I loved this blog entry about Web 2.0 because the last paragraph is beginning to have relevance in our own world of storage.
“The lesson to take away is that, in this cycle anyway, the hard architectural problems have been solved to a “good enough” degree, now its about making them easier to use etc. Its like post war cars – once it was sorted out how they worked, where to put the pedals etc, it became largely a styling game for quite a while.”
Despite a lot of the huffing and puffing by the various vendors, I think that we are about to enter a cycle where this is true for array-based storage. Most vendors, if you have a serious and open conversation, admit that their competitors’ arrays are pretty much good enough for whatever you want them to do. Of course there are a few features which differentiate them, but they are all catching up with each other in this space.
It will get harder and harder to choose between vendors based on features; it is going to come down to useability, manageability and reliability.
The array is heading towards functional maturity and after this year is done, I’m expecting the battle-ground to move to the skies.
