Chuck's Blog

Private Clouds and Portable User Experiences

When talking about private clouds, there's just so many interesting angles to dig into -- it ties so many different themes in IT into a consistent story that I keep getting drawn in like a moth to a flame.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one -- all of the customers I talk to are starting to get the buzz as well.  At some future point, I'll share my reasons why I think this is the case, but -- for now -- I'd like to discuss the user experience part of this discussion.

This post was triggered by a VMware news item describing how health care professionals can use VMware View to create a "follow me" user experience across thin clients, laptops, desktops, tablets -- just about any reasonable user device.

IT gets to package up a user experience, push it to multiple devices, and manage it all centrally.

Talk about your win-win scenario!

EMC Takes Atmos Storage OnLine

Perhaps the first big announcement to come out of EMC World is the twin combination of the new Atmos OnLine service, as well as AT&T's new Synaptic Storage as a Service based on Atmos.

While the new services and capabilities are interesting in their own right, I think they're emblematic of certain trends we'll inevitably see more of in the future.

And that's worth discussing ...

Securing The Private Cloud

So much to write about, so little time. 

I guess I'm going to have to think carefully about the topics I write about going forward -- I could easily spend every day doing nothing but blog posts on interesting topics.  Sure, that'd be fun, but my day job would seriously suffer.

A few interesting announcements last week that we can correlate:

• VMware's vSphere announcement -- all about the private cloud
• The Jericho Forum issued their best practices around secure cloud computing
• VMware and RSA made an interesting announcement as part of last week's RSA Conference

Put it all together?

It's all about securing the private cloud ...

Thoughts On "The State Of The CIO"

Rather than blather on incessantly about my company and products (again!), I thought I'd share with you some commentary around some great work by a few EMC people to summarize the 'state of the state' when it comes to CIOs.

Most of this material came from a recent CIO Magazine survey, but the EMC team added a few more data points that amplified the general story.  Thanks, guys!

I get to meet more than my fair share of thes individuals, and I found the research intensely interesting.  Maybe you will too.

Keep in mind, this isn't strictly about the person who is the CIO -- it says a lot about how thinking is evolving in enterprise IT in general.

Although many sources were used to create this composite picture, you'll see some very consistent themes throughout.

Opportunities for Telcos and Service Providers

Greetings from Istanbul, Turkey!

I'd never been before, but here I am.  It's a surprisingly rich and colorful city -- definitely on my list of gotta-get-back-here-some-time destinations.

I took a quick picture from my hotel balcony.  That's the Bosporus behind me, connecting the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea. 

My side of the water is essentially the end of the European land mass -- across the water is the beginning of the Asian continent and the Middle East. 

Kind of cool when you think about it from a geographical, historical and cultural perspective.

It's even more cool when you think about why I'm here -- it's for EMC's annual Middle Eastern Telecom Summit. 

Enterprise Cloud Wars

The recent thoughts about how "private clouds" might be the emergent model for enterprise IT has sparked some strong philosophical debate in the cloud-o-sphere.

On one side, the purists.  On the other side, the pragmatists.

Where you stand probably has much to do with where you sit, no?

Information Logistics

By now, I've had to explain COS (cloud optimized storage) and Atmos many, many times.

On this one, though, it's important to come up with a pretty clear and insightful explanation.  When it comes to COS, you either really need it (and have very few alternatives!), or you wonder what the fuss is all about.

And I've come up with an explanation that's working pretty well -- let me know what you think?

The Emergence Of Private Clouds

A few of us have come to a general agreement around how we'll probably see the next phase of clouds evolve in corporate computing environments.

Most of us think it won't be the current uber-clouds being proposed by Microsoft and Amazon.

More likely, it'll be private clouds that run today's applications, using both internal and external resources, yet allows IT to retain security and control.

And these private clouds might be closer than you think.

The Information Protection Wheel

In my travels and discussions, I'm always on the lookout for new ways to create more complete views of challenges we all face.  Sometimes, I stumble on a useful graphic or picture that explains the concept in an interesting way.

My good friend Brian Fitzgerald (VP Marketing at EMC's RSA division) shared just such a graphic with me the other day, and I wanted to share it with you.   

No earth-shattering insights here, just an easier way to explain multiple topics in a single motion.

GRC Thinking From An IT Perspective

Over the last few weeks, I've been fortunate enough to spend some serious time digging into the current state of affairs regarding GRC -- the emerging topic of governance, risk and compliance.

Sure, the topic is hazy, poorly defined and all over the map.  That's probably one of the reasons I'm so interested.

That being said, I've seen a few patterns emerge that might make things a bit easier for all concerned.

Also, for those of you who don't like the long-ish posts that result when I dive into a new and complex topic, maybe you'd better skip this one!