John McArthur’s New Venture Blog

Many startups are using free, online survey tools. Today I helped StorageVirtualAppliance develop a survey targeted at users of VMware and other virtual-server solutions. The survey was developed using FreeOnlineSurveys, similar to Survey Monkey, with which I was more familiar.

As I was working with StorageVirtualAppliance, I was reminded of some rules in survey design.

1) Know the purpose of the survey: Lead Generation, Evangelization and Market Awareness, Actionable Information for Product Marketing, Actionable Information for Product Management

2) Think about how you will categorize and summarize the data. Open-ended questions may provide great color commentary or quotable statements, but in large volume are difficult to categorize and summarize.

3) Have an incentive for those that take the time to complete the survey. The incentive could be as simple and inexpensive as a summary of the results, it could be an opportunity to be entered into a prize drawing, or it could be a small cash award.

In addition to helping with the survey, I also offered to help get the survey out to a broader set of participants. So, if you know any IT professionals, please send them to this blog and have them click on this survey link.

Thanks in advance. Participants could win a copy of Eco-Tech Warrior, Greg Schultz’, new book, The Green and Virtual Data Center.

One of the sessions I attended at the New England Area VMware User Group meeting in Newport, Rhode Island last week included a discussion on how to take the internal storage of a VMware ESX host and turn it into a virtualized iSCSI storage appliance.  I happen to believe that the approach has great merit for many smaller IT shops and for remote office environments.  The internal storage of an ESX server, if totally useable and accessible to the ESX host and other ESX servers on the network, is probably the cheapest storage you will ever buy.  What I found particularly interesting about this session, however, was the fact that the presenter downplayed the approach as good enough to experiment with the storage virtualization software, but not good enough to run production applications.  In order to encourage companies to try the software, the developer offers a free 30-day trial, the expiration of which then renders the server unuseable, unless you purchase a permanent license.  While I believe the company has good software, I don’t understand the approach to the market. (more…)

I attended the New England Area VMware User Group meeting in Newport, Rhode Island last week.  It was a great opportunity to see what challenges IT managers are facing, what solutions they are adopting, and what problems remain to be solved.  It was also a good opportunity for me to revisit what I learned many years ago in studying the research of  Clayton Christensen and his concept of Disruptive Innovation.  Two of my clients have what I consider disruptive technologies.  I’ll write about Tek-Tools in this post, and then cover  StorMagic in a subsequent post. 

Tek-Tools offers the Profiler Suite of monitoring, reporting, and forecasting tools for servers, storage, applications, files, and, yes, VMware.  Why is it disruptive? Tek-Tools’ Profiler is easy to install, easy to afford, and easy to use, and it’s “good enough” for the bulk of today’s customers.  It does not overshoot current market requirements.  It gives quick answers to important questions like: How much storage do I have installed? How fast is it growing?  How much is allocated? How much is used? When will I need more storage? Where is my performance bottleneck? How old is my data? Who is violating data retention policies? Which virtual machines are using which storage? Which virtual machines are no longer in use? Which physical machines could I consolidate onto a  VMware ESX host, without encountering performance issues? Where is my orphaned storage? (That’s a technical term that means I deleted the virtual machine, but forgot to return the allocated storage to the storage pool.)  

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One of the things we used to discuss, when I was running the storage research practice at IDC, was “When will a market disappear and just become a feature of some larger market?”  Examples are numerous.  Remember when there was a market for browser software? And, while NetApp is going strong, both Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are trying to make NAS a feature of the operating system.

One of the reasons I joined the board of StorMagic was that I saw the potential for the company to be a market disruptor.  Today, StorMagic announced SvSAN software, which, when installed on a VMware ESX server, converts the internal storage of the ESX server into an iSCSI SAN.  VMware leverages the fact that most single applications don’t need all the computing power of today’s servers.  SvSAN leverages that same fact to provide the storage management function within the ESX server, and also takes advantage of the fact that the internal storage capacity of an ESX server, perhaps the least expensive storage you will ever purchase, is more than enough capacity for a large number of VMware ESX server-hosted applications.  (more…)

Most people I work with now know that I am a relatively active user of social media and business networking tools, including Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, LinkedIn and Plaxo.  In fact, over the past six months, my blogging dropped off significantly, but my use of social media and business networking tools accelerated.

One of my clients was asking about the size of the installed base of Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS), wondering if it was a market large enough to justify the investment needed to integrate with  their own solution.  They also wondered about the penetration rate for GDPS within the installed base of z/OS licenses.  That’s rather esoteric stuff, unless you cut your teeth on IBM mainframes, as I did. (more…)

It’s a tired truism that a rising tide raises all ships.  And a rising market rewards both the creative and the rote practitioners.  In years past, it didn’t take a financial wizard to take out an HP12C, calculate a lease-rate factor, bundle up a package of leases and sell them to GE, BankofAmerica, or Key Bank.  Selling off leases enabled the equipment or software provider to recognize a sale, while still allowing customers to spread payments over the useful life of the acquired asset. 

Times have changed, and just when everyone should have a lease offering and most thoughtful customers want one, so they can preserve cash on their balance sheet, the big guys that traditionally bought up the bulk of leases have gone packing. So where do you sell off your lease paper now?

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I’ve memorized most of the screenplay for Rob Reiner’s 1987 film, The Princess Bride.  Why? Because it’s funny?  Yes.  But more importantly, because at least once a day, there’s a line from the screenplay that fits perfectly with the situation I’m confronting.  Here’s a line I always recall when facing the seemingly insurmountable challenge:

My brains, his steel, and your strength against sixty men, and you think a little head jiggle is supposed to make me happy? I mean, if we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.

Today, I updated my suggested reading list to include Dave Hitz’ recent book, How to Castrate a Bull.  In the book, Dave chronicles his life and the life of NetApp, the company he co-founded.  And just like The Princess Bride, I find myself quoting from the book frequently. 

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I just finished reading an unedited, advance review copy of Paul Gillin’s latest book, “Secrets of Social Media Marketing.” If Paul is reading this post, he may remember that I told him I would read the book last month, but then, I also planned for the stock market to be up slightly. Things change, and you adapt.

In the book, Paul relates that he dictated much of the book into his computer and used speech recognition software to scribe his thoughts.  Since this was an unedited advance review copy, I gained some insight into the state of speech recognition software, which has advanced enormously over the past 20 years, but still makes amusing mistakes.

Paul acknowledges that at the current pace of change, some of the social media marketing tools he describes and the strategies he espouses will become relics and interesting historical perspective in 10 years’ time.   But, as we find ourselves in an economic downturn that appears deeper than anyone younger than 80 remembers, Paul offers some sage commentary on social media marketing that applies equally well to general business strategy.  Paul writes:

There are only two unpardonable sins in the current environment. One is fear…That leads to the other unpardonable sin, which is inaction.

Read Paul’s book and by the time you’re done, you will be gathering at Gather, twittering at Twitter, joining Facebook groups, and spreading link-love from your blog.  One thing’s for sure, budgets are tightening, and you and your companies will have to find innovative and less expensive ways to validate product concepts, find prospects, demonstrate to them what you can do, prove to them that you are alive, well, and can deliver something they want. 

About 20 years ago, I had a small consulting practice, helping very-small businesses migrate from typewriters and manual accounting systems, to automated ordering, billing, and accounting systems.  Within a year or so, I turned my few customers over to my brother, Ken, who was much better equipped to service them.  Ken was also substantially more knowledgeable in the area.  To Ken’s credit, he continued to service these accounts for years, even though he was geographically challenged with a separation of about 350 miles.

My first client has offices little more than a block from where my sons now attend summer camp.  So this morning, after dropping them off, I stopped by to see my former client.  He’s no longer using the systems we developed for him.  But they were good for more than 10 years.  So that’s not bad.  I met his in-house IT guy, the guy that replaced my brother and our systems.  The new guy says he also takes out the garbage and cleans the offices on Fridays, something we never did.  (more…)

I was describing to my rather-precocious, thirteen-year-old son the problem that companies have of getting the word out.  As part of “Career Week” at his school (five different jobs for five days at the end of the school year), my son decided he would make a stop-motion Lego video for Tek-Tools, one of my clients, to promote the company.   I told him that, if it was good enough, I would show it to the CEO, and maybe he would use it.  Little did I know that my son was going to, upon completion, post the video on YouTube.  But he did.  Without permission.  And my wife asked me, once again, “Why don’t we have more controls on his computer?” 

Ken Barth, the CEO of Tek-Tools,  was our first client at Walden Technology Partners.  A lot of people in the computer storage industry know him, and beyond the fact that he has been successful in everything that he has done, everyone who meets him says the same thing: “He’s a great guy.”  Ken’s company provides a superb solution for reporting, monitoring, forecasting, and profiling IT infrastructure.  It’s easy to install, easy to use, and provides immediate value.  What could be better?   (more…)