by Asif Khan
We’ve all read the doom and gloom articles on the fate of Apple since the passing of Steve Jobs. This article anointed Jobs the Ronald Reagan of Technology. Several others started asking “WWJD” (“what would Jobs do?”) every time the post-Jobs Apple had a misstep (like Apple Maps). And one can convincingly make the argument that Apple is not the same scrappy underdog we all used to root for.
Continue reading Has Apple Finally Jumped the Shark? Um. No.
by Asif Khan
To recap what we covered in the Data Tiering series so far, in Part 1, we discussed the history and evolution of data tiering for moving data BETWEEN storage arrays. In Part 2, we discussed how data tiering is being applied today to move data WITHIN storage arrays. In this, the third and final installment of the Data Tiering series, we will discuss what the future holds for Data Tiering (HINT: we will transition to moving data ACROSS the data center). As always, these are just my semi-informed opinions and if I’m proven wrong in the future, I will deny everything :-).
Continue reading Data Tiering: Been There, Done That, What’s Next? Part 3: What’s Next?
by Asif Khan
About 10 years ago, I had decided that I needed a major career change. I felt that I had sucked the marrow out of my marketing job and wanted to try something new. I wanted to get more technical and focus my career on data center infrastructure technologies. I thought this track would train me better to take advantage of a trend I was starting to see forming. At the time, they called it Web 2.0 or utility computing. It eventually came to be called Cloud Computing.
Continue reading Data Tiering: Been There, Done That, What’s Next? Part 2: Done That!
by Asif Khan
One of the coolest things about working at Accenture is that you can live anywhere AND work anywhere in the world…sometimes simultaneously. For example, one of my coworkers lives in Chicago and had the opportunity to work in Sydney for six months. Another lives in Seattle and spent two years in Paris. I recently had the opportunity to work on a project in Helsinki for three weeks–but I committed to another project with a shorter commute.
Continue reading Working at Accenture: “Location Independence”
by Asif Khan
Data tiering is not new. It was first introduced by IBM in the 1960s not long after magnetic disks allowed real-time access to stored data. Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) and its successor, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), enacted fixed rules to move data from one storage array to another (ie “after 90 days, move all inactive data to a cheaper storage platform”).
Continue reading Data Tiering: Been There, Done That, What’s Next? Part 1: Been There!
by Asif Khan
When I started this blog a little more than a year ago, I intended it to be a tightly focused cloud computing blog catering to a well defined audience: IT professionals with a passion for emerging technologies who want to understand how these tools can be used to solve business problems. In the beginning, most of my (tiny) audience was my Twitter followers.
by Asif Khan
I first saw Van Halen in concert when I was about 15. We’re talking about the real Van Halen! Not Van Hagar and definitely not the lame Van Halen with that singer from Extreme. We’re talking about David Lee Roth! Spandex! Kung fu kicks! Pyrotechnics! 20 minute guitar solos! The sweet smell of chronic all around me–but not from me because that would be illegal 😉 THAT Van Halen!
by Asif Khan
What About Converged Infrastructure?
Last year, converged infrastructure (ie EMC’s Vblock, NetApp’s FlexPod, IBM’s CloudBurst, HP’s CloudSystem) made a big splash. The premise is to deliver a self-contained rack with a single SKU and single phone number to call for support whether it be a compute, storage, network or hypervisor issue. Though the concept is powerful for smaller IT shops or for specific applications (like VDI or ERP) within large IT shops, this concept is not likely to catch on in the near future with large enterprises for two BIG reasons: process and people.
Continue reading What Will the Data Center of 2020 Look Like? Pg3
by Asif Khan
The Coming Decade
Diane Greene, co-founder and former CEO of VMware, once said “VMware is the most non-disruptive disruptive technology.” In other words, in the past decade, many customers were virtualizing their physical servers and continuing to run things pretty much the same way they ran it before virtualizing (aka “paving cow paths”). Now, the emerging popularity of IT-as-a-Service (OK, cloud computing) will force IT departments to rethink business-as-usual and start automating manual tasks if they don’t want to lose their customers (and by extension, their jobs) to more nimble providers of these services. The center of gravity has definitely shifted to the end user and that trend will continue to accelerate this coming decade.
Continue reading What Will the Data Center of 2020 Look Like? Pg2
The Vaporware Blog 