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 ..
What's Happening In The Industry Today ...
No surprise, many people have noticed that the IT industry is going through yet-another-rapid-phase of maturation and consolidation.
The prominent feature is the emergence of end-to-end stacks from major vendors. If you'd like a bit more detail, see this earlier post ...
Now, Joe was a bit coy in not actually naming the stacks, but I bet you can tell from the color schemes who he might have been thinking about :-)
I think there's much more to this picture -- it's not only the technology stacks in play, it's the associated services and IT delivery models.
Joe described it as 'verticalization' -- vertically integrated technology/solution/services/cloud models -- largely end-to-end.
None of these players appear to be particularly interested in building open ecosystems of system integrators, compatible service providers, etc.
And if you can figure out the aspiring stack vendor who is not pictured here, they're part of the discussion as well for all intents and purposes.
The fundamental argument is somewhat compelling: buy all of your technology from us, buy all of your services from us, buy all of your cloud services from us. It'll integrate better, it'll support better, etc. We'll make your life far more simple.
... And Virtualization
Joe juxtaposed this vertical stack view with what virtualization brings to the table -- an approach that neatly encapsulates and abstracts just about each and every mainstream upper-level stack that's being proposed these days.
I think this neatly shifts the argument in an interesting way.
Old argument: who's got the best stack, including virtualization?
New argument: who's got the best virtual infrastructure stack that can support all other stacks?
Or, perhaps this view: as we re-engineer our upper-level stacks (OS, database, middleware, apps, et. al.), don't you want an architecture that can deliver benefits today, yet build an open foundation for the future?
As I keep coming back to the three foundational tenets of the private cloud -- efficiency, control and choice -- it's clear to me what choices people will have to make going forward.
And how IT thinkers respond to IT industry maturation and consolidation is going to force some interesting decisions :-)
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