Chuck's Blog

Narrowing The Cloud

So, we're in an interesting period with this whole "cloud" thing -- industry-wise.

At one end of the spectrum, the discussion seems to be broadening impossibly: more and more things are taking on the "cloud" label -- mostly because it seems that all sorts of people want to talk about it.

And when I talk to the people who are really working hard on the topic, the definition and the discussion seems to be narrowing considerably.

Raiding The Roadmap?

Having just got back from SNW, I had some time to read through all the various announcements from different vendors.

Since I tend to read these with a jaundiced eye (as should you) I noticed a lot of "announcements" that were a bit on the squishy side as far as such things go.

Back when I was a product marketing type, I used to call this "raiding the roadmap".  Nothing wrong with it specifically, but all of us in the industry ought to be alert for this sort of thing, and act accordingly.

A Tale Of Two Companies

I had a very interesting experience over the last few weeks.

I had the opportunity to spend quality time with two ostensibly similar companies.

Similar industries, similar situations, similar markets served -- but two fundamentally different approaches to IT.

And it's going to be very interesting to me to see which one does better in the long run.

What's Up With Hitachi?

This week is Storage Networking World down in Dallas.  Many of us in the storage biz make the annual sojourn once a year for this storage industry event.  I'm leaving for the airport in a few hours.

And, as with every industry show, it's a great opportunity for storage vendors to announce new products, especially if they have a more technical bent.

For example, EMC announced not only the FCoE-based Cisco Nexus switch, but qualified host adapters as well.  If nothing else, EMC's announcement demonstrates to the marketplace that at least one storage vendor is very serious about the transition to converged data center fabrics. 

Not to mention improved SMI-S support.

I saw an announcement from Hitachi.  Now, they've been awfully quiet these days -- both in the blogosphere, but -- more importantly -- delivering new capabilities to market.

And, based on what they announced, it looked pretty bleak to me.

It's An Information Business

One of the things that I like about my job is that I get a fairly deep look at different industries, and -- more importantly -- how they think about information.

And, to be sure, there are important lessons that different industries could learn from each other in this regard.  That point was driven home this week -- bigtime.

Virtual IT: A Frictionless World?

Welcome to our parade of next-gen IT topics for the next five years.

We got started by discussing how IT context might change over this period here and here.  We went a bit further and discussed about the deconstruction of physical IT infrastructure thanks to our friend virtualization, and the re-construction of services using a model paradigm.

And, most recently, shifted the perspective to our end users, and how their needs will evolve over this period.

Virtual IT: The End Of "Place" For IT Users

We're in the midst of a whirlwind tour of future-state IT five short years from now.

We took a quick look at context here and here.  Talked a bit about the deconstruction of physical IT infrastructure thanks to our friend virtualization, and the re-construction of services using a model paradigm.

For this post, we're going to take a look at the people at the proverbial "end of the wire" -- the business users of IT services.

Virtual IT: Deconstructing Infrastructure

Yet another step in our journey at looking at future-state IT in five short years.

The first two posts (here and here) spoke largely about how the business will view IT, and how IT might come to think of itself.

The third post dealt with the first of several important constructs (orchestration) that I believe will be essential in this future state of virtual IT.

Now, let's dig into virtualization itself, but from a slightly different perspective -- the deconstruction of IT infrastructure.

Virtual IT: Orchestration Must Change

We're now well on our journey of exploring the future state of IT in just five short years.

The first post looked at how IT's role and perspectives will likely shift over this period of time.

The second post considered the implications of when IT sees themselves exclusively as a service provider.

And in this post, we're going to start getting a bit more into the "how" rather than the "why".

Virtual IT: Virtual Service Providers

You're in the middle of a sequence of posts where I attempt to describe the future state of IT in a short five years from now.

My first post dealt more with existential issues: why does IT exist, how their role is evolving, and what the implications might be.

I ended with a first of many potential interpretations for the term "virtual IT": IT organizations will evolve to an enterprise provider of IT services, "frontsourcing" an ever-growing network of specialized and external providers who can do things better, faster or cheaper.

So, let's keep this discussion moving forward, and dig in to some of the more subtle implications of virtual service providers.