Storage Nation

I was reading posts by Elias Khnaser and Nigel Poulton over breakfast this morning that were imploring one of EMC's historical competitors — HDS — to "open up" their company and start engaging more with the communities around them. Both Elias and Nigel are absolutely correct — and their suggestions very helpful — but opening up your company is a lot harder than it looks. Trust me on this. Companies Are Like People Companies, like people, take on unique behavioral traits based on all sorts of things: the personalities of their founders, the markets they compete in, and so on

A while back, it was part of my job to understand all the different social platforms as part of an effort to make EMC proficient at social media. If it was out there, I investigated it.  Blogs.  Forums.  Second Life.  Twitter.  Yammer.  Ning.  You name it, I checked it out. Some of these platforms made sense to me, others didn't.  Some I embraced (e.g communities, blogging, Twitter), others I largely stayed away from. And Facebook was one of those that simply raised hairs on the back of my neck.

I was talking with my InfoSmack co-conspirator, Greg Knieriemen ( iknerd.com )  last week about virtual junk and how the word "virtualization" was so incredibly unwieldy. It was killing my lazy mouth to have to do so much work for such a well-understood term/topic. (BONUS QUESTION: is "virtualization" a noun, verb, or WHAT?

I'm pleased to see that EMC's getting more and more credit for innovation: not only for our technology, but our overall strategy and business model as well.  We're even getting some nice credit for how we've embraced social media as a business tool. Today, I'm going to take on the relatively sensitive topic of "marketing" in our industry.  And I'm going to openly share with you how EMC is approaching innovation in marketing. I know, that sounds like an oxymoron, but it's not.

If you haven’t yet tuned into the weekly podcast known as Infosmack on community site Storage Monkeys, you’re missing out. Every Monday, hosts Greg Knieriemen and Marc Farley bring on guests to dish about the latest storage industry news–and they do so in a very entertaining and informative way.

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! The Problem As I mentioned above, the entire chain of credit card transaction handling is reasonably secure, except for one concerning aspect — the retailer might be keeping a copy of your credit card information for various purposes.

I'm sorry.