Earlier this Summer I was able to get along to our first BDEvent (where BD stands for business development)
Obviously, it is a bit of a hike from London to Boston and just over three days is a mighty big investment of time, energy and money. So was it worth it?
Absolutely.
It brought together over 100 of the storage networking industries finest to network and share experience and provide insights into the VC community, OEM deals and latest technology. Launchpad Europe was even invited to do a session. It covered info on Launchpad and also the increasing importance of social media in this field.
The BDEvent participants included marketing, sales and technical folks from both the BIG vendors, emerging players and the start-up community, PR folks, business development consultants and channel experts, legal eagles, VCs, the media and analysts. So it was great to put faces to names (and twitter handles) and also catch up with old colleagues and even some of our customers. All in all, an excellent place to get an update on what’s happening in the market and in the markets.
There were many highlights for me aside from meeting many great people in the industry. Here’s a short(ish) overview of them:
Event kick-off was an excellent overview of the VC landscape for storage networking companies by Peter Bell from Highland Capital Partners. His focus was the importance of Business Value Creation for partners and investors. It was very insightful and then I knew we were in for a quality couple of days. Towards the end of day one after some great quick fire overviews on IceWeb, DataStor and Silver Peak, we were treated to an excellent keynote by Jim Damoulakis, CTO atGlasshouse and Dave Ellard, VP of IT at Avery Dennison. This looked at “Enabling the Private Cloud” – so I’m sure you can imagine this was a lively debate. A big question is still what exactly is the Cloud. Day two kicked off with innovation games led by Jason Tanner at Enthiosys, it was a very interesting exercise and gave a useful insight into some of the ways agile product development is being deployed in vendors.
After lunch David Broadwin from Foley Hoag, gave a legal eagle view of Trends in financing in Data Storage and the graphs were extremely telling around funding. Top tip seems to be go for funding in California, the warm weather seems to bump up the funding.
Day two had a good series of vendor presentations from Sepaton, SANpulse andSeven10 which was a useful update on some of the key technologies and where they are heading.
The second day was bought to a very successful close of the formal program with an excellent keynote by Peter Levine from Citrix, looking at desktop virtualization and what it means for the storage industry. There are still some storage nuts to be cracked to fully realize the potential, but it will no doubt drive a lot of the growth in data storage in perhaps an even greater way than server virtualization has.
As a marketer, my favourite session was however the breakout session on day three for marketing professionals. Expertly chaired by the fabulous Brad O’Neill, CEO ofTechvalidate (and former analyst at The Taneja Group). This format of a roundtable with open dialogue really tapped into the vast experience in the crowd. Excellent insights into the age old challenges of lead generation and there was a noticeable swing regardless of topics to the role and importance of social media for marketers. Overall, a definite sense that social media has a very important role for marketers and is ignored at one’s peril.
Due to a clash of sessions, I didn’t get to the Business Development Roundtable. So keep your eyes open for a guest blog post on that session by John McArthur ofWalden Technology Partners in the coming weeks.
So peeps save this date for 201. The next BDEvent is: January 25th-27th at the Sheraton Palo Alto. It will be storage focused, though they expect some folks like VMware and Oracle to participate as well – So the weather forecast sunny but with a good chance of cloud and virtualization.
Other news from the BDEvent team is a bit of a scoop. There will be a London event in 2011 with a focus on storage, cloud and virtualization, aimed at vendors and channel partners. Watch this space for more news on that. Plus there’ll be a BDevent related announcement on our sister blogwww.countdown2infosecurity.com about something with a little bit more of an IT security flavor coming soon too! Exciting times.
Greg Duplessie, father of the event summed it up perfectly: “Where else can you get so many industry executives in one confined space at one time? This Boston event was a huge success for all of the attendees.” – Greg I couldn’t agree more. Great job by you, VaNessa and the rest of the BDEvent team. See you in Palo Alto if not before...
The storage-focused BD Event wrapped up last week in Boston after two and a half days of presentations and networking for the enterprise storage industry--executives meeting up with executives in a kind of industry-focused, back to old college days mixer. If you're an entrepreneur with designs on the enterprise storage market, this was the place to be.
The event was bracketed by two provocative presentations: one delivered by Peter Bell of VC firm Highland Capital Partners to kick-off the event, and one by Peter Levine, senior vice president of Citrix, that concluded the formal presentation session the following day. Click to read more.
Not many individuals have ever had the opportunity to be worth $1 billion. Fewer still have had the opportunity to lose a billion dollars over the course of their lifetime. Then there are those privileged few that have both gained and lost that amount of money in just a few years. It was one of those individuals, Peter Bell, a general partner at Highland Capital, who spoke at the opening of this week's BDevent in Boston to share what he learned from that experience and how others can benefit from it. Click to read more.
Next week, June 15-17 is theBDevent in Boston. This is the second annual event held in Boston and the third in a year. We convened in January in Palo Alto and this year’s summer event in Boston looks excellent – here’s the agenda.
Peter Bell is going to kick off the event. Peter is a VC in the Boston area and has had an extraordinary business career. Having cut his teeth selling EMC Symmetrix systems in the early days of modern storage subsystems he had the vision of creating cloud storage. This was 1999 and he was ten years ahead of his time. He started a company called Storage Networks which ultimately shut its doors but not before he and bunch of people made a pile of dough both raising money and on an IPO. I’m really interested to hear Peter’s views on today’s version of cloud computing because of his history in the business and his current role as investor.
There's also a great lineup of interesting companies and sessions including a segment from Foley Hoag (our attorneys) on the state of venture financing in the data storage business. Some of the other companies presenting or attending that I’m pumped up to hear from and network with include:
3PAR
EMC
Hitachi Data Systems
Citrix
F5 Networks
NetApp
Emulex
Falconstor
Permabit
Storwize
Xiotech
And a boatload of other interesting startups and emerging technology innovators.
But the most value I’ll get from attending theBDevent is the BD…it’s all about BD at theBDevent; period. No booths. No trying to cajole business cards from IT guys with fish bowl givaways…just technology people talking to each other about doing business. Here’s what I do…here’s what my objectives are. How about you? Is there a fit? If not…nice to meet you. If so…let’s talk.
Anyone who has ever witnessed a disaster knows that one of two things can happen. Either the area affected by the disaster can be devastated, never to recover; or, new life can spring up in its place. In many respect, the economic disaster that hit the entire nation and world hit the data storage industry equally hard. However the data storage industry is picking itself back up and, based upon what I saw and heard this week at The BDEvent in Palo Alto, CA, it has brought an end to one era in data storage while the dawn of another is now upon us.
This past week I had the opportunity to attend the three (3) day BDEvent, a conference that specifically facilitates business-to-business networking for those individuals and organizations in the data storage and electronically stored information (ESI) industries. While it is a relatively small gathering (~150 people), it is one of those conferences where almost all of those in attendance are regularly engaged in off-the-record conversations.
That said, there were enough on-the-record comments and presentations made during the course of the event that I can reference them in this week's recap blog. In fact, the analogy that I used at the outset of this blog came directly from some comments made by Dave Hitz, NetApp Founder and EVP, during the event's closing presentation.
Greg and VaNessa Duplessie put on a great show, with A-list content and a storage who's-who present over the two days. Of course, cocktail hours and hotel "lobby time" proved equally valuable. The days were long but stimulating. I particularly enjoyed meeting some of the industry Twitterati, including @sfoskett, @sunshinemug and @dvellante. Always good to put a face to a @name, beyond the 70x70 pixel icon.
I was at the BDEvent in Palo Alto this week. For those who don't know, the BDEvent was founded by Vanessa and Greg Duplessie as a no BS forum for doing deals. Really. No users. No booths. No demo dollies. No BS. Actually there was plenty of BSing but of a different kind. At any rate, the way it works is companies address the audience in brief 15 minute segments and it's all about who you are, what your company does, why its different and what kind of deals you want to make. Interested? Let's talk. Not interested? That's fine too. In addition to the speed dealing there are more in-depth segments and panels. One was a discussion on social media led by Vanessa with @sunshinemug and @SFoskett. Both Sunshine (yes that's her name) and Stephen are social media practitioners with plenty of experience engaging people through social media. Sunshine is a social media consultant and Foskett is a serious techie and really clear thinker who can translate technobabble into what it means for customers, vendors and industries.
Last week's BD Event was more than just a deal making event. It was a chance to learn about new product releases and trend in the storage industry.The big picture: gone are the days when end users had to accept whatever the storage industry handed down to them. Today's small-to-medium-sized storage operations are all about designing systems in response to customer needs. Whether that's developing end-to-end dedupe, refining and improving processes for data recovery management, delivering automated marketing tools, improving data migration, or creating storage that is more energy efficient, the push is towards designing systems with real world customer needs in mind.
The BD Event organizers' deep connections within the storage arena meant that the two-day conference in Palo Alto drew a who's who of industry folks. I was particularly pleased to see the number of analysts and consultants on site, including Jerome Wendt, George Crump, Deni Connor, Dave Vellante and Tony Asaro (who unveiled his new project, Voices of IT). I also spoke at length with storage writerHoward Marks, who has a new project called DeepStorage.net that looks very promising for companies seeking solid research that they can use as outbound marketing.
TheBDevent is proud to announce a partnership with TechTarget - TheBDevent recommends TechTarget along with their Storage Decisions shows for promoting to end-users; TechTarget recommends theBDevent for business development for industry insiders.
Virtualization and the Cloud Will Change Data Storage
June 19, 2009
By Marty Foltyn
Amid tentative signs that the economy is trying to emerge from its worst downturn in more than 50 years, data storage industry analysts, vendors and financiers gathered last week at the BD Event in Boston to offer their thoughts on where the storage and IT industries are headed in the year ahead.
IT sales growth is a fraction of what it was a decade ago, and users are intent on keeping it that way by wringing every last bit of efficiency out of their IT environments.
In keeping with that spirit of doing more with less, virtualization and the cloud were the top trends identified by show attendees.
"Virtualization used to be all about the low-hanging fruit, where server consolidation and cost management were the drivers," said John Gavin of Akorri. "Now it's really all about simplifying management and managing performance issues when in mission-critical applications."
Data centers are moving more and more from the constraints of physical devices and to a comprehensive model. Now they've moved on to the second stage - the virtualization of applications like Microsoft SharePoint, e-mail and CRM. Some companies have even moved onto stage three, with virtualization in multiple layers, combining server and storage virtualization to create large storage pools and then virtually allocating capacity as needed.
Yet many IT organizations are struggling with two worlds: a physical world that is not yet completely virtualized combined with new applications purchased under a mandate that unless they can go on virtual machines, the purchase must be justified.
Data centers have inherited tools from the physical world to manage different problems, and now have to contend with point solutions to manage virtualized environments. New tools are coming on the market to manage ever-increasing storage pools and the expanding layers that virtualization creates. In the next year, IT managers will see more comprehensive virtualization infrastructure management software, from single vendors or open sourced, designed to watch applications, pinpoint diagnostics, and remediate issues across heterogeneous environments.
Complexity and cost are driving different points of control across different layers of storage. Organizations with remote offices may need centralized backup, restore capabilities to remote offices, and cloud archival capabilities. Tony Cerqueira of Cofio Software sees end-to-end management of active information as a theme of future business processes, offering a way to combine different operations and provide a single point of control for data.
The focus in the virtualized world will continue to be on smart management and cost reductions, according to Clive Surfleet of Blade Network Technologies. New infrastructure tools like switch modules that fit into existing blade server/rack environments can help existing bandwidth scale while minimizing cost and lay the foundation for a rack-level network infrastructure that can cost-effectively provision and scale out virtualized data centers, Web 2.0 environments, and high-performance computing clusters.
A Cloudy Future
While pundits believe that the cloud will be a part of almost every data center, just what the cloud is remains a bit obscure. John Rotchford of Strategic Advisory Services International sees cloud as "back to the future" - going back to a mainframe environment of one computing infrastructure in a cloud, distributed but simplified. Clouds can also be seen as "on-demand services," a computing resource that is scalable on demand over the network, or a way to get around an IT department and get a project moving - a business customer's dream but a potential IT nightmare.
User-generated content continues to cast a bigger digital shadow, and the next year will continue to see the rapid growth of unstructured data, the need to store larger files, and an even greater impact from industries like healthcare and finance. The premise that the cloud offers better access at lower cost still needs to be tested, especially with data that has business value. Nevertheless, IT managers with an eye on their competitors would be wise to examine cloud solutions.
Nirvanix's Jim Zierick envisions the cloud as a storage delivery network. He sees use cases for the cloud in the data center that include offsite data protection, tiered storage, distributed content and collaboration as a hub to share data, and embedded storage. The bright future of the cloud, according to Zierick, is in cloud-enabled partner applications, including the ability to store user documents and use polices to manage backup, disaster recovery and the number of copies offered in a secure, available and easily managed storage environment.
John Bantleman from Clearpace sees a new use for cloud storage as something of a data escrow device - keeping a copy with a third party to ensure availability and use for reporting.
Cloud appliances are also popping up for download and storage of database information and the ability to disseminate for queries on usage scenarios of how cloud storage is being used. Clouds have the potential to change everything - they already have for consumer-driven applications, and while not so fast, clouds are changing the behavior of the enterprise, said Rotchford. Even though there is still confusion and debate among the providers, there will be on-demand services that work.
Adoption of new technologies takes years, although the cycles are compressing, said Tony Asaro of the INI Group. He contrasted the 44 years for cars to reach 25 percent adoption in the U.S. compared to seven years for the Internet. Asaro doesn't see companies moving all their IT resources into the cloud any time soon. They will continue to do their "bread and butter" applications by buying infrastructure and owning it themselves, but will use clouds to augment and enhance their operations.
Right now, there is solid near-term adoption of clouds in emerging markets, startups and SMBs, said Rotchford, and by 2013 they will be in the enterprise. Rotchford bets on internal clouds as the eventual enterprise winner, with external clouds used for non-critical applications. And one day the clouds will separate, with the term cloud even fading away over the next 10 years.
Follow the Money
So where is industry headed? While no one could agree on the "next big thing," merger and acquisition experts agreed that historic products and markets will continue to dominate, but the next decade will bring more consolidation of big companies into even bigger companies. On the other hand, while big companies will "eat" new companies and buy their way into new markets, the power of the entrepreneur is still strong even in this recession, especially when looking at new technologies and business. IT managers would be wise to watch the "new guys" who capitalize on opportunities to disrupt the big guns and have the potential to grow to dominate a market.
The industry is paring back, and potential is always tied to funds, the panel cautioned. Especially in today's economy, cash is the oxygen not only for startups, but also for existing companies. Economies are so intertwined that events halfway around the world can create serious ramifications at home. IT managers and their companies need to look at their vendors with a new perspective. "Companies who do not have a global focus will fail," said Andrew Williamson of Alexander Durham.
Change will occur either by force or by design, said Asaro. To be successful, IT professionals must "balance their left- and right-brain thinking," he said, citing an example where a company needed to open up access to users but was limited by physical servers. The IT manager used virtualization to put up 30 different applications for users to access.
"Keeping the lights on is number one, but if companies go out of business, the lights will go off," Asaro concluded. "Nothing is more strategic than revenue, so IT should focus on how to generate revenue and increase profitability."
Anyone who attended SNW this year knows that it isn't the show it used to be. At the same hotel as usual, there were plenty of seats available at the bar, plenty at the Starbucks, and some very conspicous companies were absent from the entire ordeal. The BD Event, however, was very different.
I just finished up a jillion meetings at the first occurence of The BD Event in Boston. (OK, this entry's a week late, but I got busy.) ;) I thought my time there was time well spent and I can't wait until there is another one. I've already gone on record saying that I didn't like the draconian techniques used by Computer World at SNW. I also heard that they even went further in a later SNW, where you couldn't even RENT a suite if you didn't have a sponsored suite contract. So I'm glad that there's finally another venue to do BD work, which is the primary reason I went to SNW in the first place. And, of course, the cost is ridiculously less.
But it wasn't until I just finished three more meetings in the Boston area (after The BD Event) that another light bulb came on. Why DOES SNW do their shows in Orlando, Dallas, and Phoenix? Why not in Boston, San Jose, or Denver? Some have suggested it's because they do it in vacation destination type places. That could be one reason.
I can also think of another reason -- it discourages what happened this week. In addition to going to The BD Event, I met with representatives from EMC, ExaGrid, and SEPATON who weren't at the event (although they should have). How did I do this? I just drove over and saw them! If SNW were to host in storage hub cities, some people from those vendors might just drive up and have dinner/lunch with people who are the show -- pulling those people away from the show and allowing the local people to not register at all. By hosting it in non-hub cities, they force everyone to fly in, stay at the hotel and pay several thousand dollars for registration. Hosting it in storage hub cities would interfere with their revenue model!
In contrast, this year's BD Event was held in Boston, and the next event is to be held somewhere in the bay area. If someone can't attend the show, you can meet with a whole bunch of companies by just driving over -- just like I just did. Not bad.
Up until a couple of years ago, I could go to SNW and meet with my colleagues in the storage press, vendors big, small and in stealth and the other powers that be in the storage business from 8 AM to 9 PM for all three days of the show. While it was exhausting, especially the year I had a bad cold, it gave me a view of what was going on in the market that I couldn't get anywhere else.
While end users were welcome at SNW, they were attending a very different event than those of us that were there playing inside storage industry baseball. Storage Decisions, on the other hand, is all about the end user and since there were four Storage Decisions conferences around the country each year they were mostly local end users. The Storage Decisions folks don't aim at generating product announcements and press conferences, providing us with just a sad little press room at best. That left SNW as the place for inside baseball.
Then the show producers started trying to control the whole experience. They limited access to the press room to conference sponsor/exhibitors. All of a sudden, that meant I couldn't meet with startups that couldn't afford the minimum sponsorship and stealth mode companies that didn't want to exhibit. They even intervened with the hotel to stop a PR firm from having a cocktail party for the cognoscenti in the hotel bar.
Now, to some extent, I understand why SNIA and ComputerWorld try to discourage non-sponsors from taking advantage of the money they spend promoting and producing SNW to forward their PR and business development goals while not kicking a few dollars into the kitty. After all, one reason Comdex imploded was that major vendors started taking suites around Vegas for private meetings with the press and other VIPs while not buying a booth on the show floor so the great unwashed masses of attendees, over 100,000 for a few years there, would wonder where Maxtor or IBM was. As one of the few industry press folks that actually liked Comdex I don't want SNW to fail, though I think it would be better in Vegas.
Even though I understand, this tightening of control means there are briefings and other business I used to do at SNW that I can't anymore. I hit my limit when they set up the press room with four standup cocktail tables but no chairs and no Internet access. Apparently enough other analysts, pundits and luminaries had the same experience for Greg Duplessie to organize The BDEvent (The Business Development Networking Event) in Boston next month.
His pitch was no exhibit hall, no sponsors, no end users -- just vendors with stories to tell and folks in a position to spread the word or invest money to listen. Startups get their 15 minutes of fame on stage and there will be plenty of places to sneak off for a private briefing. It sounded good enough for me.
Oh yeah. Since there are no sponsors; everyone, except the press 'cause they know we're underpaid, pays one price -- $595 -- to attend. Story tellers, analysts pitching services, consultant's looking for new vendors, startups or 800 lb gorillas like IBM or EMC all pay the same and the coffee pots don't have a sponsor.
If you have a story to tell come to Boston and I'll listen. See www.thebdevent.com to register. If you're coming, send me an email to reserve a slot on my calendar. Vendors offering extravagant meals encouraged.
"New Speed Dating Event aims to Help Lonely Storage Vendors
January 28, 2009 - registration was opened today for the Business Development Event taking place in Boston, MA in June.
The goal is to create a forum for face to face contact for industry insiders (vendors, VARs, consultants, analysts, press) that does not require the expense of exhibiting products and catering to end-users. Registration is $495 per person prior to April 1st. Press member registration is complimentary.
Editor's comments: in recessions you hear a lot of enthusiastic ideas from marketers about what they can do to develop new business against a backdrop of lower customer demand and shrunken budgets. When times are good marketers attribute revenue growth to the cleverness of what they have just done - instead of acknowledging the pull effect of a rising tide. It's only when the tide goes out they can't tell which rock they should be standing on.
Are events where people get together to discuss markets a good idea?
That depends on your own particular circumstances. Personally, for me - electronic communications are far more time efficient - enabling me to be talking to readers in China or India at one part of the day, and in the US at the other. And I hate wasting time talking on the phone - as I can get much more done via email. But I'm at the extreme end of this spectrum - as my job involves optimizing editorial IOPS. Some well known and respected PR agencies and storage analysts are associated with the new BD Event so it's worth seeing their website."
Major Players (over $500M in revenue)
CA
Citrix Systems, Inc.
EMC
F5 Networks
Hitatchi Data Systems
Intel Corp.
NetApp
Quantum Corp.
Hoping To Be A Major Player
3PAR
7MPS
Arvidson+Wagnisse
Atempo
Avere Systems
Bocada
Bridgehead Software
Cambridge Consulting
Channel Chargers
DataCore Software
DataGlobal
Datastor
Digitiliti
DeepStorage.net
Emulex
Enthiosys
ESILO
Exar Corporation
Executive Destinations
Falconstor
Farallon Research
GlassHouse
IceWEB
Integrated Software Sales & Marketing
KerStor
LaunchPad Europe
NetEx Software
Nirvanix
NovaStor
Oxygen Cloud Services
Permabit
ProStor Systems
RAI Consulting
Rouleau Search Associates
SANpulse
SEPATON
Seven Ten Storage
Silver Peak
Storwize
TechTarget
TechValidate
Vault Solutions, LLC
Unitrends
Viridity Software
Walden Technology Partners
Wikibon Project
Xiotech
Financial & Money Related Players
America's Growth Capital
Citigroup
Hapoalim Securities
Highland Capital Partners
Northside Advisors LLC
Valhalla Partners
SASI
Ridge Partners LLC
Press, PR, & Analysts
Bhava Communications
Business Finance Magazine
DeepStorage.net
DCIG
Evaluator Group
Forrester Research
Gestalt IT
IDC
InfoStor
JPR Communications
MMI Communications
Network World
SearchStorage.com
Storage Strategies NOW
Storage Switzerland
The Taneja Group
**Check back for updates
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