Today, we bring you episode 6 of our Beyond the Hype podcast series. In this segment, Don Jennings chats with Deni Connor of Storage Strategies NOW about current trends in the storage market. They discuss the prospects of the storage industry in the current economic environment, as well as emerging technologies like iSCI.
Don opens the conversation by asking Deni if storage as a technology is recession-proof. While she states that no technology is completely recession-proof, she sees a never-ending growth of data and archiving needs because of more regulation around compliance. She feels that from this perspective, storage is not as prone to be impacted by a recession.
Since Deni last year made the switch from storage beat reporter at Network World to analyst by founding Storage Strategies NOW, Don asked her how her new business is doing and about the transition. Deni replied that the new venture has let her do something that is very interesting, which is educating end-users. She does that by writing white papers on topics like iSCSI, as well as continuing to contribute to Network World. She says that in this regard, she is "a hybrid" between journalist and analyst.
From there, the conversation switched to a discussion of emerging technologies. Deni sees the adoption rates for iSCSI continuing to pick up, based upon her discussions with users that are replacing aging fibre channel SANs with iSCSI because it is less expensive, less costly, and easy to manage. This is especially true in the Linux market because of ease of deployment.
At the same time, she says, newer technologies like Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) are attractive to companies that have invested in fibre channel SAN's. The reason is that is allows users to leverage existing investments in skills, cabling and adapters.
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