NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MIKE KARP
on STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE
10/18/01 - Today's focus: Agreeing on the same thing

Dear Wincenty Kaminski,

In this issue:

* Some industry terms are too wide and ambiguous, even in the
  storage world
* Links related to storage
* Featured reader resource

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Today's focus: Agreeing on the same thing

By Mike Karp

Storage Resource Management is a term much like
"virtualization" because both have almost as many definitions
as there are people talking about the subject. That's why when
my friend Anne and I talk to vendors and they bring up the
topic of SRM, one of the first questions we typically ask is
"What do you mean by SRM?"

Now Anne and I are both reasonable people (I much more so than
she, of course), so we aren't looking for any particular
"right" answer, and the question certainly isn't part of a
litmus test. The SRM question is just a way of calibrating the
vendor in terms of its outlook on the storage world, and that
usually turns out to be a useful exercise for both parties.
Sometimes we uncover silliness, but usually we find that the
vendors have given at least some critical thought to this
subject, and often they are better able to focus the discussion
on the subset of SRM that is their company's strength.

Sometimes vendors really miss the boat however, and
occasionally this takes place in just the wrong forum. At a
recent storage conference for instance, one vendor's
presentation identified "The Five Aspects of SRM." This quite
logically included the topics of backup and archiving.
Unfortunately, nowhere in the slide set was there any mention
of recovery, which is of course is the only reason for backing
up and archiving (unless you are selling tape drives and media,
in which case backing up for the sake of backing up makes
perfect sense). This point was not lost on the audience sitting
in front of me, whose private conversations proved once again
what many of you have known all along: towards the end of the
day, when hunger increases and the blood sugar lowers, senior
IT managers are no kinder than the rest of us.

The fix for this sort of thing is both simple and obvious. No
writer ever edits his own work. No scientific paper ever goes
to press without having undergone a process of peer-review
before publication. In like fashion, it makes little sense for
products to be planned or for presentations to be brought
before the public (or even before the venture capital
community) without some sort of critical analysis by a
relatively unbiased third party. Analyst firms offer these
services, and for smaller companies so do high tech incubators
and the various venture capital forums that are still very
active in the more technology-centric areas such as Silicon
Valley, Cambridge and Austin.

Don't like these suggestions? Then at least go to someone
within your own company - someone, I might add, who wasn't
involved in building the presentation - for a reality check.
You may be pleasantly surprised by the insights some of your
junior engineers have to offer.


Editor's Note: In last week's newsletter headlined "Taking a
Swiss approach to storage," the correct reference to NAS is
Network-Attached Storage.

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To contact Mike Karp:

Mike Karp is senior analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates (http://www.enterprisemanagement.com) in Boulder,
Colo., an analyst and market research firm focusing exclusively
on enterprise management. He works out of Portsmouth, N.H., and
Westboro, Mass., and can be reached via e-mail at
mailto:mkarp@enterprisemanagement.com
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RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS

Archive of the Storage newsletter:
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/stor/index.html
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