A Few Additional Thoughts from the Author
Hi, all. I wanted to quickly thank The Register for mentioning my article. I've been a big fan of this web site for a number of years.
I just wanted to respond to a few items in the comments and show my appreciation for your opinions.
In no certain order:
1. "Contrarian Thinking with a Vengeance": This article does go against consensus, but I want all of you to know that these are my true concerns with not only storage but data center computing, as a whole. In full disclosure, I composed this article free of charge for the SCSI Trade Association (STA) newsletter, so I don't have a score to settle. Nor am I trying to create alarm for the sake of my wallet. The insistent tone was meant to be a wake-up call for the storage industry for which I have a passion. Unfortunately, I believe the industry is going down the wrong path. Since storage providers are the audience of the original article, my concerns are focused in this category, but I certainly believe that this is a problem that hits enterprise computing as a whole and not merely storage. I feel as though the lack of sufficient electricity will hit the deployment of servers, first. The storage industry will feel the economic pain, as a consequence.
2. "Finite Amount of Power": This is probably entering the religious realm, but here goes. I just ask you to at least respect this view, even if you believe my views to be wrong. After multiple years of research, it's my view that the talk of the world running out of power is pure nonsense. In the U.S. alone, there is enough oil to supply the country's needs for over 200 years. The trouble is that there is no way to legally access many untouched supplies of these natural resources due to environmental moratoriums that only exist in my country and nowhere else. If China can build a new 1000 megawatt power plant per week, then I see no validity to the talk of the world running out of power. For those who live outside of the U.S., just know that there are multple power plants that have been planned for construction that are halted not because of a lack of the resources to run them but because of political reasons. If we can't overcome these hurdles, then enterprise computing will face the perils I mentioned.
3. Automotive market suppliers vs. manufacturers: I believe there is some confusion here, let me further explain. My article's mentioning of the automotive industry references suppliers of parts and products to the automobile manufacturers and compares them to the same for storage. The shift to energy-efficient products over the last 30+ years in the automotive industry has resulted in a shrinkage in the suppliers of parts and products to the auto makers by a factor of five, not a decrease in the number of car manufacturers. For more details on this thinking, please do visit the link to the article. I do believe that the storage industry is moving down the same path since there are dozens of suppliers that could likewise disappear as the industry's revenue potential falls. Both industries are very similar in that fewer than ten companies provide the "big iron" (e.g. GM, Ford, etc in autos, HP, EMC, etc in storage) to customers.
Thanks for your responses, I truly appreciate your opinions. If you have further feedback on these comments, please feel free to post them and I'll do my best to respond. I know there must be disagreements with my view on natural resources, so if that's where we differ, let's just agree in advance to disagree.