Chuck's Blog

EMC Information Infrastructure for Microsoft

I think Microsoft technologies are poised to play an increasingly important role in the enterprise in the next few years.  Argue with me all you want, but I see it every day in most customer shops.

As you might know, my day job at EMC is running technology alliances, and one of the best partnerships we’ve ever formed is with Microsoft. 

Sometimes Microsoft gets a bad rap, which I think is unjustified.  Up and down the organization, they’re some of the brightest, straight-shooting and customer-focused people in the IT industry I’ve ever met.

And we’re doing great things with them across the board.  I’m extremely proud about what both companies have accomplished together.

About a week ago, I was asked by a customer “what is EMC doing with Microsoft?”.  I think he was looking for the 60 second response.

Well, it turned into a hour-long discussion that went all over the landscape, and I thought it worthy of an extended post.  I hope you agree …

VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 – Climbing The Mountain

So, it’s no surprise that everyone is doing more with VMware in data centers these days. 

Between hardware reduction, power savings, increased flexibility, etc. it is an article of faith for me that this will accelerate during 2007.  It’s just too darn compelling.

So what’s holding customers back from deploying VMware most everywhere? 

Several issues, but one important one is infrastructure: to get the most out of server virtualization, we believe the infrastructure around it has to change.

In this post, I’ll take a look at where we see a few important issues arising in more advanced VMware infrastructure, and – naturally – what EMC is doing about it.

NetApp: Bad Marketing vs. Good Marketing

All is fair in love, war and marketing.  Or is it?

Do we, as vendors, have a responsibility to our customers and the marketplace that when we make a claim, that it is generically true, and customers get the benefit we promise?

I believe so. 

I believe so strongly, in fact, that I’m taking it upon myself to call out others who may not subscribe to this particular world view.

Hot Topics for 2007

Yes, it's that time of year again.

All of us who fancy ourselves as industry watchers feel compelled -- almost ritually -- to lay out their views about the coming year.  I just can't resist.

None of these are radical thoughts, just my personal views of what's going to be popular, and what's not. 

I'll probably get a few right, get a few wrong, and totally miss a few others.   We'll see ...

There Ought To Be A Law

Who owns my personal information? 

Is it me, or the organization that's collected it?

Saw this in the news today: Personal Information of 100 Million Americans At Risk. 

OK, it's a bit alarmist, but it's yet another piece of one of those meta-trends that I think will shape IT in the coming years -- shared ownership models for personal information.

Thin Provisioning: Don't Write A Check You Can't Cash

Well, by now just about every major storage player offers some form of thin provisioning (including EMC). 

And to read the marketing hype from all the smaller vendors, you'd think this is really big stuff.

In this post, I'll try and give some context to why this is so interesting to some, and -- more importantly -- the dark side that deserves a bit of light on it.

SBB: Why You Just Might Care

SBB -- maybe you missed that particular standards announcment.  It stands for "Storage Bridge Bay".

There hasn't been a lot written about it, but -- if you buy a lot of storage -- this is a standard worth watching.  There's a bit about it here, here and here.

One of my favorite quips is "God must have loved standards committees, he created so many of them".  So what's the deal with this one, and why should you care?

A Bit More On FRCP

After my last few posts on FRCP, I went looking for a simple, clear and concise description of what FRCP means to the average IT organization.

Sad to say, I ended up far more confused than I started.  Lots of thoughtful opinions, but no net-net.

Enter Andy Cohen, a fellow EMC-er (and a lawyer!) who is driving EMC's growing compliance practice.

I'll turn the mike over to him.

Benchmarketing Too Far?

For those of you who are trivia buffs, you’ll probably remember the sad story of Radithor.  Shortly after radioactivity was discovered in the early 1900s, the market was flooded with radioactive patent medicines that made all sorts of claims. 

 

Radithor was made by adding a small amount of radium to distilled water.  Nasty stuff.  But it was sold as a cure for many ills.

 

In the case of Radithor, the slow horrible death of a man who drank hundreds of bottles contributed to the establishment of FDA, which – at a high level – ensured that medicines did no harm, and hopefully did what they said on the label.

 

This turned out to be the worst form of quackery.  People who had a specific problem turned to these solutions for relief; not only didn’t they get better, they had new problems.

 

Today, I’m going to take the gloves off and look at what I consider a particularly egregious example of benchmarketing in the storage industry. 

 

Not only does it not do what it says on the label, you could end up far worse than you started off.  You can arrive at your own conclusions as to whether or not I’m overreacting.

   

Grid and Virtualization

Sometimes you make a connection between two concepts, and it helps. 

Forgive me if others have already made the connection between grid and virtualization, but it popped up today in an interesting discussion with a customer, so I thought I'd share it.

The question was simple enough: "when should I be thinking grid, and when should I be thinking server virtualization?". 

Now, keep in mind, I am frequently accused of dramatically oversimplifying things.

I really see them as two sides of the same coin, and with more in common than you might think.