Work In Progress

Like Monty Python’s famous dead parrot, the futile Aperi open source storage system management project has fluttered to earth because IBM has removed the funding nail that was keeping it upright. Aperi is now openly dead for all the world to see.

via Aperi dies on its arse • The Register.
Chris Mellor, whom I don’t know except via his writing, has never been a fan of Aperi, or of SMI.  A year ago he wrote that Aperi was stalled or maybe dead. (And at that time he indicated HP Storage Essentials was the leading storage management product “because HP is putting resources behind it and the AppIQ team produced a great initial product“.  What a nice fellow he must be.) But now it’s clear for all to see that Aperi has joined the choir invisibule.

I wouldn’t like to say whether Aperi’s downfall was in part due to HP’s non-involvement, or whether HP’s non-involvement just exhibits excellent foresight with regard to the future of Aperi. I certainly always felt more comfortable with Aperi as a competitive threat than as an unquantifiable distraction.

David Skok

The Proust Questionnaire shines its light on David Skok today. David is a successful entrepreneur who founded Silverstream which went public and Watermark which was acquired by IBM. For the last five years, he has been a partner at Matrix where he has had a remarkable track record investing in great companies like JBoss (acq by RedHat), AppIQ (acq by HP), Tabblo (acq by HP), Diligent Technologies (acq by IBM), HubSpot, and others.

David Skok Answers The Proust Questionnaire

InfoStor – HP to buy Opsware for $1.6 billion

The Creekpath software is probably a complete overlap with the AppIQ technology, which HP sells as Storage Essentials. Opsware’s storage technology doesn’t come close to the functionality of Storage Essentials,” says Stephanie Balaouras, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.

Techworld.com
Wouldn’t it be good if HP continued to make mincemeat of other vendors’ lackadaisical SMI-S efforts and creamed into their customer bases with Storage Essentials? They deserve no less. As for the others in the anti-Aperi Group words fail me….No. Stop. I’m, a hack. I can’t write that and mean it….

Is this really what’s going on?  Maybe this isn’t such a great idea.  Doesn’t SMI-S require several decent client applications in order for it to develop the required momentum for decent agent implementations to emerge? (Few have done so yet.)

I only just learned that AkkorI have come out of stealth mode with an “SRM appliance”

http://www.akorri.com/Default.aspx

Sounds like they’re aiming at one or two of the useful subsets of Storage Authority supposed functionality. Topology, and SPA and impact/hotspot analysis. I wonder if they will get it to work.  Matrix and Northbridge behind them, and a couple of customers.

Most interestingly, their “Vice President of Channel and Alliance Development” is actually Lord Voldemort. That’s got to give them some kind of advantage.

Strategic Info Management: Has Storage Resource Management Fizzled? – Storage & Servers – Network Computing
…We brought in AppIQ; same dog, different set of fleas…

This kind of thing makes me proud.  To think that somewhere in the depths of the software there is a nugget of gold that could be combined with a whole load of other stuff  to make a usable software product.  Mmmm.

Techworld.com – Storage Insight – Hurd speaks; continuing change at HP
…Mark Hurd did signal that focused acquisitions may be on the cards, ruling out larger-scale corporate buys such as Symantec. That may indicate that HP could move into the high-end network-attached storage (NAS) space. It also seems to need a data protection management reporting capability of its own, one that integrates well and deeply into its existing storage and IT infrastructure management products. There’s no sign that Storage Essentials is developing into this space…

Mellor points out repeatedly that non of the high-ups in HP (Hurd, Livermore, Robison) are talking about product (specifically Storage Essentials) but rather about strategy.  Maybe that signifies a gap between product and strategy, or even between product strategy and corporate strategy?  Are HP going to try to leverage “focused acquisitions” to bridge this gap, rather than Doing Engineering (which still seems to be regarded as a core competency amongst the engineers and their first few levels of management)?

Techworld.com – CEO Mark Hurd has had a stellar inauguration
In storage, HP bought people for technology historically — letting the smart people who were acquired run away with their cash and the ideas that got them where they were. Now not only has HP embraced the entrepreneurs it swallowed up, it promotes them. Case in point: Ash Ashutosh, the founder of AppIQ Inc. is now HP’s storage chief technology officer.

It’s great to see all this vision, business insight, and sound people management at HP.

CIM-OS : Platform for Storage System Management

Strictly AppIQ Confidential – Do not distribute without written permission from AppIQ ...

AppIQ Solution Suite is designed to comprehensively respond to the ...

 http://www.sgi.com/products/storage/pdf/appiq_whitepaper.pdf

CRN | IDC, Storage, Software, Revenue | IDC: EMC, Symantec, HP All Show Storage Software Slides
…HP is also starting to follow its recent storage hardware recovery with a recovery in software sales, and has been putting more feet in the street to integrate software from AppIQ, which it acquired about a year ago…

For the record: the acquisition was announced September 19 2005.