On an average week, I get to meet with several different customers. It's fun and it's rewarding.
Sometimes they've seen this blog, which is a strange feeling when they know more about you than you know about them ...
More often than not, the purpose of my visit is to paint a very broad picture. We'll talk about all sorts of technologies: virtualization, content infrastructure, model-based management, security -- sometimes we even talk about storage.
Whether it's 30 minutes or a day-long drill-down session, it's always fun.
Other times, there's a specific topic someone wants to drill into. Such was the case last week.
This particular picture was increasingly familiar: an IT organization getting clobbered by backup and recovery woes.
Ostensibly, we were there to pitch our capabilities. The IT guys were doing the round-robin of different vendors, and it was our turn.
But, in a search for root cause, we ended up in a very different place.