* Annual storage wish list for Santa
Dear Editor, I am writing to you again this year. I am 8 years old. Still. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in the storage newsletter, it’s so.” He is an IT director. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? If there is, please give him this wish list from Papa.
Dear Editor,
I am writing to you again this year. I am 8 years old. Still. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in the storage newsletter, it’s so.” He is an IT director. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? If there is, please give him this wish list from Papa.
Dear Santa,
I would really like the following for Christmas. If that is not possible, I would be glad to accept them for Chanukah or Kwanzaa or Arbor Day or Midsummer Night’s Eve.
1. A definition of SMB that makes sense. (From John in Washington State.) He’s a small business but a power IT user, and seems to be getting annoyed at sales reps that come in and treat him as if he were an idiot. He makes a point near to my heart – all SMBs are not the same.
2. And on the same topic… how about some products for the “S” in SMB? Designing products for companies with 5,000 employees does not really make you a solution provider for small business.
3. A nice listing of all the new regulations that affect each industry – a Web site, perhaps? Perhaps one offering some direction about which regulation affects which market?
4. An industrywide distinction between two terms, “cluster” and “grid.”
5. A technology to let tapes from virtual tape libraries write to physical tapes more efficiently, so that less physical tape is wasted.
6. The sense that the Storage Industry Networking Association (SNIA) has the ability to move at a better-than-glacial rate, and that it has the willingness to do so. I understand that building standards and certifying compliance takes time, but dinosaurs can turn to oil in the time it takes SNIA to move forward.
7. And enough of this Aperi/SMI-S foolishness! Can’t we all just get along?
8. Al in Georgia asks for logic he can pitch to his management that shows (a) how to go with a single vendor for both storage and systems and (b) how to avoid being locked if he does consolidate. (I think he is managing contracts all night.)
9. A reader in Oman would appreciate seeing some manuals written in his native language.
10. Everyone likes the idea of context-sensitive help, but how about making sure those help notes actually apply to the context. Context-sensitive-but-generic help is no help at all. (From Mr. Danial Fader of Ft. Lee, N.J.)
11. “B” near Boston hopes his boss will let him transport data to remote sites over an existing (but apparently unused) wire rather than via tape in the back of a truck. For some reason he seems to feel that this would be safer, faster and cheaper.
12. Paraphrasing a request from two readers…PLEASE SOMEONE TELL ME WHERE THE ENCRYPTION BELONGS!
13. From last year’s list, but clearly still relevant: Some blade servers would be useful, but only ones that allow me to manage storage efficiently across several server chassis. And P.S., it would be nice if those blade servers provided lots of storage without putting me to the expense of having to provide enough power to light the city of Chicago, and without generating enough heat to melt platinum.
14. From “Nancy” in California, the following: “please ask the business managers in my company, before they do another acquisition, to first figure out what it’s gong to cost to manage the IT resources of the two companies, and then to please get us the appropriate training before the staff at the company being acquired jumps ship and leaves us with a bunch of machines we can’t support.”
15. And finally, give me the ability to sleep at night (get me any three of the above and I’m pretty sure this will follow).
Santa, these are reasonably straightforward requests.
If you will get me the things I ask for, I will be really good for the next four quarters, and I promise to live up to all my SLA’s and to justify each of my purchases with a really great ROI analysis so my CFO can understand what I am doing.
Thanks Santa
P.S. Please don’t smoke your pipe in the computer room. We are all sorry about that business with the Halon last year.
