Chuck's Blog

Avamar, VMware and Hybridization

Saw this piece by Clay Rider of Sageza Group on Avamar and VMware. 

BTW, I love reading El Reg -- one of my favorite on-line news rags.  Good content, served up with a healthy dose of cynicism and insider humor.

I don't know whether EMC sponsored this piece or not, but I loved the way he got to some of the key points pretty quickly, so it's worth a read.

Bottom line:

• Lots of redundant data in VMware environments, probably much more so than in traditional physical environments, opportunity for client-side global data de-dupe.
• VCB integration means smoother access to virtual machines, and probably less physical hardware.

But there's a bit more here as well ...

Lessons In Storage Marketing

I've been involved in the marketing end of the business on-and-off for many years at EMC.

I've probably made every mistake in the book at one time or another (including some very infamous ones), but -- probably because I never got fired -- I ended up accumulating some useful wisdom about how to avoid certain egregious mistakes.

Based on what I've seen over the last few weeks, I thought it'd be interesting to share my take on a few gaffes I've seen.

Thin Client Redux

Over the years, one of the many evergreen topics in the IT industry has been thin-clients -- will we ever be able to move away from the PC model to get the majority of our work done?

Or are we forever doomed to lugging around laptops wherever we go?

Yes, the technology has changed.  But has the context changed as well?

Will we see (finally) the concept of thin clients finally take off in the next few years?

Good Technology In Good Hands

EMC has made a lot of acquisitions over the last few years. 

Some get a lot of visibility -- VMware, Documentum, RSA, etc. -- but there have been many others that have turned out to be shining success stories in their own right - just a bit overshadowed by the big names.

A lot of people think that acquiring companies is hard work.  They're right.

But exploiting the full value of what you've acquired -- that's really hard work.  And there's a general nay-sayer crowd that handicaps each and every acquisition EMC makes, including today's.

Yes, we've had a few bumps, but -- in general -- I think EMC has done an exemplary job of making acquisitions that deliver on Joe Tucci's famous "two-fer" comment: look for acquisitions that get us into interesting new parts of the market, and at the same time make the core stronger.

As one example, let me share with you the story of Kashya (now RecoverPoint) as an example of what happens behind the scenes when good technology ends up in good hands.

The Power Of Models

I think models are one of the most powerful intellectual tools at our disposal. 
 
Whether it's economic forecasting, weather prediction, financial management, cosmology or particle physics -- building a good model sets the stage for an order-of-magnitude change in how we understand (and manage) complex systems with multiple interactions.

One of our most powerful beliefs at EMC is that models are poised to change the landscape of how IT organizations manage IT resources, which most of us would agree is an increasingly complex system with multiple interactions. 

And, up to this point, use of sophisticated models hasn't been a dominant theme in IT.  I find this a bit ironic -- that the IT industry hasn't figured out how to harness this elegant approach to solve one of its most daunting challenges.

Maybe you've been exposed to our capabilities in the EMC Smarts portfolio and our broader activities around model-based resource management. 

But behind the products, there's a nugget of strategic thinking that's worth exposing.  Say what you will about the pros and cons of the products; I think there's almost no debate about the strategic rationale.