Most Memorable Storage Quotes of 2007

No. 10: "It looks like ZFS was a conscious reimplementation of our WAFL filesystem, with little regard to intellectual property rights." Dave Hitz, NetApp founder and EVP, on NetApp's decision to sue Sun for alleged patent violations.

It also looks as if some lawyers are going to get rich in Lufkin, Texas.

No. 9: "[NetApp would] like us to unfree ZFS, to retract it from the free software community. Which reflects a common misconception among proprietary companies -- that you can unfree free. You cannot... " — Jonathan Schwartz, Sun CEO, on Sun's decision to countersue NetApp to obtain a permanent injunction to remove all NetApp filers from the market and obtain "sizeable monetary damages."

If you can't unfree free, can you free unfree?

No. 8: "We do not believe that people will throw away their 13 million ports of SAN." — Michael Klayko, CEO, Brocade Communications Systems, while addressing analysts in March about the way Brocade plans to use 10-Gbit/s Ethernet to augment, not replace, its Fibre Channel switches.

We don't believe that either, Mr. Klayko. But folk are trading some of those 13 million FC SAN ports for iSCSI, and the trend may continue.

No. 7: "Hitachi is focusing on improving the performance of the Hard Disk Drive business, exploring every possibility. However the fact is that Hitachi has not decided to sell the Hard Disk Drive business." — Hitachi statement issued twice in 2007, once in September and once in December, to address speculation that Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) was up for sale.

Translation: "We are thinking about selling HGST, we just haven't done it yet."

No. 6: "If you encrypt it, you have key management problems." — Warren Axelrod, business information security officer, U.S. Trust, speaking on a user panel on enterprise data protection in June 2007.The rest of Axelrod's talk included the following gobsmacker: "Why would anyone attempt to attack an encrypted file when all they have to do is send out a phishing email or attach a keylogger and get the information that way? You have got to worry about the endpoints -- criminals are going to go for the low-hanging fruit."

No. 5: "The police tell me that they have no reason to believe that this data has found its way into the wrong hands. They are not aware of any evidence that it has been used for fraudulent purposes or criminal activity." — Alistair Darling, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer, on his agency's loss of two disks containing personal details of 25 million people.

What a relief, Mr. Chancellor! For a minute there, we thought this was serious!

No. 4: "FCOE is the right protocol to connect Intel servers to existing Fibre Channel SANs. Because Fibre Channel SANs are not being replaced by iSCSI, Fibre Channel remains dominant in enterprise-class data centers." — Jordan Plawner, storage product planner at Intel, on the introduction of his company's release of an open source FCOE initiator for Linux.

You've just gotta remember that the "right protocol" link is local only.

No. 3: "Unless you're going to limit [e-discovery] costs or where you look, then justice is determined by wealth, not by the merits of the case." — Stephen Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, in a video presentation on FRCP and the estimated millions required to implement the new regulations.

Maybe this will slow down the litigation-as-a-hobby trend.

No. 2: "We want to recharge our liquidity position, given our robust acquisition pipeline." — Jeff Lawrence, SVP, Iron Mountain, after his company's acquisition of records management vendor ArchivesOne in May 2007.

We're still not sure what he meant, but we think it has something to do with Iron Mountain's ongoing, albeit gradual, departure from the infamous truck-and-warehouse model. You've gotta love that!

No. 1: "[Isilon] made some comments about NetApp during their recent IPO roadshow. To be perfectly honest, they pissed us off." — Dan Warmenhoven, CEO, Network Appliance, during an analyst meeting in March 2007.

Considering Isilon's performance the rest of year, we wonder if Warmenhoven wasn't packing a Voodoo doll in his briefcase.

Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD)

Hitachi Ltd. (NYSE: HIT; Paris: PHA)

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST)

Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC)

Iron Mountain Inc. (NYSE: IRM)

Isilon Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ISLN)

Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP)

Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW)

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC)

Terrascale Technologies Inc.

Yahoo Inc.