Chuck's Blog

Why Having A Broad Portfolio Is Cool

In the IT industry, everyone can be a critic, and one of the criticisms occasionally leveled at EMC is that our portfiolo is somehow "too broad".  I never really understood that perspective.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but -- from that increasing breadth -- can arise some interesting solutions that might be hard to achieve otherwise.

Such is the case with today's announcement (spearheaded by EMC's Iomega division) around partnership with AXIS (a video surveillance technology service provider) to provide a cloud-based video surveillance solution.

And there are a couple of interesting angles to this one ...

Talking Cloud To EMC Partners

One of the highlights of my week was going out to Barcelona to spend some quality time with EMC's EMEA partners -- a great bunch of people, simply because their perspective is usually very different than, say, the North American crowd.

Rather than do my usual powerpoint keynote, I instead moderated a panel made up of representatives from VMware, Cisco, RSA as well as VCE.

The topic?  Cloud, of course.

Live From EMC Partner Council

Monday, I took a six-hour flight from Boston to San Diego to spend time with EMC's North American Partner community.

I'm very glad I did.  The new insights are incredibly invaluable.

So, what could possibly be so interesting?

EMC And Oracle

As the industry consolidates and standardizes, we as vendors are getting far more comfortable in the new world of co-opetion with other vendors: a nuanced world where we cooperate in some areas, and compete with others.

No longer can various inter-vendor relationships be easily and exclusively categorized as either "friend" or "foe" -- the answer is usually  mix of both, with customers giving as strong input on where we need to cooperate, and where they'll encourage a little friendly competition.

Many of the customers I work with are getting more comfortable in this new landscape as well.  They're learning to look beyond the press releases and brochures to figure out how well various vendors are working together -- or not -- as the case might be.

And I think the relationship between EMC and Oracle is an excellent case study in how these dynamics can result in better outcomes for everyone: customers *and* vendors.

Securing The Foundations Of The Private Cloud

Lots of activity at VMworld this week, plus the predictable flurry of vendor announcements.

Most people would agree that virtualization is *the* key enabling technology for most cloud models.  Make virutalization (e.g. VMware and associated infrastructure) provably secure and compliant, and you've gone a long way to securing the the clouds built on virtualization.

That's what RSA has announced -- an end-to-end GRC (governance, risk and compliance) solution that takes security in the virtual world to entirely new levels.

And if you see yourself living in a fully virtualized world, it's probably worth just a moment of your time ...

Managing Your Skills Portfolio

I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak on a panel here at the "Everything Channel" event in Dallas.

Ostensibly, we were supposed to be talking about 2011 storage opportunities for resellers and solution providers.  But, somehow, we got into a number of far more interesting areas, including the strategic importance of the above topic.

We ran out of time, but the thought keeps rattling around in my head ...

Storage Opportunities For Channel Partners

I've been invited down to the xChange gathering next Monday to speak on a panel with some of my industry compatriots on the above topic.

Although I can improvise as well as the next guy (and sound pretty good in the process!), I really enjoy open-ended topics like this that make me step back and reflect a bit.  As a result, I came up with way more material than I could ever fit into a 90 second panel soundbite.

Private Clouds, VCE And The Channel

Sometimes I write the blog post, sometimes it gets written for me :-)

Wanted to offer you all a quick link to a drive-by interview I did with Steven Burke at CRN yesterday.  He threw some great questions at me -- hopefully my answers hold up.

You be the judge -- here.  I also got this unrelated pickup here at ZDnet.

Thanks, Steven -- hope we get a chance to do it again some time soon!