Chuck's Blog

My Favorite Charity

Now, lest you think that EMC is entirely about technology, profits, markets, beating competitors, et. al. we do have a distinct charitable side to our corporate ethos.

EMC invests considerably in a wide range of "make the world a better place" initiatives, both on a local and global scale.

And, a few years ago, we started working in an area that I find fascinating.

The Future of IT (Professionals)

So, I'm occasionally having an interesting experience these days.

Very often, I'm asked to share EMC's views on what's broadly called "the future of IT".

And, in the act of doing so, we usually end up in a discussion around "the future of IT professionals".

I think this is a discussion we'll be having more often in the future.

My Personal Storage Farm

Perhaps you've noticed that EMC has entered the prosumer market to a certain extent, by offering LifeLine software that hardware OEMs can offer to their customers.

A few weeks ago, I was offered the opportunity to try one such LifeLine-based product -- the Intel SS4200

I took it home, set it up, and had a blast.

I thought I'd share my impressions here, since many of you have your own personal storage farms at home.

Wishful Thinking

Many of you noticed NetApp's recent rebranding push this week.

Since I'm sort of a marketing guy, and NetApp is sort of a competitor, I watched with considerable interest.

Simply stated, it didn't seem to go so good for them.

And I think there are some lessons to be learned for all IT vendors.

Building The NextGen Management Brain

I fear I may have been neglectful in my blogging duties. 

I've fallen behind in a couple of areas, specifically regading a few recent developments in EMC's resource management strategy. 

Go ahead and blame me, but there's a lot to cover around EMC, and I still have my day job(s) to get done ...

So, with apologies out of the way, let's dig into a fascinating portion of EMC's portfolio -- resource management.

Bang!

In last month's Scientific American, there was an interesting article that basically stated that the scientists were wrong; that the universe we all live in is expanding far faster than we previously imagined. 

And they detailed some interesting consequences to this, but -- thankfully -- we wouldn't start to notice for billions of years.

Today, IDC updated last year's landmark study on "The Expanding Digital Universe" with a new one ("The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe"), basically saying they were wrong, the digital universe is expanding far faster than they orignally estimated.

But, rather than billions of years, the effects are likely to be far more immediate to all of us.

More Good Reading

If you generally like this blog, you'll probably enjoy Steve Todd's blog: http://stevetodd.typepad.com

Steve is one of those incredibly bright, multi-dimensional people who also write well.  Given his inarguable credentials in storage technology development, he's definitely worth a read.  Some people take a while to get good at this blogging thing; Steve just jumped in and showed us all how it's supposed to be done.

Yes, he's an EMC employee, but that doesn't seem to hold him back ;-)

Storage Protocols, VMware and Religion

Funny, isn't it?  How most technology questions break into religious camps?

I've noticed that there's a fair amount of religion around which storage protocol is "better" for VMware: FC, NAS, iSCSI?

And, like most things, a fair amount of agnosticism might be appropriate.

Q4 2007 Storage Scoreboard

I've gotten into the habit of recapping the IDC storage vendor share reports here on this blog.

Not to brag on EMC's behalf, per se (although there's some opportunity to do that, which I will studiously try to avoid), but to pick out some of the more interesting trends in market evolution.

No real surprises, from my perspective, but some interesting nuggets that might be worth considering.

More Goodness From VMworld

Finally, everyone is trickling back from the VMware show in Cannes last week.

I recently covered the VMware solutions we announced there, but it turns out that there was a whole lot more cool stuff that got presented there.

As these bits come in, I'll share them with you to the best of my ability.