Goodbye X-IO, Hello Axellio and Violin 2.0!

Stephen Foskett breaks down a big acquisition in the storage market, the reborn Violin Systems acquiring X-IO. This gets complicated as Violin is buying X-IO’s legacy ISE storage line, while their edge Axellio product is being spun out into a new company. Stephen sees this as a win for both remaining companies.

NetApp Insight 2018 – Hello Stranger, We Meet Again

Max Mortillaro is coming to Tech Field Day Extra at NetApp Insight 2018. He’s hoping to reconnect with a company he’s hasn’t directly worked with. On the eve of 2019, he thinks the company’s transformation is more than just PR, and seems to represent substantive change. He’s excited to get more details during the Tech Field Day Extra presentations.

ScaleIO Becomes Software Defined on Hardware

Chris Evans got to see a bit from Dell EMC’s ScaleIO division last year. But the company has decided to shake up the offering by taking the former software product, and tying it directly to VxRack hardware. This comes after a reorganization for the company, that seems to show them focusing more strictly on hardware sales.

Swordfish – A Standard by Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

Alex Galbraith hear from SNIA last year at Storage Field Day, and takes a look at the Swordfish. This defines the standards for APIs used by storage devices to make sure they’re consistent. Alex doesn’t think this will displace more proprietary approaches overnight, but if developed in parallel, may become a widely used standard. Plus, the project is designed to quickly ratify requirements when added by a few vendors, which should keep it relevant going forward.

Has NVMe Killed off NVDIMM?

Chris Evans looks at the impact here of NVMe on the nascent NVDIMM market. Without needing to reorganize architectures and with OS support already in place, Chris sees NVMe has having a number of advantages. He still sees a place for NVDIMMs in the data center, but perhaps its place is much smaller than previously assumed.

Primary Data – Seeing the Future

As 2017 comes to a close, there’s the inevitable glut of predictions as to what’s in store for the next year. IT is no exception to this, and Dan Frith entertains some from Primary Data. Dan saw the company present at Storage Field Day earlier this year, and looks at their predictions for what 2018 will bring for software-defined storage and HCI.