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Analyst/Tech Blog |
Blog Post Index
This is a list, in chronological order, of posted thoughts and presentations from industry analysts and technologists. Click on any that look interesting -- share your thoughts and comments. Note that all posts are presented in full by clicking on them and following it back to the site hosting the original content.
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With the release of LTO-8 Tape media and hardware vendors are once again boasting about how affordable it is to store data on tape. With a compressed capacity of 30TB per tape, they are right in doing so. At Storage Switzerland, we continue to see tape as part of a data protection and archive strategy but we also think that the tape industry’s leading with price is a mistake. The price delta between disk and tape has always been there, but increasingly organizations are [...]
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At Storage Switzerland we speak to IT professionals all the time who are looking to refresh their storage system. And most of the time, they are at least considering an all-flash array. For most of them the thought of a storage system built exclusively on flash still seems a little crazy. So, the question they ask is "do I really need an all-flash array?" At the risk of being very unpopular with a few storage vendors, the answer to the all-flash question is [...]
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There are a number of benefits that present a persuasive business case for attorney’s leveraging public cloud storage which include: security, cost, flexible scalability, disaster recovery (DR) and ease of access – but the question is: Is it ethical for lawyers to use it? On an almost daily basis, I have attorneys argue with me about the appropriateness of storing client-related data such as, client notes/data, case notes, and eDiscovery results sets in the cloud. The argument stems primarily from the fact that storing data [...]
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Achieving Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Cloud, with Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services with Bill Tolson: Today, I am speaking with Bill Tolson, Vice President of Marketing for Archive360 on the topic of machine learning, information management, predicative information governance (PIG) and auto-categorization to automate the management of electronically stored information (ESI). One of the challenges the content/information [...]
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The recently disclosed Equifax cybersecurity breach is just another in a long list of epic cyberattacks. Equifax is a powerhouse in the financing industry and helps determine an individual’s all-important credit score. Determining that score requires access to highly confidential personal data including Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, credit card information and even driver's license numbers. As many as 143 million people [...]
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Among emerging technology, Blockchain is probably the one that is surrounded by enigma on what exactly it is and how one can identify practical use cases for our relevant industries. When I started my quest to know more about blockchain, I found tons of information at a conceptual level that gives a fuzzy feeling of understanding but lacks a comprehensive view, the below is from an IBM whitepaper, you will find similar explanations [...]
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The prevailing wisdom is that if you back up your data you can recover from a ransomware attack. While this premise generally holds true, simply backing up your data no longer provides an absolute guarantee that you can recover from a ransomware attack. Here are three techniques that ransomware may use to circumvent existing backups and make your “good” backups bad. Ransomware hackers attack corporate data by [...]
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The traditional methodology of simply adding more physical storage to resolve storage issues no longer works. It's too expensive, inefficient, unmanageable and slow. Organisations are faced with an ever-increasing volume of data that needs to be moved, processed, stored and managed. But data is only as good as the company's ability to use it. Traditional storage systems are not capable of [...]
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In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and with Hurricane Irma preparations in full swing, it’s important for all organizations to carefully examine their plans for dealing with a natural disaster. As companies have increased dependence on IT systems to deliver their services more quickly, the ability to recover from the effects of disasters has become more important and more complex. During and immediately following a disaster, [...]
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For organizations with multiple offices where employees need access to the same data at the same time, leveraging the cloud for unstructured data storage make sense. Not only does it help with data distribution, it also helps ease data management and provides a powerful business continuity plan for unstructured data. But public cloud storage by itself is not enough. In addition to the obvious concern over latency [...]
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Do you drive exactly the speed limit? If you’re anything like me, driving the speed limit might as well be walking. But if you were in a Tesla before a recent software update, going into auto-pilot mode forced you to do just that. Tesla recognized a human challenge (we want to drive faster) and was able to not only fix it, but deliver it to their entire fleet very quickly. Their recent update, which now allows a Tesla to auto-drive up to five miles over a detected speed limit, is a great example of the power of [...]
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Back in January of this year, we published a blog titled Quarantine your Stale Data about the need to quarantine your stale (or grey) data. In it, we talked about a conversation we had with Alan Daley, Research Director of Gartner Research, about the problems his clients were having with managing stale data – or those files that for whatever reason, become less valuable to the end-user over time. [...]
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The object storage market is very crowded now, and the first question people ask me, whether they are customers, analysts, partners, or the press, is always the same: “What is your differentiator?” I couldn’t agree more with them, since most object storage systems look the same; they all seem to have a similar feature set: Scale-out? Check. Erasure coding? Check. Remote replication? Check. [...]
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Intel just released a new kind of computer memory it believes will fundamentally change the way the world builds computers. But it won’t tell the world what’s inside. The company calls this new creation 3D XPoint—pronounced “three-dee cross-point”—and this week, after touting the stuff for a year-and-a-half, Intel finally pushed it into the market. You can think of the new technology as a computer building [...]
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Before purchasing all-flash array storage, you should determine whether your site plans to integrate AFA storage into its existing infrastructure or to start a new storage silo. All-flash storage arrays can provide much higher levels of performance than disk-based arrays, and with deduplication and compression, they can sometimes even approach the cost [...]
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Every great technology starts with mystery. Blockchain, as with cloud or the internet before it, is too abstract for many people. Many would rather not admit that they have no idea what Blockchain is. In this article I will try to provide answers in plain English to questions I am asked frequently. What is Blockchain? [...]
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By 2020, ten million cars on the road are expected to have self-driving features, reflecting the continuing move toward an IoT-based world and advances in artificial intelligence (AI). Designing autonomous vehicles requires the ability to harness massive amounts of camera and sensor data, analyze it and apply AI technology, and - as with any AI application - the more data it has, […]
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According to reports, the use of cloud infrastructure is growing and will continue an upward trend of growth moving forward. A roundup from Forbes cites a number of sources that show the recent growth as well as the predicted growth for the coming years, and the forecast is excellent for cloud infrastructure. […]
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Recently I found in my inbox a link to a piece 6 Dashboards for Managing Every Modern Data Center that caught my attention. I was hoping to see who the six different dashboard solutions were instead of finding list of dashboard considerations for modern data centers and data infrastructures. Turns out the piece was nothing more than […]
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Most experts and vendors agree a hybrid cloud bridging on-premises clouds with public clouds is the most popular way to go for cloud storage. This handbook examines the tools and technologies required to make hybrid cloud implementation work. hybrid cloud implementation requires a sound management strategy that starts with […]
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One of the key challenges to any data protection strategy is deciding where to store data and how to get that data off-site. Initially in most environments, all backups were stored on tape. Those tapes were then packaged up and shipped to an off-site location. Then disk-based backup appliances came to market and, leveraging deduplication, were able to replicate data directly to a remote location. Each of these [...]
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Selecting the right storage hardware can often be a no-win proposition for the IT professional. The endless cycle of storage tech refreshes and capacity upgrades puts IT planners and their administrators into an infinite loop of assessing and re-assessing their storage infrastructure requirements. Beyond the capital and operational costs and risks of buying and implementing new gear are also lost opportunity costs. After all, if IT is focused on [...]
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