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I spent a very busy day at Symantec Vision this week, in
Sydney. Amongst the hype and dramatics, (although it was very entertaining, I
am still trying to work out what the tap-dancing had to do with anything!)
there were some interesting keynotes and break-out sessions. The usual partner
suspects were there, Network Appliance, Dimension Data, XSI, Quantum, Dell, Sun
Microsystems, IBM etc.
These events are always swamped with the vendor staff, but
it's not always such a friendly affair as the Symantec (formally Veritas)
bashes are. Not only were the traditional customer facing teams mooching
around, but there were a number of the backroom teams, such as Education and
Technical Support. I personally think that this says a lot about the company
mentally and approach to it users, they are willing to expose their softer
under-belly, albeit probably very carefully selected staff, directly to their
user base.
The day was very well attended, from an external
perspective, numbers certainly seemed to be quite a bit higher than previous
years, not that Vision is ever not well attended.
Keynotes:I couldn't help but feel a little let down with the
massively reduced focus on the storage product suite in the keynotes, but that
must be qualified with the fact that I am a storage person and not an
Anti-Virus or retail security suite person, I am sure there were many original
Symantec customers there that would have said the same in reverse if the
content was different. As an side, it would also have been nice during the
customer innovation awards to actually have presentations from the customers
themselves describing their use of the Symantec product suite and the benefits
achieved, but in one day, time is obviously a constraint.
Personally, I was hoping for something more insightful from Mark Bregman, considering his role as
Chief Technology Officer and previous deliveries. Having said that, the time
was still well spent, informative and up-beat. Coupled with Kris's following
session, these were the most useful sessions from a high-level perspective.
As expected, Kris
Hagerman, Symantec Group President for Data Center Management was definitely
the highlight of the keynotes, an interesting and engaging speaker with plenty
of knowledge and experience from the Veritas days. Kris has always appeared to
be a very easy speaker with a much larger scope than time normally permits, the
big picture delivered during this discussion was no different, informative,
useful and on track.
Even after the NetApp Senior VP and GM, Mr Rich Clifton's delivery, I am still to
be convinced that NetApp solutions are a cut above anything else, I see a lot
of focus change at the moment, continual reference to being "the fastest
growing SAN vendor" and only minor mention of existing or forthcoming IP
Storage strategies did nothing to alleviate that feeling and in my view
continued to demonstrated, what I feel is, a lack of real commitment to end-user
long-term goals, the model presented still suggested a large
"point-solution" methodology. Having
visited EMC Inform recently, I saw and heard similar philosophical discussion
today from Mr Clifton, may be he and I attended the same EMC presentations...
Although impressive, the Telstra account deployment metrics
were rolled out yet again.... It would have been nice to see some figures from
an environment where these sorts of numbers were harder to achieve in the first
place, Telstra has never been known for its efficiency or proficiency in
Storage Management. Some of the BackUp-To-Disk data was referenced from a
Forester Report back in November '06, the B2D lansdcape has changed massively
in this time and I am not so sure these figures were as relevant as the
emphasis placed on them during the presentation.
All in all, the NetApp session could have been utilised for
better effect with more emphasise on the Symantec integration and capabilities,
especially as we were at Symantec Vision. I
am by no means "Anti-" NetApp, I actually quite like their
technology, but their strategy always leaves me wanting or wondering more.
An interesting distraction was Dr Keith Suter delivering a somewhat cynical and unrelated commentary on the state of Australia and his thoughts today.
In general the Symantec "Big Picture" echo'd their
tag-line of a "Connected World" and, for me, re-enforced the fact that
the Symantec storage product suite is still more closely aligned with the
Infrastructure Services panacea that end-users are striving for at this time
than any of the hardware vendors product offerings are, and is more likely to fulfil
the promise in both the short- and long- term.
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Sedona Perspectives 
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