I never expected such a large push back from IBM fanboys over the SVC.  I’m sorry if I personally offended any of you, that was not my intention.  It is in my fairly limited experience doing SAN assessments and optimizations for about 1700 customers in my Professional Services career, and consulting to another few hundred in recent times that I make the statement I do.

Here is a little information from someone who has worked for a "big iron" manufacturer.  The numbers that are talked about with analysts mean NOTHING!  Just because IBM claims the numbers they do, that doesn’t mean they are "true".  I know for a fact that about 75% of the first 1000 SVC "customers" were actually deployments into IBM VAR labs.  These systems never saw a production application and never will.  I would love to see this list of 1000 reference customers that are using the SVC, there isn’t a product sold by IBM, EMC, or HDS that has a 1000 reference customers, mainly because who would waste the time developing that many reference accounts?

As for dusty, pardon me, but I was using a little bit of sarcasm.  What I meant to say is that the systems haven’t ever been taken out of the the shipping containers! 

Finally, giving the systems away.  Of course, in back-office paper nothing is ever given away.  But let’s be honest, stuff is "thrown" into deals to make it look sweeter then it is, SVC is an example of this sweetness that is used during regular disk sales.  I just ran into an account where this sales method was used by IBM last week, which is why I got on the SVC path I did.  If you look at McData’s books it looks like they sold a heck of a lot of SAN Navigator software with FC switches, much of which was through EMC, but in reality it was included in large FC swtich deals to get the deal done.  In STK land, installation services were regularly given away in order to help deals close.  If you haven’t been on the sales side if IT, and are a chief magician of technology development, or some other grand title, then ask around, I’m not lying or even greatly stretching the truth.

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UPDATE – After a little grief, I will be writing a true, Why IT Start-Ups Fail piece in the near future!!!

So I have personally been involved in a couple of start-ups, however, my associations with start-ups has put me in contact with many. Why does a start-up fail? More importantly why does an IT based start-up fail. I think it is easy to explain the complete failure of the “dot-com” failures that riddle old pages of CNET and WIRED. My favorite being www.kibu.com because of my familial relations with one of the founders. As a side note, kibu.com made CNET’s TOP 5 dot-bomb list. The only reason it didn’t top that list is the fact the founders did something unheard of, they gave the VC investors money back before they blew through it ALL. So many storage, computer, software, accessory start-ups have come and gone over the years, but it is the most recent ones that should be explored. Companies that came about in the mid-to-late 90′s are just boring. One of these days I’m going to do a patent search for patents that are associated with companies that are no longer in business, because I think I’ll be extremely surprised by the results.

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Looks like another IPO. Compellent was up to a little over $28 a share at market close yesterday. I was a little disappointed at the market cap at IPO of only around $300 million. As of 8:45am MST this morning on 10/11/2007 they are already down during early trading. With the up-coming IPOs of several other start-up companies I refer back to some other statements I’ve made that discuss companies that are going public with less then $100 Million in revenue. It still looks like it takes a few million a year to remain public between auditing and other fees associated with being a public company. I wish Compellent the best of luck over the next few months, I am sure that they will be under the scrutiny of analysts and technologists during the next few revenue statements.

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I’ve heard recently I’ve Confirmed (see comment from LH below) that Raju Bopardikar might have finally left what is left of Crosswalk, Inc. Rumblings about Crosswalk, were that a small staff might be still employed working on another storage product line, or attempting to revitalize the iGrid product. As of writing this everything is pure speculation. The www.crosswalkinc.com website is still bringing up a 404 Not Found Error. However, I have heard that Raju either left what was left of Crosswalk, or he was asked to leave, who knows the story for sure??? As far as the latest update, it sounds like Raju might have landed himself the CTO position over at LeftHand Networks.

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So I cannot be a geek all the time. I do actually have serious hobbies that get me out from behind the keyboard. I played Rugby for about 8 years, including a long 4 week tour through Europe. I play tennis every other weekend, and plan on playing for the rest of my able life. More recently I ride 4 different “bikes”. I have a wonderfully built Trek Carbon-fiber road bike with Dura-Ace components. I have my old Giant Road bike that I have converted to a cyclo-cross bike with Ultegra components. Then for a change of pace, I have a 2002 Honda SuperHawk that I’ve been messing with for several years, and is almost too fast to take out anymore on public streets. Finally, I have my Chopper. This is a very customer rigid motorcycle that has seen various transformations over the past few years. I’ve posted pictures of both my sport bike and my Chopper.

So why is this important? Anyone that has been interviewed by me, knows that outside of my normal amount of technical questions, and job history grilling, I always ask a simple question for me. “What is your passion outside of work?” Read the rest of this entry »