End of Printed Version of StorageNewsletter

The publication of the printed/PDF version of the monthly publication StorageNewsLetter has just ceased, and is replaced by this daily wen site, StorageNewsletter.com, with all the news on the worldwide storage industry.

Here is an article from the editor and publisher.

The 259th issue just published will be the last printed/PDF edition of the monthly StorageNewsletter. We have decided to cease publication.

Why? The number of subscribers has continuously declined over the past few years, and we understand why. Customers don’t want to pay for information they believe is free on the net. The IT press worldwide has suffered a particularly severe crisis, which hasn’t missed us. Paper news is disappearing, sheaf by sheaf. Almost all publications have responded by creating web editions, where virtually the same content is available free of charge. They are sinking themselves, and we’re no different.

And yet, today, there are no other safety nets for the press. And although we held out, we were eventually obliged to change our formats, and accept advertisements (although only on our web edition), something we resisted until the bitter end with our print edition. Our site, StorageNewsletter.com now publishes all the news covering the worldwide storage industry on a daily basis. We already boast the most thorough website in this sector, with some twenty new stories published daily.

A BRIEF HISTORY
OF THE PRINTED VERSION OF STORAGENEWSLETTER

The first 12-page issue was published in February 1988. The headline on page one: “DAT: Tomorrow’s Streamer.” At this time, the price for a yearly subscription was $260 (now at $335 so an increase of only 29% in over 20 years!). The newsletter soon grew to 16 pages. All 259 issues published to date represent 3,964 pages, or the equivalent of a 30cm-thick book focused on storage news only.

Digital conversion is less impressive. If we consider that a page contains roughly 4,500 characters or bytes, our entire printed output represents less than 18MB in text form, slightly more (90MB) in PDF version, which hardly makes a dent in the smallest USB key drive.
1,234 different companies and individuals have subscribed to StorageNewsletter in the course of our history.

In the early years, we focused mainly on hardware (hard and floppy disks, tape and optical). Our first substantial article on flash appeared in January 1991. There was no EMC or NetApp at that time. The big players were Conner Peripherals, HP, IBM, Seagate and Sony. Then came subsystems, primarily RAIDs, and a complete change with new players in software and complete storage solutions.

Because we have a thorough index of all topics cover-ed since we began publication, here are a few interesting figures about the topics and companies that came up most frequently, out of 7,744 articles written (not including news briefs):

Note: With all other subjects combined, the total comes to more than 100%, since certain articles addressed multiple topic areas.

*This total is greater than the total number of articles published (7,744), since many articles obviously mentioned more than one company.

Furthermore, we had the opportunity to print 103 exclusive interviews of executives from throughout the storage industry, including 54 CEOs, many of them more than once, with the record set (at 6 sit-downs) with Alan Shugart, president, CEO, and COB of Seagate Technology and runner up Dave Warmenhoven, CEO, NetApp at 4.

For us, it’s difficult to select the most remarkable from among this noteworthy collection, but here are a few of the people who particularly impressed us:

Kim Edwards, president and CEO, Iomega
Alvi Mazon, MD, Karma
Matt Massengill, chairman & CEO, WD
Steve Duplessie, senior analyst, Enterprise Storage Group
Tom Georgens, president and CEO, Engenio
John Coyne, president and CEO, WD
Philippe Spruch, CEO, LaCie

The least remarkable is a no-brainer. The worst interview we ever had was with Howard Elias, when he was still VP and GM, network storage solutions at HP (12/2002). Perhaps it was jet-lag, but the man had nothing of interest to say, and seemed genuinely offended by anything but softball questions.

SEE YOU ON STORAGENEWSLETTER.COM
After more than 20 years as head of this publication, I would like first of all to thank all of our subscribers, even those who left us before the journey’s end, and more specifically two whose fidelity and support have been unwavering from the first issue to the last.

The first is Jim Porter, Mr. HDD, who finally retired from Disk/Trend, and who parsimoniously tracked, for over 20 years, until 1999, the rigid disk drive industry. The second is Arnaud Servolle, who worked for many years at Tandberg, before founding his own company in France, Sauvegarde.

We’d also like to thank a multitude of people working in the industry, who kindly helped us to glean important information amidst all the hype and clamor. We may not have been great friends or stayed in touch, but that’s unfortunately a hazard of the profession. As journalists, we must maintain a certain distance with the industry, and always used the formal French ‘vous’ with our contacts (for those who spoke French; the English ‘you’ does not make the distinction, usefully).

Finally, this newsletter would be nothing without French native Kathleen Bony, who pioneered our look and layout, U.S. citizen Melissa Eddy, and our resident American David Gardner, all of them ensuring the translation of our half-French/half-English articles into the highest quality of written English. The latter, as copyeditor, was more than this even – it was he who came up with what we think was our best headline ever. The day Al Shugart was put out to pasture by Seagate, he penned the following three words for our cover story: “Seagate Shugart-Free.”

See you all from now on this StorageNewsLetter.com web site.

Jean-Jacques Maleval, Publisher and Editor

QUOTES

“I wanted to write a ‘Thank You’ for your informative newsletter, and congratulate you on a fine job of reporting the latest news in our industry. We continually refer people to your publication as the best source for news.”
Bill Damko, VP Operations, Digital Storage Incorporated

"Notre satisfaction s’exprime dans la durée et la fidélité concernant votre publication. Continuez votre excellent travail".
Arnaud Servole, GM, Tandberg Data France

"You do a really fine job with your publication and it’s very professional, informative
and easy reading."
Jack McLaughlin, Consultant, Editor of Raw and Rumors

“We subscribe to your newsletter and really like the ‘newsy’ feel it has.“
Kim Kalahar, Exabyte Corporation

“Your publication keeps getting better (like fine wine). Don’t know how you do it but your spies are the best.”
Rolf Donahower, Clean Rooom Application manager, FlexLink Systems

"Ayant changé d’activité professionelle, je ne renouvellerai pas mon abonnement à CSDN. Sachez que j’ai beaucoup apprécié la lecture de votre publication durant toutes ces années, tant par son originalité, sa concision, la pertinence de ses artticles. Votre approche devrait être étendue à tous les secteurs d’activité, cela faciliterait le travail des managers".
Jean-Paul Castera, Laboratoire Central de recherches, Thomson-CSF

“J’accuse bonne réception de votre courrier me rappellant que je n’ai pas renouvellé mon inscription pour 99. Ne croyez pas pour autant que je suis mecontent de votre publication, au contraire, c’est la seule dans le domaine du storage qui me paraisse pertinente, et que je lise chaque mois avec la meme assiduite. Je renouvellerai mon abonnement a partir de Janvier depuis le Canada.”
Guillaume Mazieres, Managing Director, LaCie España S.A

“Dear CDSN: I am a subscriber to your newsletter and find it to be one of the best in the industry. “
Barry H. Schechtman, Executive Director, National Storage Industry Consortium

“Just finished reading the Sept issue of your newsletter. Enjoyed it all especially the page one story on the IBM drive. I have probably read 15 stories about the introduction of the Microdrive but your story was by far the most perceptive and insightful analysis of the product and all the issues surrounding it. A terrific job.”
Bob Goligoski, Public Relations Director, SanDisk Corp.

"We currently subscribe through our president, Charles Johnston, and I see his copy every month when he is finished. You have a great publication – keep up the good work."
John Drollinger, Director of Marketing, Philips LMS

"I regard your newsletter as excellent technical information and market data is very good. I use it as constant reference on new products and as part of my strategy planning. “
Rupert Beeby, Technical Marketing Team, Sagitta Performance Systems Ltd.

“We already subscribe to your newsletter, and we circulate it to several people within our office each month. I regard it as the best information source of its type for this industry.”
John Drollinger, Director of Marketing, Philips LMS

"We find your newletter an indispensible asset to our business. We develop custom drivers and backup solutions for the Storage industry and the information we gain from CDSN given us the ability to really stay on top of our industry.”
Hannah H. Kirby, StorageCraft

"I think it’s very good, I think you’re doing a very good job. If I had one recommendation, I’d recommend that you do more analysis or what I call ‘metrics’ comparing the different companies, such as the average sales per employee per year, or the numbers of drives per employee."
Finis Conner, CEO and Chairman, Conner Technology.

"I enjoy reading the news letter very much."
Stephanie Robotham, Product Manager, ADIC

"I just wanted you to know that I enjoy reading your publication very much. Keep up the good work."
Larry Eischen, President, IDEMA

"Your newsletter is all in all very interesting."
Bernd Nussbaum, Projectmanager, INCOM GmbH

"I enjoy your newsletter very much!
Dorian Johnson, Manager, Market Research, Texas Instruments, Storage Products Division

"Thank you for the sample copy of your StorageNewsletter. It is an excellent publication and much better than its competition Mass Storage News. Keep up the good work."
Dave Barnes, MarketingTactics

"Keep up the good work on the newsletter. I find it very informative."
Chris Merchant, GM, PDE Technology

"Many thanks for a most informative read, the only correspondence I really look forward to every month."
Peter Blaauw, Managing Dirctor, Storgate Africa Pty. Ltd.

"Nous avons a new CEO et, pour son education sur la storage industry, je lui ai donné la connection de StorageNewsletter".
Erik Solhjell, Executive VP and CTO, Tandberg Data

"I have always appreciated your StorageNewsletter. Keep up the good work. With storage gain in in popularity, you will surely see a surge in demand for your publication."
Rick Westerman, VP, European Strategy, MTI Technology

"I would like to congratulate you on the strength, thorough preparation and reporting on you interview with Bill Boles, CEO of Quantum ATL. I hope to never have to face you in a similar position where your maximum investigative and reporting capabilities are needed to provide the public with much needed answers.
Juan A. Rodriguez, Chairman and CEO, Ecrix

"Key worldwide journalist Jean-Jacques Maleval, Editor of StorageNewsletter based in France (I’m sure you’ve read the English-language publication which lands on the desk of every CEO and key executive of our industry) …"
Emmanuel Vitrac, EMEA corporate communications manager, Seagate Technology

"I work directly with John Dean in equity research at Salomon Smith Barney in San Francisco. We cover the disk drive and tape industries and are subcribers to your StorageNewsletter. We find it to be an invaluable resource for our coverage."
Scott McBride, Salomon Smith Barney

"I have been a subscriber to your newsletter for several years now and consider it to be the best publication of its kind in the storage industry."
John Drollinger, Director, Large Format Optical Products, Plasmon

"I would like to express my appreciation of your StorageNewsletter – it is definitely THE source that I look to for current news of our industry."
Michael Jones, President, Peripheral Test Instruments

"I will not be continuing with subscriptions as the newsletter does not have the same useful information it used to contain. If the price was around $100, I would consider continuing."
Terry Harris, RM Plc

"If you don’t have time to spend hours every week defragmenting the storage market as it unravels on portals across the web, or even if you do … StorageNewsletter will give you a convenient detailed digest so you won’t miss anything important."
Zsolt Kerekes, Publisher of STORAGEsearch.com

"Good work!"
Jim Porter, president, Disk/Trend

"The smartest storage guy I know."
Jon William Toigo, U.S. independent consultant and author of several books on storage

"La lettre mensuelle de Jean-JacQues Maleval consacrée au stockage. bandes, disques, SAN, NAS, outils d’administration… toutes les problématiques sont régulièrement abordées. Sans oublier les chiffres-clés du marché".
Journal Le Monde Informatique

"The Howard Elias interview is one of the best i’ve ever read. Excellent job. I love getting him pissed off myself!"
Steve Duplessie, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Storage Group

"I find your publication to be a valuable tool."
Nate Williams, Market Development, Digital Storage Inc.

"Keep up the good work … you have the best and most useful newsletter in the industry."
Lee H. Elizer, DataThinK

"Keep up the good work."
Frank Russomanno, President, Data Storage, Imation

"We regard you publication as one of the best in the industry and is compulsory reading for everyone in our company."
David Trossell, CEO, Bridgeworks

"Hope all is well. Just a note to tell you how much I enjoyed the Mark Lewis interview. Keep up the good work!"
Steve Duplessie, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Storage Group

"Thanks for the evaluation copy of your October issue of StorageNewsletter. Your product is excellent! We are processing a PO for the purchase of a year subscription."
Rich San, Pemstar, Inc.

"We are a long time subscriber of StorageNewsletter and I have to admit it is a very good and helpful publication."
Adrian Knapp, CEO and Chairman, Mount10 Holding AG

"It is still the best publication in the market."
Tony Somers, President, Capital Media Group LLC

"I do enjoy your newsletter a great deal. The European perspective is great, and I find articles on my competition very interesting. "
Skipp Harvey, VP Sales, HDD Products, NHK International Corporation

"I recently came across a copy of StorageNewsletter and wanted to congratulate you on an exceptional publication."
Sara Brewer, Associate, Thunder Factory

"Your last newsletter once again was up to your high standard as we have all come expect from you."
David Trossell, Managing Director, Bridgeworks Ltd.

"Votre magazine me parait un des plus informatives et surtout objectives dans le secteur. Pour cela, j’ai demande un abonnement pour DCT".
Tom Leyden, Marketing and Communications Manager, DataCenter Technologies

"We are a long-term subscriber to StorageNewsletter and find your publication quite useful."
Kathy Considine, Engis

"I continue to read and look forward to future issues of the StorageNewsletter and as always, it continues to be a great source of information for me."
Gary Francis, President, Inflection Systems

"I’ve been taking your newsletter for several years now, and I must say it is one of the best publications I read concerning storage."
George Lunsford, Storage Architect, Enterprise Storage Systems, Systems Division, ExxonMobil Upstream Technical Computing Company

"Je fais partie des nouveaux abonnés à la Storag Newsletter: j’y trouve des articles pertinents et des informations stratégiques, que j’utilise pour driver mon business".
Marc-Henri Delajoux, Directeur Division Storage and Data Management, Sun Microsystems France

"I look forward to catching up on the important information that is in your excellent newsletter."
Bob Lutz, Product Line Manager, Iomega

"Very nice article – Great questions!! I was even interested in the article!! Good job, bravo! Thank you so much for accurate reporting. Many articles I interview for come back more as opinion pieces than news."
Mike Workman, CEO and President, Pillar Data Systems

"Your newsletter still appears to be the best in the channel."
Tony Somers, President, Capital Media Group

"Thank you for the best storage information and insight, which you have consistently provided over the past many years! Your newsletter is great, I highly recommend it to others and I’m a great fan."
Mike McCorkle, Support Manager National Technical, Fujifilm Computer Products Division

"I, and many other people in the industry, recognise your newsletter as the best in the industry. Keep up the excellent work and all the best for the future."
David Trossell, managing Director, Bridgeworks Ltd.

"My friend Jean-Jacques Maleval, who writes the StorageNewsletter from his home in Paris, France, has always been a class act. In his work, you will see straight reportage with no editorializing, which is why it is read by just about everyone in the industry."
Steve Duplessie, President, Enterprise Strategy Group

"Your newsletter has been and continues to be an excellent summary of the storage business. Keep us the good work."
Gary Francis, Senior VP of Marketing, Crosswalk

"la Bible/le Coran mensuel !la Bible/le Coran mensuel!"
Jacques Kauffmann, Consultant

"I must tell you how much I appreciate your newsletter. The information is fabulous!"
Judy Smith, JPR Communications

"My congratulations on your thoroughness of covering the storage industry. I’ve always admired your publiction when I was at IDC. I am certainly interested in it for myself and my team at RobertGrayDirect."
Robert Gray, Founder of RobertGrayDirect

"This is excellent."
Doug Reid, Director, Thomas Weisel Partners

"I do find the newsletter very informative and useful."
Derek Terry, Development Manager,Teleplan

"Keep up the good work with the newsletter. I read it cover-to-cover each month."
Steve Georgis, CEO of ProStor Systems

"Vous êtes le guru du stockage en EMEA – by a mile !!!"
Daniel Mauerhofer, WD, Head of Public Relations, EMEA

"Je suis désolé d’apprendre que vous arretez la publication PDF de votre lettre que je lisais tous les mois avec interêt. J’espere que votre socieété va reussir sa conversion vers un modèle 100% web."
Emmanuel Puga Pereira, Innovacom

"Thank you for accompanying our technology for over 21 years! I remember the many meetings on exhibitions in Europe and the US since the early nineties where we met and could exchange useful info for each other. We will follow up your news on the net and hopefully meet again on one of the coming data storage shows."
Ekkart Wegeleben, Prime Digital Optical Europe GmbH