SNW offers the frights...

And so to Frankfurt and Storage Networking World 2007 by way a visiting HP and so the week starts. The storage industry is enjoying a boom currently thanks to the requirement for IT managers to keep everything. With the possibility of being sued any time by any company for no good reason at all, everyone is keeping everything, or at least all their data. Result? Loads and loads more kit being bought to the benefit of EMC, IBM, HP and every other supplier with any kind of storage product. So the organisers of SNW are predicting somewhere in the region of 2000 people at this show. And I can believe that. The theme of the show is very much on that vexed subject known as compliance. I say “vexed” as I still have a bee in my bonnet about the use of the world compliance but I will let that pass for now. Compliance is the only game in town and that is most certainly where the money is. Take, the keynote from Andy Monshaw, general manager of IBM storage, and thus a man who is very much in a position to know. He spent his allotted 30 minutes, or whatever, listing all the security, compliance, threats and related issues that are currently making the jobs of most IT manager a cause for concern. Now, there is an argument that suggests that it is absolutely the right thing to do to frighten IT managers into sorting out their issues. They need shaking up say some. Especially analysts. The counter argument says that IT companies just smell the money. After a couple of days working in this area, I think they might have a point. Thanks for the warning Andy, but ho easy on the trowel, eh?