Chuck's Blog

Does Data Have Gravity?

One of the more thought-provoking ideas from EMC World 2012 was embedded in Pat Gelsinger's keynote.  

Once you got past the extreme (and enjoyable) production values -- and 42 new products -- I found myself thinking hard about what he had to say.

He presented a case for a fundamental shift in the "physics" of information technology.  

Data has mass; big data has big mass -- and the resultant gravitational forces were causing a re-thinking from the familiar application-centric world to a data-centric one.

And the more I thought about it, I started to realize some of the very cool implications of Pat's observation.

A Unique Opportunity For IT Leaders

So much of what I blog about revolves around IT leadership -- how I see people being successful in these -- errr, interesting -- times.

EMC is wonderfully fortunate to be able to draw from the practical experiences of our own EMC IT organization, led by our CIO Sanjay Mirchandani.  

Sanjay's story around how he is leading a continual transformation of our IT function has proven to be deeply productive for EMC's customers and partners.  

And it just gets better over time.

At EMC World 2012, Sanjay took the stage for an hour.  He not only recapped the highlights of the journey so far, but laid out the next few years of IT evolution at EMC.

I'm watching it, and going through the companion slides.  It's compelling content for *anyone* interested in strategic IT transformation at any level.  Yes, it's an hour long -- but it's probably the most compelling hour on the topic I've ever seen anywhere.  Highly recommended.

Find the video here.  Download his powerpoint slides and click along here.

Are CMOs The New CIOs?

A thought-provoking title to an article appeared in Forbes last week, and it got me to thinking once again about newer IT consumption patterns, and how they differ from more familiar ones.

The author used a spate of recent tech acquisitions to make the case that the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is now driving more than their fair share of IT spend.

Do I think that CMOs are becoming CIOs?  No -- I believe the requried skill set is very different.

But I can make a strong case that smart CIOs might want to start to think of the CMO as their new best friend ...

Of Puppet And Razor

Cool-hunting at EMC is much more fun than it should be.  Over time, you keep finding the same people doing really cool stuff.  And there are a lot of them here.

One of our most visible cool-masters is Nick Weaver (@lynxbat).  You might know him as the guy that did all those great "uber" Celerra emulator releases. 

Or the guy who built the ultimate VMware partition alignment tool and handed it out to everyone.  Or perhaps the mad scientist behind many of the face-melting demos you've seen at EMC World.  Or a whole bunch of other cool stuff.

Well, Nick is now part of the CTO Office at EMC, which means he now has the opportunity to do even more amazing things.  That's part of the fun of working at EMC.  And, with this announcement, I think he's surpassed himself.

And, in the process, he's made EMC an essential part of the burgeoning open stack cloud and devops discussion.

VCE Vblock: Charting The Changes

On paper, VCE is a free-standing company -- a joint venture between EMC and Cisco, with participation from both VMware and Intel.

But many of us here at EMC don't think of them that way: they're a key part of our cloud strategy in the marketplace for enterprise customers and service providers alike.

At the time of introduction, their value proposition was somewhat controversial: in exchange for asking the customer to conform to certain configurations and operational processes, a vastly superior result could be achieved.

That bold claim is neither theoretical or esoteric; it's now been backed hundreds and hundreds of customer environments. Proof points are everywhere, including this home-grown infographic from a typical VCE customer.

In a recent post, I asked Todd Pavone if anything had shown up in the marketplace that was creating a serious alternative to the Vblock proposition. His answer -- in a nutshell -- was "no, not yet".

Part of the strength of Vblocks is the VCE organization itself: over 1000+ professionals with one mission: deliver a superior, integrated customer experience.

And, in my book, it's all about organizing for success :)

As part of the EMC World 2012 festivities, VCE is announcing a number of enhancements which further extend and differentiation the Vblock proposition.

EMC MegaLaunch II Overview

This morning, EMC is announcing 42 new or updated storage products.  That's a lot to consider.

Why 42?  

Other than the obvious reference from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, it's one more than the 41 products we announced at our last MegaLaunch event in early 2011.

I've done my best to look at each group of new or improved products, and share the highlights (as I see them) in an extended series of posts linked below.

I thought in this post I'd share what I think are the big trends motivating all this new R&D.

Isilon: Charting The Changes

Of all the EMC World product announcements I'm covering, one of the key ones every storage professional is going to want to pay attention to is the preview of the new Isilon OneFS "Mavericks" upcoming release.

Not only is there a ton of new product content, it may change the way you think about providing scale-out storage services in *your* enterprise going forward.

Isilon has always had the upper-hand in big data storage: a compellingly simple scale-out NAS / CIFS / iSCSI "single file system" cluster architecture that has enjoyed great success in many specialized verticals: entertainment, genomics, etc.

Since EMC announced the acquisition in November 2010, we've poured a mind-bending amount of resources into the product and the team.  

With this major release, you can see clear evidence of what all that investment is doing for our customers.

Atmos: Charting The Changes

EMC Atmos has always been rather difficult for traditional storage people to fully appreciate, but fortunately we've had no such problem with the newer generation of web developers and service providers :)  

In a nutshell, Atmos software is used to create cloud storage services that are a sharp departure from what's normally available from, say, Amazon's S3.

And if you're in the business of delivering storage-based services -- or work for a company that needs to do this for its own purposes -- it's not hard to have an appreciation for what Atmos does -- and how it's quite different than just about anything out there.

Atmos was first introduced in November, 2008.  Since then, it's enjoyed steady adoption from a growing number of customers and partners who now have an deep appreciation of what does better than anything out there.

Iomega: Good Things In Small Packages

So much of what we do around storage here at EMC is at significant scale: big, fast, distributed, etc.

People tend to forget that EMC is also very active at the low end of the storage marketplace: you'll find many interesting use cases where even modest products like the VNXe can be too much for the requirements at hand. 

That's where Iomega competes and thrives.

I've got a number of good acquaintances in EMC's Iomega group.  They're always up to something interesting, and -- of course! -- we all appreciate the "extended evaluation" units they occasionally hand out.

As part of the run up to EMC World 2012, they've got a few significant announcements of their own.

Data Domain and Avamar: Charting The Changes

I think by now everyone has gotten the memo -- enterprise data continues to grow and grow, with no end in sight.

That means that the amount of enterprise data that has to be protected -- backed up or otherwise replicated -- continues to grow and grow as well. 

Indeed, many enterprise backup environments put in only a handful of years ago are already feeling the pain and are thus likely candidates for a major fresh look.

It's in this fast-moving market that EMC's BRS (backup and recovery systems) division continues to innovate and thrive.

And, as part of EMC World, they've done their part in announcing important new capabilities: some modest, some quite large :)

Delivering Storage As A Managed Service: VMAX SP

One of the more interesting EMC announcements in the run up to EMC World 2012 came out today with little fanfare, but probably deserves more attention.

It's the VMAX SP: a specific, enhanced edition of the VMAX targeted at IT service providers. 

For one thing, it includes all the software components needed to provision, meter and bill enterprise-class "high QoS" storage services.  

All in one box.

It's also notable because it creates the option of transferring all the operational heavy lifting of running an enterprise-class storage farm back to EMC -- which we then deliver as a service to owners of the VMAX SP.

It's interesting to me because it shows what happens when you starting thinking about technology as a service vs. simply as a product.  

And -- please pay attention -- you'll probably see more variations on this theme going forward from EMC and other vendors.

Simplification Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: The New ESI

Just about every IT vendor on the planet is investing heavily to tackle the "simplification" problem.

IT environments are getting too complex.  More time can be spent coordinating between different IT roles than actually getting useful work done.

But there's never a silver bullet: simplification is usually in the eyes of the beholder.  

I think EMC did a good job of recognizing this early, and rather than hand-waving at the problem, digging in deeper to understand specific roles and focused use cases where investing in simplification could be of great value.

Such is the case with the new version of the EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) for Windows environments -- how do you make IT infrastructure easier for someone who lives in a Microsoft-centric world?

VPLEX and RecoverPoint: Charting The Changes

VPLEX is one of those fascinating enabling technologies that doesn't neatly fit into any established category.

Some will call it "storage virtualization", and leave it at that.  Yes, but not really.

Others will call it a "workload balancing solution".  True, but there's much more.

Still others look at it as a much better answer to zero-RPO, zero-RTO business continuity requirements.  Or perhaps a better way to do non-disruptive migrations at scale.

Yes, it does that, but ...

Since its introduction two years ago, the VPLEX platform has quietly enjoyed substantial customer adoption as well as a considerable amount of feature enhancement.

And, to this day, people ask me to compare it against competitive alternatives, and -- well -- I come up empty.  

And not because I'm suffering from IT Vendoritis.

Sure, it's not for everyone, but if you're doing IT at reasonable scale, there's nothing quite like it today in the infrastructure world. 

And it's certainly worth taking a moment to appreciate what it brings to the table.

EMC DataBridge: A New Way To Think About IT Infrastructure Reporting

It's one thing to share with you a new product from EMC.  We've got plenty of those as part of our announcement barrage at EMC World 2012.

But occasionally, I get to share a product that embodies a new way of thinking about a familiar challenge. 

New ideas can be more interesting (and potentially valuable) than iterations on previous approaches -- and that's why I think the new EMC DataBridge deserves a bit of your attention.

Not only does it have some immediately useful capabilities on Day 1, it shows we've started to think about IT management challenges in entirely new ways.

And it can't happen soon enough in my book ...

VNX: Charting The Changes

When we introduced the VNX and VNXe at the beginning of 2011 to replace our CLARiiON and Celerra products, we were sort of holding our collective breath here at EMC. 

Up close, we knew they were amazing products -- but would customers and partners embrace them?

The answer now is clear: it's an unequivocal "yes!"

Both products have turned out to be runaway successes.  We're delighting our existing customers and partners, and we've also been able to attract a lot more new adherents to the fold.  Along the way, the product has garnered more industry awards than I care to count. 

Industry market share numbers have shifted as a result.  It's now the hot product to beat if you're a competitor in this category.

Not one to rest on our laurels, the EMC team has been busy extending and enhancing the VNX and VNXe offering, and -- as part of EMC World 2012 -- there are new capabilities to consider.

My personal favorite in this batch of announcements?  The new EMC AppSync -- integrated data protection that creates protection as a service for virtual environments. 

You're going to like this one as well :)

VMAX: Charting The Changes

When I came to EMC in 1994, Symmetrix was the company's flagship product. 

As I started my employment, EMC had just announced a three-bay mainframe storage array with a whopping ONE TERABYTE of raw capacity -- half that when mirrored.  Whoa!

Back in the day, it was a really big deal.

Here we are in 2012, and the Symmetrix platform (now VMAX) continues to be just as fascinating and compelling to me as it was back in the day. 

With the most recent announcements, it's pretty clear that -- yes -- Symmetrix VMAX is *still* the company's flagship product.

If you're not familiar with VMAX, this post won't cover that for you.  The platform has continually evolved advanced functionality and capabilities over a time span now approaching two decades.  If I tried, the result wouldn't be a blog post, it'd be a textbook.

With these most recent announcements, it's crystal clear that VMAX continues to earn the leadership position it has historically enjoyed: capacity, performance, functionality, availability, simplicity -- and efficiency.

The frustrating part for me is that a significant number of people think the VMAX is for "someone else".  Recent enhancements have made the platform smaller and far easier to use, so if you haven't considered a VMAX recently, maybe you should ...

The Excitement Builds: EMC World 2012 Preview

Across the globe, we're all gearing up for EMC World 2012: employees, partners and valued customers alike. 

The pace of preparation has now reached "furious". 

I almost forgot to pop my head up and share with you a few of the things we've got planned -- without spoiling any of the surprises!

After last year's extravaganza, I didn't think EMC World could get any bigger, but -- yes -- this year is shaping up to be much, much bigger in multiple dimensions.

Whether you plan to attend live, or choose to follow us on any number of online feeds, there's going to be a *lot* to talk about from May 21st through May 24th.

I thought I'd give everyone a quick rundown of what to expect -- that is, what I can share!

Investing In Tomorrow's Skills: The EMC Academic Alliance

Listen to most senior executives for a while, and -- sooner or later -- you'll hear the familiar lament that it's so hard to find good people with the right skills.

That's understandable -- our economy is moving fast, and many academic institutions are perpetually challenged to deliver the graduates with the skill sets that employers demand.  

That's especially true in IT today -- as the IT industry transforms, so do the required skill sets.  And it's happening very fast indeed.

Enter the EMC Academic Alliance -- an open curriculum platform for both academia and industry that targets the exact skills we see so much in demand.

It's been around for a while, I was just unaware of how big and influential it had become.  After going through it, I was mightily impressed.

Perhaps you'll be impressed as well.

My Friday Rant: Overcoming IT Vendoritis

I'm continually inspired by people who've overcome challenging circumstances and backgrounds to achieve great things.  Through a great deal of persistence and intestinal fortitude, these individuals have risen beyond their humble circumstances, and can be held up as an example to all.

Working for an IT vendor can be challenging as well.  There's all sorts of reinforcement loops for unproductive behavior.  

Not everyone can rise above the fray and make a meaningful contribution to their customers, or perhaps the industry as a whole. 

But I'd like to think that anyone can succeed at overcoming obstacles.

Part of the challenge that we all face is recognizing the inherent challenge at hand, and working to become more self-aware.

So, as a public service to my IT vendor colleagues, I'd like to offer up a quick diagnostic to help you assess just how bad you have IT vendoritis -- the somewhat crippling condition of becoming mildly brain-damaged by swimming in too much IT vendor koolaid.

Why?  Because admitting you have a problem is the first step to overcoming it.

The Heavy Lifting Ahead Of IT Transformation: The Story of Ingram Micro

As part of my role here at EMC, I get exposed to some wonderful stories around how IT organizations have changed their strategies for the better.  I meet great people who are doing wonderful things for the companies that employ them. 

Occasionally, I meet someone who's motivated to share their story -- how they're working to drive substantive change in their world.  And I’m doing what I can to share those stories.  

I'm sure many of you reading this would like to be in an idealized world where IT is run as a business, built on the perfect cloud, complete with an attractive catalog of competitive services with all the financial and security stuff just working -- freeing the IT staff to work on the really cool stuff.   

But -- very frequently -- there's a lot of heavy lifting that needs to be done just to even broach that topic, let alone achieve it.  A wonderful house needs a strong foundation, and sometimes you need the earthmoving equipment to come in and do the prep work before you can even get started.  

Recently, I had a chance to catch up with Anastasio Scalisi, who's been working assiduously at Ingram Micro to create what I see are the necessary foundations for an ITaaS initiative.   As part of the Ingram Micro team, his story is how a small group of motivated leaders can drive meaningful change in how IT is acquired, deployed and consumed -- and building the groundwork for a full ITaaS model.  

When Business Leaders Own Their Information

The subject of this post came to me in a rather convoluted manner.

As I began to work more with organizations who are trying to achieve broad analytical proficiency, I started to notice something that at first appeared both unusual and unsettling.

One or more business leaders in the organization would begin to lay strong claims to "owning" their information.  

They were prepared to invest their cycles and resources towards acquiring more and improving the value of what they already had available.  They could be persuaded to share -- depending on circumstances.

While these leaders were moderately polite to others in the organization who were doing the same, they didn't want to be dependent on other groups (including, to a certain extent IT) as they went forward with their information ownership goals.

As I started to see more of this -- including in my own company -- I had to stop and think: is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

And I've come to the conclusion: it's a very good thing indeed.  It's precisely the right behavior, and should be encouraged.

VMware To Acquire Cetas: Making Analytics Easier To Consume

Today VMware made an acquisition that's extremely interesting from several perspectives: cloud, virtualization stacks, big data analytics and more.  

While certainly no Instagram, I think we'll all look back in a few years and agree -- yes, this was an important one.

Cetas describes themselves as ".. an early stage startup that delivers Analytics-as-a-Service to customers and is driving the democratization of analytics and business intelligence by dramatically lowering the barriers to entry for all companies, from SMB to large enterprises."

Yes, quite true when they were a standalone entity.  

But as part of the VMware (and, by extension, the EMC) family, it gets much more intriguing indeed ...

In Praise Of The Business Process Owner

Take a closer look at any successful organization, and you can quickly spot a half-dozen or more key business processes that really matter.  

Sales and marketing.  Customer satisfaction and quality.  New products and offers.  Global logistics.  

The specific process names might vary, but the patterns never do.  

And if you're a progressive IT leader looking for new opportunities to introduce change into the landscape, I'm going to argue that the people leading these initiatives are your new best friends.

Introducing VSPEX

This morning, EMC introduced VSPEX: a partner-centric pre-configured and pre-integrated infrastructure stack.  

Yes, we're pretty excited.  

Some will inevitably classify this announcement as yet another variation on a popular theme in the IT infrastructure marketplace.  

I mean, isn't every IT vendor packaging up infrastructure in new ways?  

Yes, somewhat true -- but many of us believe that there's plenty of room left for innovation and differentiation in this category.

VSPEX is not only interesting in what it does on its own, but how it nicely fits in to other things EMC is investing in -- like VCE and Vblocks.

Clouds Can Be Confusing For Vendors, Too

A spate of interesting developments recently in the evolution of the "enterprise cloud" market.  

Both IBM and HP have made rather significant announcements.  

Each announcement is interesting in its own way, and -- despite my obvious competitive biases -- I will try and share why I find each so interesting.

And I come away with a simple observation: clouds can easily confuse both customers and the vendors who serve them.

The Dark Side Of Big Data and Predictive Analytics

As a technologist, I'm always drawn to the amazing potential of new technologies and capabilities.  But I've also learned to be on the lookout for undesirable side effects as well.

I'm sure the first cave dwellers thought fire was a magical thing, until someone got burned, or a forest fire started.

Cheap, plentiful carbon energy has done wonderful things for our lives, until we realize we might be melting the ice caps in the process.

Modern mobile technology is transformative and wonderful stuff.  Using smart phones while driving is quickly supplanting alcohol as the #1 cause of automobile accidents.

Social network sites can be amazing things, until we realize just how open we've been with our personal information.

The era of widespread big data and predictive analytics is upon us -- should we be concerned?

Yes.

Connecting My Company To Yours

I often struggle to explain to people what I do here at EMC.  I'm not sure I entirely understand it myself, some days.

But I do see the value, as do others.  The problem is that it doesn't fit nicely into any established orthodoxy.  

My current title of "Global Marketing CTO" is a rather poor attempt at labeling.  I'm not global, I'm not that good at marketing, and I'm certainly not a chief technology officer of any sort.

But you've got to have something on your business card, don't you?

One of the things I now find myself spending more time on is brokering meaningful connections: richer, deeper conversations between my company to yours.  And, increasingly, this has less to do with technology-centric topics, and more about how businesses go about figuring out clever approaches to problems we've all had to face.

Do you have someone doing this (formally or informally) in your organization?  

You might want to think about it, because we're seeing an enormous amount of value, and I fully expect much more to come.

BI-as-a-Service: The New Cool IT Project

Cool IT projects come and go.

Social media platforms used to be a cool IT project. VDI used to be a very cool IT project. Then it was your first private cloud.

As the unofficial customer coolhunting dude at EMC, I hereby annoint my candidate for the next cool IT project: creating a BI-as-a-Service capability and pointing it at your analytical power users.

We're doing it in our own business, and I've now met more than enough customers who are interested in doing the same for their business.

And, just to be clear, this isn't your father's business intelligence.

Cloud Meets Big Data In Healthcare: The Importance of ACOs

Many people I meet who work at the intersection of healthcare and technology can get frustrated.

On one hand, the current healthcare delivery system in the US, with many obvious and visible opportunities for improvement.

On the other hand, the tantalizing power of newer technologies: cloud, big data, mobility, etc.

Historically, many people like me have looked at the situation, and tried to figure out why supply and demand weren't getting properly connected.  

The technology is there -- why isn't being consumed?

In a nutshell, my opinion is that the industry wasn't organized for success.  There were inherent structural barriers that inhibited the widespread adoption of the newer technologies and approaches.

But, with the recent rise of ACOs (accountable care organizations) and their brethren, a few of us are extremely optimistic that the next few years will be very different than the past.

An Update From My Friends At VCE

If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you know I can't hide my enthusiasm for what VCE is doing with Vblocks.  

By making converged infrastructure easier to consume, they've helped many IT organizations accelerate their transition to cloud and IT-as-a-service models. 

But -- as is always true with any new concept that upsets traditional orthodoxy -- it hasn't come without a fair amount of controversy: some thoughtful and intellectual, and occasionally a bit of unprofessional mudslinging and innuendo. 

I had a chance to catch up with one of my good friends and long-time EMC colleagues who is now at VCE: Todd Pavone, responsible for engineering and marketing at the company. 

We had a great opportunity to share perspectives on what's really going on at VCE -- and what might lie ahead. 

What's Your Personal Innovation Index?

I think most of us would like to be perceived as bright and innovative.  

Saying that -- and doing that -- can be two different things.

While we might occasionally have an innovative moment, how do we get into the habit of personal innovative behaviors that routinely inspire and influence others?

One helpful technique might be to measure your innovative behavior -- and see how you're doing.

Since different people have started to ask me about this, I thought I'd put some thoughts into a post for your consideration.

And, like most things in life, I'm sure it's not the last word on the subject ...

Learning To Get Comfortable With Sensorship

No, that's not a typo.  

That's a twist of a clever phrase that our own Thom Lytle used to describe our increasing participation in sensor networks of all kinds.

In a world of big data analytics, what we think, what we do, how we behave -- are incredibly valuable inputs.  There's a powerfully strong incentive to capture our digital exhaust as we move through life.  

In so many of these models, there's no practical way anyone can opt out.  We're increasingly being sensored whether we approve or not.

Not to be overly negative, but there's scant chance of our legal systems ever hoping to catch up to where technology has so quickly brought us.

So I believe the topic of "sensorship" -- our willing and increasingly unwilling participation in data gathering exercises -- is going to be an important one.

What Happens When You Point A Cloud At A Business Challenge -- Part II

About three months ago, I wrote a post describing how we were using cloud capabilities to address very specific business challenges internally here at EMC.

Matt Coviello had just stood up the latest version of his vLab, and started to introduce it to our global presales community.

Now, it's three months later, and much has changed.  Most importantly, Matt's team has started to expose these capabilities to selected portions of EMC's Velocity partner community, as Chad shared here.

I thought it might be time to spend some time with Matt, and see how his world had changed in three short months.  

Tales From The Trenches: Changing Your Business Model With Big Data Analytics

The premise -- at a high level -- is easy to understand: the new-found power of predictive analytics has the potential to change the way you do business.

But the devil (as always) is in the details.

Clearly there's a transformation at hand.  

The starting point: a familiar world of historical reporting on events in the past.  The goal state: the ability to better predict (and capitalize on) likely future outcomes.

And getting from Point A to Point B is rarely as seamless and pleasant as you read about :)

To that end, I'm actively studying transformational stories about how organizations are learning to change the way they do business around big data analytics.  

And, as it turns out, EMC Corporation is an excellent example of just such an organization.

Good Help Is Here For Your IT Transformation

Any time we're faced with a daunting and unusual challenge, we usually go looking for good professional help: doctors, lawyers, architects, tax professionals, financial advisers, etc.  

We may prefer to do things ourselves, but we realize that getting good, experienced help can make all the difference between a successful outcome, and one that isn't.

The same is true when IT leaders start seriously thinking about IT transformation.  Getting to cloud and its associated IT-as-a-service model can be a daunting transformational journey, and not for the faint-of-heart.

At one level, it's a re-invention of IT's business and operational model to look more like a competitive service provider, and less like a traditional IT shop.

Given my technical background, I have historically been rather skeptical of professional and consulting services, but I've discarded that obsolete view over the last several years.  IT transformation is hard, daunting work -- and getting good help from people who have done it before is not to be discounted.

Such is the case with EMC Global Service's announcement today of a greatly expanded and integrated portfolio of IT transformation services -- a set of offerings that pass my personal test as truly beneficial to many of our customers.

Even if you think you're not in the market for consulting services, it's worth understanding what these people do, how they do it -- and why it's important.

New Tools For The New Information Value Chain

Today, the Greenplum team is not only announcing an improved set of Chorus capabilities, but the important acquisition of Pivotal Labs.

So, what's going on here -- and why are many of us so excited?

Yes, there are cool new capabilities from Greenplum that help accelerate the impact of data science, and yes there's a very cool group of agile app developers and tools from Pivotal Labs. 

But how do these themes tie together, and how to they complement other pieces of the puzzle that we're assembling on the behalf of our customers?

My Perfect Privacy Disclosure

We're at an interesting turning point in so many digital business models: there's a compelling incentive for companies to know as much about you as humanly possible.

On the other hand, we as individuals are increasingly disturbed by how much these same organizations know about us, and it's only going to more disconcerting in the future.

In between is the quaint notion of a privacy disclosure: a veritable fig leaf that attempts to cover the naked truth of what's really going on.

Almost always rendered in small fonts and obtuse legalese, these are quickly displayed in a perfunctory fashion, never to be seen again.  

In the spirit of openness and transparency, I'd like to share my personal thoughts as to what an ideal a privacy disclosure ought to do -- and that's tell it like it really is.

Big Data: From Meme To Marketplace

Industry memes come and go, but industry markets are tangible things: they can be measured, segmented, analyzed and hotly debated by the participants.

Subjectively speaking, widespread usage of the term "big data" started in earnest at the beginning of 2011.  One short year later, it appears made the important transition from meme to marketplace.

Analysts are weighing in.  Interesting subsegments are emerging.  Ecosystem vines are actively growing, thriving and intertwining.  Various customer audiences are raising their hands and expressing strong interest in one set of topics or another.  

All very encouraging from where I sit.

I thought I'd use this post just to bring you up to date on the current state of our industry "big data garden" and how it's growing ...

Rate Your Storage-As-A-Service Capabilites

Storage pros everywhere: don't think you're exempt from the "X as a service" trend.

Just like other parts of IT, sooner or later you'll be transitioning to this model -- if you haven't already.

Given the explosive growth in storage and rising aggregate costs, maybe you'll end up being the *first* part of the IT organization to transition to this service-oriented model.

To be fair, not everyone should care about this particular topic -- or at least, not yet.  

If your environment is big and getting bigger faster (>100TB) you might care.  If your environment uses storage dynamically (lots of requests with fast turnaround expected) you ought to pay attention to this discussion.

And, despite me working for a vendor (EMC), this is going to be more about how you use the tools vs. the tools themselves.

So, let's figure out together just how far along you are on this journey.

Beyond STEM: Creating New Skills For The New Economy

If the acronym is unfamiliar to you, that's understandable: it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  

As a company, EMC cares a lot about STEM education.  At one level, these skills are the "raw fuel" for so many technology-based companies like us.

Personally, I care a lot about STEM education.  I am ostensibly a STEM graduate.  Two of my three children are now going through STEM programs: one male, one female.  It's an expensive proposition, to say the least.

But for many years, I've had this uneasy feeling that the game had changed, or -- at least -- we could be doing it much, much better.

And, after much thought, I've decided to share my personal views about how we could be better preparing our graduates for the coming economy.

Trust In IT: The Business Perspective

It's the week after the landmark RSA Security Conference, and cyber security is justifiably very much on everyone's mind.

The picture today is not pretty: the bad guys appear to be organized for success, and their intended victims are generally not.

For me, the RSA Conference gave me a good overview of where we are towards closing the currently wide gap -- and a sobering reminder of the work that lies ahead.

The Shape Of The Storage Market: Q4 2011 IDC Results

I know many of you follow the storage market for various reasons: whether you're a vendor, a customer or perhaps an interested analyst.

The best independent data out there comes from IDC -- the de-facto gold standard in this category.  

Every quarter, they publish their scorecard on vendor and category shares.  Since getting a detailed analysis requires a subscription to their service, I occasionally pore through the spreadsheets, and try to find a few summarized nuggets that others might find interesting.

As before -- there are a handful of interesting takeaways from the latest batch of data.  And I promise I will make every effort to keep chest-thumping to an absolute minimum ...

Want To Share Your IT Transformation Story?

I think I'm pretty fortunate that I get inside glimpses on how IT leaders are taking their teams forward to succeed in the brave new world.  

And I do what I can to share what I've learned -- both in person, and via this blog.

But I know I've only just begun to scratch the surface.  I suspect there are many more great stories out there -- chock full of great insights -- waiting to be told.

In each of them, there's something special to learn from -- one key insight or another that can probably help others with one aspect or another.

So here's the pitch -- if you've got a story to tell, would you be willing to invest an hour of your time to share with others?

The Inherent Difficulty Of Managing Data Growth

One of the most difficult questions I get asked by customers is painfully straightforward: how should we manage the explosive data growth going on in our organizations?

I wish I had a simple recipe.  Do these three ridiculously easy things, and you're set -- for example.  

No such luck.

You'd probably think that EMC would have some sort of semi-official position paper with deep insights on this thorny topic, but -- alas -- that's not the case either.  Truth be told, we tend to be somewhat divided amongst ourselves on the topic.

So, in an effort to be helpful, let me share with you how I'm answering the question when asked.

The Top Ten Pitfalls In ITaaS Transformation

By now, the story should be starting to be more familiar.  

The business needs more from the IT function, but IT can't easily deliver.  Inevitably, business leaders start searching outside of IT to get the flexible and easy-to-consume services they need.

I T leadership suddenly realizes that they're now being forced to compete for internal business , and IT isn't a monopoly any more.

Fail to compete successfully for your internal IT customers, and the future is not bright.

And so begins the uncomfortable process of IT groups transforming to look more like modern IT service providers, and less like the inwardly focused, siloed IT departments of yesteryear.

What started a few years ago as just a modest handful of customer examples quickly expanded to dozens, then hundreds and now many thousands.  

Personally, I think this has created a great opportunity for IT leaders to learn from each other as they each embark on their own transformational initiatives.  

But -- as with most things -- you tend to see patterns: where things work, and -- sometimes more importantly -- where things tend to bog down.

So, allow me to share my personal list of sand traps where IT leaders occasionally get stuck.  

Why?  Because knowing where the problems might lie is often half the battle ...

When Technology Transformed Education

In this blog, I end up writing a great deal on how information technology has the potential to change the world around us.  

From big data to mobilization to social to cloud: there's no shortage of fascinating examples where the potential for great changes are visible -- if we choose to pursue them. 

Like many of you, I am drawn to examples where technology can change people's lives for the good: health care, poverty -- and especially education. 

In this morning's New York Times, we read about the example of Mooresville, North Carolina who have used rather conventional technology to re-engineer the educational experience.

As a result, they are drawing considerable attention -- not so much because they're using technology -- but because they're changing their entire approach to education around what the technology can do.

Lightning, Thunder ... And Reverberations

Well, a relatively interesting week here -- at least from my narrow and biased storage vendor perspective.

EMC launches Project Lightning (now VFcache) with immediate availability.  

We preview a near-term follow-on technology -- Project Thunder.  

The web then reverberates with reactions from extremely positive to somewhat negative to occasionally "meh".

It was a pretty interesting show if you watch this part of the tech industry closely.

Now it's Friday.  

What have we learned?

Beyond IT: Building Your Digital Business Model

Not too long ago, I introduced the growingly attractive notion of a digital business model -- one that focused on creating content and experiences that customers and partners preferred.  My thanks (once again) to Dr. Peter Weill for introducing this powerful concept.

Since then, I've been quietly looking for stories where abstract theory have become funded projects.

Many of these stories are coming to me via EMC Digital, the boutique consulting specialty within the broader EMC Consulting organization.

And -- at the end of the day -- this particular story illustrates how a combination of innovative thinking and strong leadership can transform the seemingly mundane into a potentially compelling competitive advantage.

New IT, New Roles, New Tools

The conversation ought to be familiar by now.  

Many IT organizations are taking a hard look at themselves, and are realizing they have to learn to compete for internal customers.  

To do so, they need to start looking more like a modern IT factory, and less like your father's IT shop.  

A successful transformation essentially boils down to organizing for success: reformulating many existing IT roles, and creating entirely new ones.

Transforming even a moderate-sized IT shop takes a unique brand of leadership.  The journey isn't quick or easy, but it does offer substantial rewards to all involved.  

And, to put it gently, in many cases your options to ignore or postpone the inevitable aren't all that appealing :)

New IT inevitably means new roles and new processes, which -- of course -- implies the need for newer tools that are oriented around creating easy-to-consume services vs. simply monitoring the underlying technical components.  For example, most VCE Vblocks are shipped with UIM as an "orchestral enabler" that can expose infrastructure and allow it to be consumed as a service.

But not all clouds are Vblocks, and not all IT environments can be managed using a single paradigm.

Into this transforming IT world, EMC will be launching IT Operations Intelligence v9 early next week.  

While the product has plenty to like on its own merits, I'd like you to consider this a preview of some of the bigger ideas finding their way into next-gen IT management tools -- both from EMC and others.

The Other Side Of Big Data

Yes, I admit it.  I am caught hook, line and sinker on the transformative potential of big data analytics to not only change business, but change the world we live in.  It grows more heady and more intoxicating with every passing week.

Red pill, blue pill ...

But there's another important aspect to the big data discussion that shouldn't be ignored -- and that's the plethora of big data models that aren't entirely based on advanced analytics, but are still strategically important big data applications in their own right.

Our cohorts at Isilon have done a masterful job at accelerating value for our customers in this space, which occasionally tends to get overshadowed by the more flashy topics.

So, in the interests of inclusiveness, I'd thought I'd share with you the other side of the big data story.