I recently attended a presentation on the topic of writing good copy for blogs. The presenter mentioned, among other things, that effective headlines are essential. An example he gave was “Lose Weight While You Sleep” which is a headline that would probably get a lot of people’s attention. After the talk it struck me that in a way that’s exactly what I do: help IT pros lose weight while they sleep. Allow me to explain…
Enter Sandman
Prospective clients, unprompted by me, often tell me their current storage or backup infrastructure is keeping them awake at night. Their infrastructure is often of suspicious quality, overloaded, overly complex and therefore just not very dependable.
The list of problems is endless: data volumes or LUNs going offline without warning; unexpected (and sometimes hidden until far too late) data corruption issues; recovery failures; all manner of honest configuration mistakes; plain old bad code from the vendor, and on and on.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. I supply a very carefully vetted set of storage and backup solutions from companies that are selected according to four stringent criteria:
1. Solid, best-of-breed design and feature sets.
2. Lights-out functionality and ease of use.
3. Superior customer experience, whether it be support or just day-to-day doing business.
4. Financial strength.
In a sense, all of the solutions on the SDS line card are sleep aids – when they are in place the infrastructure simply works more smoothly and with greater dependability. For my clients, a good nights sleep can be had after all.
Honey I Shrunk The Storage Array
A defining feature of nearly all the solutions on the SDS line card is density. Through the use of advanced technologies such as compression and/or deduplication, data storage can take up much less physical space than has traditionally been required by legacy technologies. 
When combined with the built-in SSD or Flash caching technologies of SDS solutions such as those from NexGen Storage, Unitrends or Nimble Storage, the tradition of over-provisioning capacity in order to meet speed requirements is also a thing of the past, further slimming the physical profile of the solution. Physical size and rack space reductions of 80% are not uncommon.
It is therefore, in my humble opinion, fair to consider these solutions the IT equivalent of a weight-loss program.
So there you have it. I’m thinking of having my business cards changed to read: “Southern Data Storage, Inc. Helping IT Professionals Lose Weight While They Sleep.” Catchy, ain’t it?
If you are interested in hearing more about storage and backup solutions, Southern Data Storage, call me at 888-255-6889, email me at mark@southerndatastorage.com, or use the SDS Contact page.