#130 – Making Money in the Storage Business

#130 – Making Money in the Storage Business

Chris EvansAll-Flash, Garbage Collection, NVMe, Storage Hardware

This week, Chris and Martin reflect on changes in the storage industry and the ways in which vendors can make money from storage hardware and software. It’s been a tough time for storage vendors of late and the discussion starts by looking at the challenges of making money in a market where components are commodity and decline in price each month. How should vendors adapt to these challenges? There are alternative strategies than simply piling it high and selling it cheap (although that is one model). All-flash systems offered the ability to charge higher margins, …

#91 – Storage Field Day 18 in Review

#91 – Storage Field Day 18 in Review

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week, Martin leads the conversation as Chris discusses the vendors presenting at the recent Storage Field Day 18 event.  SFD18 is part of the Tech Field Day series delivered by Stephen Foskett and GestaltIT.  We last spoke with Stephen in April 2018 – an episode on why storage isn’t boring. Although there’s no official theme for SFD events, the companies presenting were nicely delineated into scale-out primary storage and data protection.  WekaIO demonstrated their scale-out file system.  VAST Data came out of stealth and also presented a scale-out file system and object store.  Storpool …

#64 – Success & Failure in Storage Startup Land

#64 – Success & Failure in Storage Startup Land

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week’s conversation follows up on Chris’ recent visit to Flash Memory Summit in the US.  Chris and Martin discuss the storage startup landscape and the range of companies appearing at the event. What makes a company successful?  Is IPO or acquisition the right route?  The discussion starts with a simple, yet tricky question – why does storage continue to be such a diverse market place, with so many solutions to problems?  We see a storage “pendulum” effect, with vendors moving between hardware and software.  At the moment, there seems to be more focus on …

#62 – The Future of Data Infrastructure with Scott Hamilton

#62 – The Future of Data Infrastructure with Scott Hamilton

Chris EvansGuest Speakers

This is the third of a series of three podcasts recorded at Flash Memory Summit 2018.  In this conversation, Chris talks to Scott Hamilton, Senior Director of Product Management, DCS group at Western Digital Corporation.  WDC are working on a new architecture that will deliver a composable data infrastructure for the enterprise.  This podcast discussed why composable is needed and exactly what scale of customers will benefit from the disaggregation of compute and storage. WDC are not looking to move into the general infrastructure market with this solution, but rather are developing an open standard …