Service Provider Insider

The Innovator's Dilemma Applies To SPs, Too

If you're a student of the IT industry, you're probably familiar with Clayton M. Christensen's famous book "The Innovator's Dilemna".

In a nutshell, his observation is that the same forces that make companies big and successful can also effectively insulate them from new opportunities -- and make them blind to newer competitors who are playing by a completely different set of rules.

If for some reason you haven't read it yet, perhaps you should.  It accurately describes a pattern of change and innovation that you'll see played out over and over again -- once you've learned to recognize it.

Enhancing SP Value Propositions By Expanding Delivery Options

Wow. EMC is up to a lot these days. 

I try to stay ahead of all the different offers and permutations as part of my role here, but I still get occasionally surprised. 

Just today, I chanced across an interesing EMC customer deck that seemed to illustrate an important dynamic in the emerging SP opportunity: the importance of multiple delivery options to enhance your overall value proposition.

A Quick Tour of EMC Products for SPs

With each passing month, EMC gets better and better at understanding the unique requirements of service providers who provide various flavors of IT-as-a-service.

We still have a lot to do before we're arguably world class, but progress to date has been striking, and the pace seems to be increasing as well.

As we think about our "offer" for SPs and their clients, we're doing a good job of thinking beyond just products, and beginning to build out more services and programs.

That being said, a lot of what we offer SPs is built on our product technologies, since -- at our heart -- that's what EMC is all about.

In this post, I thought I'd offer up a whirlwind tour of the EMC product portfolio from a service provider perspective.  If  you're looking for an at-a-glance overview, here it is. 

Well, maybe a very l-o-o-n-n-g glance.

Assembling The Pieces Of An SP Model

More conversations with various flavors of service providers.  More patterns starting to recur.

Here's one to consider: a service provider has an interesting piece of the winning formula -- but it's not enough.

How best to complete the picture?  Buy, build or partner?

It's a classic business development strategy discussion.  And it's one that I'm increasingly asked to comment on.

VMworld And How It Changes The Game For Service Providers

If you haven't been following the stream from this week's VMworld, maybe you should be.

Sure, it's a really big industry show: lots of attendees and lots of vendors.  But many of the announcements I believe subtly shift the landscape for just about every service provider out there.

I'm still digesting it all -- so please consider this preliminary at best ...

Another "Cloud Service Provider Report"

Sorry I've been away from this blog for so long.  It hasn't been for lack of material -- plenty going on in this space.  It's just the usual blogger's lame excuse -- finding the time!

Well, I've got a backlog of things to talk about, and to kick things off, a fresh version of the popular "Cloud Service Provider Report" (commissioned by EMC) that's written from a non-US perspective.

Good reading!

Symmetrix VMAX For Service Providers

As we start marching through the process of re-characterizing various EMC products for the unique requirements of service providers, we're starting to generate some interesting technical documentation.

Today's tidbit is titled "Implementing EMC Symmetrix VMAX in a Cloud Service Provider Environment".  It's somewhat technical, but not overly so.  Most of the material comes from a recent engagement where EMC configured a VMAX for Terremark's Enterprise Cloud.

NTT and DiData: Harbinger Of Things To Come?

Scanning the feeds this morning, I came across this surprising-but-not-totally-unexpected item: NTT is shelling out big money to acquire Dimension Data.

Now, in the world of tech M&A, the importance of this acquisition may escape many, but I see it as an early signpost in the restructuring of the IT industry: from IT as a product, to IT as a service.

And if you're in the service provider industry, this one deserves some attention by your management team.

Azure Starts To Get Interesting -- Sort Of

Never a dull moment in our business.

Today, Microsoft offered up a "statement of intent" to provide pre-configured infrastructure running Microsoft' Azure environment.  For examples of the coverage, take a look here and here.

Not surprisingly, this contrasts sharply with the efforts I've been working on, primarly around VCE and Vblocks.

Rather than degrade into a typical competitive rant, I think there are some very interesting themes in play here -- especially from a service provider perspective.

Commodity Clouds Vs. Differentiated Clouds

Randy Bias (@randybias, CEO of Cloudscaling) tweeted earlier today that -- compared to things like a Vblock -- the clouds that he was capable of building were about 1/10th the cost.

Now, that's an interesting discussion, to be sure. 

And I'm not here to berate Randy -- or anyone else -- who agrees with this line of thinking.  Randy appears to be a smart guy, and very experienced as well.

It's not a new thought -- the broader industry debate around commodity vs. differentiated has been around for a very long time indeed, and isn't going away anytime soon.  It's moved from hardware, to software and now to the cloud.

But how does this historic debate play here?  And especially in the context of service providers who are looking at this more as a business proposition, as opposed to an intellectual debate?