Wading through my usual early morning spam I noticed that there was a number of articles relating to IoT (Internet of Things) and storage growth.
Like the idiotic mindless early stage cloud marketing types it seems the storage marketing lot have really been let loose from the asylum today. It appears that we are about to get drowned by loads of storage requirements generated by the Internet of Things.. oh and our data centres will not cope…Yawn.
I have to wonder if these laggard dull storage-marketing idiots actually understand anything about technology at all? Or better still do they look at the world around them and question anything?
[easy-tweet tweet=”The storage marketing in your inbox is just scaremongering ” user=”comparethecloud” hashtags=”storage, datacentre”]
The damage the storage marketing types have caused is seen in the data centres up and down the country filled with SANs, Fibre Switches and other storage technologies which have rendered those cloud providers and MSP’s unable to compete on costs due to early adoption and false storage marketing in respect to the promise of cloud adoption and storage needs..
Ok so we are going to have Zetabytes, Zogabytes or even gogabytes (I made that one up), so the internet of things will explode ok… Does that mean end-users and cloud providers should rush out now and go and buy lots of storage? For anticipated demand that is… I mean seriously, I know you have to sell a product, but really?
Dear storage marketer, do you actually do any research at all? Have you looked at the recent news regarding breakthroughs in processor size? Or better still have you looked at future advances in storage here is a little research link regarding DNA and storage.
Here is an idea. How about informing the customers of your products correctly and ‘tell rather than sell’? Or better still go and speak to your finance teams and come up with a model that scales on demand (or shrinks) inline with a cloud-billing model?
My personal view is that the sooner storage vendors are compelled by customer demand to move into a subscription model the better (one with no lock-in using open standards and swappable components). Currently the storage market is awash with a lock-in mentality, I mean yes you can get a free SAN enclosure but it is the cost of the drives thereafter that pays for your free lunch.
Advances in object storage and codification / virtualisation of the network and storage pools hopefully will allow cloud providers and end-users to liberate resources away from proprietary stacks.
My open question to the storage marketers is this, in two years time when your customer is sitting with a great big blob of your storage and rules out ever dealing with your organisation again will you think ‘we did well selling that box’? Or will you think, this customer has really grown it’s a shame we used marketing rubbish to lock them in? The former will be the truthful answer I suspect, and it is this short term pursuit of targets that will see storage vendors be obliterated by cloud storage models long term.
The final thought I will leave those that have managed to reach the bottom of this blog post is this, the iPhone you hold has more processing power than all the Axis and Allied powers combined in World War Two!
Miniaturisation is a process of taking an item making it smaller driving down costs and increasing performance; this will happen to storage. The Internet of Things will help this drive.
If you want my sincere advice if your organisation is looking to scale up storage in anticipation of IoT demand in 2018 DON’T…
