we will see a new next generation hard drive (I heard it from a Seagate representative ranting about the future… and it doesn't look too crazy to me).
The NG hard drive will be equipped with a small amount of flash but it's not the "ordinary" hybrid drive, its functionality will be controlled by APIs!
You won't have a fast or slow drive but a drive that can change its behavior: APIs will allow you to manage the usage of SSD and the mechanical part of drive (even the rotational speed!).
This kind of drive will be used for a wider range of applications ranging from archiving (SSD could maintain the blocks allocation table with the disk stopped to save power) to relative high performance (the SSD could be used as cache or as an auto-tiering mechanism). On the SSD you can save indexes, hash tables, FAT, metadata, crypto keys, and pieces of applications maybe…
This hard drive could also be useful in the design of next generation hybrid arrays…
Entrepreneur and IT consultant Enrico Signoretti is at the intersection of virtualization and storage, and gives us a unique perspective into not only what we have today, but also what’s coming next. He blogs at Juku.it
Calvin Zito
Calvin Z. is The HP Storage Guy, with his experience spanning over a couple of decades in storage.
There clearly are benefits to using flash-based solid state disks (SSD) over hard disk drives (HDD). There are a few key factors that will drive adoption regardless of the environment:
Customers need to make tradeoffs between maximizing $/IOP or $/GB. That typically means that for the datacenter and local/small servers, they’ll have a mixed environment of SSD and HDD. This leads me to four architectural requirements that we think are critical for flash-optimized designs:
At HP Storage we see startup vendors addressing system bottlenecks and efficiency, and legacy storage vendors meeting resiliency requirements with their tier-1 storage. But that’s far short of addressing all four requirements. We think all four need to be addressed by any flash-optimized array.
Calvin Zito, known as @HPStorageGuy, has worked for HP Storage since 1990, and writes the most read hp.com blog, Around the Storage Block. http://hpstorage.me/ATSB-blog He can be reached at hpstorageguy@hp.com
Val Bercovici
Val B. leads strategic planning for NetApp, one of the global Top-5 companies in storage.
In 5 years:
Hard disks will play their most dominant role in the data center, as a big intermediary tier between Solid-State (mix of NAND & PCM) Storage and Tape (for Big Data Archives).
Local Small Servers will use mostly NAND or PCM solid-state storage due to ruggedness, superior failure rates and simpler FRU management. That will leave little space for hard disks in this deployment scenario.
There will be no hard disks in personal devices (desktops & laptops) just like there are none in tablets and phones today. Similar ruggedness and failure rates advantages of solid-state storage are the reasons.
#1 above will store the long-tail of data for #2 and #3 via Cloud Gateways and Cloud respectively :)
Val joined NetApp in 1998 and leads the Strategic Planning Team within the office of the CTO. Working with customers, analysts, and alliance partners, Val focuses on next-generation research projects and is responsible for NetApp’s product vision. As an early Big Data adopter, Val chairs the Enterprise Data Architecture Track of the Hadoop Summit. Val also introduced the first Cloud Standard to the industry as chairman of SNIA’s Cloud Storage Initiative, whose mission is to foster the growth and success of the cloud storage market. Previously, Val served as the vice-chair of SNIA’s Solid-State Storage Initiative. Val has over 25 years of IT industry experience spanning NCR (AT&T) and Cognos (IBM), with 12 years in storage at EMC and NetApp. Previously, he worked as a consultant to private industry and government. Val holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Ottawa.
Matt Leib
Matt is a veteran of storage and virtualization.
I enjoy these conversations when it’s purely gazing into the crystal ball, because I’m not necessarily any more clued into manufacturing predictives than anyone else. I am, however, an employee for an organization that leverages the power of solid state discs for IO.
As an employee for Nexenta Systems, we use both spinning disc and solid-state disc in a tiered scheme in our common methodology, as ZFS has most regularly implemented. Of course, the flexibility of ZFS doesn’t lock in to a specific configuration; by that I mean, one may configure all SSD for pure IO configurations, or even all spinning disc in a use-case that needs very little in the way of IO. The point being, I configure appliances on a daily basis that lean on the power of both spinning disc and solid state regularly and have developed a familiarity with the SSD industry as it is, and as such, feel that maybe I have some insight into where we may be going into the future. That being said, let’s dive in-
In the data center, I am already seeing many organizations who’ve no desire to invest at all in spinning discs, even in their low latency use-cases. They see spinning disc as dead technology, and don’t understand even in slow disc cases why anyone would invest in ancient tech. On the other hand, and still today, the cost differential presents quite a barrier. This difference will continue to shrink, in my opinion, to where I believe even the smallest organizations will see the benefits outweighing the negatives in a situation like expressed above. Where pennies per gigabyte will be close enough, and mean-time-between-failure rates will surpass spinning disc, so as to make the logic behind spinning disc, as reasonable as, for example, cranks to start a car, or party line telephone calls.
Local servers may be a little slower to adopt this, but I do feel that we’re going the same way. And in the same manner, I’m seeing many servers adapting their internal storage to a solid-state form. Local storage may be, at the moment an admittedly more expensive and smaller, but this is changing. The size of discs is growing, and though prices are still relatively high, only in comparison to today’s disc prices. They’re dropping daily, and at this level the cost really shouldn’t be the issue. In fact, one of the reasons we used to use local disc was raid level, not for redundancy only, but with the high IO levels of SSD, certainly, we’re not reliant on spindle count. Maybe rather than a 4 disc raid 6, we’d only require a 2 disc mirror for redundancy, thus mitigating some of the cost, as well.
And, in the final use-case, I’m really hard-pressed to satisfy my desire for ample local disc in a desktop workstation with SSD. Were I to be buying a non-laptop today, and to be fair, I work about 90% of the time from a laptop, I would build out with a couple of largish SSD’s, and then connect for the lion’s share of my storage to my NAS (which to be fair is a NexentaStor device). I still feel the future is the same, and well defined for spinning disc regarding desktop machines. Only the dinosaurs will have spinning discs. We will likely regard these machines as we do with nostalgia, our old NetWare boxes, or our first PC XT’s.
So, what happens in the interim? Will there be a place for the “Hybrid” disc? We’ve seen a place for these in laptops, where 2.5” discs which have been able to be augmented by a small amount of RAM which facilitates a pseudo disc tier within the physical disc architecture, and creates a much faster disc relationship. But, will we be able to realize this in larger sizes in all architectures before the full SSD overtakes the spinning disc entirely? My belief is that we will not.
Another consideration to lay thought towards is that of the ultra-fast PCIe ram card, like today’s FusionIO or Intel 910 card. These remove the card from the SAS or SATA bus, placing them in the PCIe socket to further improve IO throughput. They tend to be placed in appliance only Flash devices, or augment individual solid-state local device appliances. They’re wonderful, however, they tend to be more expensive on a dollar-per-gigabyte level than SSD disc in equivalent sizes. I am not sure what the future brings for these devices, but I anticipate that we’ll see parallel growth in these markets.
Ultimately, my prediction is that we’re at a tipping point, and that the industry is turning towards SSD in a very big way. Commodity disc and enterprise class regardless, will, I think, overtake spinning disc entirely, and I actually think that we’ll be seeing that sooner than the 5 year mark.
Matt Leib is a long time virtualization architect with years of VMware and Citrix implementations. He has years of evangelism on subjects ranging from Cloud, DR and VDI to Big Data and enterprise application virtualization. He is an advocate of Open Storage, working at Nexenta as an SE covering the entire midsection of the country and the western half of Canada. Additionally, Matt is the Communications Director for the vCommunity Trust.
The AbsoluteViewpoint
Hard drives, the spinning disk kind, seem to be reaching the end of their run as the primary storage option for computing devices.
Right now, I cannot think of any mobile device that utilizes a hard disk drive, and I believe that development will continue spreading out to mainstream computers, trickling out over the summer and becoming a deluge right on time for the Christmas and holiday season this year.
However, will spinning disks be completely abandoned?
The wildcard here is the memristor, which can serve two masters: storage and compute.
This august panel thinks so, and absent any data to the contrary, I would have to concur.
Exciting times ahead.
What do you think?
Comment here or email me at john [dot] obeto [at] absolutevista [dot] com
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
For a couple of days this past week, I was embedded at Interop Las Vegas 2013 by HP.
Ostensibly by HP Networking, I was there to listen in and see what HP Networking doing in innovation, development, products, and mindshare.
Most importantly, I wanted to see how HP was doing vis-à-vis both the 80,000 lb. behemoth in the room (Cisco), as well as the other top-shelf players such as Juniper, F5, etc.
Over the next few days, I will post information gleaned there, as well as videos – if I am able to clean them up.
I was able to interview HP Senior Vice-President and General Manager of HP Networking, Bethany Meyer for the second year in a row at Interop.
A video of the Q&A session with her will be posted shortly.
I missed getting the MeatFather, HP Networking’s Les Stuart (@netmanLes), on camera for an interview. However, judging from the absolutely borked way the audio in the videos I shot came out, I have asked Teri S. to see if she can secure a conference call for me to converse with Les on the new groundbreaking improvements and features in HP’s IMC control suite.
One of the personal highlights for me at Interop Las Vegas 2013 was finally meeting NetApp’s Val Bercovici in person.
Val is someone I have followed on Twitter (@valb00) for years, and he is also a Facebook friend. Soft-spoken – even in social media, he was what I expected: a smart, friendly person with a lot of knowledge to impart. I hope to engage with him a lot more going forward.
The Dell TechCenter guys, Lance Boley (@LanceBoley) and Dennis Smith (@DennisMSmith), were to tech stalwarts that I had the opportunity of meeting as well. These guys know datacenter, and it behooves you to follow and interact with them for knowledge. I do.
Stay tuned.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
It never fails.
Really, it doesn’t.
Whenever Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows which, according to blue sky metrics, fails to set the world ablaze, some lazy, unengaged members of the punditry class emerge from their hovels in Middle Earth, and start making pronouncements about the need for some enterprising entrepreneur – never they themselves, mind you – to develop a series of PCs powered by the open source OS flava o’ the day, in this instance, Android.
I mean, WTF, right?
Earlier today, I had the misfortune to read a post on ZDNet about Android PCs being the panacea for all things ailing the personal computer industry.
Where do link-baiting writers like this come up with this drivel?
Seriously, where do they pull this SWAGs from?
According to the article, PCs are waaay too expensive.
Really, that’s what he wrote!
As a result, he proposes that Android come galloping to the rescue.
Immediately, a sense of foreboding, and an extreme feeling of déjà vu hit me!
I had HEARD this nonsense before!
The last time, it was HP and the Android Slate.
Which, thankfully is languishing in that netherworld between being stillborn, and complete market indifference.
Before that, it was Dell, with a series of Linux laptops they wasted resources on developing for which it would literally take them until Kingdom Come, or way past this planet being consumed in a giant fireball by a dying Sun, to recoup.
Dell found out the hard way that the vocal minority inhabiting its forums were in no way indicative of the consumer world in real life.
Prior to ‘The Dell Fail’, there were netbooks. Specifically, Linux netbooks.
These devices were created to counter the expensive – financially and resource-wise – hardware costs of Windows Vista.
If I remember correctly, ASUS initially defined the netbook space with cheap – their description, not mine – small form factor laptops running Linux. I have to admit that for a minute, ASUS was successful, until their users realized that apart from carrying the latest fad proselytized by the noisemakers, all they could do on those device was surf the internet.
Window-based netbooks came out, and that put paid to the idea of Linux netbooks.
What, you don’t remember Lindows?
Lindows was the brainchild of some yum-yum who was able to schneider otherwise smart mega-mart retailers such as Walmart and co into carrying obsolete hardware running a Linux distro called Lindows – the hardware and the OS both! – and sporting a plethora of open source software as ‘The Answer”! (Apologies to Allen Iverson, re in order, methinks.)
Suffice it to say that Lindows failed. Miserably too.
In a very visible case of GIGO, it soon dawned on users that there was nothing you could really do with a computer version of a Trabant! The systems were underpowered, even for Linux, possessing obsolete CPUs, used a very obscure OS, and the desktop productivity apps were less than useless, even for consumers. The OEM was laughed out of the marketplace, and is probably in an ashram somewhere trying to locate his lost goodwill.
Even before Lindows, there were those mouthpieces who pushed IBM’s OS/2 as the OS for all of us.
We all remember how that worked for them. And for IBM!
Coming back, the point this fellow was attempting to make was that the high cost of Windows is what is killing the market.
Yeah, like y’all, I’m sure he has research into just how much Windows OEMs pay Redmond for that privilege.
Anecdotes, conjecture, rumors, head fakes, and whatnots do not take the place of facts.
Ever!
Yet, this poor misguided soul takes all of them as fact, and proceeds to derive an actual article from it.
Folks, it AIN’T happenin’!
Windows may fail, but the replacement for Windows will NEVER be Android.
If you want, I can have it inscribed on stone tablets for you!
Also, do not forget that in the short interregnum between the release of Surface RT/Windows RT and Surface Pro, HP announced an Android tablet, the HP Slate 7. While none has been spotted in the wild, I have been told that the beast exists.
However, I am sure all humanity is waiting with bated breath for when the Slate 7 hits the fire sale bins at mega-mart. Just like the late and completely unlamented HP TouchPad.
For those keeping score, these cheaper (apart from IBM's OS/2) alternatives were soundly rejected by the great unwashed, giving a perfect 1.000 score. In reverse!
G’nite now!
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
Think about it.
Nary a day seems to go by without a report here or there of one or some other Android or Chromebook OEM fast becoming a signatory to a compact with Microsoft over Android.
Mind you, these agreements aren’t just of the “Sorry, I transgressed; forgive me” type. They are backed by real money.
Real money.
Word in the blogosphere has the amounts of tribute being paid to Microsoft from these hardware OEMs ranging from a minuscule $5.00 USD per device from HTC, one of the first signatories, to about $15 from the likes of Samsung, Hon Hai (Foxconn), and ZTE.
What, you sneeze at the lowly amounts?
Listen, those amounts are pure gravy.
Earlier today, I read an article when estimates that Microsoft could be taking in as much
as $8.8 billion USD from Android licensing alone in coming years.
$8.8 Billion.
Yearly.
That's a lot of moola!
Let us discount the metrics used by the estimators as too sunny, and go scorched earth, choosing half of the estimated revenues.
50% of the projected amount would still be a lot, about equal to the sales of 127 million Windows licenses at $35 per license.
And remember, this money is a) recurring, and b) for IP that Microsoft already owns, not new research!
No wonder Microsoft is making sure that it's services connect with Android!
I had complained bitterly not quite a fortnight ago that Microsoft was seeding Outlook to Android before Windows 8 Metro. Now, I understand why. I don’t like it, but the business reasons are very sound.
And I mentioned so on Facebook.
As to the question why doesn’t Microsoft just quit making phones, the answer is rather simple: branding.
To explain: the reason is that these OEMs, while paying the licensing fees, are not doing so willingly, and most definitely not happily. They are doing this to create a state of détente, and you can bet that they are furtively or openly looking to change the status quo.
They are chaffing under what they think is the Microsoft [Android] yoke, would want to make a change as soon as they can. Once they can, Microsoft would be relegated to being a licensing authority, and quite ripe for disintermediation.
Think of the predicament of Kodak today.
For a long while, Kodak got fat on licensing patents & IP. Then film cameras went away. Today, none of my kids remember or know what Kodak is, or meant, to consumers, technology, and most unfortunately, photography. And Kodak is in bankruptcy.
Sadly, once-mighty Kodak now epitomizes irrelevancy!
Microsoft needs to continue to try to improve Windows Phone in order to maintain a presence not just in mobiles, but in mindshare.
Look what iTunes, followed by iPod have don’t to make Apple this planet's most profitable company.
In other words, the licensing fees allow Microsoft to develop new products and services. Moreover, it helps offsets the remarkably large investments in R&D that Microsoft makes yearly.
Irony: the very tool that Google created to kill off Windows, will now be used by Microsoft to diminish the Android’s impact, and prepare Microsoft for the next era in computing.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
Oops! They did it again!
Not too long after a very lucrative exit, selling LeftHand Networks to HP, John Spires created NexGen Storage, and just before they were to present at Storage Field Day, sold the company to Fusion-IO*.
Well, we got to see NexGen and Fusion-IO together, and they have a product that wants to address the bottlenecks in storage using…tada…flash storage, aka SSDs.
Below, NexGen and Fusion-IO execs give us the overview of why they are now one unified company, and why their approach matters.
This video is © Stephen Foskett & Gestalt IT
The AbsoluteViewpoint
The upper-SMB to midmarket is getting what I feel is very due attention from leading-edge storage vendors, and NextGen is no exception.
This product line uses PCIe-based Fusion-IO cards for blazing-fast access which only looks to improve with time.
More NexGen Storage videos can be found here.
Related Links
* If you remember, I won my first iPad, an iPad Gen1 device, from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak at the 2010 HP Tech Forum
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
No?
Shutterfly has.
Actually Shutterfly has, to the amount of having 70 petabytes of storage covered by Cleversafe!
Cleversafe uses information dispersal, also known in the storage industry as erasure coding, or forward-error correction, to perform it’s magic, over either local or WAN.
This video is © Stephen Foskett & Gestalt IT.
The AbsoluteViewpoint 
Absent that, coming out to Storage Field Day, and touting a reference account with 70PB of data, has everyone murmuring “respect” under their breaths.
This is a well-implemented product, and surprisingly easy to implement and use.
Definitely a company to keep my eyes on.
More Cleversafe videos can be found here.
Related links
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
Last week, I was at Gestalt IT’s Storage Field Day 3 in Westminster, Colorado.
Over the course of three days, we saw several companies who showed us where they thought storage was heading towards, and their forthcoming products. We also had the opportunity to be involved in off-camera discussions about future roadmaps. To crown it all, a startup, Exablox, came out of stealth, and launched at Storage Field Day 3!
A recurring theme at SFD3 was Flash, as in flash storage, as it seems solid state drives, or SSDs, are commonly called in this space. Just about every product talked about there had to do with flash, the use of as an accelerator for data access. In the SFD3 Roundtable, this use of flash is discussed among the delegates.
Finally, in my SFD3 summary, my thoughts, both on the state of storage, and of the event.
Exablox is storage startup that until Storage Field Day 3, was in stealth mode.
Exablox, the company, publicly launched on Wednesday, April 24, and also launched their two current products on that day. The products are:
Common to both OneSystem & OneBlox are ease of setup, configuration, and management.
OneBlox is designed to be installed, and then set up using OneSystem once. Then the admin now can do whatever is needed for provisioning.
The video below introduces you to Exablox.
This video is © Stephen Foskett & Gestalt IT
The AbsoluteViewpoint
Exablox is an intriguing, and inexpensive scale-out appliance and service combo.
What I like about it is the fact that from the onset, manageability was thought of, and built into the product. Security is also built in, and it can theoretically use off-the-shelf hard drives.
I am actually looking forward to having the time to put a OneBlox appliance and the OneSystem management service through our testing regimen.
More Exablox videos, including a detailed deep dive, and a demo of both products, can be found here.
Related Links
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
Please view a live stream of Storage Field Day 3 below.
(c) 2002 - 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
I am in Westminster, Colorado for Gestalt IT’s Storage Field Day 3.
As you are all aware, the Storage Field Days are part of the Tech Field Day® series of in-depth technology briefings by Gestalt IT.
There is a broad contingent of delegates – Gestalt IT-speak for the invited independent bloggers J - with lots of experience in storage and more.
They are:
And, of course, Yours Truly.
A list of the presenters at #sfd3 is here.
In addition, a company is coming out of stealth mode here at Storage Field Day 3, and will launch tomorrow morning!
Please follow me on Twitter, or the entire Twitter stream using the hashtag; #SFD3.
A live stream of the event is here.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
The video below, is the introduction to Moonshot by HP.
This video © HP
A specs sheet on HP Moonshot can be found here.
Hopefully, this intro helps folks learn more, and know more about HP Moonshot. Over the past 26 hours, there has been much confusion among some of my Twitter followers as to what, exactly, Moonshot is, and what the target market for it is.
Over the next several weeks, I intend to seek out, and speak with HP staffers in order to glean more about this product.
Moonshot isn’t something HP just stumbled onto. Back in 2011, at the HP Cloud Tech Day, Paul Santeler, VP of Hyperscale at HP, talked to us about HP’s work in this area.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
As the harbinger of a new line and class of Microsoft hardware, I didn’t expect much as far as add-ons and accessories were concerned.
However, it is now enough time for stuff to start showing up.
But, nothing.
Nothing!
Apart from a sleeve and a screen protector, there’s nothing more on Surface.com
There are SkinIT skins available off the site online somewhere, but that’s it.
I’ve had it on my mind since yesterday when I was looking to purchase a carrying case for Wifey’s Surface Pro. (Personally, I use a CaseLogic iPad case I repurposed for my Surface Pro.)
I found nothing.
Nothing at all!
Pondering over it since then, I have to ask: why Microsoft isn’t showing any passion around Surface?
Seriously, I don’t see any passion!
As with Windows 8, Microsoft execs are mouthing off
As important as Surface is to the fortunes of Microsoft’s future PC hardware business, why nothing?
Why didn’t Microsoft commission several accessories in order to make a great splash?
Or is Surface another Microsoft trial balloon?
If it is, I don’t want to be another guinea pig with my own money!
Resultantly, I have halted all purchases of Surface until I see the signs of life regarding Surface from Microsoft.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
“ The HP EliteBook 2570p is a very capable laptop”
Physician provider, MedikLabs
Early in February of this year, I received an HP EliteBook 2570p notebook computer for review.
I am a fan of HP EliteBooks, especially the Mobile Workstation range.
These laptops are compact, powerful, beautifully-built, and reliable.
I had a choice to take the 2570p with a choice of Windows 7 Pro or Windows 8 Pro. I’m sure you know which one I took.
Unboxing
The 2570p came in HP’s standard eco packaging, which means a slimline box with eggcrate packaging.
I turned it on, discarded the original Windows 8 install, performed a clean install of Windows 8, and we were off.
I logged into my review Microsoft account, found that I had 5 devices active, and would need to remove one before proceeding.
I hate that silly and artificial limitation. However, that’s a rant for another day.
I did that, connected to my review Microsoft account, went to the Windows 8 Store, selected which of my Windows 8 Metro apps I would like on the device, and then proceeded to install them. I also activated an Office 365 install on the device, and installed the other essential apps I use, or would need.
There are just way too many me-too lappers on the market today. And apart from the EliteBooks and the ThinkPads, all of them are quite forgettable. Mostly.
The metallic case of the 2570p is distinctive, and the entire device exudes an aura that intimates a sturdy build, unlike the plasticky cases of the systems out there.
The display is nice and bright, and the system is quite silent, despite the fan and hard drive. Shock absorption is very good, absorbing most of the whirring of the hard and optical drives.
The HP EliteBook 2570p
The 2570p came at a very opportune moment. I had been testing a plethora of Windows tablets privately and Microsoft Surface Pro & Surface RT publicly. As a result, getting the 2570p to test, and to test against those devices.
Moreover, the timeliness gave me the opportunity to have my outside test subjects
The Medical Staff
The first stop for the 2570p was MedikLabs.
At MedikLabs, the portable PC inventory consists of HP tx2s, tx2000s and a single 8460w mobile workstation. As you can tell, these systems have reached end-of-life, and have only been retained until now because of the release of Windows 8.
I would like to replace the systems there with a solution that works better, is just as reliable, built for Windows 8, and shed system weight. A lighter device is a must, as the medical staff have to carry the laptops into the rooms when dealing with patients.
The 2570p was thrust in.
For three weeks, it was used by all the medical staffers at the Clinic and to a person, everyone was taken in by it.
It is lighter and faster than the current systems. It woke from sleep in a snap, thanks also to Windows 8 Professional.
It also gained props from the physicians because of the smaller size than the EliteBook 8460w while still being just as powerful.
Funny enough, another reason why the 2570p was liked is the integrated optical drive.
The 2570p, with the internal optical drive, is the same thickness as the HP EliteBook 2740p Tablet PC, which doesn’t sport an optical drive. And about as light.
Unfortunately, most of the physician clinics in this country still use paper charts today.
While the clinic at MedikLabs is fully digital, and online, others aren’t. Which makes patients bring their records on optical discs to be read by the MedikLabs medical practitioners!
In an ideal world, I was told, the 2570p would have a touchscreen.
Other than that, it was well received, and suitable as a replacement for some of their equipment. We then decided to purchase a unit for further internal study with a view to introducing a couple of units into the computer inventory there.
The Realtor
In 2011, my realtor guinea pig in this town purchased an HP dv6t laptop as her daily unit.
Impressed by the large 16” screen, the realtor liked the way it allowed her to use animations to show off properties.
Until the weight kicked in.
For the past few months, she has been trying to get the ‘perfect’ replacement for her device.
Enter the HP EliteBook 2570p
In the weeks she used the device, she like a) the portability, b) the power, and c) Windows 8.
It was powerful enough to be used as the creation system for her animated presentations, and she never had any issues picking up signals from her mobile, car-based CradlePoint hotspot when she was at very remote ranches.
Since the device works for her, she is adding it to the list of final candidates for replacements for her current solution.
Yours Truly
At this dawn of Windows 8, Microsoft Surface, and mainstream touch computing, is there a place for a system like the EliteBook 2570p?
That question was on my mind as I took possession of the device, and decided to compare it to the other products here.
I had used the EliteBook 2740p as my primary until the release of Surface Pro this past January. Since then, it has been my backup device on trips longer than a day.
The 2570p replaced it for the duration of my personal trial, and I found out that I did not mind using Windows 8 on it without touch functionality**!
Outlook, PowerPoint, and Excel worked very well, and I was able to run VMs in it as well.
The best part was the silence and coolness.
Under stressful loads, the 2740p Tablet PC tends to run hot. Not so the EliteBook 2570p. it was always cool to the touch, and the fans were very silent. System vibration during optical drive use was also quite muted.
Conclusions 
It has the usual HP business maintenance and support options.
MedikLabs has had their own EliteBook 2570p for over a month so far, and it has performed, standing up under the stress of being constantly moved, and being in use while being moved.
We have no qualms about recommending it to our clients for their users who need laptops.
Resultantly, we have given it the SmallBizWindows Business-Ready Award of Excellence.
*The EliteBook 8460w is now being used as the official take-home laptop for the MedikLab’s primary mid-level practitioner.
**I do use non-touch Windows 8 systems on a daily basis. However, they have 30” monitors, and I had thought that it would be tedious, if not downright hard, to use Windows 8 on a non-touch small screen on a daily basis. I was wrong.
© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
Echo Mobile Solutions is trying to do more than just enabling customers to swipe their cards for payment at your establishment. They are trying to bring more backend services that benefit the merchant into the mix.
Echo Mobile is built entire from the ground up to be ready for the next generation of processing.
When I can reveal more, I will do so.
Right now though, you can participate in the private beta by applying here.
Follow @johnobeto
