Chuck's Blog

Bigger Isn't Always Better

During most of my career in IT, I have tended to hold the larger IT shops in a certain awe: their large and diverse organizations, their ability to field large IT projects, and -- especially from a vendor perspective -- their unquestionable spending power.

I sometimes wondered how the more modest-sized IT shops could ever keep up with the big guys?

No longer.  When it comes to IT transformation -- changing how IT operates to look more like an internal service provider vs. a traditional technology-and-project shop -- the smaller IT teams appear to be winning the race.  They're getting their sooner and delivering results far faster than the behemoths.

And now it looks like many of the bigger IT shops may end up paying a painful price for their size and complexity.

In Search Of The Missing IT Gene

Our story so far:

Cloud concepts are in the process of transforming IT organizations into internal service providers.  This -- at its essence -- is turning into an organizational transformation challenge.

Organize IT around technology silos; and that's what you'll end up delivering to the business.  Conversely, organize IT around delivering competitive services to the business, and that's what you'll likely deliver.

Smart IT leaders are quietly assessing their organizations, and figuring out how best to begin to implement these new constructs.  Very often, they find a critical mass of key individuals who can morph to the new roles.

But with amazing frequency, these same leaders are coming up short in a key area when fishing in their internal gene pool.  

They're often missing a few essential DNA strands that are incredibly scarce within most IT organizations, but surprisingly plentiful outside of IT.

And I'm guessing that -- before long -- we'll see some interesting recombinant DNA experiments as IT leaders start to pull in the missing profiles they'll need for success.

Rebooting EMC's Customer Council

The term "cloud" has come to represent a fundamental and structural change throughout the entire IT ecosystem -- how IT is built, operated and consumed.  

If you're an IT vendor like EMC, just about every aspect of your strategy and approach can be up for discussion and debate as a result

Very few sacred cows in these times ... 

One of the more interesting aspects of how EMC is changing our approach in this new world is a complete redesign of one of our core customer feedback events -- the EMC Customer Council.  Indeed, in many ways, it's clear evidence of how things are changing for our customers. 

And, if you're a follower of this blog, maybe it's something you'd be interested in?

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 :)

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 :)

Big News In A Smaller Package: Introducing the New VMAXe

Yes, EMC did a Megalaunch at the beginning of this year with over 40 new storage products.

And, yes, at EMC World we announced even more new products and technologies.  

Surprise -- there's still much more new product goodness to talk about in 2011 -- a lot more.  

That should give you a good idea of the accelerated pace of R&D (not to mention M&A) here at EMC.

Today, we're announcing a vastly simpler, easier-to-use "starter" version of the legendary Symmetrix VMAX high-end enterprise storage array.  

And at a lower price, naturally.

If you're interested in storage, you'll probably want to take a few moments to understand what EMC is doing here, and what it means for the overall storage market in general.  

It's not inconsequential.