Chuck's Blog

Does Data Have Gravity?

One of the more thought-provoking ideas from EMC World 2012 was embedded in Pat Gelsinger's keynote.  

Once you got past the extreme (and enjoyable) production values -- and 42 new products -- I found myself thinking hard about what he had to say.

He presented a case for a fundamental shift in the "physics" of information technology.  

Data has mass; big data has big mass -- and the resultant gravitational forces were causing a re-thinking from the familiar application-centric world to a data-centric one.

And the more I thought about it, I started to realize some of the very cool implications of Pat's observation.

A Unique Opportunity For IT Leaders

So much of what I blog about revolves around IT leadership -- how I see people being successful in these -- errr, interesting -- times.

EMC is wonderfully fortunate to be able to draw from the practical experiences of our own EMC IT organization, led by our CIO Sanjay Mirchandani.  

Sanjay's story around how he is leading a continual transformation of our IT function has proven to be deeply productive for EMC's customers and partners.  

And it just gets better over time.

At EMC World 2012, Sanjay took the stage for an hour.  He not only recapped the highlights of the journey so far, but laid out the next few years of IT evolution at EMC.

I'm watching it, and going through the companion slides.  It's compelling content for *anyone* interested in strategic IT transformation at any level.  Yes, it's an hour long -- but it's probably the most compelling hour on the topic I've ever seen anywhere.  Highly recommended.

Find the video here.  Download his powerpoint slides and click along here.

Are CMOs The New CIOs?

A thought-provoking title to an article appeared in Forbes last week, and it got me to thinking once again about newer IT consumption patterns, and how they differ from more familiar ones.

The author used a spate of recent tech acquisitions to make the case that the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is now driving more than their fair share of IT spend.

Do I think that CMOs are becoming CIOs?  No -- I believe the requried skill set is very different.

But I can make a strong case that smart CIOs might want to start to think of the CMO as their new best friend ...

Of Puppet And Razor

Cool-hunting at EMC is much more fun than it should be.  Over time, you keep finding the same people doing really cool stuff.  And there are a lot of them here.

One of our most visible cool-masters is Nick Weaver (@lynxbat).  You might know him as the guy that did all those great "uber" Celerra emulator releases. 

Or the guy who built the ultimate VMware partition alignment tool and handed it out to everyone.  Or perhaps the mad scientist behind many of the face-melting demos you've seen at EMC World.  Or a whole bunch of other cool stuff.

Well, Nick is now part of the CTO Office at EMC, which means he now has the opportunity to do even more amazing things.  That's part of the fun of working at EMC.  And, with this announcement, I think he's surpassed himself.

And, in the process, he's made EMC an essential part of the burgeoning open stack cloud and devops discussion.

VCE Vblock: Charting The Changes

On paper, VCE is a free-standing company -- a joint venture between EMC and Cisco, with participation from both VMware and Intel.

But many of us here at EMC don't think of them that way: they're a key part of our cloud strategy in the marketplace for enterprise customers and service providers alike.

At the time of introduction, their value proposition was somewhat controversial: in exchange for asking the customer to conform to certain configurations and operational processes, a vastly superior result could be achieved.

That bold claim is neither theoretical or esoteric; it's now been backed hundreds and hundreds of customer environments. Proof points are everywhere, including this home-grown infographic from a typical VCE customer.

In a recent post, I asked Todd Pavone if anything had shown up in the marketplace that was creating a serious alternative to the Vblock proposition. His answer -- in a nutshell -- was "no, not yet".

Part of the strength of Vblocks is the VCE organization itself: over 1000+ professionals with one mission: deliver a superior, integrated customer experience.

And, in my book, it's all about organizing for success :)

As part of the EMC World 2012 festivities, VCE is announcing a number of enhancements which further extend and differentiation the Vblock proposition.

EMC MegaLaunch II Overview

This morning, EMC is announcing 42 new or updated storage products.  That's a lot to consider.

Why 42?  

Other than the obvious reference from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, it's one more than the 41 products we announced at our last MegaLaunch event in early 2011.

I've done my best to look at each group of new or improved products, and share the highlights (as I see them) in an extended series of posts linked below.

I thought in this post I'd share what I think are the big trends motivating all this new R&D.

Isilon: Charting The Changes

Of all the EMC World product announcements I'm covering, one of the key ones every storage professional is going to want to pay attention to is the preview of the new Isilon OneFS "Mavericks" upcoming release.

Not only is there a ton of new product content, it may change the way you think about providing scale-out storage services in *your* enterprise going forward.

Isilon has always had the upper-hand in big data storage: a compellingly simple scale-out NAS / CIFS / iSCSI "single file system" cluster architecture that has enjoyed great success in many specialized verticals: entertainment, genomics, etc.

Since EMC announced the acquisition in November 2010, we've poured a mind-bending amount of resources into the product and the team.  

With this major release, you can see clear evidence of what all that investment is doing for our customers.

Atmos: Charting The Changes

EMC Atmos has always been rather difficult for traditional storage people to fully appreciate, but fortunately we've had no such problem with the newer generation of web developers and service providers :)  

In a nutshell, Atmos software is used to create cloud storage services that are a sharp departure from what's normally available from, say, Amazon's S3.

And if you're in the business of delivering storage-based services -- or work for a company that needs to do this for its own purposes -- it's not hard to have an appreciation for what Atmos does -- and how it's quite different than just about anything out there.

Atmos was first introduced in November, 2008.  Since then, it's enjoyed steady adoption from a growing number of customers and partners who now have an deep appreciation of what does better than anything out there.

Iomega: Good Things In Small Packages

So much of what we do around storage here at EMC is at significant scale: big, fast, distributed, etc.

People tend to forget that EMC is also very active at the low end of the storage marketplace: you'll find many interesting use cases where even modest products like the VNXe can be too much for the requirements at hand. 

That's where Iomega competes and thrives.

I've got a number of good acquaintances in EMC's Iomega group.  They're always up to something interesting, and -- of course! -- we all appreciate the "extended evaluation" units they occasionally hand out.

As part of the run up to EMC World 2012, they've got a few significant announcements of their own.

Data Domain and Avamar: Charting The Changes

I think by now everyone has gotten the memo -- enterprise data continues to grow and grow, with no end in sight.

That means that the amount of enterprise data that has to be protected -- backed up or otherwise replicated -- continues to grow and grow as well. 

Indeed, many enterprise backup environments put in only a handful of years ago are already feeling the pain and are thus likely candidates for a major fresh look.

It's in this fast-moving market that EMC's BRS (backup and recovery systems) division continues to innovate and thrive.

And, as part of EMC World, they've done their part in announcing important new capabilities: some modest, some quite large :)