EMC World

EMC’s Tough Road to the Post-Infrastructure Future

May 10, 2010 by Stephen 1 Comment

EMC is the 800 lb gorilla of the enterprise storage industry, but the company has much bigger plans. Although CEO Joe Tucci kicked off his keynote by claiming “We are an infrastructure company and proud of it,” EMC’s ambitions must go way beyond IT infrastructure. Each acquisition and strategy announcement is an attempt by EMC adapt to a fundamentally-transformed enterprise IT world.

Lessons From the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo Prague 2009

May 19, 2009 by Stephen Leave a Comment

What is the cloud? What will become of it? I spent May 17 and 18 in Prague at the Sys-Con Cloud Computing Conference and Expo exploring these questions with some of the smartest cloud-focused folks in Europe. The consensus: The IT world is changing and remote managed services are a big part of it. Another discovery: […]

EMC About To Take Us To Maui…

November 7, 2008 by Stephen 1 Comment

Update: Maui is now Atmos! See my post, EMC Atmos Versus VMware VDC-OS: Will The Real Cloud Strategy Please Stand Up? Remember all the talk about a year ago about EMC’s mysterious new storage product, code-name “Maui”? It was teased and pulled by Storagezilla, and rumored by one and all… Well, it wasn’t at EMC World, […]

Jargon Watch: EMC 3D = Data Deduplication

May 21, 2008 by Stephen 1 Comment

Watching the announcements coming out of EMC World today, one bit of jargon stuck out at me: The EMC bloggers are starting to refer to “data deduplication” as “3D”. I had never heard this terminology before yesterday, but the EMCers are all using it, so it must be a popular term inside that company. So […]

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GPS Time Rollover Failures Keep Happening (But They’re Almost Done)

This is week “1111111111” in the GPS system. Tomorrow morning it will roll over to week “0000000000”. How well will various systems handle this change? Not well, judging by what we’ve seen so far!

The 2018 iPad Pro is a Beast!

The third-generation iPad Pro is a great machine but also a bellwether of change at Apple. It will be very hard for the rest of the mobile and client computing industry to keep up with this kind of progress!

Ten Terrible Apple Products

June 14, 2012

I’m often accused of being an Apple fanboy. While it’s true that I love my vast selection of fruity products from Cupertino, I’m not blind when the company makes mistakes. In fact, I think Apple’s mistakes are as enlightening as their successes: They reveal a company that is fallible, sometimes learning but often allowing the junk to rot far longer than other companies would.

Donate Your Swag to School Kids In Need

July 28, 2010

Trade shows are a veritable swag-fest, some with great loot and some with junk. I’ve been critical of the booth babe and chotchkie phenomenon, but my friend Kevin Houston has a better suggestion: Donate your (useful) swag like backpacks and pens to school kids in need.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Software-Defined Future

November 29, 2012

The Software-Defined Datacenter is a great concept, but it just won’t work. The big enterprise companies will never allow VMware (and daddy EMC) to commoditize them out of existence, so useful implementations will be rarer than ruby slippers. The best we can hope for is point enhancements to enable greater virtual machine mobility through SDN and improved storage integration.

New England Takes On Seattle To Determine Who’s Number 2 … In Tech!

January 19, 2015

Although New England ought to win that big football game, they’re losing when it comes to innovation and technology. Seattle and Austin are gaining rapidly, and Massachusetts has itself to blame thanks to oppressive non-compete clauses and the threat of litigation. As for Tech Field Day, look for us to return to Silicon Valley for seven of our nine full events in 2015. At least now you know why!

My Advice For New Business Travelers: Get The Credit Cards!

March 20, 2014

New business travelers first should sign up for a preferred hotel and airline program and focus their travel dollars there. Then, they should get a Chase Sapphire card or American Express Platinum card to earn points on travel and transfer those points to the hotel or airline program for redemption. Finally, they should consider getting the co-branded credit card for their hotel chain and airline of choice.

The Four Horsemen of Storage System Performance: The Rule of Spindles

August 25, 2010

Why do some data storage solutions perform better than others? Mechanical performance, RAM caching, I/O capacity, and the intelligence of the system all have a part to play. Today we examine the rule of spindles: Adding more disk spindles is generally more effective than using faster spindles.

Nimble Storage Rolls Out an All-Flash Array

February 24, 2016

It took longer than I expected for Nimble Storage to introduce an all-flash array, but their AF7000 looks to be a very credible offering. They’re targeting XtremIO and Pure with their marketing, but I expect HP, Dell, and especially NetApp to be cross-shopped more frequently. In that fight, I expect the Nimble AF7000 to be very attractive indeed!

My Visit to Bletchley Park

August 3, 2012

Bletchley Park is much more than a museum. For those interested in the history of computing, like me, or World War II buffs, it’s a must-see. The reconstructed Bombe and Colossus computer are truly breathtaking, and I find myself drawn to the stories of codebreaking that took place here. I highly recommend a visit!