Case Study: Social Media at EMC World

Watch live video from The Cube LIVE from EMC World 2010 on Justin.tv
Watch this social media panel from the show, for example. John Troyer and Len Devanna, two of the more genuinely interesting and socially-credible people I know, spend much of the discussion talking about the benefits of social media to their companies (VMware and EMC, respectively). It’s a bit disturbing, really, to hear just how successful these companies are at influencing opinion, fostering loyalty, and driving sales by leveraging social media. These guys are not “salesy”, yet their companies are benefiting in dozens of ways from their efforts.

Social media was everywhere at EMC World. Product announcements and keynotes were covered and discussed live on Twitter, including by yours truly. The event also generated dozens of blog posts, hours of video, and even a tie-in promotion leveraging Foursquare! Again, I was involved in this frenzy, posting a video interview and blog entries on Iomega, STEC, EMC, and the VPLEX. None of this would have happened if EMC hadn’t consciously reached out and included social media in their event planning.

Considering all this, it is surprising that social media was probably not a major element of the overall EMC World budget. I am certain that the blogger lounge (complete with a barista) cost tens of thousands of dollars, yet this is insignificant compared to the show’s other costs – hiring Counting Crows, renting the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (the largest and most expensive space in New England), and setting up a huge show floor, complete with a dozen motor coaches. Indeed, most of the attendees (including the bloggers) even paid an entry fee and travel costs to attend the show. As I point out in the video, EMC’s budget for this one event could pay for all social media efforts the company will make for the next hundred years!

The Next Wave

Although social media is making a huge impact on companies like EMC (and they are investing huge amounts of time and money to make this happen), it may be surprising to learn that I’m not worried about their impact. Social media can’t be taken over by corporations any more than the Internet itself can. Although they will certainly try to bend public opinion to their way of seeing things, the Internet (thankfully) remains too fluid to contain.

Let’s say (and this isn’t far from the truth, to hear some tell it) EMC, VMware, and Cisco hired every independent enterprise storage, virtualization, and network blogger, pundit, and gadfly, using social media as the ultimate recruiting pool. Each of these folks would now have to spend some or all of their time focusing on the technologies and experiences that relate to their day jobs. This opens opportunities for others to step up and fill the niches they once claimed – nature abhors a vacuum, after all.

We are already seeing this happen. Although four Tech Field Day and Gestalt IT community members have now joined related companies (Scott, Ed, Simon, and Rich), they remain credible contributors to the enterprise IT community. We still have plenty of unaffiliated folks as well, with new ones added all the time. Take a look at the contributions of people like Ilja Coolen, Craig Stewart, Matt Davis, Edward Aractingi, Dan Hughes, and so many others. Each gets far less readership and attention than he deserves, and each will undoubtedly step up and claim a spot in the IT community. Social media is designed to allow people to say what they have and democratic enough to bring them attention.

“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again*.”

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Relax: The Corporate World Can’t Co-Opt Social Media
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

HP invited bloggers to Colorado to show off their storage offerings at Tech Day 2009

Well that was interesting! I spent Monday and Tuesday with a dozen bloggers in Colorado Springs learning about HP’s key StorageWorks products from the executives and engineers of that storied company. Throughout the event, we listened, asked tough questions, and tweeted incessantly. HP Tech Day generated an avalanche of publicity for the company, including press articles and cries of FUD and misdirection.

Here is the truth: HP and Ivy did a darn fine job of putting together a set of sessions to tell us what they have. They presented folks who really knew their stuff, warts and all. They invited a variety of independent voices and let us ask and say anything we wanted with no expectations, let alone an NDA. This was a stellar event, and every other IT company should be asking why they didn’t do it first.

Won’t Be Fooled

But what was HP Tech Day really all about? Did they brainwash us into thinking the EVA was exciting? Did HP hoodwink and misdirect us from noticing the gaps and overlaps in their product line? Were we dazzled enough to no longer question their storage strategy? Of course not! Robin Harris has seen it all before. Rich Brambley can dissect a presentation with the best of them. Nigel Poulton questions everything he sees. This was not a love-fest, and there were some seriously uncomfortable moments for the HP crew.

We were all savvy enough to know what the score was: HP (and especially their StorageWorks product line) has never received much press or blogger attention. They invited us in to spread the word about their products and get blog exposure. And it worked! The storage Twitter-sphere was dominated with #HPTechDay postings for days, and attendees did indeed blog about the stuff they saw. It was a success from HP’s perspective, and now that we know more about their products we will likely cover them in the future.

I personally never blogged much about HP products. I compared them to Ford, called one product an all-time cool flop, and covered their acquisition of LeftHand and Ibrix, but that’s about it. I didn’t even notice that they had started selling LSI’s StoreAge-based virtualization platform, and didn’t know enough about their other product releases over the last two years to mention them. If it hadn’t been for Calvin Zito and the HP Tech Day, I probably wouldn’t mention them in the future, either. They just weren’t on my radar.

We Were Educated

This has changed as a result of Tech Day. I now know that EVA is still pretty much what I thought it was but that it is fairly simple to configure. I now know that HP has two lines of deduplication appliances, and that one is homegrown. I now know that HP develops and sells a FC SAN virtualization platform based on the LSI/StoreAge product. This was great product exposure for HP: Even though I still don’t think I’ll focus on these offerings, at least I now know that they exist.

We also saw some more interesting content: HP plans to leverage their excellent ProLiant server and blade technology to underpin a line of commodity-based storage and consolidated virtualization offerings. This is exciting stuff, and builds on HP’s base and their recent acquisitions. The most interesting concept I saw was a combination of a blade chassis and ultra-dense storage system with VMware ESX, LeftHand, Ibrix, and HP’s management software. They definitely plan to challenge Cisco/EMC and IBM in this market.

But the best part of the event was the people of HP. The company was smart enough to bring in the techies rather than executive marketing droids. They gave us straight and honest answers about their product capabilities and their place within the company, sometimes to the chagrin of others in the room. We saw conflicting definitions, product line overlaps, internal competition, and got a feel for the realities of this massive company. Every company is like this, but most would never admit what we already know. By not showering us with slick FUD, HP won our respect in a way that I would not have thought possible.

Colorado Take-Away

The event was great. Every other IT company should wise up and do the same. But I bet they won’t have the nerve to do it as openly, and I expect HP will be more careful next time too. As for HP’s products, let me lay out my honest opinion:

1. LeftHand was a bargain. HP could replace their entire sub-XP block storage product line with LeftHand variants based on commodity Intel hardware. I think they should.
2. Ibrix is too new to judge, but will likely take a seat next to LeftHand in a unified commodity-based scale-out SAN/NAS platform.
3. I hope HP hasn’t lost focus on their excellent Hitachi-based XP line, since it’s the only challenger they have to EMC Symmetrix at the high end of the market.
4. HP’s excellent server and blade hardware should be leveraged throughout the company and oddball hardware should be curtailed.
5. HP has an interesting lineup of Windows Storage Server and Windows Home Server hardware aimed at the low-end SOHO and SMB market. I’m not a Windows hater, but wouldn’t it be cool to have a super-low-end LeftHand variant there too?
6. I wonder if HP’s home-grown in-line deduplication (the D2D line) could replace the Sepaton-sourced post-process VLS line or vice-versa if an acquisition of that company happens.
7. I don’t “get” SVSP, the LSI/StoreAge SAN virtualization platform. It’s nice and it seems to work, but why introduce a FC SAN virtualization platform at this point? Maybe it sells when integrated with EVA, but not as a standalone product.
8. Where are all the storage arrays that use 2.5″ disk drives that HP talked about over the last few years? And where are the flash solid state drives?
9. They were like deer in the headlights with no story when I asked about sub-LUN automated tiered storage since even full-LUN automation has not yet been released. Might EMC get there first?
10. As for the absence of DCB and FCoE, HP seems to think that Virtual Connect and Flex-10 are good enough for now. HP will OEM a CNA soon and might possibly consider the Cisco Nexus 4000. Maybe. They had better have a more-convincing story when this stuff takes off next year!
11. Most importantly, where is the cloud strategy? I applaud HP for not overusing the current buzzword, but it almost seems like they are avoiding the topic entirely.

I am left thinking that HP is like a boxed puzzle. All of the pieces are there, but they haven’t been put into place yet. Let’s hope Dave Donatelli and his crew can help them work it out when he takes his post as czar of servers, networking, and storage next year. For now, I’ve gained a lot of respect for the people of HP and a pile of knowledge about their storage products. And HP has gained my attention.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | The Truth About HP’s Tech Day
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Gestalt IT, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Gestalt IT is a new publication for the best independent IT commentary

Times are changing in the tech media world, with paper publications disappearing quickly and new online ventures springing up to take their place. For a long time, it seemed that individual blogging and RSS might become the next big thing in DIY technical media. But, frankly, it’s not working out. Even after years of publicity and solid technical capability, RSS and feed readers just aren’t attracting much of an audience. A recent study showed that just 11% of Internet users use RSS feeds at all!

The majority of my blog traffic comes from Google searches – more than 2/3 in fact! But my best traffic (meaning those that stay and read a few pages and perhaps even comment) come as referrals from articles I’ve written in respected online publications. These engaged readers, my core peer group, are why I blog, and what I am hoping for! But even for-profit web sites are feeling a squeeze. No one can figure out how to monetize enterprise IT topics , paper publications are failing, and we in the industry risk losing our best source of engagement PR. This has to change!

Therefore, a core group of independent enterprise IT bloggers have come together to combine our writing into a mega blog or web magazine focused on enterprise IT infrastructure topics like virtualization, networking, and storage: Gestalt IT. The idea is that the best content from the best enterprise IT folks is brought together in one place. See the Gestalt IT FAQ for more information.

I am pleased to announce that we already have seven fine writers for Gestalt IT:

• Rich Brambley - VM /ETC
• Chris Evans – The Storage Architect
• Stephen Foskett – Me!
• Martin Glassborow - StorageBod
• Joerg Hallbauer – Joerg’s Blog
• Devang Panchigar - StorageNerve
• Ed Saipetch - Breathing Data

My blog is changing, too:

• From now on, most of my enterprise IT blog posts will be available both here and at Gestalt IT.
• I will be writing exclusive pieces for Gestalt IT as well, and linking to them from here. Check out my recent posts on the flexible nature of IT equipment pricing and the TechTarget Storage Product of the Year awards, for example.
• Many of my subscribers have complained that they don’t care about some of the non-IT things I write about (Apple computers, iPhones, blogging, etc) and they would be better served by subscribing to Gestalt IT’s feeds.
• I intend to ramp up my posting in other areas in the coming months.

Note that some things will not change. I will still be speaking and writing for TechTarget and other fine publications. Gestalt IT is simply another outlet for use independent writers to use. If you’d like to be involved, drop me a note. There’s always room for more writers!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Introducing Gestalt IT, a New Web Magazine For Enterprise IT Infrastructure Commentary
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.