The Storage Economist

The past 3 blogs have covered the economics behind reclamation (of disk) compared to buying new disk. My material has focus on reclamation due to storage virtualization, over provisioning (thin provisioning) and zero page reclaim. The same methods can be used for other capacity efficiency techniques to be sure. The other blogs covering the setup, [...]

I came across several articles this weekend that implied the stalled economy and high unemployment can be attributed to IT automation, doing more with less and improved business operations and functions. Are these not the holy grails of business and IT operation professionals? Some of the points in these articles seem to place poor employment [...]

When I started college, I first selected math as my emphasis of study. I think it was the second calculus class that helped me realize that multi-variable problems were not my strong point, so I dropped my math major and I chose (for me) a more systematic or logical degree in computer engineering.

I had a meeting with a State Government CIO this week. As is the case with most government clients, the discussion centered on cost reductions, and their perspective that in the future they need to “just buy cheaper disks” to get around their current IT budget difficulties.

Hu Yoshida posted a blog last week on the issues around data center transformation and the impact of Decommissioning Applications. Hu and I exchanged emails while I was in Europe on this topic, and he has asked that I put this issue into context around storage economics.

For the past 12 years, I have been defining and refining principles, concepts, categories and models around storage economics. In the past few years, it has become necessary to move into adjacent infrastructure areas to identify, measure and reduce the costs of IT.

I love the movie Inception. I have to admit it took 2-3 viewings before I understood and followed the sequence of events, especially as the scenes were split between 3, 4 or even 5 levels. The nesting of these stories (or stories within the story) made my head hurt at first, but I was later [...]

I was working on my taxes two weeks ago, and as usual ended up humming the Taxman song from the Beatles. Part of the lyrics penned by George Harrison goes as follows: “Let me tell you how it will be; There’s one for you, nineteen for me. ‘Cause I’m the taxman, Yeah, I’m the taxman”. [...]

If you have followed this blog, or been exposed to storage economics from Hitachi over the past few years, you will recall that we have characterized and documented some 33 different types of costs that make up storage total cost of ownership (TCO). The key part is that price does not equal costs, and there [...]

One of the 33 types of costs outlined in storage economics is the cost of migration, or the cost of remastering. Last week, colleagues in Australia asked me the difference between the two, and how these costs factor into the total cost of ownership (TCO) of certain storage architectures. If you follow the links above, [...]