It seems like innovation especially in technology is best done with a blank page, systems built from the ground up with a specific function in mind tend to do best in the market. The challenge is that the legacy companies in that space try to bolt this functionality onto their solution so they can say “me too”.

Often though this “bolt it on” technique ends up not working quite as well as the way it was implemented on the manufacturer that started with the blank page. All the bolt ons eventually drag the system down

Examples of this abound:

Thin Provisioning – invented by the storage virtualization system creators like 3PAR and Compellent but now imitated by just about every supplier on the market. These solutions tend to not really be thin provisioned at all and require measurable predefined allocation units as large as 256MB by some suppliers. The pre-allocated unit not only results in higher incidents of wasted capacity but also higher overhead.

Data Deduplication – seems like disk backup vendors and now software manufacturers are adding this capability to their solutions. Companies like Data Domain that have built the solution from the ground up to have this solution have a distinct advantage in operational simplicity and functionality by being able to sustain reasonable performance with an inline process.

Solid State Disk – is again another technology that is working its way into most storage platforms and probably exposes the bolt on approach more so than any other. Systems like those from Texas Memory Systems and Solid Data Systems have designed a storage system around these zero latent devices. Now traditional storage manufacturers are racing to offer SSD solutions by plugging SSD modules into standard drive slots.

The problem is the whole system, shelf, storage controller and the overhead of the storage software itself creates latency. Fixing this is going to be a tough decision for the traditional storage manufacturers. Reducing latency will substantially increase overall system cost; leaving it in will create less than ideal SSD performance.

This is not to say that an older system cannot have new features added to it. They all can. How effectively those features can be added and integrated into the current system is a testament to how well the system was designed. The better the foundation the longer it can be extended.

Eventually every system needs to be scrapped and work needs to begin anew with new tools and new ideas while leveraging the knowledge and experience of the past.