For instance, you could look at EMC’s payment to IDS for a study on five nines. Obviously if EMC is paying for it, IDC is going to work to make sure the results fit EMC’s goals - because IDC wants to continue to get more of this good business. Its not clear to me that there is any benefit to you in trying to expose this kind of influence - you run the risk of alienating yourself from the flow of funds. And for what gain? For stating the obvious?

At a minimum, people in the analyst business are going to give a pass to companies that help them pay the rent. More likely, you have good reasons to analyze and promote your clients’ solutions.

As to RAID - I think we need to clarify terms here. Are you talking about RAID algorithms or about RAID disk subsystems. I never really thought you left the ball in my court, but maybe I didn’t understand. Nonetheless, I’m not sure what you expected.

Actually, the NDA rant was a small part of a larger thread that some people picked up on.

The reason I’m looking at EMC’s patents is I’m trying to get a handle on what, if any, research priorities they have. I’d like to understand who their top researchers are, as well.

What prompted this was the realization that EMC is pretty much invisible in the world of storage research, unlike most of their competitors, larger and smaller.

Like it or not, I’m interested in this stuff, and in public methods of getting a handle on it.

Yes, I am preparing another post on the analyst profession, which I think will go on Storage Bits over at ZDnet.

And did you ever have any comment on my response to your post on RAID?

Robin

The issue clearly rests with the Patent Office which is more motivated by fees than the originality of inventions. On the other hand, some of the blame rests with the engineers participating in this game.

How can “using the message fabric to maintain cache coherency” or “a pair of independent power busses” be patentable…. its a bad joke.