In early 2005 as I started Akorri I knew I’d have to somehow discover and collect information from resources within the enterprise data center. Initially my plan was to partner with vendors that already did collection and layer the Akorri value on top of that without reinventing the wheel. Great idea huh? So I began the discussions to partner with a couple of the SRM vendors for our discovery and collection needs. The plan was we would augment their agents to collect the performance centric data that we needed. Everything was moving along nicely until both of the vendors I was talking with got acquired. Shortly afterwards I found out that the acquiring companies had no plans to offer API’s for these services. Not such a great idea now! I made the decision to develop our own discovery and collection service. Although it added to the demands on my engineering team it gave us the control to develop a premier agentless discovery and collection system for performance management. That was one of the best decisions I’ve made. As development of our discovery and collection engine started I asked my engineering team to support SMI (Storage Management Initiative). In late 2005 SMI looked promising and I was a huge advocate. Having a standard interface for management of storage components makes a lot of sense. The networking guys figured that out decades ago and it’s served them well. Anyway, my Engineering guys came through and developed an SMI collector that was one of the best in the industry.So roll forward 12 months. Our BalancePoint product is now Generally Available and we are deployed in a number of enterprise data centers. Each time we engage a customer we try to use our SMI collector where ever possible. The problem is it very rarely works. We’ve found that in a lot of cases the incumbent systems vendors haven’t deployed their SMI solutions in these accounts, or if they have, the SMI technology is very slow or worse yet it doesn’t respond at all. It’s become clear to me that the vendors are paying lip service to SMI but in reality aren’t supporting it.Recently we deployed into a customer site that contained a fair number of storage arrays from a vendor that has traditionally been a strong supporter of SMI. My field guys took this as another opportunity to try SMI. I figured it was worth the effort; if we were going to have success with SMI anywhere it should be with this equipment. Wrong. It worked as well as other implementations I’ve come across, meaning it didn’t! Queries took hours to complete! After trying to get it to work for a couple of days we were put in touch with the equipment vendors field guys. His advice was to give up on the SMI interface and use their proprietary API. We made the switch and things began to work much better.  I’ve been in technology for 25 years and I’ve seen this story before. SMI is a great idea but great ideas very rarely win in the marketplace. Good enough at a reasonable cost is what usually wins. In order to succeed the equipment vendors and customers have to be convinced that SMI brings real value. Right now though it’s the good enough custom implementations for management interfaces that are winning. So my question is whether SMI is dead or just in the deep trough of disillusionment? I think it’s dead. I can’t see the magic bullet that’s going to cause the equipment vendors to change their views and truly start supporting SMI. Customers aren’t yelling at them, vendors like Akorri don’t pull enough weight with them, and the heavy implementation costs associated with SMI aren’t very attractive. SMI can join other great technologies like Beta Video Tape on the List of Great Technologies That Didn’t Make It.

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to participate in a class at Northeastern University’s School of Technological Entrepreneurship. This was a graduate level class reviewing a case study on hiring within the context of a startup. I was asked to attend, along with Len Perham, to give an industry perspective of this important function.

As an alum of Northeastern I am amazed at how different the university is from when I attended. Back in the early 80’s Northeastern was mainly a commuter school, with very little research capability. My freshman class was somewhere around 11,000 students with a large majority of those students living off campus. The main attraction for students back then was the Co-op program. Today’s freshman class is about 2,800 students with the majority living on campus. Although the Co-op program is still a big draw for many students the university has greatly expanded its research capabilities and offers some unique programs. The School of Technology Entrepreneurship is one of those programs.

The School was the brainchild of Dr. Paul Zavracky. The School provides both undergraduate and graduate level degrees and is the only program of its kind in the United States. The main focus of the program is to expose students to entrepreneurship and teach them the skills they’ll require as they consider starting their own company someday. Most of the students in the program seem to come from an engineering background. I’m not sure why that is, but the great thing is the program gives them exposure into other disciplines that they’ll need to succeed, like finance, marketing, sales, and operations. Most entrepreneurs that I know with engineering backgrounds, including myself, had to learn those disciplines via the School of Hard Knocks….not the preferred way!

Sitting in this class I was given a glimpse into the next generation of entrepreneurs and I was excited by what I saw. The students came from various cultural backgrounds; they were intelligent, driven, and passionate about what they were doing. I believe most, if at all, of these kids will one day take the startup plunge. After the class I told Paul how jealous I was…jealous because there was no such program when I attended NU.