Archive for May, 2012

EMC World was a great event! Axxana’s Select Theatre presentation was delivered by our own Brendan Foye, Director of Sales, USA West. According to the EMC Select team on the floor, it was by far the most attended session at the Select Theatre. Some of them asked me “What did you do to get such a crowd?”

Axxana at EMC World Select Theatre

It’s no surprise to anyone who has heard Brendan present, but, the presentation went very well. And the buzz continued long after his presentation. People came to our booth saying they saw his presentation and wanted to hear more. At the V bar later that night, people were still talking to me about how cool the Axxana Phoenix is and how great the presentation went. They started asking me if we smashed and crashed the box and I right there on the spot went to YouTube with my iPhone and showed them the mechanical tests video that we have on our channel WEDR, complete with the fire, earthquake, explosion, penetration and water tests. It was, as Chad Sakac would say “AWESOME”!!!

Stage is one thing… but EMC TV??? My friend Lara El-Ghazal from Philly was the beautiful host this year and in between conversations about potential customers who will surely benefit from Axxana’s transformation of Async to Sync… we also… by chance… really… talked about sending a TV live crew to our booth… and sure enough, they came. Mr. Paul Jassies, Axxana’s Director of Sales, EMEA, did a remarkable job in his first TV appearance. Word on the floor was that he was the one who sent RPO-0 to do dance with the TV crew live. That was so much fun! RPO-0 was everywhere at the show. Our friends from Presidio, an EMC Channel Partner, took a picture of RPO-0 strapped to the rope of their climbing wall… again… AWESOME!!!

RPO-0 Ready to Climb The Wall

As for the trade show… it was great. We had many meetings which were pre-set with end users and that’s a lot of what it is about. We had many EMC’ers bring their customers to our booth and of course, random end users who visited us and went home with a phone call in their future. We now have many good friends at EMC, people from all ranks and all roles… and many of them came to our booth to say hello. Having all of us and all of them in the same place at the same time – that’s… you guessed it – AWESOME!

Especially noteworthy was Jerry Eudey who walked around wearing our special, limited edition, “Team Axxana” shirt, which no Axxana employee is allowed to wear, by the way. And if we are talking about friendship… Axxana and RecoverPoint were seen going strong and steady at the show this year, with RecoverPoint’s new booth and back and forth referencing of Zero Data Loss @ Distance (RP+Axxana) to create the world’s strongest, most cost effective, replication solution, with not even a hint of competition. VNX/CLARiiON today… VMAX and VPLEX – here we come!!! Now… isn’t that… AWESOME?!

Maroon 5 Shaking It Up at EMC World

Even at EMC World 2012, it’s not all business. Last night everyone had a great time shaking it up with Maroon 5. Of course, the organizers knew everyone would be exhausted from three packed days of education, information, and entertainment, so they are kicking off today with a keynote from Steve Duplessie, Founder of Enterprise Strategy Group, at 8:30 this morning. If you are in the storage industry, you  know Steve Duplessie, and you know, that even if you are exhausted, he will WAKE YOU UP.

Steve will be talking about flash and how flash is shaking up the storage industry. He’ll cut through the hype and, as his blog says, give us “The Bigger Truth.” I’m sure it will be streaming live on EMC TV, so you can watch it at home, or if you are at EMC World, but can’t get out  of bed this morning, you can watch from your hotel room.

Our RPO-0 solution, the Phoenix System RP, uses flash. Watch this short video clip and you’ll see us doing a whole lot of shaking. Don’t try this with your spinning disk.

RPO-0 Meets VNX and Promises Total Protection

Coming from Tel Aviv, I’m used to the heat, but Las Vegas was over 100 degrees yesterday at EMC World 2012.  I figured it wouldn’t matter, because I stayed inside, with our new mascot, RPO-0. Turns out, though, it was just as hot inside. RPO-0 got a lot of attention, and hundreds came over meet him. Of course, one of his favorite visitors was RPO-0′s BFF, VNX.

Don’t forget to stop Booth #728 to meet RPO-0 in person, and remember that Eli Efrat, our CEO, will be speaking today at the Select Theatre at 1:30PM. Ask him how to get your own RPO-0.

Finally, if, tragically, you weren’t able to attend EMC World, you can still watch interviews and keynote presentations streaming live from theCube and EMC TV. We’ve been on EMC TV twice this week. Hey, it’s hot under the camera lights, but nobody handles heat better than Axxana’s RPO-0.  We prove it with this video showing RPO-0 being tested to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here I am: Introducing EMCworld to RPO-0

We did set up on Sunday and had time for a quick talk with the EMCTV. Go to EMCTV to watch live streaming video of the keynotes, as well as replays of interviews.

Yesterday was our first full day at EMC World 2012, and we were busy, busy, busy. Eli Efrat, our CEO, took the front row VIP seat that I won (you’re welcome, Eli) and watched the opening talk by Joe Tucci and Pat Gelsinger. You can see some of the pictures Eli took at the keynote. I posted them to Axxana’s Facebook page.

We spent the afternoon at the Solutions Pavilion, where I introduced affordable RPO-0 to hundreds of people.

Don’t forget, Eli will be speaking at the EMC Select Theatre at 1:30PM on Wednesday. Meanwhile, stop by to see us at Booth 728 and meet RPO-0 in person.

I’ve got to run now!

See RPO-0 in Action at EMC World 2012

EMC World 2012 is next week in Las Vegas. The Axxana team will be there in force, including our CEO, Eli Efrat, and CTO, Dr. Alex Winokur. It’s a huge event with plenty of options as to how to spend your time, so careful planning helps you make the most of the days.

As a company that has done deep technology integration with EMC’s RecoverPoint, you will find us at many of the RecoverPoint sessions.  There are now twelve.  To find the sessions, just go to the EMC World Scheduler and search on RecoverPoint.

If you are a VNX or VNXe customer, I recommend you attend the session by Jonathan Meltzer, entitled “VNX and VNXe Data Protection: Recovering from Disasters – Large and Small.” He’ll be presenting on both Monday and Tuesday.

If you are responsible for disaster recovery or IT budgeting, you should try to connect with Lynn Osborn, Director of Engineering Services at The Pinnacle Group.  He’s the individual that helped Animal Health International achieve a zero-data-loss IT environment on a budget that any mid-sized company can afford. You can hear Lynn discuss his experience with Axxana in this short video on our YouTube channel. Stop by Booth 728, and we’ll help connect you with Lynn.

As an EMC Select Partner, we are very pleased to have a cameo presentation at the Select Theatre on Wednesday the 23rd, at 1:30pm. Don’t miss it. At the presentation you will learn how to transform asynchronous replication to synchronous replication.

Finally, if you can’t attend EMC World, consider watching the live streaming video that will be coming from theCube. As always, the folks at SiliconAngle and Wikibon will be providing great coverage and interviews with EMC executives, EMC customers, and EMC partners.

We hope to see you in Vegas!

A Bad Bet

Tim is the VP of IT. His company’s data center is more than a thousand miles from the nearest ocean, so it’s not going to be impacted by a tsunami or a hurricane. It’s in an area that has very little seismic activity, so it’s not likely to be affected by an earthquake.  There are no active volcanoes nearby. It’s not near any rivers or near a flood plain. There are no other major buildings nearby, and, even though his area has experienced a major drought over the past year, the risk from fire, at least from somewhere outside the data center, is very low.

Tim’s disaster recovery plan calls for a full backup of the application and data files of the critical applications once a week and an incremental backup nightly. The backups usually complete without error, but not always. Some applications are considered more critical than others, so some applications are backed up less frequently. Tim does a disaster recovery test twice a year, to make sure that everything in the DR plan is working. Usually it is. There are other risks to his data center. He could lose power or network communication. He could have a fire that starts inside the data center. His area does occasionally have tornadoes, but not very often. There could be a chemical spill that would require the area to be evacuated, but none of these are very likely.

Like every IT director, Tim has a limited budget, and he is constantly under pressure to keep IT costs low. Tim has made a series of guesses, bets really, in developing his disaster recovery plan. He’s bet that he’s covered for most of the risk associated with natural disasters, he’s bet that the applications that he deemed critical are the right priorities, that he’s got all of the program files and data together in the proper groups, and that nothing has changed since he last revisited the plan. He’s betting that the backup process is working, that the tapes are readable and the applications recoverable.

Those are only some of the bets that Tim has made. Each bet has a consequence. Sometimes he’ll win. Sometimes he’ll lose. But what happens, if Tim guesses wrong?

I’m a fan of the movie, “The Princess Bride.”  If you haven’t seen the movie, click on the link below to see a short clip of what can happen when you guess wrong.

The Princess Bride: The Man in Black in a battle of wits with Vizzini.

Actually, like the movie, the story I just told you is fantasy. Tim is real, but I made up the rest. In reality, Tim made a very different bet. He bet on Axxana. With one very good bet, he avoided making hundreds of bad ones.