And the Winner Is... update from February 2007

The stars will shine brightly when the red carpet rolls out for this Sunday's Academy Awards. But we think something's missing.

Why should Hollywood get all the glamor and glitz? The world of storage networking's every bit as exciting (from our viewpoint, at least). Expecially when you're talking films about ancient history and aging royalty.

So, in the spirit of this 79th Oscar weekend, we at Byte and Switch offer our unique take on the industry we know and love. Got your own nominees? Hit the message board below or write to us at [email protected].

Presenting:

Best actor in CEO role: EMC's Joe Tucci, for his artful distinction between the terms "spinoff" and "spin-out" during an RSA press conference -- the day before announcing the float of 10 percent of VMware. Famous last words: "Pay close attention that I'm picking my words carefully." Duly noted, Joe! (See VMware to Spin Out.)Best supporting actor, executive role: Michael Dell, who answered thus when asked whether Dell would fire CEO Kevin Rollins, three months before the board fired Rollins: "It's not going to happen. I believe Kevin is an outstanding executive. Kevin and I run the business together. If you want to blame somebody, blame me." (See EMC Loses Ally in Rollins.)

Best director: Cisco's MDS 9513. (See Cisco Goes 4-Gig & Big, 2006 Storage Winners & Losers , and Cisco Salvo in 4-Gig FC.) We especially loved its earlier, edgy works.

Worst director(s): HP, whose board's decision to seek phone records of reporters and its own directors led to an investigation that's ongoing. (See Hurd Apologizes, Probe 'Disturbing'.) (HP is also a nominee in the William G. Safire Award category for mainstreaming the verb "pretexting.")

Most promising newcomer, technology category: Clustered NAS. An enigma wrapped inside a riddle, compressed onto a server blade -- or is it the real deal that will lead NAS customers to a new generation of storage efficiency? Suppliers hope for the latter. (See Isilon's Counting on Clusters.)

Most promising newcomer, startup category: Grid-X, whose coy combination of secrecy and selective news filtering can only presage Google-like greatness. (See Grid-X.) It's 100-Gbit/s, it's TOE, it's government research... Not since Pillar's early days have we seen the like!Least promising old timer, technology category: Ficon. Someone show this geezer to the same rest home where Token Ring now resides.

Best funding: Force10, whose whopping $113 million round rivals Larry Ellison's piggy-bank breaking to get Pillar up and running. (See Force10 Round Hits $113M .)

Best disappearing act by a startup: Gear6, which claimed to be shifting out of neutral with its NAS caching appliance, but seems to have a broken transmission. (See Gear6 Shifts Out of Neutral.)

Best sound effects: Acopia Networks, which claims to take file snapshots from a virtualized volume spanning EMC and NetApp NAS arrays. (See Acopia Talks Snapshots.) Sadly, this proof of concept may be just a concept. Still, in marketing it's the thought that counts, right?

Best foreign language feature: Huawei-3Com, for publishing hundreds of pages of specs on its shadowy Neocean IX1000 and IX5000 IP SANs only in Chinese. Still, western enterprises may get a translation soon. (See 10-Gig iSCSI SANs Set for Takeoff.)Most discreet partner(s): Jointly awarded to Falconstor, Intransa, iVivity, and Xyratex for turning mute on the subject of the IX1000 and IX5000, presumably on threat of finger loss. (See Huawei Sets Sights on IP SANs.)

Best editing, short feature: Mendocino, which has reversed its position on offering "near CDP" in response to perceived market demand. (See Mendocino Embraces Near-CDP.)

Best independent short fiction: SMI-S. 'Nuf said.

Next Page

Best supporting actor(s): A tie between Azaleos, whose parasitic relationship with NetApp sets a new standard; and the team of Archivas, BlueArc, Diligent, and Sun, for helping HDS cross the storage street on the green light. (See Exchange Issues Spawn Services, Hitachi Pockets Archivas, and HDS PrepsTagmaStore, Ponders Sun.)Most creative marketing math: Pillar Data Systems wins again, thanks to its "green power" equation that proves, without exception, that all data center roads on this planet lead to Pillar. (See Pillar's Power Pitch.)

Most creative corporate math: No, it's not Brocade. The award goes to Tom Hudson's Connectivity Solutions International, an oddball conglomerate of technology castoffs with aspirations of becoming a virtual network operator. Somehow, $44 million has been spent to improve your life as a corporate consumer of data center services. If you can figure it out, let us know. (See CentrePath's Fate May Be Sealed.)

Biggest waste of engineering time: Sun, which put years into Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) open tape management platform, then pulled the plug last June. (See Sun Shuts Door on VSM Open.)

Leading actor in a PR comedy: Cluster Resources Inc., which sent the following note after issuing a press release last week: "A CORRECTION was made to the press release I sent you yesterday. The quote: 'Imagine a storage solution that eliminates data hotspots before they occur.' Changed to: 'Imagine a storage solution that self-predicts and adjusts for potential data availability issues before they occur.' "

Biggest pain in the collective IT lower back: The SEC, whose latest assault on your time and budget is called XBRL. (See Wall Street Gets Set for XBRL.) Somebody doesn't have enough to do.Lifetime achievement: Al Shugart. (See In Memory of Al.)

The Editors, Byte and Switch