The Storage Economist

Most of us have bought a car before and sometimes we have an older vehicle to trade in. I have always been disappointed in the trade-in value of my older car, but realize that cars depreciate rather quickly. If the car is running and reasonably driveable, you will get something for the trade-in. I tend [...]

A few months ago I wrote a 4-part blog series on the cost of data protection. One of those entries discussed an approach to calculate the annual loss expectancy (ALE) related to risk, and the cost of risks. I had a program several years ago that helps calculate the probability of 19 of the most [...]

I came across this article on the total cost of storage (and VM) this past week.

Over the last few years, it has become increasingly important to create storage service catalogs in order to align business requirements to technical storage architectures. Many organizations shy away from developing catalogs for a variety of reasons, one of them being the perceived complexity to create them. Many also tend to think that defining different [...]

I have been asked to develop a paper (more like a book) on the topic of chargeback. Since chargeback involves money, colleagues automatically assume that this is a job for the “Chief Economist” at HDS. I have had a lot of experience with  charge-back schemes, though this is not a core skill that I can [...]

Today marks my 7 year anniversary of blogging for HDS, with most of the emphasis on the economics of storage, hypervisors, converged infrastructures and cloud. My very first entry on April 4, 2006, summarizes the genesis of my material, research and learning journey that has been storage economics. As I look back on the macro [...]

This is the fourth and final entry on this series about data protection(DP) costs. I have discussed some of the reasons why these DP costs are high, how to measure them, and how to correlate these costs to risk. Finally, I’d like to discuss some ideas around DP cost reduction, as well as the correlation [...]

My last 2 blogs “Are We Over-protected/Over-insured” and “Calculating the Total Cost of you Data Protection” have been on the cost of data protection, and the categories that make up data protection costs. In a blog format, I do not have time/space to present a complete calculation methodology, but rather set up the framework that [...]

In my last blog post, I introduced a 4-part blog series on the economics or costs of data protection. My colleagues Ros and Claus also are writing a parallel set of blogs on the technology behind data protection. My boss Hu Yoshida also posted compelling points in a blog from 2 months ago, and an [...]

Recently I experienced an insurance audit – to correlate and review all my insurance between home, life, car etc. The audit was helpful in identifying some gaps in my coverage, and to look at ways to reduce my total insurance bill. In the end, I found that I had better coverage at a lower cost.