Day 1

To blog or to not blog that is the question? Whether it is nobler to keep my opinions to myself or to share them - that is the question. OK I'm not Shakespeare but I do have a unique point of view due to my background as both a user and vendor of storage, archiving and streaming products.

After much consideration I have decided to share my views/musings on archiving, storage, streaming and other technology stuff. I must warn you that after over 20 years in product management at many technology companies that I'm opinionated and you may not appreciate my viewpoints.

For full disclosure I have worked for the following storage companies: IBM, Dell, StorageTek, Sun and Plasmon. I have left off the start-ups that went bust despite my time, money and effort.

I recently returned from a week at IBC (International Broadcasters Conference) in Amsterdam and this was the tipping point in deciding to blog or not. I was amazed at the lack of information and misinformation on archiving at this event. Apparently an "archive" is the copy of your content that you put on tape. And putting anything on tape is bad. Countless companies were promoting tapeless workflows.

Note that I said a copy that you put on tape is the archive. This is a big step forward from the "backup" is the archive to a second copy that is put on tape is now the archive. Apparently you can buy a system that stores a copy on a SAN and then uses a HSM feature to make a second copy to tape. Much to the dismay of Sun/StorageTek/Oracle tape is the enemy of the broadcast industry. It appears that tape has a rather short lifespan and the value of your content approaches zero if the only copy is on tape and the tape is over 5 years old and the tape stored off-line in a coat closet. Imagine the surprise to the content owners that somebody has "archived" their valuable content in an ordinary coat closed for the past X years despite the warning from vendors that the lifespan of tape is negatively impacted by heat. light and humidity. I guess that reading the small print is probably a good idea if you are storing data on tapes or Facebook.

It is my goal to candidly discuss archiving, archiving strategies, archiving technologies, issues and in some cases talk about products in the coming months. In addition to archiving I will explore compliance and governance issues as they relate to archiving. Comments of any flavor are welcome and appreciated. It is only through transparent and open dialogue that WE can serve the broader community. So feel free to say "bullshit" or "prove it" or anything else as it is only through constructive criticism that we can all grow.

I welcome requests for deeper discussions on a particular topic.

Cheers,
Jay