Chuck's Blog

Introducing VSPEX

This morning, EMC introduced VSPEX: a partner-centric pre-configured and pre-integrated infrastructure stack.  

Yes, we're pretty excited.  

Some will inevitably classify this announcement as yet another variation on a popular theme in the IT infrastructure marketplace.  

I mean, isn't every IT vendor packaging up infrastructure in new ways?  

Yes, somewhat true -- but many of us believe that there's plenty of room left for innovation and differentiation in this category.

VSPEX is not only interesting in what it does on its own, but how it nicely fits in to other things EMC is investing in -- like VCE and Vblocks.

Clouds Can Be Confusing For Vendors, Too

A spate of interesting developments recently in the evolution of the "enterprise cloud" market.  

Both IBM and HP have made rather significant announcements.  

Each announcement is interesting in its own way, and -- despite my obvious competitive biases -- I will try and share why I find each so interesting.

And I come away with a simple observation: clouds can easily confuse both customers and the vendors who serve them.

Cloud Meets Big Data In Healthcare: The Importance of ACOs

Many people I meet who work at the intersection of healthcare and technology can get frustrated.

On one hand, the current healthcare delivery system in the US, with many obvious and visible opportunities for improvement.

On the other hand, the tantalizing power of newer technologies: cloud, big data, mobility, etc.

Historically, many people like me have looked at the situation, and tried to figure out why supply and demand weren't getting properly connected.  

The technology is there -- why isn't being consumed?

In a nutshell, my opinion is that the industry wasn't organized for success.  There were inherent structural barriers that inhibited the widespread adoption of the newer technologies and approaches.

But, with the recent rise of ACOs (accountable care organizations) and their brethren, a few of us are extremely optimistic that the next few years will be very different than the past.

What Happens When You Point A Cloud At A Business Challenge -- Part II

About three months ago, I wrote a post describing how we were using cloud capabilities to address very specific business challenges internally here at EMC.

Matt Coviello had just stood up the latest version of his vLab, and started to introduce it to our global presales community.

Now, it's three months later, and much has changed.  Most importantly, Matt's team has started to expose these capabilities to selected portions of EMC's Velocity partner community, as Chad shared here.

I thought it might be time to spend some time with Matt, and see how his world had changed in three short months.  

Good Help Is Here For Your IT Transformation

Any time we're faced with a daunting and unusual challenge, we usually go looking for good professional help: doctors, lawyers, architects, tax professionals, financial advisers, etc.  

We may prefer to do things ourselves, but we realize that getting good, experienced help can make all the difference between a successful outcome, and one that isn't.

The same is true when IT leaders start seriously thinking about IT transformation.  Getting to cloud and its associated IT-as-a-service model can be a daunting transformational journey, and not for the faint-of-heart.

At one level, it's a re-invention of IT's business and operational model to look more like a competitive service provider, and less like a traditional IT shop.

Given my technical background, I have historically been rather skeptical of professional and consulting services, but I've discarded that obsolete view over the last several years.  IT transformation is hard, daunting work -- and getting good help from people who have done it before is not to be discounted.

Such is the case with EMC Global Service's announcement today of a greatly expanded and integrated portfolio of IT transformation services -- a set of offerings that pass my personal test as truly beneficial to many of our customers.

Even if you think you're not in the market for consulting services, it's worth understanding what these people do, how they do it -- and why it's important.

New IT, New Roles, New Tools

The conversation ought to be familiar by now.  

Many IT organizations are taking a hard look at themselves, and are realizing they have to learn to compete for internal customers.  

To do so, they need to start looking more like a modern IT factory, and less like your father's IT shop.  

A successful transformation essentially boils down to organizing for success: reformulating many existing IT roles, and creating entirely new ones.

Transforming even a moderate-sized IT shop takes a unique brand of leadership.  The journey isn't quick or easy, but it does offer substantial rewards to all involved.  

And, to put it gently, in many cases your options to ignore or postpone the inevitable aren't all that appealing :)

New IT inevitably means new roles and new processes, which -- of course -- implies the need for newer tools that are oriented around creating easy-to-consume services vs. simply monitoring the underlying technical components.  For example, most VCE Vblocks are shipped with UIM as an "orchestral enabler" that can expose infrastructure and allow it to be consumed as a service.

But not all clouds are Vblocks, and not all IT environments can be managed using a single paradigm.

Into this transforming IT world, EMC will be launching IT Operations Intelligence v9 early next week.  

While the product has plenty to like on its own merits, I'd like you to consider this a preview of some of the bigger ideas finding their way into next-gen IT management tools -- both from EMC and others.

Change Is In The Air: CIO Magazine Poll Results

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I've been writing extensively on IT transformation - where IT decides it needs to compete for internal IT business, and organizes appropriately.

Why?  It's a really big deal.  As a result, I've exhaustively gone through what I felt were the motivations and the challenges for IT changing the way it does business. 

But now, you don't have to listen to me and my endless exhortations.  You can now see how others in the IT profession feel about the topic.

While the poll results might be surprising to you, the only "surprise" I found was perhaps  the degree that the responses tended to correspond to my own personal views.  But that's not really a surprise, since many of my views are nothing more than aggregations of conversations that I frequently have with this audience.

Take a moment, and see for yourself …

It's The Big Launch Day For EMC IT's ITaaS

I consider it an article of faith that many enterprise IT organizations will need to learn to compete for their internal customers.

If you've been following this blog, you know I've been drawing heavily on the experiences of EMC's own IT organization as they progress through this inevitable transformation.

Today represents an interesting milestone of sorts: the formal internal launch of a "critical mass" of self-provisioned IT services that anyone at EMC can freely consume.  

Yes, they've had many of these internal services out there for a while, but now our EMC IT team has started to actively encourage consumption at scale.

I think this particular event serves as an excellent example of how the thinking changes when enterprise IT goes from being seen as a monopoly to being seen as an aggressive competitor.

If you work in an IT setting that's starting to go through some of these changes, I think you'll find the discussion here very enlightening.

EMC Atmos And The Challenge Of Doing Things Differently

There are two ways to bring a new technology to market.

One way is to give people a better product to do exactly what they're doing today: no process change required.

Another way is to give people a better way to do things: substantial process change required.

Meaningful breakthroughs in technology almost always involve process change.  The downside is that any substantive process change takes significant time and effort.  

There's no shortcut that I'm aware of.

In our world, EMC Atmos is an excellent example of innovative technology that demands both a mindset and process change.  The lessons we've learned about how to go about introducing new technology (and new process!) to large audiences is instructive -- not only to other technology companies like us, but to any IT organization looking to introduce new ways of doing things into their ranks.

As technologists, we obviously have to learn to get good at getting people to actually embrace what we come up with.  Otherwise, the stuff just sits on the shelf :)

EMC vLab: What Happens When You Point A Cloud At A Business Challenge

Clouds are exceptionally difficult to discuss in the abstract.  

They become much more real and tangible when you associate them with a particular business challenge.

As a result, I've started to collect various "cloud meets business" success stories.  They're all very cool, but they take some serious time to write up.

I thought I'd start with an internal one first: how EMC's vLab cloud is changing an important aspect of the way EMC does business.

Although there are aspects that are unique to EMC and our particular situation, I believe there are many useful lessons here that can be more broadly applied.