Proprietary Cometh before the Standard

Driving home the other night I was listening to the latest episode of the podcast “Coffee with Thomas”. This episode had our host, Thomas Jones, interviewing Steve Chambers of ViewYonder (and also a history of great vendors!). During the interview, Steve made the following comment:

It amazes me that people criticise Cisco for not be standardised on things that are brand new, as if the standards bodies are innovators. That is not their job. They follow up after things have been invented.

This statement took me back at first, and I was about to write it off as protecting your own team, but the further I drove (I have a very long commute - about 100km each way) the more I thought about this statement and the evidence - both historical and current.

First dive into Storage Networking

When I started this blog last week, I certainly didn’t think my first post would be on the topic of Storage Networking. My background is R&S / SP more than it is storage. I work as a consultant building ISPs in Australia (and occasionally across Asia Pacific).

Some of my customers are End User ISPs, others are Content Providers, so I often get thrown at interesting new projects (sometimes at the whim of engineers on a tech-fetish, sometimes from the buzzword bingo of Sales and Marketing).