In actuality, this may work for something as simple as diagnosing a cold or treating a scrape, but relying on parameters I enter into Google to come up with a cancer diagnosis and a treatment plan for myself? I'm not there yet. However, isn't this indicative of the way companies diagnose and treat their storage problems?

Having worked for companies of all sizes and having seen some of the more perplexing storage problems that they face, Google was just one of the many tools that I had at my disposal. Sure, vendors have their storage specialists, support centers and customer-only support Web sites, but sometimes Google worked as well as any of them in identifying the solution to my problem.

In fact, sometimes I found Google actually has an edge over vendor support. Vendor support structures are often first and foremost built to support hardware and software that they sell and support, not the mishmash of hardware and software most administrators need to support.

Dumping your vendor support structure for Google as your primary and most trusted source for complex medical or storage problems is still a fool's choice in large organizations if for no other reason than it exists to protect. But vendor's beware: If the day comes when Google search results exceeds your abilities and resources to provide support, don't think for an instant companies won't deliberate making the switch.

Jerome Wendt is the president and lead analyst with DCIG Inc. He may be reached at jerome.wendt@att.net.