Chuck's Blog

Do You Know Where Your Information Is?

As part of my various duties here at EMC, I get the occasional privilege of introducing new ideas and new lines of thought to our customers and partners on a regular basis.

Understandably, a few of these newer discussions don't do so well, and they get dropped from the rotation.

Others catch on.  Over time, I see more head-nodding, more engagement, more questions, more discussion.  There's almost an invisible line that gets crossed at some point.

And -- at least from a personal level -- I think we've crossed that line with the information risk management and data loss prevention discussion.

It's now something most people want to talk about at some level.

The CFO Of Information Is Gonna Need A System

One of my persistent themes is that tomorrow's CIO will have to think of themselves as the "CFO of information".  The parallels between the evolution of how we've learned to manage money, and how we're going to have to learn to manage information are striking.

There's a very strong linkage between this thought, and RSA's recent offerings around DLP -- data loss prevention.

I've looked at different IT products over my entire career, and have learned to evaluate them in terms of the "big thoughts" they embed.  Of course, execution against those ideas matter as well ...

And I've been watching how RSA's DLP suite is rolling to market, and have been absolutely fascinated by the thinking behind it.

If you're a fan of big ideas, there's a lot to consider in this offering ...

How Are You Going To Monetize The Mobile Web?

That was the key question for the panel I was on this week.

It's an interesting question for mobile operators (that is, cell phone companies) around the globe.

The future of mobile networks is -- surprise -- IP-based.

And once you're running open devices on an open network, you going to have to think a bit harder about how you're going to differentiate.

Data Loss Prevention -- New Thinking

I've had another "aha" moment -- actually, a whole series of them -- recently.

The first hint that something big was going on came as part of a flurry of announcements at RSA World, including this hidden gem around DLP.

It turns out that I only had a half-baked notion of what all the fuss might be about, until late last week.  I was privileged to spend some quality time with the RSA team who went through the concepts and demo'd the product.

When they were done, my head was spinning.  Not so much around the product capabilities (which were very cool, to be sure), mostly it was the new way they were approaching the problem that got me so excited.

I probably won't be able to fit in all into a reasonable-sized post, so consider this the first installment exploring a topic that I'm sure we'll all be interested in -- sooner or later.