Chuck's Blog

A Tale Of Two Economies

Like a few people I know, I slavishly follow the economic news from around the world.  

Sure, I have a casual background in economics, but I've always thought of economics as the engine that powered so much of human activity.  That, and demand for EMC's products and services are somewhat correlated with economic swings :) 

My current fascination is the US economy -- not only is it the largest by some measures, but -- historically -- it tends to often go through key transitions before other regional economies.  It's not a bad "early barometer" to watch strong forces play out globally -- if you're watching carefully. 

Without getting delving into politics, I think the current US economy can be best described as "uneven" or even "lumpy".  At an aggregate level, there's the perception that there's not enough growth or job creation to get things moving in the right direction.  

Indeed, the current round of spectacular policy debates seem to arise from fundamental disagreements regarding what to do about the situation vs. any disagreement that there's a serious challenge at hand. 

For me, I see the US as a tale of two very different economic models being measured as a whole: the tail end of a successful-but-getting-tired legacy model, and the early days of its powerful successor.  

Focus on the legacy model, and I see a picture of a running-out-of-steam economic model with few attractive options left for substantial rejuvenation.  

But focus on the newer model, and it's easy to be dazzled by the potential for growth and prosperity.

Understanding Advanced Persistent Threats

Next week is the big and uber-cool RSA security conference.  In preparation, I was chatting with Brian Fitzgerald and Nirav Mehta to get a quick synopsis of what they had planned for the show.

Half-jokingly, I asked "what's the big new threat that no one is prepared for?".  A lot of the conversation at the RSA Conference is inevitably along those lines, as you'd expect.

In a millisecond, Brian shot back: "APT -- advanced persistent threats".  

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He started to explain the basics.  I was fascinated, and asked him to send along some more info.

Maybe you'll be fascinated as well -- or at least, maybe a bit concerned?

Should Information Be On The Balance Sheet?

This painfully viral meme comes to you courtesy of none other than James Governor of RedMonk Consulting, perhaps better known as @monkchips.

He infected me badly at the recent EMC megalaunch event in London.  The words escaped his lips, and I had to go think about it -- a lot.

And maybe you should, to.

Making Our History Accessible To All

This month marks the 50th anniversay of President John F. Kennedy's inauguration.  It also marks the unveiling of the nation's largest online digitized presidential archive.

EMC, along with AT&T, Raytheon and Iron Mountain, have partnered to create a searchable online archive, available to all at www.jfklibrary.org.  

One of EMC's roles was to provide the core scan, protect and storage capabilities at the heart of any digital archive.

It's safe to say that the internet has changed how we think about information access.  

I think this announcement is only the tip of the iceberg as we apply new technologies to preserving our cultural heritage, and making it vastly more accessible to all.

But, as you'll see in a moment, it won't be an easy job.

Are You Ready For Big Data?

Yet another concept starting to pop up ever more frequently in day-to-day conversations.  

Although no formal definition likely exists, my working definition seems to be adequate for the time being: the act of creating new value through harnessing enormous amounts of information.

Yes, though the definitional net is quite large – and many fish are caught as a result – the core thought is the same: big data means that increasingly enormous amounts of data are seen as an inherently good thing vs. an evil to be avoided.

Of WikiLeaks and Information Ownership

I happened to kick off a rather spirited discussion yesterday, when I tweeted that there were strong parallels between WikiLeaks and Pirate Bay -- both decided to widely distribute stolen information, and both are now in trouble for it.  

From my point of view, I couldn't see much of a difference.  I quickly found out that there were many alternative views on this topic, which -- for me -- makes it even *more* interesting!

Looking Ahead To 2011

Yep, it's that time of year when pundits and wannabe pundits start making their prognostications about the year ahead.

Since I'm in the latter class (wannabe pundit) part of me feels obligated to offer up my somewhat unique and biased views.  In some sense, you can see this as a preview of many of the themes that I'll be inevitably exploring during 2011.

Who Will Be The CFO Of Information?

Like I've said before, I get the privilege of meeting with all sorts of IT organizations that span just about any categorization axis you'd care to imagine.

A precious few of these IT organizations have been working on the whole virtualization / cloud / IT-as-a-service thing for quite a while.  They did it the way most early adopters have to do it -- the hard way, using the tech that was available to them at the time.

Their stories are inspiring, to say the least.  

Not only a radical re-think of the technology stack, but the associated operational models as well.  And, of course, presenting an entirely new catalog of attractive consumption options back to the business.

They've done the whole private cloud thing already, in essence -- or have done it well enough that it's no longer near the top of their IT leadership agenda.  And -- as a result -- they're ready to move on to the Next Big Thing.

So, what do these unique IT thought leaders often want to tackle next?

An Atmos Update

Last week there was some idle banter online that few people knew what was really going on with the Atmos cloud storage platform.  Many people in our industry presume that no news means bad news, and tend to assume the worst.

I knew differently, though.  So I took it upon myself to reach out to some of the Atmos storage team and ask the generic question -- how is it going these days?

And I found the answer far more interesting than I had suspected.

See if you agree ...

Interest In Object Storage Heats Up

One of the benefits of frequent customer interaction is that you get to spot rising -- and sometimes declining -- customer interest in various topics.

Object storage has been around for a while -- a few people understand it, but many don't.  And in the last few weeks, I've found myself getting into an object storage discussion with customers without really intending to.

And the ways we get there are interesting as well ...