* A look at storage vendors at LinuxWorld
An increasing number of storage players are showing up at Linux-related trade shows, which certainly makes sense as Linux transitions from being an operating system for wonks, hackers (in the old, good sense), scientists and aficionados, and becomes an operating environment for mainstream commercial computing.
Storage management vendors were scattered all about the show floor. Many of our old friends from the commercial world were there, including Computer Associates’ BrightStor and Veritas; in addition, we saw many smaller players such as Arkeia, Avamar, BakBone, Ibrix, Steeleye and Yosemite Technologies.
For those of you looking for Linux storage management tools, here is a quick overview of some of what I saw from the smaller vendors (I know some of these are not really small at all, but compared to Veritas and CA, sometimes everyone seems small).
* Arkeia (http://www.arkeia.com) offers network and server back-up solutions, plus bare-metal restore for disaster recovery. At LinuxWorld, the company announced that Silicon Graphics is bundling Arkeia software in SGI’s Itanium 2-based Altix 350 server.
* Avamar (http://www.avamar.com) provides back-up and restore solutions in three versions. Its Axion E is a back-up and restore appliance aimed at distributed workgroups and remote offices. The Axion M is a larger appliance for enterprise data protection, while the Axion S is a software-only version of the Axion M.
* BakBone (http://www.bakbone.com) provides data protection solutions for everything from small and midsize businesses through the enterprise. Its NetVault back-up and recovery product won the show’s award for “Best Data Backup or Storage Solution”. Increasingly, BakBone seems to be part of the mix when IT managers create their purchasing shortlists.
* Ibrix (http://www.ibrix.com) builds a parallel file system for environments that are shifting away from massively parallel supercomputers and moving toward clustered systems that take advantage of commodity Intel hardware. Right now, Ibrix’s Fusion software suite seems to be aimed at the engineering and scientific community, but clearly commercial applications that can take advantage of parallelization techniques (financial modeling and data warehousing are likely examples) will start to avail themselves of clustered Linux systems soon, as well.
* Storix (https://www.storix.com/) was also a finalist for the “Best Backup” award. Its System Backup Administrator provides Linux and AIX administrative tools that look to be appropriate for many SMB IT situations.
* SteelEye’s (https://www.steeleye.com/) LifeKeeper software provides data replication for Linux and Windows storage, and offers high-availability clustering for Exchange in Windows environments.
* Yosemite Technologies (https://www.yosemitetech.com/index.htm) offers a number of products for storage protection. At LinuxWorld, it announced a disk-to-disk backup module for its Tapeware product.
I know that many of my readers are Linux hardliners and some are already despairing at the growing commercial appeal of Linux. Some among them may even be worrying about the interaction of commerce and the concept of open-source code. To these people I have two bits of solace to offer:
First, there is every indication that open source is here to stay. As open source vendors continue to get better at what they do, both they and the whole open source concept are becoming all the more viable.
Second, Linux vendors may be aiming for commercial viability, but when it comes to marketing at least, it is amateur night for most of those guys. At least as far as the storage vendors were concerned, half the booths were populated with staffers who either didn’t know the product or who seemed more interested in talking with one another than in talking to attendees. This may, however, have been an academic issue at many booths because, try as you might, there was often no way to tell what kind of solution the company was offering.
Key point for any aspiring marketers out there: No matter how snazzy the name of your product, if nobody has the faintest idea what it does a product name alone is not going to bring anyone into your booth.
Thus, a word to the wise and the not-so-wise alike: If your company is going to spend money on a booth at a trade show (not usually a good investment in my opinion), at least try to get some of the passers-by to stop in and look at what you have to show. How to do this? Try a simple sign that uses such provocative terms as “data protection”, “recovery” and the like. Otherwise, you’ll get much more value out of your marketing dollar by buying the engineering department a case of beer and keeping them happy.
Actually, you should probably do that anyway.
