Chuck's Blog

A Manifesto For IT Change Agents

If you're in any way involved in IT, you are acutely aware that change is in the air.  Not just cosmetic change; we're talking deep, structural change.

Some are in denial, some are watching from the sidelines to see what happens -- but a handful have latched on to the emerging opportunity at hand, and are busily fashioning themselves into self-styled agents-of-change.  Rarely is it a formal role; more often it's a self-assumed persona.

When I meet these people, I see them in the process of becoming self-actualized: becoming more fully comfortable with the nature of their important yet informal role.

But, typically, they're not yet 100% at ease with their new brand. 

I do what I can to validate what they're doing, to help articulate what they're trying to communicate, and hopefully give them the tools and self-confidence to be more effective.

And here is my best effort at a manifesto to help encourage this crucially important IT mindset.

Don't Waste A Perfectly Good Crisis

Having rode through Hurricane Sandy here in the Boston area, I see that we came through relatively unscathed compared to others in New York City, New Jersey, etc. 

Our thoughts are now with the resilient people everywhere who are now challenged to restore a semblance of order to a world upended by an unusual massive weather event.

That being said, I believe there is the small spark of opportunity for selected IT leaders to use this very dramatic and very public event to drive a more meaningful discussion with their executive teams around business continuity.

And as I often say "don't let a perfectly good crisis go to waste".

Ten IT Predictions For 2013

Life comes at you fast.

2012 is barreling to a close, and 2013 is almost upon us.  Planning season is well underway here at EMC, perhaps the same is true for you?

Every year about this time, I bravely share my best guesses around the big themes we'll be seeing in the coming year.

Many years ago, I joined the informal crowd of industry prognosticators who offered up their views of the year ahead.  As I look back at the past years, I think I've done reasonably well in framing the hot topics that are coming at us fast.

My secret?  I pick trends that are already well underway, but aren't entirely mainstream yet.

Just to be clear, none of these here are really "new" ideas.  But, if I'm right, you'll hear a lot more about these topics during the coming year.

See if you agree ...

Greenplum: Pushing The Boundaries Of The New Data Science

By now, the storyline ought to be familiar.

Around the globe, leaders in both the private and public sector are clearly besmitten with the amazing power of big data and predictive analytics.

Much has been written so far, with more coming -- two of my favorite pieces are here and here.

In this new hegemony, the ascendant rock star is the data science professional, or -- if you prefer -- the data scientist. Much has also been written about this realtively new and essential caste of knowledge worker -- for example, this piece I did a while ago.

EMC, through our Greenplum division, is "all in" on this fundamental shift on how data is being used to create new insights and new value.  That's a rather bold position, as I still routinely encounter people who are still firmly entrenched in the comfortable and familiar world of data warehousing and business reporting, and can't understand what all the fuss might be about.

But I'm not despairing.  I meet more than enough people around the globe who are extremly  motivated by the unfolding new world of big data, predictive analytics and data science.  And these people are likely to be paying close attention to what  Greenplum is doing.

From enabling technology to investing in the data science communit Greenplum is among a small handful of vendors actively bringing the future into the here-and-now for so many of our customers.

And with today's announcements, you'll see clear evidence of that strategy in action: more investments towards building the industry's most powerful ecosystem for exploiting big data analytics.

Growing Your Digital Business Model? Fertile Ground Helps!

The next major wave of disruption appears to be starting its tear through organizations everywhere.  It's not a technology wave, it's a new way of doing business in our digital world.

Learning to compete using a digital business model appears to be comparatively easy if your company or organization was fortunate enough to be "born digital".  For the 99%+ of organizations that aren't so lucky, the far greater challenge lies in transforming a function that was born in the physical world into a modern digital one.

In these digital business models, technology is used very differently.  In a traditional business model, technology is primarily used to automate and improve the efficiency of existing business processes.  In a digital business model, technology is used to re-invent and re-imagine the fundamental proposition of the business.

I've written a fair amount on this topic before.  If you'd like to catch up, I've created a blog resource page that lays out the thinking at different levels: strategy, platform, leadership, new skills, etc.

By now I've seen plenty of strong differences between the organizations who are doing well at this strategic transition; and those that aren't.  And, just like having the right conditions is a boon to growing crops, it appears that the same thing is true for growing digital business models.

Pluggable Databases Vs. Database Virtualization

I love this industry.

On one hand, you can clearly see the megatrends that are driving change.  On the other hand, not every vendor reacts to these trends in the same way.  That's what makes things so interesting.

Take virtualization -- as applied to servers. A powerful idea, but interpreted in different ways.

One camp saw the need for a new technology abstraction -- the hypervisor -- that encapsulated and extended the legacy approach.  A second camp decided to add server virtualization features to their existing operating systems.

In this case, VMware is the best example of the first camp.  Sun, IBM and Microsoft are probably good examples of the second camp.  You're free to debate which one is theoretically "better", but there should be no argument whatsoever around market adoption of the former over the latter.

A similar divergence of approaches appears to be shaping up over networking technology.

The database world is not immune to this megatrend, either.

As part of Oracle Open World 2012, Oracle gave their first peek into how they're going to address what I would call "database virtualization concepts" (expressed in their terms as the need for multi-tenancy) in their core database products. 

And, once again, we'll see a familiar argument play out: create a new abstraction, or simply extend existing database technology.

I know which one I'm betting on ...

Want To Learn To Lead An IT Transformation?

An interesting opportunity has just bubbled up around the whole topic of IT transformation -- especially for IT leadership.  Maybe you'd be interested?

Our own Wayne Pauley has tackled a very ambitious task indeed.  He's attempted to take everything EMC has learned around IT transformation over the last few years, and boil it down to a practical 7 hour class.

The coursework is aimed primarily at key IT leadership who will be playing a direct role in orchestrating an IT transformation. 

The material is also relevant to business leaders who are closely involved in an IT transformation.  The goal is to arm these people with practical frameworks for driving the right workstreams in the right sequence.

The material looks pretty good to me.  However, we won't know that for sure until we try it out.  So we're looking for people who would like to participate in the beta version of the class.

If this might sound like you, please read on ...

Friendly Advice For The IT Service Provider

"What we've got here is a failure to communicate" -- Donn Pearce, Cool Hand Luke

I get to see both sides. 

I meet with dozens of enterprise IT organizations that can clearly benefit from what IT service providers can provide. 

And I also get to meet with IT service providers who are genuinely puzzled as to why it's so hard to get enterprise IT organizations to consume their offerings.

When we're discussing this challenge with EMC's IT service provider partners, sometimes you'll hear the frustration bubble over: "IT shops just don't get what we're doing!"

Rule #26 of Chuck's Big Book Of Business is clear on this one: never blame the customer for problems of your own creation.

Too many times, I see the very strong offerings from our IT service provider partners get lost in translation. 

They're not clear on what makes them different.  Very often, they don't seem to understand where the enterprise IT mindset is coming from.  They fall into the trap of vague generalities, and completely miss targeting the deeper needs underlying all the surface chatter.

And with that, I'd like to offer some unsolicited and unofficial advice for EMC's IT service provider partners everywhere.

The CIO Survey: Big Data Is Hotter Than You Might Think

We here at EMC tend to care greatly about what IT leaders around the globe are thinking about -- no surprise. 

We spend a great deal of time in face-to-face settings.  We subscribe to a wide range of analyst publications and surveys to broaden our perspectives.

But, sometimes, we feel the need to invest in our own surveys around important questions we believe deserve more detailed answers.

Working with CIO Magazine, we were able to uncover some useful insights around how IT leaders in larger enterprises around the globe are thinking about big data, security and cloud. 

We also found some surprising differences between US perspectives and more global ones.

Oracle and EMC Help Protect Against Silent Data Corruption

One of the painful realities in the enterprise storage world is silent data corruption. 

An application sends a perfectly formed write to the storage array, but the bits get scrambled along the way.  The array isn't aware of the problem, and dutifully writes the malformed data to disk.

All appears well until sometime later when the data is retrieved and found incorrect, which typically kicks off a lengthy sequence of very unpleasant and disruptive activities: forensics around what happened, a quick restore and roll forward, and so on. 

It doesn't happen very often, but -- when it does -- it's a painful experience.

And, as part of Oracle Open World, Oracle, Emulex and EMC are announcing the first availability of the joint work we're doing to further minimize this sort of problem.