 Heck event coverage, and we have Greg Schultz here. Hello there. Founder of Storage I.O., which is server in Storage I.O., but can compress down to Storage I.O. Storage I.O., it's kind of like Federal Express being FedEx. Good point. OK, good analogy there. Do I hear you guys are best friends? No, but we play one on TV. Nice. And you stayed at Holiday Inn Express once? Never. Never? Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. I don't remember. You don't know if you've ever stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. I have to take pictures of the hotels that I stay in, so I remember. So then you don't know about the holiday inn, the holodump scale of rating hotels one to ten? No. Oh yeah, I mean zero is, it's basically a plywood on the floor as a mattress. OK. Yeah, and then ten is like maybe like a sub regular hotel. Yeah, yeah. OK. So you haven't stayed at a Holiday Inn Express though? Because Holiday Inn is a zero? Well, no, I mean there's good Holiday Inn and there's the holodumps, right? The holodump ones are the ones where you take the towels out of the bathroom because there's a one-inch gap under the door. Right. Right, right. And you don't want that army of critters marching in in the morning to help with the wake-up call. Well, unless you're Cinderella, you know. That's a good point. That's a good point. Then they're cute. Well, then you click your heels twice and you're at the highest. We've got the Wizard of Oz now. You're going to the Wizard of Oz. Hey, wait a minute, aren't we at the Wizard of Oz? No, we're at Disney. Yes, we're at Disney. We're at Disney. So welcome to Disney World. Yes, welcome to the fun. And also, we're also having fun here at the Fluid Conference, the Dell Storage Forum. Boy, I hear a lot of people last night were drinking lots of fluid, getting goofy, and hanging out with Mickey and Minnie while they were putting oil in. They were getting Plutoed. Where was I? I was working. I don't. See, that's a thing. You were working. I missed that joke. Look at John. He looks embarrassed. Like, oh, yeah, he was off getting Plutoed and getting goofy too. No, I wasn't. I actually heard there were blue drinks last night. That would make sense. They were called what? I have no idea. I wasn't there. Yes, you were. No, she was talking about it. Christy was talking about it. I was here when she talked about it. I'd have to roll the tape back. I can't remember. See, now we've got clear drinks. No, we have not been drinking, by the way. I know it might seem like it. Hey, it's early in the afternoon. So are you in other than the parties? I just flew in the actual. Actually, I just flew in. I just flew in a couple hours ago. Yeah, my arms are still tired. Did you catch the keynote this morning? Nope, I was in the air, but I was seeing the tweets. I was getting the tweet updates from the plane. I was above the clouds, not in the clouds. I didn't go to the clouds. I went over the clouds to get to the deli vet. Is that a segue to your new book? Actually, I do have a new book coming out. Tell me about the new book. So the new book, it's called, you'll like that? It's called, at least you didn't say cycle. It was a left turn. Go ahead. There's some rights in there, too. Tell me about the new book. So the new book is called, Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking. And yeah, it's optimized for the search engines. Cloud, virtualization, data storage networking, all popular themes, topics here, as well as other work. But it takes a little bit different approach, John, which is there's a lot of works out there about why go to the cloud and the value prop of the cloud is this or that. But then there are the others, people that are looking at it like, what's the cloud? Why do I want to go to the cloud? Are there still people saying, what's the cloud? Absolutely, there's people that are scared of the cloud. Oh, well, of course, yeah, there's definitely people that are scared of it. I mean, you've got nice clouds and you've got storm clouds. Yes. But there's a lot of people that... I was totally gonna just go on random. Go with it, go with it. I actually was in a plane the other day and saw a storm cloud right outside our window. Oh, yeah. We were not in it, but it was like right. You get to fly around them. It was amazing. Exactly. Anyway. Oh, it's a great segue because there's on the one extreme you have the crowd, cloud cheerleaders. Mention the word cloud and they start like, yay! Right? And then you've got the other extreme, the true cynics. They're not even skeptics, they're cynics. Never will be, never was, it's all snake oil, et cetera. I think Larry Ellison was sort of on that bandwagon. No, you're thinking Ken Olson when he was talking about Unix. No, okay, maybe, yeah. Well, Larry Ellison, I mean, he loves sailing between the clouds. You know, he's big in the boating, he's in airplanes too. Yes, I do. Yeah, so anyway. So he's very dependent on the cloud. Good point. Right, but he's even more dependent about having navigation tools, insight, awareness. Wow. Weather, you like this, huh? He's good. So what this comes back to though is like part of the idea for the new book is there's this big gap in between the two extremes and people they want to know. I used the analogy of don't be scared of clouds. Do your homework, but don't be scared. Look before you leave. It's like electricity. You know, you learn enough like don't put your fingers in those two little sockets in the wall. Right. I know it's sexy. Well, I mean, but we've been talking about personal, we're talking about enterprise, cloud, and obviously on the personal side, there are less issues to worry about before jumping in and swimming around in that cloud. So I take it you weren't part of the Google outage. No, I wasn't. But there's a good point. But there are less than enterprise. But here's the thing about the, that's debatable, but the point being there is that if you go with a good cloud provider, you shouldn't have to be scared, but you do your due diligence. Correct. In other words, you're going with somewhere where maybe it's not for free, but maybe for a slight fee. Right. You're getting that the fact that any data you entrust with them is going to be protected that you can get to it. They're not going to lose it. Yeah. And that's part of doing your homework. Apple had a big announcement. Yeah, yeah. Did you follow that? Yeah, they got the iCloud, which I'm playing around with my cloud. I don't know if the iCloud is going to be my cloud, but I think for a lot of people it will be. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, you know, you've got Google who's, who's been doing the cloud like crazy with Google Docs with Gmail and all of that. And people trust their lot. I trust my life to Google in essence with all of my email, with my calendar, with all of that information. So Apple is stepping into that in a big way. Well, they're stepping into it, but you know, there's an interesting piece to it, which is some of the banks have been in the, called the cloud and the cloud peers will say, no, it's a managed service provider, but banks like Wells Fargo, large bank. Okay, do you trust Wells Fargo? I do, because I have some accounts with them. Sure. Sure, why not? Yeah, yeah. But they've got a product called VeeSafe, virtual safe deposit box, okay? But yet, how come it hasn't taken off like you would expect it would? Well, because people are like, hmm, that's the bank. They know how to do banking, but one, they're not advertising, they're not promoting it. People go to Google because it's free. People go to iTunes because they like it. They know music. They know it. I stopped buying iTunes. I go to Amazon. Why? Because I like Amazon better. Why? Because, well, we do a lot of business. For I think every dollar I get from them selling a book, I spend five. Sure. You know, it's a classic. They got me hook, lion and sinker. Oh, yeah. I would say, yeah. But the thing like, I like those economics. With the Amazon. Yeah, exactly. Oh yeah, I read a time I log on. Greg, you like a radio controlled helicopter. Greg, you like a new barbecue grill. Greg, you like this. I'm like, how did they figure that out? Well, they're doing data mining. They're leveraging their clouds, their resources, putting all these things together. But let's go back to the iTunes for a minute. And this plays back to the iCloud. It's that we're seeing more and more of Apple wants you. They want the iTunes store, the app store, right? To control how you get things. iTunes, you can buy, at least used to be, you'd buy your music from iTunes, but it was sticky. You could make like a copy here, a copy here. But like Amazon, I go and get it. And I can download it, put it here. I don't have to reauthorize. When I replace my new computer with a new computer, I don't have to reauthorize it again. And now you have- But you do have to reload it. You have to move it. Or you use the Amazon music cloud. Right. Okay, not to be confused with the S3 or the EC or- Yeah, no, it's different. And actually you were saying that iCloud requires you to pay for it. If it's your music and not- So yeah, you can sync all of your iTunes music with all your iDevices. Or if you have Amazon purchased music, you can pay $25 a year for no limit to tie those MP3s with iTunes. So then it'll sync along with the rest of your music. Cause most of us have iTunes music and then Amazon music, right? Or stuff that we've ripped. And you know, we have this big collection from different places. Let's preference that. Legally ripped. Right, well legally ripped, of course. Legally ripped, of course. What else would I be talking about? Absolutely, it's all 600 CDs you had laying around on the shelf. Exactly. But you said Apple wants to own you in all of those facets of your life, but Amazon wants the same thing. Oh, absolutely. They're doing Android, App Store, they're doing all these other things. Absolutely, absolutely. But again, where it's coming down to is that you're seeing, do you want to deal through Apple? Do you want to deal through Amazon? Do you want to deal through Google? These are the fulfillers, if you want to think about it. Who do you want managing your credit cards, your checking accounts and things like that? And that trust used to be with the banks, it used to be with the telephone companies to a degree, but you're seeing more and more, it's the Amazon where they're being the virtual store for all kinds of different entities. They manage your accounts for you. So I think it's as much about the technology, much about the content, but it's also who do you trust besides Ghostbusters? Well, obviously, we all trust Ghostbusters. We all trust Ghostbusters. So what do you think is the answer? Are we okay trusting that one person, that one company? Here's the thing is that anything that has extreme value, whether it's money, documents, videos, whatever it happens to be. Our photos, our personal family photos, are of extreme value. And especially if you know of anybody who's had a disaster like a house burned down or whatever. No, not house burned down. I raised my hand with just disaster. It happens, right? Anything that's important enough to have value, you should have multiple copies of it. If you're really, really concerned, and this is part about doing your homework. If you're going to put all your data at Google, you might want to put another copy of something really critical, maybe at Amazon or maybe at some other service provider. I think, you know, I don't think- It's not if they go down, it's when. It's sort, yeah, I think that's true, but I think- And that's the same case with the hard drives. Absolutely. One of the big challenges is people don't have time to do all that investigation. I mean, individuals don't have time to investigate all that stuff. So it sounds to me like there needs to be a set of services where we can create trusted advisors to tell us which services are safe and which ones aren't for what purpose. Well, I mean, but the market speaks. You know, the market speaks. So Amazon, iTunes, those are, you know, Apple, those are the trusted- I think you're also seeing, though, two different markets. I mean, they've been kind of muddled up to now, but I think you're going to see some further clarification occur, which is there's one market where it's all about cost, price sensitivity. In other words, it's either for free or as low as cost. It's like going to the all-you-can-consume-data buffet. You know, you've been to the all-you-can-eat-buffets, right? After three hours. After three, yeah. After three hours, the guy comes out and says, that's all you can eat now you leave. You've been there, right? Yeah, have you? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You go there with the sliding chair, but there's the models where it's all about the information. How much can you consume, but what are the service levels? Then there's this other model, which is emerging, and it's like regular retail. There's the discounters and then there are the premium ones. And I think we're going to see this more and more where the two will coexist. They'll have different audiences. Some of them will even go back and forth across, but you're going to put premium content, premium things of real value at one, but you might have a backup over here. You're going to use this for just low-cost type items. While there are issues that, security things that we have to think about and making sure that we trust our providers, we have, we had to in the past, let's say we've moved into the cloud, right? In the past, we had to do that with our hard drives as well. We had to have a backup, whether that was online backup or a physical backup kept at our friend's house. I mean, if you really want to be secure, that's what you have to do. But most people didn't. That's a good point. Most people didn't and most people won't with the cloud either. Well, this is where it gets interesting, is those that were concerned were doing that, okay? But there are many of them that weren't. Many small businesses were barely getting by with that consumer. So I think now there's more and more awareness. If anything, an ironic twist of things is people have started putting information to the cloud. They've become aware of backup that picture, backup your vacation photos, your music, things like that. And there's a disruption. There's an outage or they know somebody who's had a disaster. So there's this awakening. And maybe some of these outages with some cloud services are getting people say, you know what? We do need to be more protective of our information. Maybe we have to have the multiple copies but that's all good because then people start thinking about what needs to be done for. Those of us who do these things that need to be done, making sure things are protected, copied, secured, encrypted helps other people to aware of that. I mean, if there's a security breach, what lessons are being learned from it as opposed to being scared of it? Yeah, but a lot of people go the scare route. And you know, I mean, just to take this a whole other level, media tends to grab ahold of those and cause people to be a little bit more scared. Oh, absolutely. I was at Don Henley, Gimme Dirty Laundry. He made an old song about that, right? You know? Oh, it's a great song about get the widow on the set. We need dirty laundry. That's classic media, sensationalizing. Look, when you think about disasters, it's the headline news disasters, the proverbial soaking hole, a flood, a tsunami, right? Of which we've had a few. Which we've had, or? Lately. The smoking holes, fires, explosions, that's what make headline news. A tape goes missing. That makes headline news. But the 1500 to 15,000 laptops that go missing per month at major airports, that doesn't make the headline news. The small file that gets corrupted that leads to a disaster, that doesn't make the headline news. I mean, some of these others, it's only when they escalate or get bigger. Because it's a slight annoyance of affecting a small number of people. Sure. Exactly. But then there's also the ones where it's borderline on a major disaster. But you don't want anybody else to know that you almost got burned, right? So let's keep this quiet, right? But again, people have to learn that again, information has value. If anything that has value, you need to protect it and have multiple copies. But the trick, as you were mentioning, John, is how do you do that keeping your costs low in a cost-effective manner? But without any complexity. And that's where I think we start to see some of these services. I use a backup provider that if I had gone back to who I'd been using, I'd actually be paying about half the price, okay? But by who I'm going with, they're actually giving me more functionality, they're managing things, including the back-end services that where the data's actually being stored to. And not that there's a permanent decision, but who did you go with? I went with Jungle Disc Rackspace. Oh, okay. Jungle Disc Rackspace, yeah. Rackspace is doing some interesting things. They really are. They really are. They're trying to put together a bunch of service, data services. They do data services, they do data storage, file, backup, archiving. They started out very focused, small, and then they kind of out. We give it racks in the space. Yeah. But John, you've been around in the industry, you've seen some of these comings and goings and re-comings and goings, and some of these things are just cyclical. And if we go back a decade or so, when the storage service provider or the XSP era, everything was something SSP, ISP, ASP, et cetera, et cetera. Now it's all cloud or whatever. But some of those companies that started in the Colo and the co-hosting, remember the data hotels and the data resorts? It was a different way of describing what we now call a cloud or managed service provider. Some of those companies now went from co-location to being that services provider. And they're adding more personalities, being file serving, virtual machine hosting, hosting your media. In other words, adding the personalities that allow your applications to plug into that makes it easier for you to use it. Yeah. We were talking to Tony Parkinson earlier about the cloud of it. And he was actually talking about the IT departments in small and medium businesses and how they are working towards implementing that for businesses. So that was an interesting perspective for sure and something I'm sure you're going to be paying attention to as well. Well, I think one of the interesting, there is this notion that the cloud eliminates traditional IT, that's one way of thinking. But then you also have that other extreme scenic view which is it's all snagled. But I think there's a very interesting ground in between which is for some, yes, everything will move to the cloud. For others, nothing will move to the cloud. But I would say probably 80% in the middle. In other words, the classic bell curve, it's going to be in a complimentary manner. In other words, I still do some things locally. But I back up to the clouds, but I do local backups. I use managed service providers, but I do, it's that hybrid approach of how things complement versus how do they compete. Are there applications that you think are logically going to go to the cloud first? Oh, absolutely, back up. Back up. Back up. I would say from S&B down to the consumer, it's the home run. Work, it's interesting for the enterprise, John, is in the work group departmental. Phil's branch offices, it's another home run area. Archiving I think also has some interesting capabilities, but there's some even more interesting ramifications when you start looking at data sovereignty, when you start looking at, you know, you hear about like moving data across different country boards. Yeah, I was watching some of that, we'll move your, during some of the disasters, we'll move your data for free from. Right, but are you allowed to? Not allowed to. You may not be allowed to. Because of privacy issues. In certain countries, stark regulation. But you know what, people don't realize that even here in the United States, John, that there are certain industries in certain states that can't move data across state boundaries. Because for example, gaming laws. Okay. Certain information tied to, you know, gaming, casino gaming, things like that can't move across certain state boundaries. Again, these privacy concerns. So there's a lot of things that need to be watched out. So you do need a compliance officer in the big corporation still. You know, whether it's a compliance officer or something around that nature, but yeah, I think so. Absolutely. Maybe a convergence officer is maybe a better way of thinking about it. You like that? Yeah, I guess. Because I mean, a lot of these things is that. No? No, I like it. Where does compliance- He's kind of turning his nose up. No, I like it. Well, he's thinking about this. I was thinking about our earlier conversation about convergence versus proliferated end devices. Well, I mean, when you think about it, I mean, we talk about the converged technologies, but there is, to really make converged technologies work, people are just going to keep buying converged technologies, but use them in a non-converged manner until people processes best practices, the other parts, I mean, you get the products, but it's the peoples, the processes, and the politics within organizations that keep the technology siloed. So hence, you come back to the convergence because compliance, is that a security issue? Is it a data management, a records management audit? Somebody needs to converge, not just the technologies, but the processes on how things flow, how they get used, how they get managed. Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Google I.O. to help people where they can find us. Just Google storage I.O. one word. I'm sorry, why did I say that? I don't know. Oh, because the conference, the I.O., I just went back to the Google I.O. conference. Storage I.O. one word, you can Google Greg Schultz. My new book is titled Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking. And it's coming out. It will be shipping available August 1st. On... Publisher? Oh, just hit the mic again. Oh, the publisher is... Gopher? I thought you were at John. On Amazon, right? It'll be on Amazon, all the venues around the world, the publisher of CRC Press. Will it be on all of the Evo creators? It will, good question. I know it'll be on Kindle, and of course. Finds a no-bel-knock. It'll probably be on Nook at some point, and then we'll see what's some of the others. I know the last one ended up on some of the others. There was even a translation done in Chinese. Nice. Authorized or not? Absolutely, it was totally legitimate. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was an interesting model, which was basically, do this particular license model and get something versus don't do anything and get pirated. Yeah, OK, there you go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, good. Thank you for coming on us. Oh, my pleasure. We appreciate it. All right.