Chuck's Blog

Beyond Private Cloud: Towards Information Governance

Yes, I know -- all of this talk about private clouds can seem very futuristic to some.

In essence, though, we're talking about nothing more than the industrialization of IT infrastructure.  If you're inside the IT business, it all can seem so complex.  But if you're outside of IT, you might wonder "what's the big deal?".

Assuming that -- yes -- we can get our IT infrastructure to behave like other forms of modern infrastructure: telecommunications, power, water, transportation, etc. -- what lies beyond?

In my mind, the answer is pretty clear -- it's information governance.

EMC To Acquire Archer

It's 2010, and we're off to the races already ...

Today's acquisition announcement of Archer Technologies is likely a harbinger of what we'll see from EMC during 2010 -- swift execution around strategic themes that we've already discussed.

The first order of business -- a hearty "welcome aboard" to Jon Darbyshire and his world-class team.  We're proud and excited to have you as the latest member of the RSA and EMC family!

And, for the everyone else, I'd like to share a bit of the story behind the story ...

Tokenization Makes Me Feel Better

As we head into the holiday shopping season, we'll all be using our credit cards a lot -- both in physical stores, and increasingly online. 

Sure, the transmission of the credit card information is reasonably secure, and we've got to trust that the financial service provider has taken the necessary steps -- but what about the retailer?

The good folks at RSA have come up with a clever solution to that part of the equation -- and, I for one, will be looking for it in the near future!

Overcoming Distance

Over the last few centuries, much of mankind's ingenuity has been focused on eliminating the inconvenience of distance. 

From sailing ships to modern air transportation; from hand-carried letters to global telepresence -- we spend a lot of time and money to overcome distance in the physical world.

And, in the next few years, there's going to be an intense focus in IT in doing exactly the same thing.

I Want My Personal Cloud

Storagezilla got this one going, and it's a thought that's worth exploring.

So much of the cloud discussion is pointed at businesses -- what about us as individuals?

And -- yes -- there's a potential type of cloud that I think we'll all want.

A personal information cloud.

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.