EMC’s $3 Billion Announcement

The events of January 18, 2011 marked a new boldness for EMC marketing. The storage giant is not known as a clever marketing machine, but change is in the air. New Chief Marketing Officer Jeremy Burton was lauded by many today for the bolder strategy, and the company’s management, board, and stockholders must be pleased by his performance.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci kicks off the

EMC’s share price has slumped for almost a decade, yet has risen steadily over the past year. Although lagging behind rival NetApp in terms of growth, EMC shares jumped dramatically over the last three days. As the details of today’s announcement leaked, the stock rose $1.50, or about 5%. With 2.1 billion shares outstanding, this gain represents $3 billion of market capitalization.

While EMC’s engineering team delivered a compelling new unified storage platform as well as solid upgrades across the line, EMC’s marketing deserves much of the credit for the sudden rise in valuation. Opinions regarding the product announcements were positive but not overwhelmingly so. But the “record breaking” theme of the event generated buzz from unlikely corners and drew applause from the audience.

It wasn't clear how packing 26 women in a Mini Cooper related to the product launches

NetApp Decries “Childish” Moves

EMC's Jeremy Burton tweeted this photo of the Minis at NetApp HQ

EMC’s marketing push also included pointed taunts at one key enterprise storage rival, NetApp. Tuesday morning saw a fleet of Mini Cooper cars wrapped in EMC branding parked outside NetApp’s Sunnyvale headquarters, and EMC slogans appeared on the pavement outside at least two offices.

This guerilla marketing tactic was lauded by the EMCers I talked to in New York. They chuckled at the audacious “branding” of NetApp’s offices, passing around photos of the cars on Twitter and internal sites.

NetApp PR director, Roger Villareal, voiced the annoyance expressed by some within that company at the pointed statement made by EMC’s moves. “EMC defaced NetApp HQ sidewalks,” tweeted Villareal, while others speculated about the nature of the marking campaign.

A NetApp contact provided this photo of the sidewalk logo

EMC insiders tell me they used a stencil and power washer to avoid “vandalizing” the NetApp property in a more-permanent manner, but the folks at NetApp were not so sure. One suggested it was “acid etched” and thus a permanent defacement of the property.

Update: Chad Sakac of EMC has unambiguously stated that this was “power-washed with a stencil.” NetApp should be able to easily remove the lettering by pressure-washing the surrounding area.

The presence of branded EMC Mini Cooper cars at NetApp HQ also raised questions. EMC pulled a similar stunt in November of last year, sending in billboard trucks during a major NetApp announcement. The photo of the EMC Minis was first tweeted and uploaded to the YFrog account of none other than Jeremy Burton, suggesting his pride at the action.

Note that these stunts occurred far from EMC’s announcement and would likely only be visible to NetApp employees but for the power of the Internet. Even Twitter, puzzlingly propelled more by NetApp tweets than from EMC, didn’t increase their visibility much. These stunts appear to be designed for the internal consumption of EMC and NetApp employees.

Stephen’s Stance

Another view of the sidewalk lettering

Native Americans of the American plains demonstrated their courage through the “coup” of touching their opponents and escaping unharmed. EMC appears similarly to “count coup” by “tagging” NetApp’s buildings with their logo and message. But what’s the point?

Such stunts are hardly unusual in corporate PR, but uncommon in enterprise storage. It is unlikely that customer buying decisions would be impacted positively by actions like this. In fact, large enterprise customers might be turned off by behavior they view as childish.

The launch of the VNX series, which is obviously inspired by and aimed at NetApp, does mesh with these branding stunts in one way: They show that EMC considers NetApp their main market threat. This must be gratifying to the smaller Sunnyvale company, and should entice the storage teams at HP, Dell, IBM, Oracle, and HDS to step up their games.

You might also want to read Every Company Is Gunning For Someone Else and When Marketing Becomes Pointless

Generating buzz for new products is certainly beneficial to EMC, and Burton’s announcement paid off in a big way in terms of corporate valuation. But mean-spirited taunting, like Twitter fights, will backfire. EMC should focus its newfound marketing muscle on positive messaging, not provoking their smaller competitor.

EMC provided air, hotel, dinner, and some delicious chocolate

Disclaimer: EMC paid for my airfare and hotel accommodations to attend this event. They also took me out for an excellent Sushi dinner and snuck into my hotel room to leave some Lindt chocolates on my bed. EMC and NetApp have both also sponsored Tech Field Day, an event I organize.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | EMC Taunts NetApp: Counting Coup or Poor Sportsmanship?
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

See my companion piece, When To Embargo Blog News (And When Not To), over at Foskett Services

A similar error happened this morning, with NetApp’s Israeli site reportedly scooping the company’s own embargo regarding some product enhancements. This time, I hadn’t even had my briefing when the news hit Storage Newsletter and The Register. This sparked a discussion on Twitter regarding embargoes, and I thought it was time to lay down my own opinion on the matter.

Embargoes Are Useful

Embargoes help us all. I love that I can get inside information ahead of announcements, giving me time to consider the implications of new technology releases. I’m not scoop driven (though I’ve sometimes gotten the scoop) so I’m less interested in timeliness than I am in the depth of insight I can get from a briefing.

So I usually welcome embargoed briefings from companies I cover. I’m always ready to listen to interesting content, and usually ask tough questions during these calls. I want to know why a product decision has been made and what it’s good for, not just that it exists.

But I won’t write about everything. I am not a professional reporter, and I don’t get a bonus for being first or most-read. I use my blog to talk to the world, as well as a mechanism for me to record my own thoughts on topics interesting to me. I’m not trying to maximize pageviews or ad impressions.

So I will often refuse a briefing if I’m not interested in a company’s announcement, and will even cut off a call midway through if it seems like a waste of both my and the company’s time. (I hope they understand the sincerity in that move) I will also sometimes decide not to write about a relevant topic if I can’t find something I want to say about it. I’m not going to parrot everyone else’s coverage just to have said something!

Stephen’s Stance

I’d like to lay out my opinion on embargoes very clearly:

1. I honor embargoes I agree to – Contact me and if I say I won’t publish until a set date and time, you can bet I won’t.
2. Set a date and time – It’s frustrating when companies haven’t decided when an announcement “goes live” or don’t include a time zone.
3. Don’t break your own embargo – This happens all the time. Please don’t hold me to a higher standard than you follow yourself!
4. Embargoes are not NDAs – As spelled out in my other post, don’t confuse these terms. Embargoes are not NDAs and vice versa.
5. Try to be relevant – I write about enterprise and consumer technology, especially data storage. Don’t pitch me on unrelated topics.
6. Don’t pester me – If I overlook your briefing request, go ahead and contact me a second time. But don’t pester me for weeks especially on irrelevant topics. I get about a dozen requests a week and can’t attend to all of them!
7. Give me time and information – Don’t expect me to react positively to a press release or tardy 15 minute briefing. I need time to ask questions and digest your announcement or I’ll just skip it.
8. I will be skeptical – I’m not going to write a summary of your press release. I will interrupt your slides. I will question your numbers. Send me a sample to test and I’ll really test it.

I really respect and enjoy working with many PR professionals, and I have a serious distaste for the “un-professionals” out there. Reach out to me in a positive way and I’ll happily work within your embargo!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | My Stance on Embargoes
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

This got me thinking: The real distinction is between buyers and sellers of products and services. There is a spectrum on the sell side between being an independent and a company man, but we are all vendors. Our credibility comes from who we are, not where we work.

The Business of Consulting

Consulting is a simple and perilous business, and it is governed by a simple formula: Billing rate times billability is gross revenue, everything else is overhead. You keep what’s left over.

Only three elements matter to a consulting business, and all are variable

There are really only two reasons a customer hires a consultant:

1. They need specific skills or knowledge
2. They need focus or manpower

The consulting business rests on these simple elements, and we all try to make the best of them. But at the end of the day, a company that has to make its money selling services has to decide what it wants to be:

• Strategic and professional services (PS) organizations focus on maximizing rate by specializing in a special area of skill and take shorter-term engagements.
• Body shops or outsourcers focus on maximizing billability by providing low-rate manpower in long-term engagements.
• Subcontractors focus on reducing overhead by running lean and outsourcing services to non-employees (typically self-employed “1099″ consultants).

I’m using common jargon here, and most consulting businesses wouldn’t want to be classified into one of these buckets, but the business speaks for itself. For any given consulting shop, ask yourself one question: Which of the three factors in the equation is being maximized?

This simple math deeply affects the life of the consultant. Some decide to go it alone, happily risking a steady income for a higher rate as a 1099 subcontractor. Others choose to stick with the steady life of the outsourcer, accepting a lower pay but knowing where they’ll work each day. Personally, I always gravitated towards the strategic and PS roles because the focus on skills made me feel special.

Who Are You?

Let’s step back to that continuum of supply-siders for a moment. In my field of specialization, enterprise data storage, one can immediately identify some positions along the spectrum:

• PR people relentlessly and (sometimes) creatively push their clients. They are among the most vendor-focused folks out there because that’s their job!
• Marketing communications folks have to be creative to create a product-centric point of view, so you can expect solid vendor-angled messaging from them.
• Product marketing people tend to be much more technical and tend to truly believe in the virtues of their product, since they helped shape it.
• Subject-matter experts in the vendor and reseller community know the plusses and minuses of the products inside and out and love to get into deep technical discussions.
• Analysts present their opinions in a balanced way, but the topics they focus on are driven by the vendors they work with.
• Consultants vary in focus depending on the aims of their company, but tend to be more utilitarian, asking “what does this do for a customer?”

I have great affection for folks in every category on this list. Take Sunshine Mugrabi, for example, a PR pro who has taken that job to a whole new level of relevance with her work for Ocarina Networks. Or Marc Farley, who works somewhere in 3PAR marketing but still manages to crank out hilarious videos and thoughtful commentary. Or Chad Sakac, whose knowledge of VMware and storage makes him credible as much more than “an EMC guy”. And what about storage analyst extraordinaire, Steve Duplessie? This list could go on and on, so please accept my apologies, but I could not possibly include everyone I respect.

What’s the common denominator that makes someone credible? Simply that they rise above their positions to protect and project their personal reputations. Yes, they all work for vendors and they all deliver sales, but their work benefits the community well beyond that.

Credibility

The net is simply that we each build up or tear down our own credibility in life. Consultants, analysts, and pundits do not corner the market, and simply being in one of these fields does not make one especially independent or trustworthy. What matters is what we do with whatever soapbox we have. Do you trust me?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Consulting Is A Perilous Business But Credibility Is What Matters
This post was categorized as Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

IT infrastructure is following consumer technology out of the data center glass house and into the wide world

Dave Hitz over at NetApp poses a very interesting question: What is the ten-year trend in information technology that we are currently building to? He supplies these historical examples:

• 1982-1992: A computer on every (business) desk
• 1990s: Networking all those computers

He then goes on to suggest three ten-year trends that we might currently be living through:

1. Cloud/Outsourced Computing
2. Server Virtualization
3. Flash Memory

Although I agree on the importance of these three to enterprise IT, I don’t think they’ll be seen as the megatrends of this decade in hindsight. I suggest that, more than anything, we are witnessing a wholesale shift from information tied to place/device to information mobility. Cloud computing, server virtualization, and even flash memory are all contributors to this massive trend, along with the user-side trends of the post-PDA mobile phone, 3G data, social web services, and connected home.

What Is Mobility?

The meaning of mobility, to me, is expansive. It doesn’t just refer to taking a copy of your data with you, ubiquitous connectivity, or portable devices. Mobility is a new paradigm of computing.

• Your data no longer “sits” in one place – your data lives out there in the network!
• Your applications no longer “live” on this device or that – your applications live out there in the network!
• Your productivity environment no longer requires a particular piece of hardware – you expect to be productive everywhere on every device!

This doesn’t sound strange to the modern Internet user. We have completely accepted the role of Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Wikipedia and the rest in our personal lives. Just as they did in the early days of the PC, business people have transitioned these concepts into the professional world – witness Salesforce and LinkedIn! In all cases, we have endorsed the idea that certain types of information want to live in the cloud because it makes them better!

Once you’ve used these services, old-fashioned email, contact management, encyclopedias, maps, and the rest seem incredibly limiting. A GPS system that can’t update its maps seems antiquated, and we want it to have real-time traffic data, too. An iPod that needs to be physically connected to a PC to add music or applications is simply unacceptable. Time- and place-shifting technologies like TiVo To Go, over-the-air podcast downloads, and Slingboxes reset our expectations about availability and choice of entertainment, but they are mere symptoms of our changing perceptions. We want mobility of data, applications, and platforms, and we are getting it.

Consider two truly revolutionary platforms: the iPhone and the netbook. In both cases, we knowingly accept limitations in the name of portability, knowing that the cloud will give us what we can’t hold in our hands. These devices are limited in ways that would seem inconceivable just a few years ago: Apple has locked their platform up tighter than any in history, and netbooks are too small, underpowered, and cheap in all senses of the word. But we love them because they get us where we want to go, which is up and out!

Mobility and Enterprise IT

The concept of mobile data, applications, and devices is just as applicable to enterprise IT infrastructure as it is to personal technology. Some enterprise data must be kept close to the vest, especially where privacy laws and litigation concerns are applicable. But there is certainly a vast pool of corporate data that wants to be out working in the field! Setting this data free is the enterprise equivalent of the mobility megatrend!

Cloud computing is hype. Server virtualization is hype. Flash storage is hype. XaaS is hype. Web 2.0 is hype. But once the cloud of hype passes, we will be left with solid technologies to enable mobility and transform corporate computing. Why should corporate email have to punch through your firewall? Why should the intranet be limited to internal or VPN users? Why can’t customers interact with a (limited/controlled) set of your corporate records? Salesforce showed us that roaming users (sales teams) need greater access than most IT staff were ready to build. What if we applied the same ideas to other data types?

Many companies are already doing this. Microsoft offers a variety of internal/external services for their customers through Live (see Connect, for example). Many companies are using mail and productivity applications in the cloud from Google, MessageOne, and Zimbra. Backup and archiving as a service to mobile users is widespread (see Iron Mountain Connected and Mozy). And more and more corporate PR relies on blogs, twitter, and social networking sites. Corporate security and legal types are worried about data “escaping” from the eggshell of control they exert, but this cat is out of the bag. Enterprise IT will never be the same!

It comes down to a single core question that IT folks ought to have been asking themselves all along: What should be held internally and what should be let loose? We already “outsource” many non-core corporate functions. Sometimes we do this for cost reasons. But the most effective outsourcing decision is when a third party will do a better job, offering levels of expertise or service that an internal group could never realistically reach. We already buy enterprise software to leverage outside development (remember, this was not always the case!), so why not also buy enterprise services? Corporate-grade outsourced email, groupware, sales automation, and the like is not only more robust and less expensive than internal systems, they enable a disconnected, mobile workforce.

Today, I Was Angry

I bought a new album from Amazon, but I forgot to sync my iPhone with my laptop, so it was sitting at home when I wanted to listen to it in the car. Then I couldn’t find a colleague’s phone number because he moved to a new company and my address book didn’t automatically update. And I couldn’t review a presentation because I needed a special account to access a corporate document system behind a firewall.

These little accomplishments would have seemed like miracles just a few years ago: I remember the joy I felt ten years ago when I could read a web page offline on my Palm Pilot using AvantGo; I was amazed when I first fired up 802.11a wireless networking and could work anywhere in the office; I was gleeful to be able to take 5 GB of music with me on the train. But all this is past. Today, I want to access my portable data and work anywhere. We are in the midst of a revolution in the mobility and ubiquity of computing.

See my posts on Gestalt IT for similar enterprise IT infrastructure commentary

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Ten-Year Trend: Mobility
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.