Chuck's Blog

Request For Topics

Hi everyone!

If you're a regular reader of this blog, or other EMC blogs, you know we can cover a lot of different topics -- and they don't all have to be storage related!

I thought I'd put a quick note out and ask my regular readers if there are any themes or topics that you'd like covered -- either new ones, or deeper dives in current themes?

Just to set expectations, I'm not saying I can deliver on what people want to hear more about, or that other EMC bloggers can do so, but I'd be really curious as to what other people are really curious about.

If you have a thought or two, would you mind sharing it in the comments section?

Thanks!

Retooling IT For Private Cloud

Most of the discussion in our industry focuses around technology and use cases.  That's as it should be.

But occasionally a shift comes along that puts the focus squarely back on the people side of our business -- the many hundreds of thousands of IT career professionals who design, implement and manage the enormous IT infrastructure that keeps our modern world spinning.

Any cloud is fundamentally different than traditional IT approaches: it's built differently, operated differently, and consumed differently.  That's what makes it a cloud.

Most of the industry discussion tends to fall around the endpoints -- how it's built, and how it's consumed.

But, for enterprise IT groups wanting to build their own private cloud, establishing the new operational model is going to be a compelling part of the equation.

EMC Acquires Kazeon

[Update: I was informed that the title of this post should have been "EMC To Acquire Kazeon" since the deal's not closed yet.  My bad.]

My my, another busy week.  No shortage of blog topics in my world!

I thought this latest acquisition was worth commenting on, less in terms of the product and what it does, and more in terms of exposing underlying strategic thinking here at EMC.

The press release, as well as Dave Raffo's blog post, cover most of the basics.  We'd been working closely with Kazeon for a while as part of our CMA business (think Documentum, SourceOne, et. al.), and today's announcement can easily be seen as simply another step in a logical progression.

I think that most industry watchers are starting to appreciate that M+A at EMC is a highly-tuned machine with formidable strategy, pipeline and process.  Just recently, we've acquired DataDomain, FastScale and now Kazeon.  All important acquisitions, all relating to different portions of EMC's business. 

But how do these themes relate strategically?

Good question.

Towards A Private Cloud Architecture

I think we're getting ready to take the next step in the discussion around private clouds -- from an initial set of generic concepts, to a more precise articulation of an underlying architecture.

At a surface level, private clouds are basically fully virtualized environments that allow IT organizations to use a dynamic combination of internal and external resources.

From a concept barely discussed just a few months ago, it seems to have risen as a dominant theme in our currently cloud-crazy industry discussion.  I've lost count of the vendors and analysts trying to either co-opt (or distance themselves!) from the term.

The high-level definition above is enough to get the conversation moving in the right direction, but there's a far deeper level of architectural abstraction that eventually needs to be discussed.

And, despite my limited abilities, I'm going to bravely venture out into this next phase of the industry discussion.

Let me know how I do?

Go Ahead, Give It A Try!

Today's news on EMC acquiring FastScale as part of our Ionix portfolio drew a slew of predictable skepticism from many who questioned the viability of this approach.

I was emailing Lynn LeBlanc, CEO of FastScale, and was wondering if there was any easy way that people could try it for themselves.  She immediately came back with the news that there was a limited *free* download people could try to see it working for themselves.

So, here you go.  Have fun ... and let me know what you think!