Category: Offline with DCIG

A couple of months ago I got an alert that Russell Rothstein, the CEO of IT Central Station, had started to follow my personal Twitter feed. Not knowing either who he was or what IT Central Station represented, I checked out his profile and IT Central Station’s website. Intrigued, I reached out to him personally. That series of events led DCIG and IT Central Station to form a collaborative working relationship so that we may collectively help users make more informed technology buying decisions.

As the move to consolidate and virtualize IT infrastructures continues, the anticipated benefit that “less” promises is not always the case. In fact, as DCIG research continues to uncover, the need for solutions like dedicated appliances to offload growing complexities is increasing. That is true, especially with dedicated appliances for critical data protection processes, and in particular, to help with backup. Backup appliances that combine server and storage hardware with backup software continue to appeal to organizations as cost-efficient, “set and forget” solutions.

I lost a friend to sudden death in the last number of weeks and it has caused me to be introspective about life, work, the future, and why we seem to do the things we do to make a living. Years ago, I made a decision that I want to share with you it’s this; that if you hate what you are doing, or have a dream that you want to pursue but are afraid to do it, stop now and chase that dream because you are not getting any younger.

In the last few weeks and months DCIG has been doing some introspection as it looks to quantify what it does well. As we have done so, we have talked internally as well as with folks external to DCIG who are sources we trust and who give us candid feedback about what we do and how we can do it better. During this period of time we have found room for improvement but we have also found that of the analyst services DCIG does deliver, it performs them in a manner than it most cases beats the competition.

AUSTIN, TX – April 2, 2012, DCIG, the first industry analyst firm to engage the world with transparency of business and social tools, today unveiled the Interactive Buyer’s Guide (IBG) (/ibg), providing the industry’s first research-as-a-service for instant product insight. The on-demand service allows for line-by-line product breakdowns, enabling IT professionals to reduce the time spent identifying, collecting, sorting, filtering and rating business-to-business storage software and hardware products for consideration.

Recently, I joined the ranks of the iPad owners and have been discovering the myriad of apps available to me to use/goof off with/waste time with. What I have found has been pleasing for the most part, and while I am not likely to become a Ninja Fruits aficionado, or break onto the Angry Birds Pro Tour one of my favorite apps is Pandora Radio. I love music and have it on almost constantly.

America is a nation of Do it Yourselfers like no other that I can think of. All you need to prove that is to watch a few hours of television and you will see commercials for stores like Home Depot, Lowes, and Ace Hardware, who can outfit the household handy person with the right tools, knowledge, and bravery to tackle almost any project.

DCIG just celebrated its 4th anniversary of doing outsourced BUSINESS blogging for companies in the high tech space. But where many others have tried and failed at this initiative, DCIG has succeeded by, over the years, unlocking some of the secrets that make it a win-win scenario for both DCIG and its clients. Today I reveal the first of those secrets behind BUSINESS blogging.

I have lived in a city of 11,000 people in Minnesota for the last 10 years and always felt that I knew how it looked quite well. In my campaign for both City Council and Mayor I have walked every street and Cul-de-sac in our city, I know the names of each street and can tell you where I am exactly by just looking around. But even with my high level of intimacy of my city, I found out recently that I was missing out on another view of where I live.

Have you ever noticed how important numbers are to us as a people? We are fixated with the numeric results of almost everything; football scores, G.P.A.’s, miles per gallon, cost per unit, throughput, capacity, and the number of minutes it takes the delivery guy to get my pizza to my door.