Chuck's Blog

Why The Cloud Discussion Is So Polarizing

Over the years, you've probably learned that you don't talk about politics or religion at social gatherings.  

If you're in the IT industry, you'd probably add "cloud" to the list of topics you approach with some  caution, especially in larger settings.

I've often wondered what is it -- exactly -- that makes cloud such a divisive discussion?  

We've been collectively hacking away at the cloud debate for many years now, and -- although there's been some progress in a few areas -- we're nowhere near anything that approaches an industry consensus.  

James Urquhart does an admirable job of tackling this thought in his recent post "Why It's So Hard To Talk About Cloud", but -- after reading it -- I think there's something deeper going on: the incredibly wide swath of stakeholders inevitably leads to an incredibly wide range of divergent perspectives.

For those who are waiting for the debates to subside and a reasonable common ground to emerge, don't hold your breath: there's far too much at stake for all involved.  Smart IT leaders will have do what all leaders usually end up doing: listening to all the perspectives, and deciding their own path forward in the face of rampant and bitter industry arguments.  

And, since the potential benefits of cloud concepts are very great indeed, there's a strong incentive to plan a course of action sooner than later.

The Squabble Over Single File Systems

Many of you are endlessly entertained by the back-and-forth bickering between us storage vendors over things like benchmarks. 

Sometimes the disagreement is over how the test was conducted, or the use of "lab queen" configurations that would never be found in a customer environment.

And, occasionally, there's very strong disagreement around comparing two very unlike things using a common standard.   That's what this post is about.

Why should you care? 

In a world of exploding data growth, massive scale and limited resources, how you do things may end up being more important than what you do. 

I believe many IT architects will want to take note of this particular debate, because you'll be seeing ever-more variations of this same theme in the near future.

Why EMC Cares So Much About SAP

Today's news release is making the rounds here at EMC: SAP annointing the EMC/VMware combination as preferred partners for cloud.  A somewhat similar release was issued by our compatriots at VCE only a few days ago.

More than a few people here are extremely enthused; I tend to be a bit more reserved simply because it's only the latest signpost of a deep symbiotic corporate relationship that goes back for more than a decade.

That being said, it's also a fascinating industry case study of how one company (EMC) can -- over time -- wrap its entire value proposition around that of another company -- SAP.

"No Compromise" -- And Why It's Important When It Comes To IT Vendor Services

Being an IT professional isn't exactly the easiest career choice in the world.  

On one side you've got cranky users and a difficult budget picture.  And on the other side you've got complex technology from multiple vendors to select, implement and support.

In an increasingly commoditized world, I would argue that "service quality" from your vendors is an important differentiator -- important now, more important going forward.

If you've bought a new car recently, you'll notice just how much service -- before, during and after the sale -- is a key part of the dealer's pitch. 

Like any competitive differentiator, the natural incentive exists for all players to invest in stepping up their game.  What was once arguably unique quickly becomes table stakes.  If you equate "service" to "product" for just a moment, it's fairly obvious that you wouldn't put a product out there without some mechanism to continually improve it.  

The story here is simple -- it's about how EMC Global Services has invested in continual process improvement -- and how these investments are paying off in not only customer satisfaction, but industry recognition.

My devious motivation?  

I'd like to encourage you to ask harder questions of your IT vendors, if you're not already :)

Catching Up With VNX

At the beginning of this year, EMC announced over 40 new storage products and enhancements.  Among these, a great deal of attention was focused on the new VNX and its smaller sibling, the VNXe. 

The VNX brought together the traditional CLARiiON and Celerra storage arrays into a single, unified platform: more powerful and far easier to use than its predecessors.  The VNXe was a strategic foray into what we saw as an under-served market: storage for the IT generalist: the VNXe takes simplicity and cost-effectiveness to new levels in this important market segment. 

That was then, what about now? 

On the tail of EMC’s positive Q3 earnings results, I wanted to dig a bit deeper into what was going on in this important storage segment: how were the existing products doing, and what was new in this space? 

And there ended being a lot to talk about …. 

A Big Step Forward In Creating A Cloud Marketplace

Lots of great news starting to come out of VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas.

Technically, I'm supposed to be there right now, but we had this hurricane come through ...

Metaphorically speaking, though, a hurricance isn't a bad analogy for describing the impact of this important event.

The scope of VMworld has expanded far beyond the initial boundaries of server virtualization and pulled in all sorts of adjacent disciplines: cloud, IT transformation, application transformation, next-gen user experience as well as all sorts of related technologies: servers, storage, security, backup, orchestration and management ... it's perhaps the most compelling cross-section of advanced IT thinking in the industry.

And one of the first blockbluster announcements from VMware concerns signficant and meaningful progress towards establishing a marketplace of compatible service providers, based around VMware technologies.

My Friday Rant -- Good Companies, Bad Marketing?

Looking back, I realized I hadn't done one of these "rant" posts in a while.  I used to reserve Fridays for a get-it-off-my-chest post, usually focused on all of us hyper-competitive technology vendors.

Today's rant is squarely focused on really bad marketing choices made by otherwise good technology companies.  Given my role and my background, I often worry that I'm over-sensitive to this sort of stuff.

See what you think.

Reflections on VMware's Cloud Infrastructure Announcement

The day before yesterday, VMware had their most-significant-ever product announcement.

The amount of technical goodness -- and what it means for the industry -- takes more than a little while to wrap your head around.

A bit of that awesomeness was overshadowed by reactions to VMware's new pricing scheme.  I watched the vocal back-and-forth intently as it unfolded through Monday and into Tuesday.  Wisely, I kept a safe distance from the fray.

But I did want to weigh in at some point.  I think some people are missing a few key perspectives, and I'd like to take a shot at broadening the conversation.  

Disclaimer: This is just plain old me talking.  VMware, as an independent company, runs their own affairs.  I am speaking strictly as an industry observer here, and not in any way communicating the official position of EMC, VMware, or anyone else for that matter :)

Big Data, Big Numbers: New SPEC Results From EMC/Isilon

I always warn people -- be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it.

For years, various competitors have heckled EMC that we ought to be more active and participatory with regards to public storage benchmarks.

Today, our Isilon team has released some truly astounding SPEC numbers that should get you thinking about this whole scale-out performance thing in a new way.

There's a lot of juicy insights here -- in addition to the predictable bragging rights -- so let's dig in and see what we've got.

Creating A Compatible Service Provider Ecosystem

If you’ve been following my private cloud discussions over the last few years, you’ll probably recall there were two halves to the strategic proposition.

The first part came quickly: strong interest from enterprise IT organizations that wanted to transform their traditional physical IT environment into a private cloud – usually motivated by a strong desire for efficiency and agility.  That theme is well underway -- it's everywhere now. 

The second part was the promise of a wide selection of compatible service providers, using essentially the same technology infrastructure, that would give enterprises the ability to be choosy: not only in which workloads they wanted to move externally, but in choosing who they wanted to work with at any given time.

Today, a big announcement out of EMC World to accelerate that all-important second half of the strategic proposition: EMC is announcing a formal program for Service Providers to accelerate this important trend.