| 18 Years of
Enterprise Storage Guides |
Editor:- February 2010 -
it's 18 years since I sold the 1st edition of my enterprise server and storage
buyers guide.
Little
did I imagine back then (in 1992) that
SSDs - a
technology I had used to boost the
reliability and
speed of servers in
the 1980s - and which occupied less than 1% of the pages in that heavy
$79 book - would one day become the #1 hot topic for millions of my readers
- as it is today.
2010 - year of the SSD
market bubble - is one of the most exciting times and places to be involved
in the computer industry.
It's got... the buzz I felt in
1977 as an electronics
engineer working with microprocessors. The uncertainty of being a web
publisher in 1996. The thrills of the dotcom boom days in 1998 which
gave me the confidence to put a cartoon character -
Megabyte the mouse -
on the home page of a serious new publication about
RAID,
SCSI,
HDDs and
SSDs - which I boldly named
StorageSearch.com
Today
- the storage market is the hot center of flaming innovation in computer
architecture.
SSDs are going to enable us to evolve new digital
markets faster than possible using the tired sagging clock rates and fat
cores of 30 year old processor architectures with hard drives. |
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There are thousands of
articles here on StorageSearch.com - and our readers, contributors and
sponsors include many of the
thought leaders in
the SSD industry. Together - we're "leading the way to the new storage
frontier". | | |
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ACSL publications timeline
1991 -
ACSL incorporated as a publisher of computer directories in the UK
1992
- ACSL publishes the SBus Product Directory (later renamed the SPARC Product
Directory) - the independent guide to Sun compatible cards, systems, and VARs
endorsed (for
many years) by Sun Microsystems.
1993 - ACSL becomes an
international publisher with customers in over 20 countries, and generates over
80% of its revenue from outside the UK. Prints directories in both California
and UK.
1996 - ACSL moves to a web based publishing model with
SPARC Product Directory and
creates Marketing Views to help
its partners get up to speed with the needs of internet marketing.
1998
- ACSL publishes STORAGEsearch.com
2001 - STORAGEsearch.com overtakes SPARC Product Directory
in readers and pageviews (in February 2001) and by the end of the year becomes
ACSL's main publication - generating over 80% of ad revenue.
2006
- STORAGEsearch.com passes 1 million unique readers annually milestone.
2007
- STORAGEsearch.com achieved 33% revenue growth, and double digit
pageview and reader growth year on year.
2009 - was the best
year for StorageSearch.com's ad revenue since the publication began. |
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| How are
things going at StorageSearch.com? |
Editor:- March 2010
2009
was the best year ever for StorageSearch.com's ad revenue.
And
it was another strong growth year for most of our SSD advertisers.
There's
no mystery about this.
Web
advertising is a scientific process which involves trial and error.
If
you're in the hottest segments in the storage market you have to
advertise in the hottest publication for those segments - because that's
where the customers are.
You've got to advertise where the
serious SSD buyers look. We cover the SSD market from the mobile phone to the
datacenter.
We've helped more SSD oems grow their business than any
publication online and offline.
As a result of sustained ad programs
which work - and as a result of over 78% increase in top SSD article
pageviews - a lot of advertisers have been asking how they can do more with
us.
Our overall site readership has increased by significant double
digits this year too - despite a decline in some traditional storage markets.
That's why I can spend more time working on unique content, and zero
time cold calling ad sales.
I'm very lucky. We've got fantastically
successful advertisers and fantastically high reader quality too. How can you
not have a good business with that winning combination?
2010 looks
like it will be a very good year for StorageSearch.com too. | | |
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In 1977 he knew he just had to get hands-on with the new generation of 8 bit
micros - there was no question of doing anything else.
After designing
first generation microprocessor based products for 3 international companies
in the instrumentation and factory automation markets he cofounded a venture
capital backed startup manufacturer of networked I/O products called Digital
Instruments in 1983.
In 1988 Zsolt became development manager of a
Unix systems integrator called Databasix which produced COTs 680X0 / SPARC
VMEbus platforms for the defence, intelligence, broadcast and industrial
markets. He led a reverse acquisition by startup Venturon, and became technical
and marketing manager of the data systems division which continued the
Databasix product line.
In 1991 he founded ACSL. Zsolt loves his
current job and is passionate about the great opportunities in the storage
market. | |
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