Chuck's Blog

The Cool Magic of AIM

Yes, I'm going to throw a new term at you -- it's Application Image Management, or AIM. 

Before you scream “buzzword alert!”, take a moment and hear me out, please.

For quite a while, we've understood the potential to transform how application images are defined, managed and delivered in a radically optimized fashion.

And today, EMC is announcing the acquisition of exceptionally intriguing technology that cuts across multiple disciplines and delivers some eye-popping benefits.

How does the potential of running 3x-6x more virtual machines on the exact same hardware grab you?

In Memorium: Dick Egan

We all were stunned to learn of his death. 

To many of us, Dick Egan was a fundamental force of nature.

It goes without saying that Dick was the driving force behind EMC in its early years.  He was personally responsible not only for our stellar success in the beginning, but shaping our cultural DNA in a way that persists to this very day.  Indeed, many aspects of our industry are his direct legacy.

Way back when, Dick Egan *was* EMC.  The company and the man were largely inseparable.  To say he was a man with a vision would be a serious understatement of his contagious enthusiasm. The stories of his unique, compelling (and sometimes outrageous) style still circulate around the halls of the company.

Now that EMC is celebrating its 30th anniversary, it's a bittersweet occasion to look back at the man and the way he shaped so many of our lives.

He may have passed, but his impact will be felt for many, many years to come.

The New Face Of IT Security Infrastructure?

I was pleasantly surprised to see this article where some hands-on reviewers were favorably impressed with RSA's extended DLP (data loss prevention) capabilities.

Yes, it's a pretty cool set of capabilities.  And we could do a feature-by-feature comparison of our stuff vs. their stuff and probably come out ahead.

But it becomes an unfair comparison where we take these capabilities, and put them in the broader context of EMC's emergent stack.

Of Objects And Files

I was pleasantly surprised by the vigorous debate kicked off by one of my recent posts "The Future Doesn't Have A File System". 

Although most of the vigorous rhetoric came from an individual with a clear vested interest (Alex McDonald who is the competitive blogger over at NetApp), he did bring forth some themes that I'm sure are more widely shared.  And, just as vigorously, Paul Carpentier of FilePool (Centera) fame argued the other side of the equation.

I'd like to use this post to step back a bit and lay a bit of groundwork as to why this is such an interesting topic to so many of us looking at architecture.

I Love A Good Disruption

If you're like me, you love to see the continual cycles of disruption that percolate through our industry.

You might wonder why a "disrupto-phile" like me would work for a large, successful behemoth of an IT company like EMC, it's easy. 

It's pretty easy, actually. First, you don't get large and successful without paying attention to disruptive trends.  And, second, it's far more fun when you are the disruptor rather than the disruptee.

Case in point: a rather innocuous announcement from our Iomega subsidiary, found here.

You can say what you want around the pros and the cons of the actual product, but the thinking it represents is interesting. 

Think of it as yet another example of EMC's unique approach to creative disruption.

A Starter Private Cloud For IT

So, it's happening more frequently now.

We go into a large enterprise customer, or perhaps one of our partners, and do our private cloud presentation.

We talk about fully virtualized environments, new operational models, and how VMware, Cisco and EMC are working together to accelerate this world.

And then something very interesting happens with increasing frequency.

The Future Doesn't Have A File System

... at least, not that tree-oriented, heirarchical model we've all gotten so accustomed to.

Sure, there'll be mechanisms for managing information objects, but calling them "file systems" can really hold back our thinking in some subtle yet powerful ways.

Reconsidering Storage As A Service

Yes, many people have tread this ground over the years, but I'd argue it's time for a re-definition of the term.

Properly framed, it can provoke a mindset that transcends historical thinking, and might help pave the way for storage architects out there who are looking for new ways to frame the discussion with their teams to move the ball forward.

You be the judge.

Why I Really Like VMware's SpringSource Acquisition

Sorry I wasn't able to weigh in when this happened last week. 

The good news: the more I think about it, the more I find this particular acquisition absolutely fascinating.

The usual disclaimer: I'm offering my own opinions, and not speaking officially on behalf of VMware, EMC, SpringSource or any other company for that matter.

But, despite the disclaimer, many of us think this is pretty darn cool.

Big VDI With VMware / Cisco / EMC

Came across this gem the other day, and wanted to share. 

Ideally, this would be over at Chad's blog, but I guess he's been swamped with prep for VMworld.

In a nutshell, it's a beefy whitepaper showing Cisco's UCS doing virtual desktop consolidation in an entirely new league.

A couple of highlights:

• This scenario targets heavy-duty knowledge worker use profiles as opposed to occasional desktop users.  Although virtual desktops can potentially apply everywhere, they have special appeal for the power users in some organizations, hence the use of industrial-strength infrastructure for this particular environment.

• This scenario validates the premise that certain VMware consolidation scenarios are memory-limited (vs. CPU or I/O bandwidth), hence the attractiveness of the UCS design.

• As you dig into the white paper, you'll get a sense of the attractiveness of how the UCS Manager's template-based approach complements VMware's and EMC's.

I think this is yet another great example of the power of VCE: VMware, Cisco and EMC working together to accelerate fully virtualized environments and private clouds.  Thanks to the respective teams who did all the hard work!

More to come.