A while back, I commented on the growing disparity I was seeing to these different approaches to storage in larger customer environments.
Not surprisingly, I was taken to task by many over my observations. "Of course", they'd offer, "what else would you expect a large vendor to say?"
Well, I'm signing up for another round of punishment.
Why? It's getting even clearer to me with each passing week.
I get to meet a lot of customers. And I get to talk about a lot of topics.
I'd bet you'd never guess what the most popular topic is turning out to be. And I think the "why" behind the topic's popularity is worthy of some discussion.
Hint: it's not virtualization, or dedupe, or cloud, or anything like that ...
The acronym stands for "next generation data center", and -- once again -- this discussion is very much in vogue across the industry.
So many pieces are coming together, that there's a new hunger for a conversation around "what does it all look like in a few years".
I think there's actually two distinct NGDC models emerging, and -- the real question is what kind of business do you see yourself in?
Like many of you, I tend to be on the lookout for interesting trends in this industry.
No surprise, but trends come and go. Some start out strong, but may lose steam or morph into another discussion entirely.
Others continue to gather steam until the concept becomes part of our overall fabric of thoughts and ideas.
And I think I owe you an update on "information governance".
I've never seen anything like this in the industry. VMware is going from strength to strength in a way that's hard for many of us to fully comprehend.
Just when you thought the server-oriented ESX party was raging, over the last 6-12 months the VDI discussion has become extremely interesting, especially to larger organizations who are seeing the potential to save money, deliver better user experiences, improve security and so on.
As a result, a number of vendors are being drawn into extremely interesting conversations around VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure), including EMC.
I thought I'd offer up a few thoughts on this, based on what I'm hearing from people.
So, I'm occasionally having an interesting experience these days.
Very often, I'm asked to share EMC's views on what's broadly called "the future of IT".
And, in the act of doing so, we usually end up in a discussion around "the future of IT professionals".
I think this is a discussion we'll be having more often in the future.
Over time, we're getting more passionate bloggers here at EMC. And we enjoy debating different topics back and forth among ourselves. I think we were all argumentative as children -- must be in the DNA.
Dick Sullivan and I were having an interesting discussion that many of us (vendors, IT and business people alike) perhaps missing a really big point around the whole "green IT" thing.
It's simple -- yes, it's important to have "green IT", but what we're really after is efficiency.
And -- more often than not -- the efficiency gains we're after with green IT lead to even bigger efficiency discussions that many times have nothing to do with energy or carbon footprint.
One of the most frequent questions I get from EMC customers in our briefing center is "how are we doing?".
They're curious to know how well they're measuring up in managing their growing storage and information management environment as compared to other IT shops.
Now, any sort of rigorous, scientific answer is beyond my scope. But what I can do is share with you some of the broad averages as I see it from my perspective.
And, yes, many of them think they've made real progress on taming their storage beasts.
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.
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.
Continue reading "Information Infrastructure for DW and BI" »
It wasn't too long ago that outsourcers were causing considerable consternation in both IT customers and vendors.
Mega-outsourcing was all the rage. If you were a large IT organization, you took this trend very seriously, for all the right reasons. And if you were an IT vendor like EMC, your world was very different if your customer got outsourced.
But I think that the outsourcing marketplace itself is going through some pretty massive changes. And, as I spend more time with outsourcers, I realize that some are moving quickly towards the new reality, and other -- well -- others are moving a bit more slowly.
And, if you're an industry watcher like me, it's an interesting story for customers, vendors and outsourcers alike.
To many industry watchers and IT consumers, VMware looks like just another technology to add to the list of operating environments they have to support. The mindset might be that there are some places where it'll work, some places it might not work so well -- really, it's just part of the landscape.
But the more I talk to some customers, they've changed their perspective.
It's not just part of the landscape, it's THE new landscape.
And it's interesting to watch how people's thinking shifts over time.
Hmmm -- the podcasters over at RSA found me recently, and asked me to talk a bit about what I was seeing from customers around the confluence of two really big themes in IT today: security and virtualization.
Now, I'd like to say it's a complete exposition, but -- to be honest -- it's a fresh discussion we're just now starting to get engaged in.
Maybe interesting, maybe not. Find it here.
It's been a travelling week, hence no posts as I find it difficult to sit still and write when on the road.
What made this trip unique was that I had three separate customer interactions around the same topic: information governance.
Each of them got to the same place, but through a different path.
There's either a trend here, or perhaps I've succeeded in deluding myself ...
It's got to be one of the most popular "grabber" lines in the industry, right?
And who doesn't want to save money on storage?
On the average, corporate capacity grows 60% per year. And, even if media prices fall 20-30%, it doesn't take a math major to realize that -- every year -- you're gonna be spending more money on the round, brown spinning stuff unless steps are taken.
So, here's what I've been telling people.
No, I didn't get lost somewhere in the IT buzzword dictionary.
I've started to use the phrase to capture some basic concepts around one of the most mundane (yet) important tasks in IT -- migrations.
And I'd like to offer some thought as to why we might be thinking of this differently in the near future, if not today.
I get to meet with customers on a frequent basis. And I like to share my thoughts and impressions of these experiences here on Ye Olde Blog.
Yesterday, I had the chance to meet with a group of real cool IT guys.
They weren't talking about next-gen IT, they were doing it.
And it made me think.
As you know, I meet with a lot of customers. Most of the time, we talk about the growing importance of information, and the new role IT will have to play in the future. Or we talk about technology: EMC's and others.
But once in a while, we get into the very important (yet sensitive) topic of the IT organization itself -- what should it look like going forward?
And I have seen a noticable and inescapable trend towards what I've come to call "thin IT organizations".
A bit of commentary has been floating around blogland about the increased need for trained, certified storage administrators.
I thought I'd use this post to share EMC's views on this problem, and what we've been trying to do about it.
There must be a male "do-it-yourself" gene somewhere in our DNA.
And as I talk to many IT organizations, there seems to be a certain stubborness in accepting help in the form of consulting or other services.
I think that this sort of thinking will have to change radically in the next few years. I believe IT organizations will have to become even more adept at figuring out what they want to be really good at, and what things they'll want to turn to external services or expertise.
If you tend to read the usual management articles and books on airplanes like I do, you probably realize that the whole subject of innovation is a very hot topic.
As well it should be.
I see it as analagous to Darwinian evolution -- unless there are some good mechanisms in place to adapt and thrive in a changing ecosystem, the outlook for your species is very poor indeed.
Much of the discussion I've read about is around "organizing for innovation", which sounds interesting at the outset, but I find it difficult to reconcile with how I think people and organizations work.
Simply put, I think that "organizing for innovation" will require -- ahem -- innovative approaches. And I think that each of us -- regardless of role -- can become innovators without waiting for organizational mandates.
Yes, even in IT.
Maybe I'm a bit slow, but when I see the same thing happen 5, 10 or maybe 20 times, sometimes a dim bulb goes on in my head, and I say "wait, maybe there's a pattern here!".
As you know, I spend a lot of time with customers. It's so much fun, I sometimes wonder why I'm allowed (and paid!) to do it.
And you know I've written about information infrastructure considerations for VMware ESX before.
So, I'm now starting to see the same thing over and over again.
And it's entirely avoidable.
Continue reading "When VMware Deployment Isn't Just About Servers" »
So, a customer stopped me cold the other day with a very pointed question. I love when that happens.
Here's what he said:
"Look, every major player in IT is building their stack: EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, SAP, and so on. What makes you think your stack is the better stack?"
Brutally candid, but a really, really good question.
So here's what I said.
On an average week, I get to meet with several different customers. It's fun and it's rewarding.
Sometimes they've seen this blog, which is a strange feeling when they know more about you than you know about them ...
More often than not, the purpose of my visit is to paint a very broad picture. We'll talk about all sorts of technologies: virtualization, content infrastructure, model-based management, security -- sometimes we even talk about storage.
Whether it's 30 minutes or a day-long drill-down session, it's always fun.
Other times, there's a specific topic someone wants to drill into. Such was the case last week.
This particular picture was increasingly familiar: an IT organization getting clobbered by backup and recovery woes.
Ostensibly, we were there to pitch our capabilities. The IT guys were doing the round-robin of different vendors, and it was our turn.
But, in a search for root cause, we ended up in a very different place.
Imagine you were trying to build a great car engine.
Sure, there'd be a great discussion around different kinds of engine technologies, design considerations, fuels, etc.
But at some point, you'd want to understand a bit more about the car the engine is going in, and -- more importantly -- what the owner expects from the car.
I'm finding that the "storage strategy" discussion has many similarities.
The conversation can become very inward focused, and can sometimes lead to isolated approaches that don't exploit the context.
And I continue to see pretty big opportunities that are missed, simply because the lens isn't wide enough.
Continue reading "When A Storage Strategy Isn't About Storage" »
I've mentioned before the best part of my unofficial job is that I get to have some pretty intense discussions with customers who are sometimes up to pretty big stuff.
Last week, I had two such discussions (on the same day!) that ostensibly looked like the same thing going in, but went down two very different paths as they took high-level concepts and mapped them into priorities.
I've written about these sorts of engagements before (here, here and here), and I think they're interesting journeys into the real world of IT strategy.
I hope you agree.
I just love talking to customers. I could do it all day long -- if I didn't have a day job.
Sometimes, you have an intense customer discussion that gives you new insights into what it’s all about.
I had just such an experience this morning, which I want to share with you. It was fascinating, at least from my biased perspective.
The key question: how does IT gain control of information in a large, complex organization without waiting for a lengthy, top-down organizational process to complete?
And, at the end of the story, there’s a few nuggets of learning which I wanted to pass along.
I really enjoy talking with customers. Not every conversation is entirely serious, either. Sometimes, things are just plain funny.
Here's my collection of true stories that might give you a laugh. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
