Chuck's Blog

The Story So Far

One of the clear advantages of writing a blog is that I can easily move back and forth between interesting topics.

The people who read me regularly tell me that they enjoy the zigs and zags, but -- for the occasional reader -- the resulting topic salad doesn't lend itself to easily summarized and digested thoughts, presented in a linear fashion.

So, with this post, I thought I'd take some time to pick a few of my favorite regular themes, summarize the key thoughts, and link back to the various supporting blog posts.

If you find this sort of summary interesting or useful, please let me know, and I'll make a point to do it regularly.

And, if you're looking for some nourishing brain food during the lazy days of summer, you might find some of this interesing :)

A Tale Of Two Economies

Like a few people I know, I slavishly follow the economic news from around the world.  

Sure, I have a casual background in economics, but I've always thought of economics as the engine that powered so much of human activity.  That, and demand for EMC's products and services are somewhat correlated with economic swings :) 

My current fascination is the US economy -- not only is it the largest by some measures, but -- historically -- it tends to often go through key transitions before other regional economies.  It's not a bad "early barometer" to watch strong forces play out globally -- if you're watching carefully. 

Without getting delving into politics, I think the current US economy can be best described as "uneven" or even "lumpy".  At an aggregate level, there's the perception that there's not enough growth or job creation to get things moving in the right direction.  

Indeed, the current round of spectacular policy debates seem to arise from fundamental disagreements regarding what to do about the situation vs. any disagreement that there's a serious challenge at hand. 

For me, I see the US as a tale of two very different economic models being measured as a whole: the tail end of a successful-but-getting-tired legacy model, and the early days of its powerful successor.  

Focus on the legacy model, and I see a picture of a running-out-of-steam economic model with few attractive options left for substantial rejuvenation.  

But focus on the newer model, and it's easy to be dazzled by the potential for growth and prosperity.

Organizing From Silos To Services

I"ll let you in on a secret I've known for a while.

When I speak to IT leadership, the #1 topic that they're interested in -- by far -- is the organizational changes that result from moving to an IT-as-a-service model, e.g. "cloud".

They understand that they need to move in that direction.  They understand it's a journey, and not an event.  

But -- at the end of the day -- IT organizations are comprised of people and -- if you've ever led an organization -- it all comes down to the people: what skills, what roles and what structure.

And meaningful organizational change is a daunting task for any leader.

I've written before about the new skills and new roles in next-gen IT organizations, and I've given you an update on our internal progress (EMC IT) as we move our non-inconsequential IT function in that direction.

Today, I'd like to give you progress report on the structure, role and measurements of our recent Private Cloud Infrastructure Group within EMC IT.   To me, it looks like an organizational pattern we'll much seeing more frequently before too long.

If you're looking at this from somewhere in your IT organization, and thinking "gee, this doesn't apply to me", I'd encourage you to do yourself a favor and perhapsshare it with someone a bit higher up in the organization?

My guess is that they might find it interesting :)

One Thousand Blog Posts Later ...

I've hit an interesting personal milestone with this whole blogging thing.

This is my 1,000th external blog post.  Yes, really.

And I thought I'd indulge myself with not only a few reflections on the experience, but hopefully inspire a few more people to take the plunge and invest in themselves much as I did.

What's In A Name?

Names do matter.  

Especially in organizational settings, what you decide to call your aligned group can have a subtle yet powerful effect on perceptions: both within the organization, as well as how people outside the group percieve your role and intended value proposition.

And if you don't think perceptions matter that much in organizational settings, well ... you're wrong.

When Was The Last Time You Updated Your Storage Strategy?

Customer and partner discussions seem to move in seasons.  I'm sure there's some underlying cause-and-effect at work here, but sometimes it's a complete mystery to me.

It seems that -- almost out of nowhere -- there's an notable uptick in requests to have non-trivial storage strategy presentations and workshops.

Not to oversimplify, but I think that IT planners are starting to realize that whole topic of storage is going through a number of rather important transitions.

On the demand side, the evidence is clear: the majority of the organizations we support are seeing unprecedented demand to acquire, store and manage multiple rivers of information.  

Put differently: here comes the flood.

On the supply side, there are significant and meaningful changes in how storage is built, how it's operated and how it's consumed.

Sure, there's lots of opportunities to do small things here and there to move along in the right direction: introduce a new technology here, fix a process there -- incrementalism vs. re-engineering.

But, at the same time, I'm finding more and more cases where it's probably time for our customers and partners to sit down and re-envision end-to-end how best to cope with the new world of information-intensive businesses.

The Importance Of Friction When Considering Cloud

As I watch the industry talk-track around cloud and IT-as-a-service slowly evolve, I'm starting to get a bit ticked off.

I think in many cases the various industry cloud pundits may be doing people a disservice.  

They're a passionate bunch, for sure, but I think -- in some cases -- they're losing sight of a few important real-world considerations that have absolutely nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with how people consume shared resources.

If I think back, I've perhaps been as guilty as anyone, but I've seen things in a new light for quite a while now.

How PEER 1 Built A Commercial Cloud Storage Service With Atmos

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the cloud-storage-as-a-service industry is doing quite well, thank you.  There are more and more great stories to tell.  

As just one example, EMC just issued a press release that PEER 1 Hosting has launched a rich, robust cloud storage service based on EMC's Atmos: CloudOne

When I saw the story, I was intrigued.  

I was lucky enough to speak with John Hamner, the product manager for the new service.  I wanted to know more about what customer needs he was targeting with the service, and -- of course -- what he liked about the Atmos approach :)

Reflections on VMware's Cloud Infrastructure Announcement

The day before yesterday, VMware had their most-significant-ever product announcement.

The amount of technical goodness -- and what it means for the industry -- takes more than a little while to wrap your head around.

A bit of that awesomeness was overshadowed by reactions to VMware's new pricing scheme.  I watched the vocal back-and-forth intently as it unfolded through Monday and into Tuesday.  Wisely, I kept a safe distance from the fray.

But I did want to weigh in at some point.  I think some people are missing a few key perspectives, and I'd like to take a shot at broadening the conversation.  

Disclaimer: This is just plain old me talking.  VMware, as an independent company, runs their own affairs.  I am speaking strictly as an industry observer here, and not in any way communicating the official position of EMC, VMware, or anyone else for that matter :)

Managing Block Storage At Scale: Introducing EMC ProSphere

Personally, I think the whole topic of storage management doesn't enough industry attention.  Far more ink seems to get spilled on more prosaic topics like debating storage network protocols.

By all rights, storage management ought to be a topic of vibrant discussion and debate.

There's so much is in play here:

• dramatically growing information volumes and associated storage farms
• new storage technologies, like flash and storage federation
• the growing predominance of virtualized workloads
• the rapid shift to IT-as-a-service models (e.g. "cloud")
• and, as ever, the need for efficiency, control and choice

I think we collectively spend too much time debating the technologies themselves, and perhaps far too little time discussing how people might use them effectively.

So it seems almost precognitive that today EMC is launching an entirely new storage management environment targeted at large scale environments with demanding block-oriented storage workloads.