Maybe it stems from years of studying mathematics at the undergraduate level, or perhaps it’s a byproduct of a 10-year stint as a high-tech journalist. I’m not sure.

But what I do know is that if you give me a topic to research, a study to conduct or a third-party report to thumb through, I’m happy. Similarly, if I’ve got a paper to write, rest assured I’ve waded through market data before my pen goes to paper.

Why? Because data is knowledge. It provides insight into the behaviors and thinking of real people, doing real things at real points in time. It makes me a better journalist, a better analyst and a better marketer. And, importantly, it makes you a more informed buyer.

That’s why when I heard that my colleagues in APJ and EMEA had conducted region-specific disaster recovery surveys, I was thrilled.

True, it meant more data for me to sift through, but more importantly it meant real data about the solutions, technologies and trends in East Asia Pacific and Japan, as well as in the Middle East, Turkey and Morocco. The 360° view of the industry this blog promises!

So, if you haven’t already, I encourage you to take a look last week’s posts from our own Kelly Ferguson, director of EMEA marketing, and Shane Moore, director of APJ marketing. If nothing else, be sure to take a look at the embedded infographics. But, if you have the time, click on the links in each of the articles and immerse yourself in detail from each of the regional surveys.

One thing you’ll discover is that while there are differences among these regions, they share similar high-level concerns about:

• The ability to recover from a disaster
• The amount they are spending, or not spending, on backup and recovery
• The need to eliminate tape from their disaster recovery environments

Not to exclude the US and EMEA, I will share some recent data points from ESG’s “2012 Data Protection Modernization” study in an upcoming post as well as provide an update on the IDC Purpose-Built Backup Appliance (PBBA) report I wrote about in January (“Got PBBA?”).

But before then, EMC World awaits. We’ve got a lot of great stuff planned, including coverage of Stephen Manley’s keynote and the debut of a new blog series “Accelerating Transformation with Smarter Backup.” Be sure to check back.

And, no, the answer wasn’t vortex, vertex or (thankfully) varix (but feel free to leverage these words in your next game of “Words for Friends”). Nor was it VMAX, VPLEX or VNX, or for that matter Vblock.

The answer…VSPEX

What is VSPEX? It’s a set of specifications (“SPEX”) for virtualized (“V”) environments. Think reference architecture. Think cloud computing. Think SME. Think channel.

Without getting into technology specifics or configurations (I’ll leave that to my product marketing and management counterparts on this and other EMC blogs to cover in separate posts), VSPEX integrates leading virtualization, server networking, storage and data protection into a single efficient, scalable solution that can be easily consumed by small to medium-sized organizations.

The 14 initial VSPEX configurations Burton and team discussed  leverage technologies from key partners Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Intel, Microsoft and VMware  and feature EMC storage (VNX and VNXe) and data protection (Avamar and Data Domain) solutions.

Why VSPEX?

We all know that SMEs have many of the same pain points as larger organizations as well as many of the same business objectives, but they generally don’t have the resources (people and staff) to achieve them that larger organizations do.

VSPEX allows customers get to take advantage of best-of-breed technologies in easy-to-deploy and manage packages, the channel to develop and deliver solutions that are really customized for this segment of the market and technology providers (like us) to expand the reach of portfolios down-market, to accelerate cloud initiatives there. Win, win, win.

The survey says…

According to the Enterprise Strategy Group’s just-published “2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey,” when it comes to their virtualized computing infrastructure:

• While nearly have said they took a “Do It Yourself” approach – that is, they built out virtualization infrastructures of out of separate servers, storage, networking hypervisor software and management software, 36% of you would prefer to deploy “fully-integrated solutions” – that is, pre-packaged solutions sold and serviced by a single vendor.

For more information about the benefits of the new VSPEX infrastructure, the configurations that are being offered and how you can get them, check out the extensive coverage on our website. You can also find more information about the Avamar and Data Domain components here on The Backup Window or on our recently revamped backup and recovery solutions web pages.  Of course, I’m always here to answer your questions or direct you to someone who can.

One of the links brought me to an article about the innovations that are reportedly infusing new life into tape technologies (do increases in speeds and feeds qualify as innovation?), another led me to content directed at end users looking to leverage tape backup for the first time (if you’re not using tape for backup why would you start now?) and a third brought me to a discussion about the risks of not using tape for backup (yep, you read it right).  Are you kidding me?

For the fun of it, I thought I’d do a quick on-line search for “tape is dead,” and the results amazed even me. Google unearthed – and I do mean unearthed – more than 117,000 results, spanning more than a decade ago. Heck, I even came across an article I wrote back in March 2001 on the evolving role of tape and the rise of disk backup, and I bet if I had done just a little more digging, I would have come across the “IT’s Dirty Little Secret” special report I referenced in a previous post.

On the other end of the time spectrum, my search uncovered countless “Is Tape Dead?” stories, as well as some good barometers of current tape and disk backup use, including an animated conversation on the Spiceworks Community website. In fact, this discussion topped the Google search list.

And, interestingly, when I changed the keyword search to “tape backup is dead,” the number of results increased exponentially, to more than 19 million! As a (fun) point of comparison and perspective, a Google search for Hunger Games produced 527 million results; Justin Bieber, 379 million; and Mitt Romney, 848 million.

So, is tape dead? No, technically, it’s not. Is this the last of the “Tape Is Dead” stories? Regrettably, I doubt it. However, in the words of The Backup Window Blogger and EMC BRS CTO Stephen Manley, it is farcical to keep pretending that tape is a relevant part of any backup – let alone an IT transformation discussion. Houston, we have a problem!

Now, while I don’t necessarily agree with pinning a football loss (or victory) on any single person, one technology – PBBA – has undoubtedly changed the face of backup.

So, you know what I think… but what do others have to say? Users, industry experts and the media have all chimed in about PBBA with stories, industry-supporting research data and good-old market analysis. In an effort to fulfill our promise to you to provide a 360° view of backup and recovery, below is a “snapshot” of the various conversations going on in the market. As you click through the info that follows, if you agree or disagree with any of the analysis below, have a story to share or simply want more information, just post a quick comment or question below.

• Backup to the Future by EMC CTO and TBW Blogger Stephen Manley on Spiceworks.com: “Virtualization has become the proving grounds for disk backup solutions – only the best survive. I’ve met many customers happily rolling out virtualization at warp speed. And I’ve heard countless tales of woe. “We can’t fully load our ESX servers because backups never complete.” “We can’t virtualize our Tier 1 applications because backup load kills performance.” “I’m constantly installing agents, tweaking backup schedules and praying nobody wants to restore.” Visions of dynamic virtualized environments have transformed into nightmares of mindless grunt work. How did things go so wrong for them?”

• IDC Ups Revenue Forecast for Purpose Built Backup Appliances and Shows EMC with Big Lead in Growing PBBA Market by former end-user and current storage analyst Jerome Wendt on DCIG.com: “Giving preference to PBBAs over other approaches to backup is maybe what is most notable about this upgraded IDC forecast. Organizations clearly view PBBAs as a better way to address their long standing backup challenges and are implementing PBBAs at a pace faster than what even IDC anticipated.”

• ESG Research Report: 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey: Protecting, virtualizing and managing IT assets remain top IT priorities.

• EMC Leads Backup Appliance Market: Report on ITwire.com. “We believe this explosive growth will continue through 2015 and is a result of users’ desire for improved backup window timing, faster recovery times, effective virtual server protection and seamless integration with existing backup applications.  We also believe customers are gravitating towards PBBA solutions as a way to control their data protection capital and operational expenditures.”

• Can Anything Stop EMC? on ecommercetimes.com: “Bottom line: As has been demonstrated many times before, conventional wisdom is far more conventional than it is wise. The IT industry is big and diverse enough to provide enormous opportunities for vendors quick and quick-witted enough to seize them, which brings us to EMC.”

• Daughters of Charity Health System Improves IT Efficiency and Accelerates Time-to-treatment with EMC, Michael Day, DCHS Director of Information Technology, comments on its PBBA deployment: “With VMware and EMC, we’re able to automatically back up all of our virtual machines. We also can move virtual machines from one server to another if we need to run firmware updates or if a server unexpectedly goes down. VMware and EMC are integral components of our business continuity strategy.”

Don’t drop the ball!

Just look at IDC’s latest data:

• Year-over-year revenue growth increased from $2.1B (24.4%) to $2.8B (65.5%).
• CAGR increased from 16.6% to 25.6%.

Wowsa!  Changes in today’s data center – notably, the explosion of virtualization, the ramp-up to the cloud and even expectations around big data demands  – are changing the way we think about backup and recovery and, more importantly, the purchasing decisions we’re making.

Why is PBBA growing faster than any other backup category? IDC says it’s because PBBAs improve backup window time, provide faster restore and enable seamless integration with existing backup applications. Customers and other industry analyst firms cite a variety of business and technology benefits, including continual and uninterruptable business processes, lower infrastructure costs, reduced backup windows, more scalable virtual server protection and consistent backups.

How long will this trend continue? IDC believes it will continue for the foreseeable future as organizations continue to take advantage of the PBBA’s rich feature-sets, again particularly for virtual server protection, rapid recovery and data deduplication.

What choices do you have? The market abounds with options. Over the past four months, Stephen Manley, EMC’s backup recovery systems CTO and TBW blogger, has been writing on this subject. His multi-part blog series – Choices Matter: Don’t Get Caught with Your Pants on the Ground – puts industry research, like IDC’s, in context. The series examines key technologies (versioned replication) you should be looking into if you’re not already and shares customer stories – the good, the bad and the ugly. A must read if you’ve got PBBA or are just considering it.

Oh, and did I mention, EMC, with 62.0% of the $1.2 billion spent on PBBA solutions and 63.5% of the raw TBs shipped, is the clear market leader in the PBBA market? A shameless plug, I know. But if you translate these numbers into market share, we’ve got more than 3x the share of our nearest competitor, and that means something.

1. Conduct a “thorough” assessment: This may sound obvious but if you’re like the majority of organizations out there – and industry research says you probably are – you haven’t really assessed your backup and recovery environment to ensure it is aligned with business and IT objectives (more on that below). And I’m not talking here about IT’s notorious “Dirty Little Secret,” which I exposed nearly a decade ago. It’s not just talking about meeting backup windows, recovery objectives or even floor space requirements. Nor am I talking just about implementing backup and recovery processes to meet ramping virtual environments. All are essential but as IT transforms itself from a “cost center” to a “generator of business value,” understanding the value of the data you’re backing up to your organization and applying backup and recovery policies accordingly will become increasingly important, and should dictate the solutions you implement. Choices do matter, as Stephen Manley, EMC backup and recovery CTO and fellow blogger explains in his Blog mini-series: “Making the Right Choices: Don’t Get Caught with Your Pants on the Ground.”
2. Take time to innovate: As I noted in my last post, innovation is key to success; it can separate the ordinary from the extraordinary (e.g., Apple, FaceBook); the successful from the not-so-successful. The problem is, we aren’t innovating, or at least as much as we should be. We say it’s because we’re too busy (at least that’s what 41% of us said at the recent Gartner conference), so let’s make time to step outside the box. And this includes bucking trends, questioning “hype cycles” or, heck, rolling your own, etc., when it makes business and IT sense to. If nothing else, you’ll benefit from a “bigger picture” view of your backup environments from your new vantage point (outside the box), and that’s always a good thing.
3. Make a business case: One of the most common mistakes organizations – and, in this case, IT departments – can make is implementing technology for technology’s sake or, well, simply because it’s en vogue. And just like innovating for innovation’s sake, this can be a very bad thing. So, whether you’re looking to expand your use of disk-based backup, to implement version-based replicationfor the first time or virtualize more business applications, you’ll want to put together a business plan to support it. How do you ‘prove’ your projects? According to Gartner Research VP David Cappuccio, you’ll increase your odds of success, if you:
   • Clearly identify the problem you are trying to solve and the business result you will see if executed successfully.
   • Put together a short-term business plan (no more than one or two pages), which includes a current baseline, an analysis of three or four key metrics and a solution comparison.
4. Align business and technology teams: I’ve got this as number-four on the list, but if you make – and keep – only one resolution this year, this is probably the one. As I’ve mentioned, we’re all on a journey and how quickly we get there and the success we have will increasingly depend on communication between business and technology teams (as well as communication within those teams). So, go ahead, snuggle up with your business counterparts. Doing so should reduce the number of turf wars, political battles, etc., you’re experiencing, giving you more time to innovate and your projects more and better air time. Win-win.
5. Follow through. As I was preparing this post, I came across an interesting Harvard Business Review blog, in which author and strategic advisor Peter Bregman writes about his friend Byron’s ongoing struggle to achieve physical fitness. Ultimately, Bregman deduces that Byron’s problem isn’t one of motivation (Byron is a reallymotivated guy) but follow-through. “Motivation,” Bregman says, “is in the mind. Follow-through is in the practice.” Humph!Okay, I don’t necessarily disagree with the (few) comments that equate Bregman’s input to trite psychological mumbo-jumbo, but like many readers of the post, I think Bregman may have a point. I mean if you think about it some of the best-attended sessions at recent shows/conferences (VMworld, Gartner, and our own EMC World, to name just a few) have been next-generation backup and recovery-focused and market research shows strong and growing adoption of next-generation backup and recovery solutions, so motivation doesn’t seem to be an issue. Yet, there’s still a lot of tape out there, and deduplication use while strong is not ubiquitous. Could it be that we have a follow-through problem? If yes, Bregman would say we need to stop thinking and start doing in which case #1, #3 and #4 above should help.

Good luck – and a belated happy New Year!

As I’ve mentioned, as a former analyst, one of things I routinely try to do is challenge my thinking about technologies and trends. Keeps me from “drinking the vendor Kool-Aid,” or too much of it anyway, and ensures we continue to develop solutions and messaging that keep pace with customer requirements.  And what better place to do such testing than at a data-rich Gartner event?

Funny thing is that while I did collect a lot of great data (which I will share in this and upcoming posts) from the frequent real-time polls of the approximately 2,000 users in attendance and from the spattering of official Gartner Research throughout the sessions, it really wasn’t the data but Ed Holub’s keynote Driving Innovation to Achieve Dramatic Improvements in IT Infrastructure & Operations that got me thinking, and my guess is a lot of you too.

I remember reading an article just after the passing of Steve Jobs this past October that talked about Job’s many strengths, including his innate ability to innovate – or more specifically his ability to innovate not just for innovation’s sake. Hmm. Made me think then of the mad scientist in his laboratory, my dad feverishly working on his latest gadget (he’s an MIT graduate, need I say more?), the IT start-up revving up the newest update of its revolutionary data center technology, etc., and it still does.

Gartner defines innovation as “a process that starts with an idea and drives a change that creates value.” So, innovation is more than just invention, or technology. It’s a way of doing things that provides benefit – business, IT, cultural, societal, political, etc. – to someone or something.

It’s replacing traditional power and cooling data center architectures with ones that are “free-cooling”; it’s leveraging compute resources more efficiently through applications your IT teams have written; and it’s developing your own disk drives to change storage economics, as Facebook does and explained first-hand at the conference last week. It’s using a clever combination of server virtualization with deduplicated storage to deliver a unified backup and DR solution, as one mid-size enterprise customer has done. It’s challenging your IT and business views of the need for and design of backup and recovery solutions, and it’s bridging IT and business teams for business advantage.

The problem is innovative thinking is counter-intuitive to many of us, especially we IT folks. That’s why Gartner expects by 2014, less than 10% of IT infrastructure and operations organizations to institutionalize innovation methods sufficient to achieve dramatic improvements. Why is it so low? Well, according to Gartner Data Center attendees last week, it’s because you’re too busy to innovate. Yep, that’s what 41% of you said. Do I hear New Year’s Resolution anyone? If the size of the crowd (had have been 400) at David Russell’s backup session is any indication, I definitely do.

It’s a sad but true fact, but of the estimated one in three people who make New Year’s resolutions (whether it’s to lose weight, better balance work-life responsibilities or something more specific to their daily jobs, etc.), only a small percentage actually keep resolutions long term (which explains why gyms don’t plan for the January onslaught other than to hire new sales staff).

But research also shows that people who make New Year’s resolutions are more likely to reach their goals than those who don’t make resolutions. So, the looming question is, Do you make resolutions and risk failing to keep them, or fail to make resolutions and risk not achieving goals?

Ultimately, the decision is yours. But I can’t help but think that the adage “It’s better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all” applies here. (In fact, I can hear my mother’s voice telling me so!)

All kidding aside, I don’t think it really matters if you make “resolutions” or not but that you start and end a year with a plan and, importantly, reevaluate the plan throughout the year to ensure it remains aligned with business initiatives, IT priorities and market conditions. In fact, ESG senior analyst Mark Bowker talks about the importance of planning in the context of the VMware journey in the recent EMC Backup Showcase event “Defending our Virtual World.”

So, where to start? What are your top-five IT priorities for 2012? Where does backup fit in? How does it stack up against virtualization priorities? Data center consolidation? Application roll-out initiatives? Cloud projects? IT Transformation? Big Data?

To help you get started, here’s a couple of high-level charts from ESG’s 2011 IT Spending Intentions Survey that will give you some insight into the thinking last year of 611 of your closest enterprise and midmarket IT colleagues around IT priorities and investment.

Now, I could be wrong, but I’m betting 2012 results will look pretty similar with the possible exception for some heightened awareness around IT Transformation and Big Data. In my next post, I’ll update the Top 5 IT Resolutions list I put together last year for 2012. Should be interesting!

Given The Backup Window’s perspective on IT transformation and the critical role backup and recovery is playing in both supporting and accelerating virtualization adoption, I was curious to read about the seven superheroes InfoWorld has identified, the “superpowers” they believe them to possess and the “fatal flaws” to which they are most susceptible. (Okay, and I just like these types of articles. They’re fun, but they do make you think.)

After all, the transformation about which I wrote in the post Backup Transformation – What Lies Ahead and the collaboration that Stephen Manley detailed in Moore’s Law (Backup Administrator’s  version): “Every 18 months, my pain will double,” define a new type  of IT superhero, or do they?

Following is InfoWorld’s list of superheroes and their corresponding superpowers. In the interest of time (and space), I’ve summarized/paraphrased them below:

1. Captain Instinct is known for his “otherworldly IT intuition.” While this hero’s “gut feelings” can get IT departments out of very sticky situations, it can also get you into trouble. Bottom-line: Make sure you’ve got to have facts to back up your gut feelings.
   
2. Fantastic Plastic Tech Man works tirelessly to meet IT and business needs. He is a hero by necessity, not choice and is subject to burnout.
   
3. Dr. Kludge is the master of “quick and dirty fixes” and for “putting out fires.” While this type of superhero can get IT organizations out of some tough spots, over the long term, such short-term fixes generally catch up with them, and in not in a good way.
   
4. The Iceman performs under pressure. While this can be a good thing, it can also lead to overconfidence or decisions that may not be well-thought out (e.g., doing something quickly and inexpensively but not properly), which can have long-term implications.
5. The Improviser has the innate ability of “thinking on their feet.” He is IT’s MacGyver. This can be a great thing in a crisis situation but “it’s no substitute for planning ahead.”
6. The Distorter is known for the “time-honored techniques of under-promising and over-delivering” or “bending reality for good or evil.” This type of hero is able to navigate IT and business waters and champion IT’s cause. However, these superheroes have a tendency to take full credit for successful projects and to “hide the sources of real value” in an IT departments.
   
7. The Lone Geek is the “least-sung hero” of the IT department. This type of superhero isn’t necessarily the most technical or has the greatest instincts but is known for “doing it right every time” and for speaking up “when something is wrong, no matter whose feathers get ruffled.”

Which superhero best fits describes you?

Whether you’re a dedicated backup admin, a VMware guy facing mounting backup (and recovery) challenges or backup is just one of several IT functions with which you’re currently tasked, I’m guessing mounting business and IT pressures are making you behave in new ways and even discover “superpowers” you never knew you had.

So, while many of you by nature may be “Lone Geeks” or “Captain Instincts,” you may feel more like “Fantastic Plastic Tech Men,” “Dr. Kludges,” “Improvisers” or some combination thereof.  (Do I hear “Transformers” anyone?)

Am I right? Is this just craziness, or can you relate? I’d love to hear what you think.  Comment below, email to friends, share on Twitter.  Let’s talk.

(For the full InfoWorld story, go to http://www.infoworld.com/print/171795.)

In all seriousness, in recognition of breast cancer awareness month and in support of “EMC Fights Cancer,” a global community service initiative led by EMC’s worldwide marketing teams, we’ve swapped out the familiar EMC blue backdrop behind our site logo for a vibrant shade of pink.

Like many of you, The Backup Window family has been touched personally by cancer. We’ve lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents… friends and neighbors. And like the New England Patriots, who this year wear the initials “MHK” on their jerseys in honor of Myra Kraft, wife of Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft, we also bear the initials of loved ones lost to the disease.

This month, we remember those who have lost their lives to cancer, honor those who have battled the disease – and we fight back!

October 11-14, EMC employees across the globe will engage in a series of activities to foster awareness, encourage teambuilding, and promote fundraising for all types of cancer. EMC Cure-A-Thon ─ a 5K run or walk ─ is one of the headline events, taking place at EMC campuses in Massachusetts and California. (We’re also painting EMC pink, which should be great fun! Be sure to check back for pictures.)

If you’d like to find out more about the 5K event or make a donation, the link to the Cure-A-Thon support page (sponsored by Swim Across America) will be active through October 16. Just click on the “Donate Directly to an Event” button, choose “support Team Black” and select your contribution amount. It’s as simple as that.

Ready! Set! Go!