As you suggest on the surface FAST sounds like a great technology regardless of which vendor it comes from. However as you point out, exactly how intelligent and adaptive is it? Can it deal with the complexities and oddities of business systems without lots of human fed insight. EMC have obviously indicated that their FAST will work on a policy basis, i.e. the human fed insight, but some form of trend identification or analysis engine will be required to compliment those policies and make it a success. Ideally you would like to see this being fully automated but maybe the facts are that “Fully Automated” may not be entirely achievable and human interaction and analysis will always be needed. I'd very much like to be proved wrong on!!

As you suggest on the surface FAST sounds like a great technology regardless of which vendor it comes from. However as you point out, exactly how intelligent and adaptive is it? Can it deal with the complexities and oddities of business systems without lots of human fed insight. EMC have obviously indicated that their FAST will work on a policy basis, i.e. the human fed insight, but some form of trend identification or analysis engine will be required to compliment those policies and make it a success. Ideally you would like to see this being fully automated but maybe the facts are that “Fully Automated” may not be entirely achievable and human interaction and analysis will always be needed. I'd very much like to be proved wrong on!!