What’s the difference between naughty and nice when it comes to IT companies? Microsoft and EMC would definitely not have made the nice list over the last decade, but things are changing. With their competition taking dents in the ongoing battles, Microsoft and EMC just don’t look so bad anymore.

I’ve been thinking about FAST and especially FAST v2 but not entirely from a storage point of view. FAST v2 and indeed any automated storage tiering product has some interesting uses beyond storage and could be a basis for a whole new way of managing IT as a service. In fact, it finally enables storage and beyond to managed as a service. BTW I’m going to use FAST as shorthand for any automated storage product; so please don’t take this as only being about EMC.

I am spending a few weeks examining the truths and fictions that bind our industry together. Let’s start with one of my favorite old canards: That enterprise storage must be overpriced because bare disk drives are so cheap.
I have seen this straw man argument set up by so many throughout my career that it has [...]

Championing “open” and calling for standards has become the first stalling action by late-movers in technology spaces. They see opportunity passing by and try to hold back progress and FUD the market by yelling about proprietary solutions, vendor lock-in, and a lack of standards. Many well-intentioned IT folks follow along: After all, who doesn’t want openness, standardization, and interoperability?

Will Chrome OS become relevant in connecting to VDI solutions? Google’s immediate traction and ultimate success with an OS relies on it’s ability to install VDI clients – not as a Microsoft desktop replacement, whether physical or virtual.

As cloud computing becomes more mainstream, investors will start looking to get in on the act. With that in mind, a friend and I began discussing which public companies were getting into the cloud computing market and to what extent. I have put together the following list, and encourage comments, suggestions, and contributions.

While the bulk of Sun-related news this week relates to reported talks of a buyout by IBM, the company took a break from negotiations to introduce their own cloud computing and storage infrastructure, challenging Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and perhaps VMware, Microsoft, and Nirvanix.