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Speed Bumps Along The Way To The Private Cloud

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:58:24 +0000

Many of the IT organizations I speak with have started their journey to a private cloud model. Every road has its speed bumps: knowing what they are likely to be helps a great deal. I thought it'd be useful to simply share my perspectives of likely issues, concerns and challenges that tend to show up in each phase of the journey

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Speed Bumps Along The Way To The Private Cloud

Whitepaper: Private Cloud Practitioner’s Guide

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:16:20 +0000

If you've been following this blog for a while, you know I've been describing how EMC's IT organization is progressing in re-envisioning our IT capabilities based on a private cloud model. You've seen bits and pieces here on this blog, as well as EMC IT's own web site . Today, I received a nice white paper entitled " EMC IT's Journey To The Private Cloud: A Practitioner's Guide ". While not as complete as many of us would like, it does serve as a nice contextual overview of of our journey: the rationale, the phases and the results to date.

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Whitepaper: Private Cloud Practitioner’s Guide

The Impact Of VMware Storage Integration

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:19:41 +0000

Today is the day that VMware announces the availability of 4.1, and a key set of storage integration APIs (VAAI) that provide all sorts of cool speed-ups between server and storage. EMC's announcement of day-one support is here . Chad Sakac (our legendary Virtual Geek ) does a great job of explaining what they are, how to use them, and what they can do for you. If your passion is hands-on tech, please head on over there. However, if you're more like me, and are always curious about what things might mean in a broader sense, this post might be more to your liking …

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The Impact Of VMware Storage Integration

EMC To Acquire Greenplum

admin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:18:21 +0000

Today, EMC announced its intention to acquire Greenplum — a successful provider of data warehouse and business intelligence database software. And there’s a lot to talk about as a result … What's This All About? In a nutshell: big data driving a new generation of data computing applications using a private cloud model. Let's take these one at a time.

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EMC To Acquire Greenplum

Understanding what were doing with Atmos

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:10:37 +0000

I suppose it’s inevitable that the EMC competitors would attack as EMC has decided to make things clearer by not being in the business of OFFERING Atmos as a service for any additional customers (it is staying up for existing users). So – why did we do it? Well – in basic terms, we made a mistake, and are correcting it. (BTW – that’s **MY** view – another valid view is that it was a necessary step to get the ball rolling). In more detail… People had a hard mental time understanding whether EMC was positioning Atmos as a: An EMC PRODUCT – as a Virtual Appliance on top of traditional storage models, or as physical appliance designed for maximum scale and lowest cost. OR….

Another Step Towards Information Governance

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:59:08 +0000

Sorry for falling behind the pace here, but there was a recent EMC product announcement that I found worthy of a deeper discussion. EMC's SourceOne group just announced their new File Intelligence product. And, as organizations struggle to get their arms around unfettered information growth, we may just have a new and important tool in the arsenal

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Another Step Towards Information Governance

Cloud Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:03:45 +0000

Lots of cloud chatter this week. A couple of good industry events. An interesting new startup offering a cloud operating system for private clouds. Even the ever-outspoken Werner dissing private clouds as "false clouds". A lively debate, to be sure! Time for me to offer up another attempted level-set in this discussion. It's easy to become lost in the details, and more difficult to see what's really happening here — or, at least, what I think is happening. Disruption Is In The Air Clouds disrupt three aspects of technology: how it's built, how it's operated and how it's consumed. Other than that, it's business as usual There's excitement in the air, but also certain degree of fear. The deck chairs are starting to get re-arranged in the IT vendor world. Hot winds of change are blowing through enterprise IT organizations. And vast piles of capital are flowing into the new intermediaries — the service providers. As all of this happens, I'd encourage everyone to remember the golden rule.

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Cloud Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Another Take At Integrated Vs. Best-of-Breed

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:22:46 +0000

I was locked away in meetings most of this week, and didn't have a chance to participate in a flurry of posts and discussions on this important topic. Scott Lowe got the latest wave going with his prognostications on a certain vendor , Marc Farley added a thoughtful post , and Chris Mellor joined in the fun , as well as Storagebod. But the topic isn't done yet — we'll be arguing this one for decades to come

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Another Take At Integrated Vs. Best-of-Breed

Xiotech a Laggard? Hmm.

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:09:04 +0000

Hopefully, some of the Xiotech folks have their ears on. In response to my previous post questioning the marketecture around Flash SSD, one reader (Pq65) said that my commentary underscored Xiotech’s limitations in the sense that they (1) are closely tied to Seagate, which doesn’t have a Flash story yet, and (2) were not jumping on

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Xiotech a Laggard? Hmm.

Questions From "Journey To The Private Cloud" Simulcast

admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:23:10 +0000

A few weeks back, I joined Sanjay Mirchandani (our CIO) and Tom Roloff (heads up EMC Consulting) on a neat simulcast that was beamed to multiple locations around North America. The content mostly focused on EMC IT's journey — results, challenges and lessons learned — but we spent a lot of time answering questions as well. Despite our best efforts, there were many good questions that we just didn't have time to answer

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Questions From "Journey To The Private Cloud" Simulcast