Storage Nation

Hi everyone.  I had the pleasure of jumping over to Paris to deliver a short keynote this week.  When I do this, sometimes I use material I've used before.  Other times, I try and mix it up a bit and try something different.  Such is the case here. I wanted to make this presentation all about the big ideas that are going on in our industry today, especially as it applies to IT infrastructure, since it directly and indirectly impacts all other aspects of IT.  I wanted to make a point to try and stay away from individual technologies (and their associated product incarnations), and focus instead on how technology is being built, deployed and consumed. See if you agree with my choices …

This morning Netapp announced plans to acquire Bycast, Inc., a privately held company in Vancouver BC. I can see wanting an office in Vancouver, so congrats to Netapp on that front.  Also congrats for sticking it in the eyes of storage competitor, HP – and probably their N-Series partner, IBM, – who have been acting as the OEM sales channel for Bycast.

The twittersphere was all abuzz this morning.  Netapp agreed to acquire Bycast , a 60-person startup.  The press release is here. Part of me is fascinated with any acquisition in our industry.  Deals are complex things, and have so many angles to them.  And, being at EMC, we've seen more than our fair share over the last decade or so — including getting an inside look at many we've passed on. One of my friends in M&A has a clever saying — "the best deal is the one you don't do".   That being said, if you're expecting an unreasonably negative response from me, I'm going to disappoint you.  Like all deals, there's some good points and weak points

Fremont CA:  3PAR, the leading Steering Wheel Camera Society of America (SWCSA) producer of Steering Wheel Camera Technology and Smart Car chase scene videos has come to an agreement with Storwize , a Steering Wheel Camera Society of America member company from Marlborough, MA for Storwize to acquire the assets of the Steering Wheel Society of America. Marc Farley, founder of the SWCSA, said: "It kind of sucks to have the SWCSA ripped out from under my complete creative control," before blowing his nose and continuing "now I don't even know where to drive." Steve Kenniston, Director of Driving at Storwize was only available to speak from his mobile phone from within Storwize's state of the art Studio on Wheels was quoted as saying: "mmmbblgurg,  tan you he..  sshhhtdf… can you here me?" And then dropped this bombshell: "Were trying to pass legislation here is Massachusetts requiring everybody to make at least one SWCSA video per month." Here is his latest video:

Argh – what to do when a competitor and a friend is outright lying about you? You know, I try furiously to stay above the fray.  I try FURIOUSLY to avoid talking smack about others.  When I train people how to compete with others here at EMC, I always emphasize “don’t talk about why others are bad, focus on why you’re good”. Heck, I point out flaws, bugs, issues with EMC’s own products, and do it publicly

A couple weeks ago EMC's Pat Gelsinger outlined a vision for long-distance federated storage, which Chuck Hollis wrote about on his blog .   It received a fair amount of attention in the storage community as a bold step by EMC to set a development course with far reaching potential.  StorageBod's take on it was to call it a moon shot , referring to NASA's enormous decade-long project in the 60's to put a man on the moon. I remember being a kid during those years, thinking that anything would be possible in our lifetimes through the combination of imagination, hard work and glorious destiny.  We were encouraged by things like scuttling our yearly ice fishing expedition and taking a winter vacation to Disneyland instead. One of the great all time memes is pursuing the dream

Let's face it — EMC is an industry leader in storage and related disciplines. And, when you earn the status of "industry leader", all of your competitors paint a target on you, and try and make you the bad guy. There's nothing wrong with this — it's how the industry has always worked

In most of my customer and partner engagements, I use the private cloud model as a starting point, and how EMC, along with our partners VMware and Cisco are investing in accelerating the transition to this model with VCE, vBlocks, Acadia and the like. Very frequently, someone very senior will ask me "where is it all going?" or "what's the end-state?". And that's where I start to have some fun.

Slammed getting ready for EMC World and the VMware SE conference, playing with a bunch VMware and EMC pre-release products… Super busy, have a bunch of posts I need to complete, but in the meantime, here’s some cool upcoming webcast.