Chuck's Blog

Making Our History Accessible To All

This month marks the 50th anniversay of President John F. Kennedy's inauguration.  It also marks the unveiling of the nation's largest online digitized presidential archive.

EMC, along with AT&T, Raytheon and Iron Mountain, have partnered to create a searchable online archive, available to all at www.jfklibrary.org.  

One of EMC's roles was to provide the core scan, protect and storage capabilities at the heart of any digital archive.

It's safe to say that the internet has changed how we think about information access.  

I think this announcement is only the tip of the iceberg as we apply new technologies to preserving our cultural heritage, and making it vastly more accessible to all.

But, as you'll see in a moment, it won't be an easy job.

Are You Ready For Big Data?

Yet another concept starting to pop up ever more frequently in day-to-day conversations.  

Although no formal definition likely exists, my working definition seems to be adequate for the time being: the act of creating new value through harnessing enormous amounts of information.

Yes, though the definitional net is quite large – and many fish are caught as a result – the core thought is the same: big data means that increasingly enormous amounts of data are seen as an inherently good thing vs. an evil to be avoided.

Of WikiLeaks and Information Ownership

I happened to kick off a rather spirited discussion yesterday, when I tweeted that there were strong parallels between WikiLeaks and Pirate Bay -- both decided to widely distribute stolen information, and both are now in trouble for it.  

From my point of view, I couldn't see much of a difference.  I quickly found out that there were many alternative views on this topic, which -- for me -- makes it even *more* interesting!

Looking Ahead To 2011

Yep, it's that time of year when pundits and wannabe pundits start making their prognostications about the year ahead.

Since I'm in the latter class (wannabe pundit) part of me feels obligated to offer up my somewhat unique and biased views.  In some sense, you can see this as a preview of many of the themes that I'll be inevitably exploring during 2011.

Who Will Be The CFO Of Information?

Like I've said before, I get the privilege of meeting with all sorts of IT organizations that span just about any categorization axis you'd care to imagine.

A precious few of these IT organizations have been working on the whole virtualization / cloud / IT-as-a-service thing for quite a while.  They did it the way most early adopters have to do it -- the hard way, using the tech that was available to them at the time.

Their stories are inspiring, to say the least.  

Not only a radical re-think of the technology stack, but the associated operational models as well.  And, of course, presenting an entirely new catalog of attractive consumption options back to the business.

They've done the whole private cloud thing already, in essence -- or have done it well enough that it's no longer near the top of their IT leadership agenda.  And -- as a result -- they're ready to move on to the Next Big Thing.

So, what do these unique IT thought leaders often want to tackle next?

An Atmos Update

Last week there was some idle banter online that few people knew what was really going on with the Atmos cloud storage platform.  Many people in our industry presume that no news means bad news, and tend to assume the worst.

I knew differently, though.  So I took it upon myself to reach out to some of the Atmos storage team and ask the generic question -- how is it going these days?

And I found the answer far more interesting than I had suspected.

See if you agree ...

Interest In Object Storage Heats Up

One of the benefits of frequent customer interaction is that you get to spot rising -- and sometimes declining -- customer interest in various topics.

Object storage has been around for a while -- a few people understand it, but many don't.  And in the last few weeks, I've found myself getting into an object storage discussion with customers without really intending to.

And the ways we get there are interesting as well ...

Another Step Towards Information Governance

Sorry for falling behind the pace here, but there was a recent EMC product announcement that I found worthy of a deeper discussion.

EMC's SourceOne group just announced their new File Intelligence product.  And, as organizations struggle to get their arms around unfettered information growth, we may just have a new and important tool in the arsenal.

You be the judge ...

The Coming Revolution In Business Analytics

Sometimes, so many pieces seem to line up, I feel obligated to make a call and declare "big changes are coming".

Such is the case with a topic I've come to call business analytics.  Other people might call it decision support, data warehousing, data marts, or perhaps something else.

At its highest level, it's using analytic results to make better business decisions. 

And I think it's a topic that many of us will be drawn into at one level or another -- if we're not already.

Why I Never Embraced Facebook

A while back, it was part of my job to understand all the different social platforms as part of an effort to make EMC proficient at social media.

If it was out there, I investigated it.  Blogs.  Forums.  Second Life.  Twitter.  Yammer.  Ning.  You name it, I checked it out.

Some of these platforms made sense to me, others didn't.  Some I embraced (e.g communities, blogging, Twitter), others I largely stayed away from.

And Facebook was one of those that simply raised hairs on the back of my neck.

Now, it's pretty clear why I had that perception.