Barry M. Ferrite AI Advisor

Behind the Scenes: The StorONE Webcast

Last month, I had the pleasure of doing a webcast with Gal Naor, CEO of StorONE, a truly disruptive software-defined storage play.  The webinar was well received and can be viewed online on the StorONE site or at the webinar replay site established by 1105 Media and Virtualization & Cloud Review.

If you know anything about these webinars, they usually consist of a modestly animated slide deck,…

Storage Pyramid Found In Ancient Mummy’s Tomb: Dates Well Before Google (BG)

Storage technology may not be the hot topic in the industry today, but we need to be careful that we do not lose time-honored skills and knowledge.  Yes, it may seem like the old storage pyramid,  popularized by smart guy Fred Moore of Horison Information Strategies, is rather antiquated today.  Vendors evangelize all silicon infrastructure, flat storage, and hyper-convergence and often diss…

Zoginstor At His Finest

Okay.  I admit it.  I am a fanboy of one Eric Herzog, IBM Vice President of Storage and Chief Marketing Office.  Known on Twitter as  Zoginstor, Eric has been schooling me on storage since I wrote my first book on the subject back in the 1990s.

My last interview with Eric was at Think 2018,  where he gave me one of his energetic updates on the storage industry and IBM innovation.  I have seen him…

Storage Technology Meets the Big Screen

With the upcoming Tape Power Summit in Chicago, where I will premiere a humorous movie trailer we are creating for an imaginary film franchise called the Data Defenders, I have film and media on the brain right now.   At IBM Think 2018 a couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to interview a very smart fellow, Robert Murphy of Pixit Media, who sought to set me straight on the role of flash…

Stand By for the Data Defenders

I have been invited to speak next week in Chicago at Fujifilm’s Tape Power Summit.  I am looking forward to reconnecting with my many friends there, especially since my eighth consecutive year of attending the event (last year) was interrupted by Hurricane Irma.  This year, the hurricanes are tracking north of me and appear to be focused on the East Coast (thoughts and prayers for those in harm’s…

Storage is Like Toilet Paper: The Insight that Earned a Promotion

Of all the IBM execs I have had the pleasure to interview, one who stands out is Calline Sanchez.  My last in person chat with her was in March at IBM Think 2018.  The interview, which may have been published on an IBM blog site around that time, included a quip by Sanchez:  “Storage is like toilet paper…”

Truer words were never spoken.  And that quote, with or without her interview clip, made…

8 Questions About Object Storage: Exclusive Interview with Cloudian’s Jon Toor

A couple of months back, I travelled to the Left Coast to meet up with a couple of trendsetting vendors and to speak at a confab set up by ASCDI.  At the latter, I had occasion to meet up with Jon Toor, who is the CMO for Cloudian.  I knew Jon in several previous lives and it was fun to catch up.  On a lark, I stood him up in front of my camera in the corner of the ASCDI venue and shot a quick…

Talking Software-Defined Storage with IBM’s Alex Chan

Last time I was at IBM Think, in other words, at the first Think show in Las Vegas last March, I shot a bunch of video interviews.  Right of first use went to IBM who traded my work for a free pass to the show and the able assistance of an IBM operative to round up interviewees.  The event was outstanding and so were the interviews.  After editing, I waited for word that IBM had published the…

IBM Think 2018 Thought Leader Recap Continues: IBM VP Storage Jeff Barber

Jeff Barber is a good guy.  He mixes his engineering pedigree with the no holds barred fun of being an executive at IBM, Vice President of Storage.  I met him for the second time (if memory serves) at Think 2018 and he agreed to be interviewed provided that I was in the interview too.

I quickly realized that he is a personable guy who feels more comfortable in a conversation than in a formal…

Another Thought Leader: Andy Walls

Since I am on a roll, thought I would post another interview I shot at IBM Think 2018 and never saw published in the IBM blogsphere following the event.  Since I still have rights to these videos, I wanted to make sure that they are shared and that everyone can benefit from the information that I received from some of the smart guys at IBM.

Andy Walls is scary smart.  He is a Distinguished…

Thought Leadership: IBM’s Clod Barrera

Today, as a looked over posts on Twitter, I caught a picture of my boots  (on the right) from the Think 2018 conference earlier this year.  We were interviewing IBM thought leaders at that show — among the best events that I have ever attended, by the way — when it occurred to me that the fellow in the picture, Clod Barrera, gave a great interview that I didn’t see published anywhere.  Clod has…

Final Installment of StorONE Interview

This blog contains the final two clips from our in depth interview with Gal Naor, CEO of StorONE, as he prepares to announce the details of his new software-defined storage technology, S1, at VMworld.  Gal will be doing a special speaking session at the show on Tuesday.  Check HERE for details on that event and to schedule a demo of the technology during the show.

Here are the concluding clips of…

StorONE’s Gal Naor Makes the Case for S1 – Part 3 of a 4 Part Interview

This is the third installment of the interview we conducted before VMworld with Gal Naor, CEO of StorONE.  We  hope you have found the previous segments informative and believe that these segments, which include a discussion of S1’s enterprise class performance, will motivate you, as it has us, to learn more about the technology.

If you are at VMworld, you can see Gal and StorONE and get a Demo…

StorONE Interview Part 2: You Must See This

Continuing on from the previous post, we continue with our chat with StorONE CEO and long time friend, Gal Naor, regarding his new technology offering, S1 from StorONE.  Following this conversation and the demonstrations Gal provided to us, I am convinced that this technology could be a game changer:  delivering on the promise of software-defined storage with the  scalable performance, the…

StorONE: The Vendor to See at VMworld…or anywhere else

Okay.  So, I stated in the previous post that I wasn’t going to VMworld this year.  I gave a long winded explanation of my reasoning and even brought in a Kardashian reference to boost blog hit counts.

Now, for the serious stuff.  If I were going to VMworld, one company I would be sure to visit is StorONE.  A link to their info and booth number are here, thanks to Mark Smith at JPR Communications.

Not at VMworld, but if you are…

VMworld strikes me a bit like watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians. It makes a person lose IQ points.

Now, I say this knowing that I will piss off a bunch of folks who think that VMworld is a quality trade show and that I am trash talking their favorite technology vendor.  Some might even correctly assert that I haven’t been to ‘world in a couple of years, and times have changed since it was…

Storage is Like Toilet Paper — Calline Sanchez, IBM

Usually, I don’t expect such candor from industry insiders, but I was delighted to hear Calline Sanchez, one of my favorite IBM execs, confirm what I already suspected.  The current disinterest among many IT consumers with physical infrastructure, including storage, is wildly mistaken. 

I had been questioning my career after traveling to Silicon Valley just prior to attending the IBM THINK…