My experiences and thoughts around the evolving IT service provider market while working at EMC.
Call it cloud, call it IT-as-a-service, call it whatever -- there's an important shift going on in the market. And it's cool.
I work with enterprise IT organizations. And, over the last few years, I've increasingly started to work with enterprise-focused IT service providers. The similarities can be amazing.
On my other blog, I often discuss a topic that matters to *both* audiences. And this is just such an example.
If you're thinking about how to best position yourself as a trusted partner to enterprise IT leadership, it's worth a read.
A few things in the news today that ought to serve as food for thought for any SP targeting enterprise IT workloads.
For starters, I'd encourage you to read up on advanced persistent threats (APTs). These are organized attacks using a combination of social engineering and traditional hacking techniques.
In a scarily prescient post, I talked a bit about APTs during the run-up to the recent RSA Conference. Then the unthinkable happened: EMC's RSA division got hit pretty hard.
How they did it is no longer a mystery. Who did it, and why they did it, is currently a matter of an ongoing investigation, so not much will be said about that for the time being.
If you think it's isolated cases, feel free to scan the headlines on any given day, and you'll hear about the most recent breach. This morning, it was Epslion's service that got dinged.
It's now happened about a dozen times, maybe more.
In the meeting, we're hip-deep into discussions around SP business models (especially those that want to target enterprise IT organizations). I start getting into differentiation and specialization, which inevitably leads to a core question: where and how do you want to play in the supply chain?
Supply chain? Puzzled looks all around.
OK, back up the train. Draw a big picture on the whiteboard, start filling in boxes, where do you see yourself?
Since it takes so long to draw these pictures, I've decided to whip up a sample slide for two reasons.
One, I'm essentially lazy at heart.
And, two, there are about a dozen or more meaty SP strategy discussions I can drive off of this single chart.
Chuck Hollis VP -- Global Marketing CTO EMC Corporation @chuckhollis
Chuck has been with EMC for 17 years, most of them great.
He enjoys speaking to customer and industry audiences about a variety of technology topics, and -- of course -- enjoys blogging.
He lives in Holliston, MA with his wife, three kids and four dogs when he's not travelling. In his spare time, Chuck is working on his second career as an aging rock musician.
Warning: do not buy him a drink when there is a piano nearby.
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