Chuck's Blog

The New (Mobile) Desktop

About two or three times a year, I have a "d'oh!" experience, one where something hits me so strongly that I wonder how I missed it.

Generally speaking, these are trends in the industry that I was only paying casual attention to, but -- suddenly -- I realized that something big was going on here, and it really mattered.

I had a "d'oh!" experience this week while travelling in Europe, visiting with a few telecommunication providers.

And I finally started to really, really grasp what this mobile thing was all about.

Maybe you already "get it", and I'm the slow one here. 

If that's the case, I apologize in advance.

Please, Not The "S" Word!

Ours is an industry that tends to overuse and abuse words more than most.

We use them too frequently, and too imprecisely to the point where they lose their ability to convey significant meaning.

And, on the list of maligned IT words, I hold a special place for the word "solution".

In our industry, it's applied to so many things, it has come to mean almost nothing.

I've come to call it the "S" word -- to let people know I consider it impolite and inappropriate to use in public unless you're willing to take the time to convey what you might mean by it.

RecoverPoint Redux

As you might know, I like to dig into parts of EMC's portfolio that I think are especially cool, and share with you what I really like about the different pieces.

Somewhere in all the activity last week, there was a major announcement around RecoverPoint, our next-gen replication platform.

Not only is RecoverPoint cool technology, but it's a cool story as well.

Travels In Europe

Sorry for not posting lately, but I've been travelling this week.

I seem to go back and forth between despising travel, and welcoming the variety and exposure to other perspectives.

I'll need to catch up as quickly as I can -- a lot happened this week that deserves commentary.

FCoE Gathers Steam

When I first started discussing this emerging storage networking standard, it brought out vigorous debate, not only from others in the industry, but also within EMC.

I've been quietly tracking FCoE, and -- not surprisingly -- it appears to be on its way to achieving critical mass.

And, it's not just me who's noticed the same thing.

EMC To Acquire Pi Corporation

In a world of corporate acquisitions in information technology, there are those that eventually matter, and those that are just part of the landscape.

Everyone is free to come to their own conclusions regarding this particular acquisition by EMC, but I for one see this as signaling yet another shift in the technology landscape – one whose impact probably won’t be blatantly obvious for some time.

Let me share with you why I think this isn’t your everyday acquisition …

Is Your Storage Vendor Serious About Storage?

Today's news was sad for parts of the community, but somewhat inevitable.

Apple decided that they were essentially getting out of the enterprise storage business.

I'm not one to criticize Apple's move -- in some regards, it's not surprising -- but I think the announcement will cause many to reflect on who they're buying this technology from, and their commitment to the business.

BTW, like most of you, I have enormous respect for what Apple has done over the past decade.  I fully appreciate who they are, and what they're trying to do.  On one level, they've redefined what it means to be "cool" in the technology biz.

But, with all due respect, they had no business being in the storage business.  As a reseller or OEM, perhaps.  But as a manufacturer of the core technology, it was a really bad idea from Day One, IMHO.

Skiing And Storage

OK, this is going to be an off-beat post.  I'm on vacation this week (sort of), skiing in New Hampshire. 

So, what can possibly be the connection between skiing and storage?

It'll be a little strained, but I'll get there ... just be patient.

How The EMC Disk Library Came To Be

EMC offered up a press release today reflecting on the market success we've enjoyed with the EMC Disk Library (EDL).

I felt a special bit of satisfaction when I saw this.  The EDL was one of my special projects way back when.

Some people think that new product development is largely an autonomous, faceless process.

It's not.  Sure, there's plenty of process and data.  But, in most cases, there are a few people who really believe in a new product, and are willing to go to great lengths to see it happen.

And I was one of those people for the EDL.

Can You Trust Your Cloud?

The industry is all abuzz with conversations about things cloud-like these days.

Sure, EMC has added our views to the discussion in terms of technology, architecture, requirements, use cases, etc.

But there's a certain element that's going to be required for this stuff to really take off.

And that's trust.

SAP and EMC?

Saw this little gem come across the wire today, speculating on a tie-up between SAP and EMC on "web hosting services".

And, while it's very true that EMC brings a lot of value to an SAP environment, I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this article -- sorry, folks, that's beyond my pay grade ;-)

But the author did a great job tying together a number of concepts and trends into an interesting story, and I thought it'd be worthwhile to spend a bit of time and share some of the behind-the-scenes thinking here.

Information Infrastructure for DW and BI

Well, it turns out we're finding ourselves in more and more conversations with customers about what they're doing with data warehousing and business intelligence.

From wherever it started, they're now coming to the realization that this is now an important part of their landscape. 

Whether there are a few warehouses that became business critical, or the darn things are proliferating everywhere, we're now getting asked to help out on a more frequent basis.

So I thought I'd use this post to share what we're seeing, and what we're doing to help.

Building A Really, Really Fast NAS Platform

One of the things I enjoy doing on this blog is taking some not-widely-known part of EMC's portfolio, and explaining a bit on how it came to be, but more importantly, to highlight how we combine and integrate our portfolio to come up with some interesting approaches to customer problems.

EMC does so much that sometimes very compelling offerings simply get lost in the noise.

Today's behind-the-scenes journey is about MPFS.  The acronym stands for Multi Path File System. 

Probably named by an engineer ;-)

Think of it as really, really fast NAS.  Now, I'm not going to argue that it's the fastest, or the best, or that the other guys aren't so good, etc. because that's not the point here. 

But many of us think MPFS is a pretty cool story, and a pretty cool product.

Corporate Social Media -- Lessons Learned

If you're a regular reader of this blog (or an EMC employee) you probably know I'm running a corporate social media initiative at EMC, among other things to keep myself out of trouble.

Over a year ago, I became dazzled by the transformational potential of social media as a business tool. I was lost, as many people are, in a babble of buzzwords, trying to figure out what to do.

Thankfully, I regained my composure, figured out a reasonable plan, and started hammering away.  Not only are we making delightful progress, but we've learned some lessons that aren't really talked about in the usual stuff you read.

I'm writing a more detailed blog on our journey, since I know that others will follow at some point, and -- like an explorer probing somewhat new territory -- I think my notes will be useful.