Storage Isn’t Sexy and Never Was

What do you do?
I work in biotechnology
That’s very interesting, tell me more.
(and the dialogue continues)

What do you do?
I work in data storage.
(and the dialogue stops)

Storage is not sexy and never was.

For many people, it’s a boring technology: just an idiot box to store data with electro-mechanical devices just able to read and write blocks of data. Storage is like plumbing. The intelligence is not into it but in the processors and software.

But it’s not true. For example the current HDDs are the results of deep R&D since 1956 with the first IBM’s 4.4MB Ramac to get now 3TB in a small 3.5-inch form factor box with four platters rotating at 7,200rpm. For the disk heads, it’s something like flying a Boeing 747 at Mach 800 at less than one centimeter above the ground. The Symmetrix VMX storage array from EMC for mainframes or open systems is full of highly sophisticated technologies including hardware and software. A package like CommVault Simpana is full of functionalities.

For tape, it’s worst: just an old audio cassette adapted to backup.

The situation is a little better with the arrival of more sexy SSDs and cloud storage.

The storage manufacturers are largely responsible of this situation because of their poor marketing policy. Big Blue invests a lot to promote IT. Intel did a great job obliging the PC manufacturers to add the logo Intel Inside on all their brochures and advertisements when they integrate its processors. We have never seen Seagate Inside or WD Inside written on a computer.

[Correction March 2, 2012: "We actually tried a Seagate Inside program back in about 1990. It fell flat. No PC vendor wanted to put it on its PCs even with an incentive for doing so," said Dave Anderson, Application Engineer
at Seagate]

Maybe it’s the right time for the industry to change the bad image of storage.

How? Here is just an idea to promote this technology. It could be a worldwide advertising program financed by a huge company like EMC or – much better – by a consortium of storage companies.

A campaign like that:

Without Storage:
no smart phone
no tablet
no PC
no CD and no music
no DVD or Blu-ray and no movie
no Internet
nothing to replace your limited memory
The life will be just different.