OK. We’re not being coy, even though we have a big “Major Product Announcement” box on the front page of our web site. Really. Am I going to share? Yes, but not now. Instead, I’m going to provide a bit of a drum roll and some recent feedback from many worldwide discussions with some great analysts and thought leaders.
To start off, we’re not just making a product announcement. Rather, we’re proposing an entirely new way to think about availability: one that will actually work – and work for the masses. We’re not pulling any punches. It builds upon years of experience, 14,000+ implementations, and thousands of customers. Combine that with some stunning, technological, price-performance breakthroughs and the game begins to change. It’s a direct assault on what I’ll call the “norms of availability.”
These norms have forced many organizations either into accepting a false sense of security or tolerating downtime that could have been prevented. We’ll be attacking both this week. So what are some of these norms of availability?
- Recovery is OK because it’s getting faster. Really? Go ask American Eagle Outfitters about their 8-day outage debacle. Given that over 30% of recoveries don’t go as planned, this is dangerous, especially now because the stakes are so high. “Recovery” is still application downtime and still presents a high-risk of data loss. Remember: prevention is better than recovery.
- Virtualization is availability. Actually, virtualization is consolidation. Virtual machines (VMs) fail and have to be restarted. Virtualization, though very important, is a subset of availability. Want to gauge availability risk with pure-play virtualization? Look at the other pieces such as storage. No big deal? Most organizations will disagree on many fronts, including price and complexity. Virtualization matters (and we’re fans), but availability should be thought of first.
- DR keeps us going. DR is the nuclear option. It’s a last resort when major catastrophes occur. It should NOT be used when a disk drive fails. (More on this in a subsequent post.) DR is a necessity, but needs to be combined with local protection to make a very powerful availability combination.
- We have high availability support for our applications. That used to be a good, though it's really an inherently flawed approach. Remember, it’s still a restart; it’s still complex; and - do the math - it’s still expensive.
- Cloud computing will solve all our issues. Actually, it may ultimately be a great part of the DR component of broader availability, but it’s just not going to work for localized failures. Time to think holistically.
- Backups protect us. They sure do, but it may be a day or two late. Can your business afford that? Keep your backups going, but consider other things to amplify availability.
- I’m not worried because I never had a problem. Wow. Now I’m really scared. You may want to give us a call before you get fired. During recent services work, we’ve helped many of our customers not just identify, but find their critical assets. Do you really know where your important assets are? Do you want to be looking for them when something goes awry?
I’d like to say these are tales of fiction, but they’re not. They’re part of that dangerous norm and we hear this regularly. Fortunately, many organizations are getting better. Shortly, we’ll provide them with availability capabilities that they’ve never had access to, either because of economics, complexity, or scalability.
For the past few months, we’ve been briefing analysts and other experts on what we're delivering this week (and after). What has their response been?
- Wow. This is BIG.
- You’re changing the dynamics of availability.
- You’ve eliminated the triage IT decision make while tackling availability.
- You’ve emancipated applications from downtime.
- This is the “American Dream” of computing.
I like the last one, though I think the rest of the world will appreciate it as well. Stay tuned. We’ll share the word in the next couple of days. And it won’t end there because fault tolerance is about to go mainstream and the implications are substantial. And that’s just the start…
Rob Ciampa