2003 Top Ten: Most Popular Stories

Looking at the articles from 2003 that generated most interest on Byte and Switch makes it clear what our readers like most: Pain. Preferably, other people's pain. Our readers are keenly interested in layoffs, closings, and product failures. They especially enjoy it when Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) is involved.

Now, we don't think this means our readers are a bunch of sadists. No, we think it's a law of human nature that looking at someone else's misfortune takes the sting out of your own. In a year filled with industry bad news, it's no surprise that tales of woe ranked high.

Here's hoping the new year brings good news for everyone -- and just enough bad news to keep us grateful.

No. 10: Scale8 Flatlines

Scale8s folding generated lots of traffic -- maybe because its struggles hit close to home with a wide range of readers. Scale8 tried everything as it burned through $55 million: The distributed NAS startup switched gears from being a storage service provider (SSP) to selling distributed file system software to becoming a hardware-based NAS appliance vendor. Nothing worked, and the four-year-old company folded in June.Leading up to the closure, it seems the writing had been on the wall for this startup -- and it was also on our site:

No. 9: Brocade & Cisco: Who's Out of Order?

Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) and Cisco got into a spitting match after Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. analyst John Roy issued a note raising his rating on Brocade from Neutral to Buy, partly because of what he called the “immaturity” of Cisco’s switching products. Cisco cried foul. Turns out the report was based largely on Brocade’s claim that it found serious issues while testing Cisco switches -- issues like out-of-order and dropped frames, which Cisco denied.

Besides racking up page hits, this story lit up our message board with 40 posts.

Other stories about the hyper-competitive SAN switching arena:

No. 8: What's Hot in 2003

Trend-hungry readers devoured this look-ahead to 2003. Among trends we cited: Disk-based backup will gain momentum, public companies will continue to gobble up startups, and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Cisco will make their presence felt in networked storage.

So far, we're at least three for three there. Check out our 2004 trends:

No. 7: What the Heck Is HyperSCSI?

It’s been three months since this story ran, and we’re still not sure of the answer. We do like the definition from one iSCSI vendor, though: “I would describe it as a beer can with a motor,” says Andre Hedrick, president and CTO of PyX Technologies Inc.. Then again, you wouldn’t expect an iSCSI vendor to embrace this rival protocol.Stay tuned for more HyperSCSI stories. We'll also keep alert for news about beer cans with motors.

No. 6: Did Brocade Bungle Cisco Test?

This sequel to story No. 9 is subtitled, “Cisco Strikes Back.” Cisco continued to take issue with Brocade’s testing of one of its Fibre Channel director switches, and its resellers EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) said they were satisfied that any problems were corrected before Cisco started shipping. Brocade stuck by its tests, which others in the industry said were merely tools to spread FUD -- fear, uncertainty, and doubt. This story generated 59 responses on our message board, most siding with Cisco.

For more on Cisco and its partners:

No. 5: Cisco's VP of Storage Sales QuitsThis Byte and Switch scoop about Steve Querner quitting as Cisco's VP of worldwide storage networking sales suggested the company was changing its strategy for SAN switch sales. Querner had pushed for an independent storage sales operation, but Cisco's overall sales force resisted.

Other stories on Cisco’s sales strategy:

No. 4: EMC Muffs Migration

Our readers couldn’t get enough of this story about EMC annoying a Fortune 100 company by failing to disclose an incompatibility between the older Symmetrix 3000 series and its recently launched DMX storage arrays. An admin for the unhappy customer said EMC informed the company late in the process that they couldn’t use EMC’s data replication software to connect the old and new arrays. EMC suggested the customer lease a third box as a migration go-between -- for $75,000. EMC told us this customer’s system was old, necessitating the extra migration step.

Other news on EMC’s high-end Symmextrix DMX arrays:

No. 3: BMC Folds Storage Unit

BMC put its Patrol Storage Manager product on permanent furlough while merging the storage business unit into its Enterprise Systems Management group. The move affected about 80 employees in BMC Software Inc.'s (NYSE: BMC) storage management software unit, who were told they had 30 days to find new jobs in the company. BMC eventually laid off around 45 of them, sold EMC the rights to PSM, and began reselling EMC’s ControlCenter.

This story had fallout for months:

No. 2: Cisco Lays Off NuSpeed Team

The folks from the iSCSI router company purchased by Cisco for $450 million in 2000 were fighting a losing battle entering 2003. They competed with Cisco’s Andiamo Systems team, and IP storage wasn’t meeting Cisco’s expectations. So around 50 of the 65 employees left from NuSpeed were axed in February, a few weeks after NuSpeed founders Mark Cree and Clint Jurgens resigned. A group of the NuSpeed veterans later formed a venture called WinStorage, but all they have to show is a sparse and ugly Website. This story generated 58 message posts.A bit of Cisco-NuSpeed history:

No. 1: IBM RVA (Not Shark) Downs Danish Bank

The account of a failed array from IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) bringing down a bank for more than 24 hours drew the most hits of any story on our site in 2003. Danske Bank Corp. in Denmark was the victim of a failed power unit in an IBM Ramac Virtual Array (RVA) storage system. The process of replacing the unit triggered a string of problems that caused 90 databases to freeze. This was no minor thing: Danske Bank has 3 million customers worldwide and manages approximately 50 Tbytes of data on IBM Enterprise Storage Server (a.k.a. Shark) and RVA storage arrays. The bank uses IBM DB2 database software at the core of its One Group One System infrastructure program, which aims to centralize the management of the bank's back-office IT operations.

Not all IBM stories in 2003 were as big or as blue:

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch