Congratulations, Martin! You keep writing and we'll all keep reading!

You keep on writing and I'll keep on reading. We may not agree, Chuck, but you've always got something thought-provoking to say. I have to agree about the astroturf. I refuse to engage in a discussion with anyone I can't identify. I don't need to know your real name, employer, and position, but I'd like to know at least two of the three. I believe folks can represent themselves, their employers, or both. But no matter, I'd like to know where you're coming from. We always know where you are coming from, and that's refreshing!

What? No vStorage? I'm a one-trick pony I guess!

InMage is really one of those overlooked gems in the storage world. Sure they're tiny and focus on out-of-fashion CDP, but it's cool tech and it works. I do hope this deal helps spread the word that this tech is useful and available!

I'd just like to highlight one statement from the above post: "if anyone thinks [traditional scale-out block and scale-out NAS] can compete with Amazon S3 (on function or price), personally, I think they are missing something." Amen, Chad! Amen!

I'll be there, too! Watch for updates at gestaltit.com and on Twitter (@sfoskett).

Martin is right on with the TCO comment. I recently compared all-in TCO for long-term tape to long-term cloud archiving (golly, I wonder why?) and we found it was a positive ROI to move to the cloud. This is not to say that disk or cloud storage is cheaper than tape. It says that backup to cloud is cheaper all-in than backup to tape with off-site storage. So if the problem is protecting data off-site for long periods and keeping the solution going for the forseeable future, cloud is cheaper. If the problem is writing some data on a tape and sticking it on a shelf, then tape will always be cheaper. But I think that NO ONE has that problem!

Welcome to the storage blogosphere! It's great to have another perspective on storage, especially someone who knows so much about EMC kit! Thin provisioning is interesting, but it's still only a half-solution to the utilization problem we've all faced for so many years. I've been meaning to blog on this, and maybe I will thanks to your prodding, but in short, even thin provisioned arrays will be purchased vastly over-sized due to the provision/refresh cycle in enterprise shops and poor capacity forecasting. In fact, thin provisioning promises to make utilization appear much worse not much better, especially in the short run. Instead of doling out 50% of an array's usable capacity as under-used LUNs, we'll dole out 10% as full LUNs. What could go wrong? Looking forward to this debate! Stephen

I appreciate the poll, Scott, but feel it definitely needs some qualification and explanation. Asking simply "would you backup to the cloud" leaves it wide open to interpretation. Who is "you"? Yourself or a business? Which cloud? What cost? What capabilities? You left it vague on purpose, I know, but this vagueness is going to cloud (pardon the pun) your answers... Personally, I back up to the cloud every day, and have for three years. I know LOTS of folks use services like Mozy, Iron Mountain, and Symantec to do this as well. Including MANY EMCers. I also know of businesses who use cloud storage as a backup target, but archiving is a much more common application. Consider all of the Zantaz and MessageOne users! This has been going on for a very long time, too, and many might not even know they're "backing up to the cloud"! Again, thanks for asking. But don't be surprised if the answers don't reflect existing use cases and practices!

Steve, A prominent Massachusetts company is currently wringing their hands, trying to figure out how to respond to this encryption mandate with regard to offsite tape storage. This is a huge deal, and lots of folks haven't figured out how to deal with it yet. I'll be covering that in another blog post (tomorrow?). As for enforcement, I agree it's weird. The Massachusetts AG gets to enforce it, and I can't see how they would go after, say, Bank of America or someone else outside the state! Stephen

This is a really critical differentiator, and one that seasoned IT folks already recognize. It doesn't matter how good your IT infrastructure DR plan is if there's no employee around to use it! Running with this theme, there is a public vs. private cloud aspect to this. Since public cloud systems are designed to run outside the firewall and be more widely accessible, they can be more easily used by displaced and dispersed employees. Private cloud infrastructure will need the same connectivity rush as non-cloud apps. I ran with this on my blog: http://developer.nirvanix.com/blogs/strategies/default.aspx Stephen

I'm trying to figure out these numbers... Let's start with media: $36,000 buys 800 LTO-4 tapes with 640 TB of raw capacity. $36,000 for offsite storage at $1 per tape per month is 3,000 tapes. This is a huge environment. Then we have Avamar backing up 40 GB. This is a tiny environment. What am I missing here?

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Can't say I disagree with Farley's conclusion!

Once again, Marc proves that StorageRap is the only blog worth reading (and watching)! It comes down to this: If Google misses out on half of the web because it's sealed off with nofollows or out of sight on Twitter, then their results will suffer. Remember AltaVista? Lycos? Heck, Yahoo? The masses have changed search engines before, and they can again. Google has a problem to fix! And yes, it was a bit of a technicality. But this little technical nothing (nofollow) is threatening everything we think the Internet is!

Chuck, I couldn't agree more on your requirements for cloud storage to succeed in the enterprise. As someone who lived through the first wave of managed storage services at StorageNetworks, these two elements were always top of mind. Sadly, it was difficult for us to deliver cheaper/easier storage as a service using the EMC hardware of the time. We did a fine job of developing SLAs and meeting our customer expectations, however! Looking around this second wave of storage services, I noticed that Nirvanix stood out. It's certainly got the cheaper/easier factor covered versus DIY internal storage. But the company is focused on the enterprise space, with excellent SLAs and metrics, sales, and support. So I took the plunge and went to work for the company myself! Amazon S3 is a good choice for many use cases. Atmos onLine looks like a nice service, too, and time will show us exactly where it fits in to the overall storage services market once it becomes available in Q3. I certainly expect many, many of AT&T's competitors to join the fray as well over the next year! We live in exciting times, Chuck, and both of us have put ourselves at the center of it!