Uri Unplugged

In just a few weeks we’ll ring in 2008 with the usual fanfare. But what’s not usual about this coming year is the state of uncertainty it brings along with it. With market volatility and the fear of a recession offering more questions than answers, we’re all a lot more cautious when it comes to spending money.

Of course, the logical reaction to such market uncertainty is to hold off on new projects and expenditures. My wife and I recently decided to postpone a new car purchase for this very reason.

But there’s no getting around the fact that some purchases, those most critical to the continuation of your business, simply can’t be put off.

If you need it, you need it.

But this year, more than ever, is the time to be extra diligent in evaluating your options.

This is the Year...
To scrap the old mantra: ‘No one ever got fired for buying [insert major brand name]’. Because although [insert major brand name] may have a strong reputation for reliability, chances are the associated outlay is much higher than you’re comfortable spending right now.

This is the Year...
To look for alternative solutions that will lower your overall TCO and offer a healthy balance between price, performance, and reliability.

This is the Year...
To minimize your risks by choosing a solution that’s been proven, yet still cost-effective.

At RADirect, I’m speaking with a lot of storage customers about things like consolidation and tiered storage, which fits right in with this way of thinking.

How is the current market volatility affecting your budget planning for 2008? Drop me a line - I’d love to hear from you.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seems like everywhere I turn lately, there’s commentary on the critical need for data centers to “go green”. In fact, internetnews.com published two articles on the topic (“Greening Your Data Center...” and “Green is Hot for Storage Managers”) in less than two weeks.

So why all the buzz? Soaring energy costs (including the cost of cooling). Environmental responsibility. Emerging regulations that govern power consumption levels. In short, companies are challenged to find more energy efficient ways to store higher volumes of data and retrieve it faster.

Analysts and experts have released all kinds of statistics and predictions that are extremely frightening, such as:

• IT organizations are now spending 25% of every hardware dollar on power (IDC)
• IT departments can expect to spend half of their total budget on energy (EPA draft report on server and data center efficiencies)
• By 2008, half of current data centers will have insufficient power and cooling capacity to meet the demands of high density equipment (Gartner)
• By 2009, energy costs will emerge as the 2nd highest operating cost in 70% of worldwide data center facilities (Gartner)

Well then, I guess it’s no surprise that energy efficient products have increased as a buying priority.

Fortunately, a few storage vendors are ahead of the game. For example, Nexsan Technologies, a veteran green machine which has installed more than 50 petabytes of “green storage” since 2001, incorporates their proprietary AutoMAID™ (Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology into their SATABeast and SATABoy SATA storage arrays.

This technology transparently places disk drives in an idle state to conserve energy yet still allows for near-instantaneous access to data, resulting in reduced power consumption and operational costs.

According to a recent Nexsan press release, the SATABeast SATA RAID array (at Level 3 AutoMAID), consumes up to 25 times less power than conventional storage arrays. If the requirement for greener storage continues to grow as I predict it will, this is the kind of stuff buyers will be looking for.

By the way, I noticed that the SATABeast was selected as a finalist for “Green Product of the Year” at this year's Techworld Awards in the UK. Nice!

Posted by Stephen Insdorf at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I was growing up (some time ago), we had one TV channel, a few radio stations, and just a couple of encyclopedias and a few other resources to use for finding information. Our challenge back then was in the actual process of gathering information. With scarce and limited resources available to us, the task was tedious and slow.

In contrast, today my oldest child researches information for homework assignments by ”Googling”. Every one of his queries returns countless resources (surprisingly enough, Google does count them) providing him with a wealth of information in a fraction of a second. This is great, yet it presents a different kind of challenge - How can one sort, comprehend and assimilate these vast amounts of information?

In today’s business landscape, this condition is no different. We are all overwhelmed with information and face the enormous challenge of sorting it all in a meaningful way.

Our role at RADirect as a trusted partner has changed too. We are no longer the authoritative resource; we no longer have a span of time to communicate with you and we are certainly no longer the ones that know it all. We are just another resource on your journey to discover information.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My family and I just returned from a two-week trip to Argentina. This was a leisure trip for a change, with highlights including Buenos Aires, Iguazu Waterfalls, and Bariloche, to name a few.

Argentina is a great country - beautiful, extremely nice people, and easy enough to travel (even with the kids). Overall, we had a terrific time! Nevertheless, one phenomenon troubled me throughout the trip: rampant price discrimination.

You see it across the board in Argentina: taxis, hotels, airlines, visas, and what not. In some cases, tourists are charged double or even triple the local price for practically the same products and services. To be fair to Argentina, I believe this to be a common practice in other countries as well, especially where huge gaps in GDP per capita still exist compared to wealthier, more developed regions.

In my view, price discrimination is a short sighted business practice that will do more harm than good in the long run. In 2005, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census, tourism from abroad became the third largest source of income for the country, so it’s hard to imagine that Argentina would want to risk one of its prime industries for short term gains.

Customers always have choices. We could have easily chosen to travel to Brazil, Costa Rica or Mexico on this trip, and I am sure we would have had just as great of a time. That’s why I believe that in order to stay competitive for the long run, prices should be a derivative of actual costs, the value provided, and a reasonable profit margin that will assure your business long term survivability. Any other practice is short lived, especially given today’s proliferation of information on the Internet. In short, discriminatory practices are doomed to fail.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chances are, you’re in the midst or wrapping up your strategy planning for 2007 (as are we at RADirect!). So I thought it would be perfect timing to share my thoughts on this topic.

It’s widely agreed that the CIO role is becoming more and more complex. If you are a CIO or would like to become one, you must consider these three elements as the main drivers:

1. Leadership. You’ve got to be that person with the vision, the one who can articulate goals, garner strong support from your company’s main stakeholders, manage the resources, and have the ability to execute.
2. Business Acumen. Before undertaking any new initiatives, you must have a strong sense of how each initiative contributes to the overall success of your company.
3. Technology. You should certainly understand technology (including emerging ones), and have a strong sense of how these technologies can be applied to, and play a vital role in, your company’s overall success.

In the course of your planning, I am sure that at least some of the following will make it onto your radar:

• Legacy (infrastructure, application) refresh
• Virtualization
• Consolidation
• Regulations/standardization/compliance
• Business continuity/disaster recovery
• Collaboration
• SOA (service oriented architecture)
• Privacy/security
• Information management
• Instantaneous information via increased computing power, bandwidth and storage
• Globalization
• ASP
• Outsourcing

Obviously, each of these high level concepts can and should be translated into more meaningful tasks that are closely related to your own business environment, challenges and strategic planning. So how can this be translated into a meaningful strategic plan?

In my view, each undertaking you consider should be measured against ROI matrices. You should answer and quantify the following questions:

• How will this initiative help my business grow?
• How will this initiative help my business reduce costs (OPEX, CAPEX)?
• How will this initiative help mitigate risks? And the potential loss if I choose to do nothing?

Once you have fully reviewed the various aspects of each of your initiatives, you’ll probably have a better sense of which are most critical, as well as a better understanding of what will be considered a ‘justifiable investment’ to undertake them. Only then is it the right time to start exploring the available technologies and teaming with the right people to execute them.

The good news is, most of the things that will land on your priority list for 2007 will be doable and consistent with your ROI matrices (I call it healthy competition).

Without a doubt, the coming year will bring an even more vibrant economy. If you are comfortable with change and are as excited as I am about technology and its potential to improve our respective businesses, I think we can all expect an outstanding 2007!

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Each year, as we at RADirect conclude our current year’s business and begin to plan for the next one, I try to develop a new “theme” for our team to adopt over the course of the coming year. This year, I chose the following theme: ‘Commitment’. In doing so, I found the following definition particularly useful:

“Commitment: The act of binding yourself (intellectually or emotionally) to a course of action.”

The reason that I choose a theme to begin with is that it helps me think about what I’d like to accomplish. I then translate a concept into more defined and feasible actions.

Each one of us holds many roles in his or her life. For instance, in my personal life, I am a husband, a father, a son, a grandchild (my grandma just turned 96!), a friend, a community member, and so forth. In my professional life, I am a leader, a manager, a mentor, a motivator, an employee, a colleague, etc. And of course, there’s always the role of ‘I’ myself...

The question we may ask is, “How can one better bind himself to each of the courses these various roles require?” Is it even feasible (hey, only 24 hours in a day last time I checked!)? Does it make sense?

I believe that as long as your roles don’t contradict each other, they will actually complement each other. The stronger you are in each of your roles, the more you will grow as a person and the more successful you will be in your other roles. Let me give you some examples:

• If I am more successful in my professional roles and feel better about my accomplishments, wouldn’t that make them more meaningful? Wouldn’t that help me secure the financial future of my family?

• If I have a good relationship with my wife, wouldn’t that make me a better model for my kids? Wouldn’t that make me a happier person in life? Wouldn’t that impact my professional roles for the better?

• If I am a better model for my team, wouldn’t that make my ‘I’ go higher? Wouldn’t that improve the rest of my roles?

I am pretty sure you get the picture (I mean ‘my picture’). All of our roles involve varying degrees of interdependence, and your ability to be truly committed to more of your life’s roles will increase, not impede, your overall success and happiness.

Another aspect of commitment that I think often gets distorted is the idea that to take on more commitments, we need to do more work. This isn’t always the case. In my view, a commitment to something doesn’t mean that you have to do everything yourself. You can always rely on colleagues, friends, family members or whatever other means you may have available (did I mention outsourcing?).

Commitment entails your own responsibility to the course of action, and perhaps also its outcome. But you don’t necessarily have to personally take on all of the activities associated with reaching the outcome.

So there you go, my colleagues, partners, customers, prospects, family, friends - and whoever else may be reading this post-

My resolution this New Year is to be more COMMITTED!

Happy New Year!

Uri

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just returned from RAD Data Communications’ annual partner meeting in Eilat, Israel and came across an interesting article while I was there. Zohar Zisapel, (founder of RAD and 26 other networking companies in the RAD Group with aggregated 2005 revenue of $640 million) shared his thoughts on the most important upcoming telecom trends. I usually pay attention to what Zohar has to say because:
a) he’s my boss ;-)
b) with as many successful start-ups as he’s founded and his exposure to a wide array of technologies he generally has his finger on the pulse

Here are the biggest take-aways from Zohar’s article:

1. Wireless devices are getting smarter and more flexible, and are getting better at preventing transmission interference. These improvements can effectively increase capacities tenfold in the very near future.
With WiFi advances, for example: “…who of us wouldn’t want to get rid of the telephone and television cables in our homes? Why do we have to renovate our house every time we want to move the plasma screen? Why does every office need its own Internet and telephone infrastructure?”

2. Zohar sees particularly interesting developments in those areas that combine technologies; for instance video and communications as in the case of video conferencing and IPTV. Video and mobility is another interesting proposition, as in the case of video in cell phones and cars (both for communication and entertainment).

3. Yes, it’s the era of the social Internet, web 2.0, whatever you want to call it. But as to starting a web 2.0 company? You should act quickly, very soon it will be too late to catch this boat…

4. The world is not flat; it slopes towards Asia. There are more cell phones in Asia, more Internet users, higher growth of Skype users and even more blogs! The growth rate of all of these is faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world.

5. Higher bandwidth applications lead to demand for well, more bandwidth. This in turn creates demand for more security for that bandwidth, and more storage for all that content.
I think so myself, which is why I am expanding RADirect’s load-balancing, security and storage practices to accommodate this trend.

6. We’re entering an era of major technological battles; WIMAX vs. 4G, cable vs. ‘traditional’ service providers, Skype and VoIP vs. classic telephony, wire vs wireless. This is a tremendous opportunity for all of us, providing that we manage to identify the right trends and choose the winning technologies…

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)