Live and Let Die

Another day, another dollar. Or half dollar.

I tell ya, it's tough being a storage professional in this economy not to mention one who is also a beaver. Every day I hear yet another sob story of some company shutting its doors or booting more employees outta work. It's enough to make me want to chuck the whole thing and start my own consulting firm catering to foreign governments (more on Kissinger later).

But here I am, back in my Q&A cockpit, because the mortgage ain't going away and I have a lot of little beavers at home to feed. Be sure to check out my previous columns, Scratch My Back and Dear Byte and Switch....

OK, fire away, people.

Dear Bob the Beaver,Any word on what happened to storage resource management startup ProvisionSoft Inc.? (See ProvisionSoft at Half-Staff.)

— Andover and Out

Dear Andy,

Yeah – it's dead. Turns out ProvisionSoft's parent, CMGI, couldn't find a buyer (supposedly they were asking $8 million), and the company shut down effective April 30. The 16 remaining employees are all out of work. Bummer! CMGI will also seek to sell off the equipment in the million-dollar SAN the startup had installed in its lab.

Apparently there have been a few nibbles from some big names for ProvisionSoft's intellectual property, but we'll see if anybody actually bites. "That product kicked ass," says one former ProvisionSoftee. "I hope it won't just die away." ProvisionSoft actually did have one customer, but it uninstalled the software in April after it became clear the company wasn't long for this world. Better luck next time, guys.Dear Bob the Beaver,

I heard that Mike Worhach, president of Auspex Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ASPX) – which just filed for bankruptcy – had a contract that guaranteed him $1 million a year! Seems like a ton of money for a company that was going down the toilet, no? (See Auspex Shuts Down.)

— Shock and Auspex

Dear Shock,

I checked with Worhach and he told us his first-year salary at Auspex was $350,000 and he received a guaranteed commission of $300,000 – so that was $650,000 guaranteed for the first year. However, he also received a signing bonus (he wouldn't say how much that was), which was paid over a period of time. Worhach joined Auspex in August 2000 after serving as a sales VP at Data General, which EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) bought in 1999.Nice work if you can get it, chums.

Dear Bob the Beaver,

Someone told me former Salomon Smith Barney analyst Clint Vaughan has popped up in Hopkinton. Whaddya know? (See Salomon Axes Storage Team.)

— Sallow Man

Dear Sallow,Yep, Vaughan is now at EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) working for CTO Mark Lewis in the technology group. He was cagey about what exactly he's doing. (Waxing Lewis's car? Just kidding, guys!) But he did tell me that he's "pumped."

Says Vaughan: "The storage industry is at an inflection point to come back. And so I thought, how do I leverage that and do what I want to do? I wanted to go into the industry, and EMC... You can say something like, 'Clint is clearly making a bet with his feet.' "

Obviously Clint's had no problem sucking down huge amounts of the EMC Kool-Aid already. Bottoms up!

Dear Bob the Beaver,

What's the latest on Rasvia Systems? They were hyping their "original design manufacturer" model, saying they had connections with big Asian electronics manufacturers to make super low-cost storage arrays (See Rasvia Breaks the Mold.)— East is Yeast

Dear Yeast,

Hmmm. Well, it looks like these guys aren't quite dead, but they may be dying slowly. Their Website isn't working, so I called them up. The receptionist wasn't very helpful except to say Rasvia wasn't interested in talking to me. Neither was T.C. Chen, formerly the company's CTO and now (evidently) its president.

But here's what I found out: Peter Shambora, former founder, president, and CEO of Rasvia, has been long gone. Another founder, Ron Lee, who was previously VP of engineering, has also left the company. Reached by phone, Lee told me: "The company has been moving along, but there was quite a bit of headcount reduction in the U.S." He didn't have specific numbers but says Rasvia's Taiwan facility hasn't been cut back as drastically.

Farid Neema, president of consulting firm Peripheral Concepts Inc., says he doesn't think Rasvia really knew what it wanted to be doing. "Their idea was mostly that they were going to be manufacturing cheaper than other vendors, but I kept wondering what would prevent anyone else from doing the same thing," he says. That makes at least two of us, pal.Dear Bob the Beaver,

Apparently Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) has invited Henry Kissinger to speak at its upcoming user conference. Can they be serious?!

— Christopher Hitchens

Dear Chris,

Weird but true. The company is indeed having Kissinger, a.k.a. "Dr. Strangelove," give a keynote address at CA World 2003 in Las Vegas in July. Kissinger – whom CA refers to unflinchingly as "a Nobel Peace Prize recipient" – will speak on "Lessons for a Rapidly Changing World." The company also notes that "dress at CA World is business casual." So let me get this straight: Kissinger in khakis talking geopolitics at Mandalay Bay in Vegas... Is this anyone else's idea of the Ninth Circle of Hell!?Hey, maybe next year, CA can line up Slobodan Milosevic.

Figure 1:

— Bob the Beaver