Birth of a storage magician

Sometimes stuff happens that just makes you feel old. Recently an email went around EMC asking us what we remembered about the early days of ATF, Array Guide, and Navisphere. I brushed off the cobwebs in the old brain bucket, and listed the cast of characters and products as best as I could remember. I kicked off the return email. Shortly, I got a reply from an old friend on the list saying damn, Mich, that was close to twenty years ago. Now feeling old, and after looking for the Geritol and my walker, I began thinking back. You know a mind can be a dangerous thing when enabled. I began pondering ”how long have I really been doing this?” After getting over the shock and horror that I had actually become one of those old farts I knew and loved in the old time data centers with punch cards and green bar, I started chuckling a bit remembering all the weird and wild times I’ve had over the years. I figured I'd share some of the stories; so below is the first, which should prove to be entertaining to those who don’t know me, and to those who do have a hint of how I've become this crazy man.

I never really intended to go into the storage industry from the start. My first real computer job was writing cash register software for one of the very first front and back office system vendors. This was back in the day when cashiers actually counted change by hand. It was the late 70’s thru the early 80’s. It was a tough time for start-ups, and alas, the poor company wound up having the doors locked by the IRS. I began consulting with all the customers of the prior company, and at some point, I met Bill The Concert Promoter. Bill was the picture of cool for the time with his, short beach shirt, dress shorts, and Birkenstock’s. His lack of socks all balanced out with dark sunglasses and a California tan. This slick picture of cool managed to talk myself and two other friends, Tom and Wade into helping him start up a software company.

My first job was to create a tape backup application for the Vic 20 and C64. I didn't realize it until much later, but this was my lesson on when to look for the small unsubtle clues in life. I’ll never forget my first meeting with Bill Living in an apartment on my parents land in Santa Barbara, California with a dog named Duke, who was a cross between a golden retriever and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bill had arrived, and we had just started talking about the project when Duke trotted into the area wagging his tail. Gaining his usual attention from me, he then walked over Bill and paused. Then, in one quick, smooth, and unusually quiet motion, he managed to deposit what looked like a couple pounds of partially digested dog food across both of Bill’s feet. I looked down in horror at his toes being held captive by the molten mound of kibble in combination with the look of bewilderment on Bill’s face. Spotting a scoop shovel nearby used by my family’s construction business, I dashed to grab it. Bill managed to extract himself from Alpo Mountain by the time I returned with the shovel. After removing one full scoop shovel full of soggy kibble, providing a towel, and some nervous joking, we managed to get back to the conversation at hand. As it turned out later Duke was a very shrewd judge of character. Despite Dukes best attempts, I managed to secure the job to do the tape backup application, and thus started my first adventure into the land of storage.

Wade’s project at that time was to create disk replication software for the Commodore 64, which was to be known as “Disk Maker.” This became an overnight success, and soon this small software company was up to its elbows in orders for this backup/pirate software. I became the expert on the back office system. We did all our own floppy duplication, shipping, order processing, and tech support. By the time I left, Bill The Concert Promoter’s company I had automated every aspect of the office, order processing, and replication systems. Like a lot of things during this era, myself, Tom, and Wade’s dreams were never realized. Duke was indeed right, Bill managed to spend, blow, or hide all the profits from the sales of our software. That aside, this was the first of many strange adventures into the land of Storage…

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Microsoft learns with Linux and Hyper-V

In today’s market place of over labeled hype and spin it’s refreshing to see when a company noted for such spin steps up and avoids bad habits. While at LinuxCon Boston last week I was looking over the show program trying to decide what talks caught my fancy. Eyeing “The Physics Behind the Microsoft Hyper-V Drivers For Linux”  by Hank Janssen, caught my eye. My fist thought was boy this should be interesting, my second I was glad I'm not the Microsoft dude. I found a seat in a pretty well attended session and was ready for the show to begin. I was so surprised when it started standing before me was not a marketing suit or program manager. A real kernel developer stood where once you would see an empty vessel. Hank truly knew his topic matter and wasn't just informing the community what they intended to do. Better yet he was actively seeking a better way of going about the process. All along the presentation he asked for better ways to  make sure that both the Linux and Microsoft issues were addressed. He took his shots well and pushed back when needed. The fact of the matter is simple here OS vendors needs the support of the new virtualization engines coming into the market place. The VM vendors are the new emerging arms vendors in the data centers today. The OS will be battling it out to see which weapon works better for the customers arms dealers of choice. Having a good strategy into the virtual market place should and needs to be a high priority for any OS vendor today.   

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Is there any newness left?

An interesting thought occurred to me during an ad-hoc debate about the last truly new idea we could remember. Having covered several examples and their impact on a given industry. I thought it would be a good idea to pass this along.

These seemed to stand out as good examples
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We all agreed that the PC was a game changing idea and product. We also agreed that both the Apple’s and Microsoft’s OS’s simply leveraged the innovative thinking of the corresponding hardware platforms.

The Segway was another interesting discussion where I couldn't agree whether it was a success or not. I didn't really see it as a transforming idea. This could be partly due to an inability to create, captivate and execute on its market space.

CDP (Continuous Data Protection) gets mixed marks as a new innovation. It managed to change drastically the way we think about data protection.

This seemed like a simple task at first, but quickly proved that King Solomon was right “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Simply put, we tend to reinvent and mix the same set of technologies and come up with different results.

I may have a jaded view of the act of invention, but what really makes an idea new? If you look at my industry for example, we tend to focus on small incremental changes with no real explosions of newness. This leads me to have to say that new invention is all about the creation of new market collections. The PC wasn't really new, but rather opened up a market space that to this day continues to deepen its access to the masses. The Segway has yet to be proven as to its impact into the new green markets. It is clear they’ve had some level of impact, but is it really the market creator here? CDP--as short-lived as it might have been, helped create new markets and changed the thinking within existing markets, but failed to produce a market of its own.

Interestingly, the discussion tends to change when you step out of your comfort zone--whatever that may be. For example, I think Biotech and Nanotech are full of newness, but I wonder if someone with equal understanding of those industries would have the same opinion. This medium of new social networks and tools has created a whole new market space waiting to be fully activated and proven. Yet, what new concepts and technologies are really present? Still, you can’t deny its impact and change to all of us however. 
Perhaps at the end of all of this Plato was correct and that it’s all a matter of perception.

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