The Tech Field Day staff have been working behind the scenes to improve the quality and timeliness of video output from our event. We are pleased to present the first result of this work, in the form of live streaming from Tech Field Day 4 in San Jose this week.

Tech Field Day in San Jose began at the NetApp briefing center. The session kicked off with an introduction by co-founder and engineer, Dave Hitz. Dave spent the rest of the session in the audience, contributing his knowledge to every session. Next up was Steve Daniel, who discussed benchmarks and performance. Steve also covered the role of NAS and SAN in today’s datacenter.

Joshua Konkle talked about cloud and object storage NetApp’s acquisition of Bycast. At our prodding, Konkle also talked a bit about pNFS and alternative object storage approaches.

After Konkle was Greg Kleiman who initiated a discussion of the role of tiering and caching in storage. (We will revisit this topic with Aprius this afternoon!)

Santosh Rao covered the development of NetApp’s storage operating system, ONTAP. After discussing the progress from 7.x to 8.x, Rao discussed the new features in 8.0.1, introduced just this week.

Our morning with NetApp concluded with a joint discussion about the new FlexPod offering, along with Cisco and VMware. NetApp was represented by “virtual storage guy”, Vaughn Stewart. Joining him was Ravi Neelakant of VMware and Thomas Scheibe of Cisco. The FlexPod discussion was a highlight for many Field Day delegates, who compared it to “the elephant in the room”, the VCE vBlock.

We finished up with our roundtable discussion focused on NetApp’s morning session. This discussion will be posted to our podcast feed, but here’s a sneak preview!

Our video crew also grabbed some interviews with the NetApp folks, presented at the top and below.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | NetApp: Live From Tech Field Day San Jose
Read more posts categorized as Events, Exclusive, Server Virtualization, Storage

This change should not come as news to anyone who closely watches the company. Georgens was said to be the most-likely successor for Warmenhoven since his hiring in 2005 to lead NetApp’s enterprise storage systems group. He previously led LSI’s Engenio subsidiary and has experience at EMC as well. Analysts speak of Georgens with respect and expect little immediate change in the company’s strategy.

NetApp’s press release went out at 4:05 Eastern time, just after the close of the stock market. First-quarter 2010 financial results were announced at the same time, further diluting the market effects of the transition. The company’s stock was trading down slightly after-hours, but no major market movement is expected as a result of the transition. Warmenhoven will remain with the company for a short time before his expected retirement in 2010.

This executive succession stands in contrast to many companies inside and out of the storage industry. Many have speculated, for example, about who might be picked to replace Joe Tucci at the helm of NetApp rival, EMC, but no clear successor has emerged. No company’s succession plan has drawn more speculation than Apple, which has been tightly tied to the fortunes of CEO Steve Jobs. Both could learn a lesson from this gentle NetApp transition.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2009. | NetApp Shows How CEO Succession Should Work
Read more posts categorized as Exclusive, Featured, Storage