Chuck's Blog

Planning To Fail

Like many of you, I'm staring in utter horror and disbelief at the ecological catastrophe unfolding in Gulf of Mexico.

Indeed, the Deepwater Horizon will likely go down in history alongside the Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, Chernobyl and other examples of massive infrastructure failure destroying the environment on a mind-numbing scale.

And, as I go through all the articles and analysis to date, I am struck by one simple fact: it is likely that they didn't have a plan for the inevitable. 

And if the story comes out as I believe it will, I will consider that unforgivable -- simply because it was avoidable.

My Friday Rant -- Integration

Actually, this week it turns out people are ranting at me, rather than the other way around.

By all accounts, it was a great week: did a great broadcast thing on Tuesday, met with a great customer/partner on Wed, and had a similar experience on Thursday.

Along the way, I wrote a short post about my early days at EMC -- one of those intensely personal experiences I felt like sharing. 

The message was simple: don't rest on your laurels, because things change fast.

Some people saw it for what it was -- just me sharing my personal experiences and perspectives.  Others saw it as an attack on some of EMC's competitors.  Either way, it's a message that bears repeating.

But, somewhere in the ranting, a few points were made that deserve some exploration.

The Town Hall

Today, I flew out to Orange County to do a "town hall" type meeting with the team from CoreLogic. 

Much as I really enjoy this kind of interaction, time and travel constraints don't give me a lot of opportunity to do it as often as I'd like

However, I'm really glad I made the trip this time -- it was special on many levels.

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time -- and a very long time ago -- there was a very successful storage company. 

It made a good product, sold it effectively to customers, and supported them well.  It made a lot of money, and was seen as successful.

However, the seeds of its success ultimately proved to be its eventual undoing.

Oh My!

Many of us are still contemplating the enormous implications of VMware's announcement from the Google I/O conference.

Without getting too technical on you, the pitch is simple: build your applications on SpringSource's enhanced Java stack.  If you do, you can run them on any cloud: VMware's, Amazon's -- even Google's.

And that, my friends, presents an interesting opportunity for IT architects everywhere.

I'm Starting A New Blog

OK, you're probably wondering (a) what in the world could possibly motivate me to start a new blog in addition to this one, and (b) who would ever want to read more of my blather?

Well, over the last few months I've been working intently with a group of people I'll call "IT as a service" service providers.  We've historically called them outsourcers, hosters, SaaS, managed services, etc. -- but they all seem to be moving in generically in the same direction -- and quickly.

And I'm downright fascinated ...

Verticalization Vs. Virtualization

So many great thoughts and ideas came out of EMC World last week, I'm still gathering and processing them.

One of the bigger thoughts shared that took a while for me to fully process is a simple two-slide sequence that greatly clarified -- at least for me -- what was going on in the IT industry at a macro scale.

And it came out crystal clear in Joe Tucci's keynote ..

SAP and VCE

The news coming out of SAPPHIRE this morning is fairly compelling to many of us.

SAP is publicly endorsing the private cloud model, the VCE coalition and the Vblock infrastructure package.  They've highlighted the work that the VCE coalition (together with Accenture) has done to validate and benchmark a real-world SAP environment from Levi Strauss.

This announcement is in addition to the recent EMC Information Intelligence Group's tie-up in the content management and workflow space, covered here and here -- a big piece of news in its own right.

And, predictably, there are a lot of interesting angles to the SAP and VCE story -- some obvious, some a bit more subtle ..

EMC World 2010 -- A Retrospective

Now that EMC World 2010 is comfortably in our collective rear view mirror, I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on a few interesting themes that came out of this event. 

In many ways, EMC World is becoming more of an industry event, and less of an EMC-specific event, so what happens here affects just about all of us, and not just those affiliated with EMC.

Why I Never Embraced Facebook

A while back, it was part of my job to understand all the different social platforms as part of an effort to make EMC proficient at social media.

If it was out there, I investigated it.  Blogs.  Forums.  Second Life.  Twitter.  Yammer.  Ning.  You name it, I checked it out.

Some of these platforms made sense to me, others didn't.  Some I embraced (e.g communities, blogging, Twitter), others I largely stayed away from.

And Facebook was one of those that simply raised hairs on the back of my neck.

Now, it's pretty clear why I had that perception.