Blame Canada

11:20 PM -- With the recent frigid temperatures in New York, any talk about summer heat waves seems surreal. But with a scorcher predicted for this year, there is already nervous talk about what will happen when millions of New Yorkers crank up the AC.

Blackouts were just one of the topics discussed at the meeting of the New York Storage Networking User Group (NYSNUG), prompted by the larger-than-life figure of analyst and Byte and Switch contributor Jon Toigo.

Clearly, there are users out there who either can't, or won't, learn the lessons of the massive 2003 power outage. (See Blackout Looms for NYC.) It was worrying, for example, to hear that, even after a power crisis that cost northeastern businesses an estimated $6 billion, some IT managers still face backup budget constraints.

Somehow, I suspect that Toigo could wring cash out of the tightest of CFOs. Clad for part of the day in a full-length leather trench coat, the strapping president of Toigo Partners International looked like a refugee from the Matrix, as he strode the lobby of the Westin Times Square hotel dispensing his storage wit and wisdom.

This included a new acronym, Synchronous Extended I/O (SEXI), designed to spice things up in the data center, and an interesting observation on New York's looming energy crisis."I was talking to an energy company in Canada," he told me just before he ran outside for a smoke. "And they said, 'Oh great, we're going to get the blame for this one too.' "

James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch