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ARN Storage Roundtable: 'Ensuring business continuity and building opportunities'

ARN Storage Roundtable: 'Ensuring business continuity and building opportunities'

Who says storage can’t be sexy?

From left: Allan Swann (ARN), Allan King (Infront Systems), James Sillence (EMC), Andrew Thomas (Thomas Duryea), Stefan Gillard (Engineroom.io), Rodney Gedda (Telsyte),
Anthony Davis (Nexenta), Jennifer O’Brien (ARN), Richard Denyer (Fusion Systems), Matthew Swinbourne (NetApp), Phil Lancaster (Bluechip Infotech)

From left: Allan Swann (ARN), Allan King (Infront Systems), James Sillence (EMC), Andrew Thomas (Thomas Duryea), Stefan Gillard (Engineroom.io), Rodney Gedda (Telsyte),
Anthony Davis (Nexenta), Jennifer O’Brien (ARN), Richard Denyer (Fusion Systems), Matthew Swinbourne (NetApp), Phil Lancaster (Bluechip Infotech)

FLASH TO THE RESCUE?

Enterprises will increase their adoption of flash technology as the leading storage companies validate this trend. NetApp’s Swinbourne said the battle between mainstream players and bleeding-edge all-fl ash vendors will be won by those that best enable customers to deploy the right levels of performance, reliability and scalability for their specifi c needs and workloads.

EngineRoom.io, chief mechanic, CEO, Stefan Gillard, agreed the obsession with fl ash technology is shaking up the market.

“We are seeing commoditisation of storage and the advent of all flash arrays or hybrid converged appliances like a Nutanix that has the compute and the storage and the network all in the same appliance and software defined storage and network. Our customers now have huge opportunities and huge choices,” Gillard said.

“Consumers in the last three years have more selection around all storage, fl ash, version IO, hybrid, trays from even the big manufactures. They’ve got consumer choice for one of the first times. Five years ago or 10 years ago, if you were Telstra there were probably two vendors that you talked to about your storage needs. Now you’ve actually got more than two handfuls of people you can potentially go to.”

InFront Systems’ King said many customers with a set budget settle on flash, but still expect high performance.

“It’s the emergence of good enough reasoning. We’ve got to be aware of the good enough discussions. Now what is good enough? Well good enough sometimes is in the eye of the beholder, not the educator trying to convince you that it could burn or fail in the endeavor. You don’t want to ever see a customer fail, but they can make rash decisions based on budget. We’re walking away from a lot of jobs.”

Additionally, the popularity of flash and ‘good enough’ computing is fuelling the birth of the generalist in the partner community, he added.

“We’re seeing our industry devolve into a bunch of generalists. They don’t have the specialists. We’ve always tried to advocate ourselves as a specialist company. I believe customers know 80 per cent of everything before you even walk in the door. And what you’re trying to do now is understand and guide. They’re not sure of the flavour or the colour. The big boys are generalists these days and they laugh at the deep integration capabilities of the specialist organisation,” King said.


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Tags storageemcbluechip infotechnetapptelsyteThomas DuryeaPhil LancasterAndrew ThomasInfront SystemsRodney GeddanexentaFusion SystemsEngineroom.ioAllan KingJames SillenceRichard DenyerStefan GillardMatthew SwinbourneAnthony Davis

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