Storage admins have heard the same vendor pitches over and over and over. And let’s admit it, repetition in any job is just boring. I am lucky to be in a channel marketing role where I can hear what hundreds of storage solution providers are doing to make product positioning both relevant and interesting. And some of them do it really well.

Here are three of the best I’ve seen:

Cambridge Computer’s Active Archive Lecture Series – This seminar is a half-day of lectures around topics such as “Best Practices of Archiving and Data Life Cycle Management” and “Comparative Methods for the Automation of Tiered Storage.” The audience is actually learning something that they can apply in their own environment today. The feedback we hear from this event is not just positive, it is also appreciative. This lecture series is one of dozens of educational events that Cambridge puts on. To see if Cambridge is hosting an event in your area, visit their Web site here: http://www.cambridgecomputer.com/education.cfm

Eagle Software’s Total Solution pitch – Eagle Software has established a reputation in the mid-west for being  a knowledgeable storage industry consultant. A lot of VARs label themselves “solution providers” and sometimes that just means you can buy multiple products from them. But, Eagle is a true solution provider. They test multiple products for interoperability, and build a complete working solution for their customers, including installation and support. What is interesting about their method for delivering this message to market is that they actually ILLUSTRATE this approach in a lunch and learn series. Eagle regularly takes interesting products, sets up a live environment, demos the working solution, and identifies best practices to share to their end user base. And…. you get a steak dinner. Expect to see an upcoming event around best practices in backup and archiving, coming in the fall. Email events@storagebyeagle.comto get added to their event invitation list.  

ASG Social Media – We are all trying to figure out how to leverage social media in our businesses. ASG has one of the best social media presences out there. Their multi-pronged approach includes a regular newsletter where they feature product specials, a blog from their CTO on hot topics, a YouTube channel featuring educational content, and a lively Twitter feed. Their Twitter network is diverse and active and is filled with industry information. Follow them at @virtual_com.

The above three are excellent examples of the types of solution providers we are eager to work with. They are knowledgeable, experienced, and trusted in the industry. Their customers listen to what they have to say and act on their advice because of the value they bring to the market.

Spectra Logic is proud to have  Cambridge, Eagle, and ASG on board as Elite SpectraEDGE resellers. Kudos, guys. You make working even more fun.

Gartner last month announced the results of an enterprise infrastructure survey conducted with over 1,000 large enterprises -http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1460213 – and they make interesting reading. According to respondents; data growth is the biggest data centre hardware infrastructure challenge for large enterprises. Now, this in itself is probably not surprising – vendors, end-users and other industry analysts have been talking about this challenge for some time. The inescapable truth is that storage demands are growing, and the answer lies somewhere between provisioning greater capacity and making more efficient use of the resources available. What is particularly striking is that 62% of respondents reported that they will be investing in data archiving or retirement by the end of 2011.

From Spectra Logic’s perspective it is particularly encouraging to see data archiving and retirement projects cited by respondents as the most popular response to the challenge of data growth.  Many of the conversations we had recently with end-users at SNW Europe centred around this theme. Backup is still important to customers – after all, disaster recovery will always be a key capability for IT and the wider business – but archiving is moving up the agenda (and rapidly so). Not only was archiving a hot topic of conversation on the show floor at SNW Europe, but our VP of Marketing & Product Management, Molly Rector  gave a very well received presentation entitled Active Archive: Data Protection for the Modern Data Center. Archiving is clearly making the transition from ‘nice to have’ to ‘business imperative’ – (Gartner will have other far cleverer terms for this I’m sure!)

While this is great news for Spectra Logic in terms of validating our position and viewpoint, it also points to a broader trend; customers are clearly beginning to look more closely at some kind of tiering strategy and/or data categorisation. Previously archiving and backup have often wrongly been lumped together under an all-encompassing tier sitting beneath production storage. I would hazard a guess that for a lot of end-user organisations ‘tiering’ has not got much more sophisticated than using disk for production / transactional data and tape for everything else. A number of technologies and drivers are forcing organisations to reassess this approach.

We can't overlook the rise of SSD (another hot topic at SNW), in this movement - it is becoming a viable option for enteprises, but current prices suggest that IT departments will have to carefully assess what data resides on that medium. This may be kicking off a trickle effect, which starts at the top and works its way down the storage hierarchy, with customers doing much closer mapping of data to storage medium and working out the best fit in terms of cost and performance.

Customers will also be looking at what data can be moved off disk altogether, and this is where archiving – specifically active archiving – comes into play. IT departments that investigate active archives will see that this approach is much less of a trade-off in terms of accessibility and performance when compared to disk than they may think. Customers will probably be shocked at just how much data they have sitting on disk which would be much more appropriately stored within an active archive setup. The data is still online and therefore still of value to the business, but on a much more cost-effective medium.

Everything points to a more sophisticated hierarchical approach to data management. Technologies like deduplication and thin-provisioning will play their part in facing up to the challenges caused by data growth, but ultimately a more radical shape-up of storage architectures is required, with active archives a new and very distinct layer.

Last week, Spectra was one of hundreds of vendors at IP Expo in London. Several of Spectra’s business partners were in attendance as well, and it is always interesting to see what they are up to. 

It’s great to see a back to basics theme in our channel’s marketing and event planning. The channel is intended to put logical solutions together and there seems to be more of a push towards introducing their vendors in this way. This compliments Spectra’s Active Archive messaging and the Alliance nicely and was certainly a hot topic amongst the end users as well. 

On the other hand we also saw a specialization theme. As much as a customer doesn’t want to be pigeonholed, the channel is doing more research into the types of products customer’s buy together or in succession with each other, they are doing more verticalized marketing as a focus, and tiering their customers in other ways such as size. A few examples are Global Distribution with M&E and CCTV focuses, Cristie UK with the mid-market, and B2Net with Financial vertical. 

Cloud computing was a hot topic at IP Expo, as it is everywhere. The end users are asking a lot of questions, some are quite skeptical, but the industry must go in the direction of the cloud in response. The channel is determining their role in this and it remains to be seen how that will play out. Will the manufacturers drive the strategy? Is distribution the key player here? Is it the closest-to-the-end-user reseller that will drive the car? 

I guess when you look at all of this, the biggest trend is that there are no real “trends”. In reality, the trend is that everyone has their own specialty and focus on what they do best: from bundling products to pre-sales consulting to professional service offerings. We spoke to many channel partners and found that they all were interested in different products, messages, and go to market strategies. Highlighting your best features? Count us in!