The small storage world

Small towns in northern New England like the one where I grew up often tend to look inwards.   Not “inwards” in the sense of being introspective (although that sometimes happens as well – remember, Robert Frost came from this part of the world), but rather inwards in the sense of keeping an eye on what their neighbors are doing.

For better or worse people keep an eye on one another.  I guess it depends on your point of view whether this is good or bad.  It’s nice to know when you are out of town that your neighbor will check up if he sees lights on in your living room.  It is maybe less nice when he peeks in just for the sake of peeking.

And of course, always, there are also more than a few busybodies who like to know who is not paying their taxes, who just got arrested, and who is sleeping with whom.  Whether or not such topics are any of their business is of course beside the point.

Often such towns split up into two or three groups, which talk among themselves but often don’t spend much time with the members of the other groups.

The storage world in some respects is like a small town.  On the vendor side, everyone knows what everybody else is doing because, after all, everyone goes to the same meetings and talks with the same people year after year.  Furthermore, in many cases the executives play musical chairs with the same small group of companies, moving from one to the other over the course of their careers like elk on a migration route.  Often they bring their minions with them (I know the metaphor breaks down here – I am pretty confident elk have antlers, but I am not quite sure about the minions).

IT managers move in similar circles. Although they change jobs with less frequency, they still spend a fair amount of time talking among themselves. Managers aggregate with groups who have similar responsibilities and similar challenges:  IT directors at merchant banks tend to listen to IT directors at other merchant banks; CIOs at healthcare providers tend to spend time in discussion with their counterparts at other companies in the healthcare segment.

Vendors and IT management are constantly looking over their shoulders at one another, each trying to understand what the other is doing.  Occasionally they get together for a social occasion (the vendors tend to call them “focus groups,” the folks on the IT side sometimes pronounce it “boondoggles”), but other than that the two groups don’t interact nearly as much as you might think they do. 

And they still keep wondering about who is sleeping with whom.  We’ll talk about that next time.

P.S. If you are going to be at Storage Networking World and you happen to see me, please stop by and say hello.  I’ll be the haggard looking guy trying to get an article in on time.