The Storage Economist

Lately, people have asked me about the difference of ROI and ROA, both techniques that we use in defining storage economics. Here is my IT-econ perspective. Read More

I have had many different blog entries over the years dealing with verifiable, real, tangible cost reduction tactics. Doing more with less, or at least doing more with what you already have. We talk about the cost of waste, reclaiming waste, and having a strong enough constitution to go to your management asking for the investments to really improve utilization, ROA and total costs.

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A recent blog entry on Storage Monkeys mentions thin provisioning and the proper investments needed in implementation in order to achieve a TCO reduction. My comments are in that blog, but we should not be surprised that any new storage approach or technology can have an impact on TCO, but the investments are not free. Read More

A great article from CIO Magazine online, citing a Ponemon Institute study on the cost of a security breach. This $200 per customer record is broken down into several cost factors: Read More

Like most people, I am hopeful that the long, dark 15-18-month IT recession is over. I like to read all the optimistic articles pointing to a comeback. Read More

Just after I posted an entry last week on setting up a strategic storage or IT architecture, I came across this Dilbert cartoon. Read More

Lots of people write about new year’s resolutions. I am not going to elaborate on my one, you do not want to read about them and I may not want to share them… Read More

I have been working this past week in Mumbai and Bangalore India, but still trying to keep connected with 2 hot topics in my world of storage economics: Storage Clouds and greenhouse emission standards coming out of Copenhagen this week. Let me see if I can reconcile these 2 topics in one blog entry… Read More

The title of this blog come from Shakespeare, from Julius Caesar. This phrase is often misquoted as to pertaining canines that symbolize warmongers. The dog in ‘dogs of war’ is a restraining device, and the phrase takes on the meaning (after the murder of Caesar) of soon the man-made restraints are to be removed, and war will likely follow. Lots of mis-quotations of this phrase in the news this week with war build-up, and the error in blaming a family pet for the resulting escalation… Read More

We have been showing clients for years how Storage Virtualization and Dynamic (thin) Provisioning saves money by producing higher utilization rates, and thereby reducing current and future capital expenditures. Better Utilization = Better Return on Asset (ROA). Your CFO will love that message. Read More