What's in Store

12:30 PM -- Bigger. Better. Brighter.

Alright, so I may need a little more time in my vendor decompression chamber after last weeks SNW, where the hyperbole got tossed around like EMC keychains. But I think you’re going to be genuinely pleased by the changes we’ve made to Byte and Switch. You may even make allowances if we indulge in a bit of self-promotion.

Effective today, Byte and Switch now incorporates CMP’s Storage Pipeline and Light Reading’s Next-Generation Data Center Forum (NDCF) publications to bring you all the news, insight, and analysis for keeping your fingers on the pulse of the storage industry. We've refreshed the look of Byte and Switch and incorporated content from the former publications to ensure continuity and emphasize our new charter.

With an even sharper focus on the enterprise storage customer, Byte and Switch will continue to track storage networking, while addessing how it fits in the larger context of today's evolving data centers.

We will pick up the popular elements of Storage Pipeline, including regular commentary from columnist Jon William Toigo and the latest in lab tests and product reviews from our colleagues over at Network Computing.While it’s great to be able to boast about those very welcome associations, it was more than bragging rights we were after here. Time, experience, and reader feedback has demonstrated the value and usefulness of such content, and it’s a great complement to the hard news edge of Byte and Switch. More importantly, you can’t find that depth and breadth at any other storage Website.

Indeed, by merging Storage Pipeline and NDCF with Byte and Switch, CMP Media Inc. has created the biggest business-to-business information portal for the storage industry. In addition, the Byte and Switch newsletter will now reach more than 102,000 of the most highly qualified readers of any storage site or publication.

I’m very happy to be associated with people you may already know from these pages—Mary Jander, the longtime Site Editor for Byte and Switch, as well as Dave Raffo, Senior Editor. James Rogers, Senior Editor from NDCF, rounds out an editorial team with more than five decades’ of writing and reporting experience.

After more than two years at Storage Pipeline, I feel like I’ve had a front row seat to witness storage become something more than the poor stepchild of enterprise servers and more highly regarded than the nightly tape backups the word “storage” evokes. I think this is a site that matches the role of storage as a big budget item for enterprises and government organizations.

So yes, we expect to jump higher and run farther by harnessing the skill and experience of what were once three separate Websites. But we need your help. We want to know more about how you think, what you buy, if you dream about storage virtualization. Kidding—mostly—about the dreams part, but if you do dream virtual dreams, whose logo do you see?Whether you divulge all your secrets is your business, but we want to know what’s on your mind. We want to know what you like, what you miss, what you’d like to see more of.

It’s the best way we know to both start and sustain the kind of dialog the new Byte and Switch wants with our sizable audience of storage buyers. We think you’re going to like the results.

— Terry Sweeney, Editor in Chief, Byte and Switch