Mark's Blog

Episode 88: Momentum Athens, 2009

I’m on my way to Athens for our annual users conference, Momentum. I’m excited.

We’re expecting over a thousand customers and partners from all across the EMEA region, and the CMA team has worked really hard to give a rich, memorable experience.

The theme of the show is, “Inspired by the past, Primed for the future,” which is appropriate in so many ways. Take the location of Athens itself. Not too many places in the world so nicely blend the old and the new. Even more relevant to me, is thinking about how our solutions mirror this theme of building on past successes to give customers even more value and more innovation.

In my keynote at the conference, I will share with our guests why I’m so confident about the future. The CMA solutions for Information Governance, Information Access and a development platform for building case management applications, are all target areas of strength for us.

I look forward to meeting new friends and re-connecting with old colleagues who’ve followed the Documentum brand for years.

Mark…

Episode 87: A big boost in eDiscovery

Late Tuesday we made a significant acquisition to advance our Information Governance strategy by grabbing a hot eDiscovery software vendor called Kazeon Systems. This is a great move for EMC, and specifically for the CMA division, for many reasons. Primarily, with Kazeon, EMC will now be able to deliver in-house, end-to-end eDiscovery and litigation preparedness solutions as part of our EMC SourceOne family.

Here’s a quick primer on Kazeon:  They market a highly scalable, enterprise-grade platform delivered as an appliance. It satisfies the demands of corporations, legal service providers, law firms and consultants for Early Case Assessments, Legal Hold Management, Analysis and Review, and Collection and Culling with an integrated workflow, all in a single platform.  The solution enables organizations to quickly respond to time-sensitive events while simultaneously providing a long-term, proactive eDiscovery solution for future requirements.  It is fast and simple to deploy, and has one of the lowest TCOs in the business – they have demonstrated successfully reducing eDiscovery costs by a factor of 10!

Kazeon has been a partner of ours since 2003, so we know exactly what we’re getting. They’ve enjoyed 100% year-over-year growth, have a great customer list and are highly respected by industry influencers. They deliver proven solutions for a hot, growing market.

I’m excited about adding Kazeon because it helps us extend our position in EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model), which is eDiscovery done right. With Kazeon, we continue to move beyond simple archiving to delivering real value, which is an integrated approach to archiving, compliance and eDiscovery.

Check out the press release for more details.

Mark…

Episode 86: xCP

If you work with EMC Documentum, you are going to start hearing about a new platform called Documentum xCP. xCP stands for Accelerated Composition Platform, and yes, I know there is no “x” in accelerated but Marketing loves to have an x in names and it definitely sounds cooler…

As we have not had a lot of fanfare on xCP (yet), you might think it is just another product suite or bundled product. True, xCP was created by combining our Capture, Output, Content Server, BPM/BPA and other products to form a new platform for developing case-centric applications, but there is much more to it.

There is a lot to explain and talk about here (which I will do over the course of several blog posts) but, as they do in the news business – let me start with the headline.  xCP will fundamentally change HOW people build case/information-centric applications. We believe xCP is so much more efficient in terms of ease of application development and operational cost to use, customers and partners will be able to leverage technology to improve productivity in whole new areas of the business.

In short, I believe one of the single largest untapped technology markets today is helping customers automate case and paper-centric processes. We developed xCP to be the best platform built for this specific purpose, and we’re really excited about it. Expect to hear more in future posts.

 

Mark…

Episode 85: New Words for the 2.0 World

A great part of our culture is how experiences and events somehow lead to new words, and every year the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary is updated with new words that hit our vocabulary. In the 2009 edition, new entries were added, such as vlog (video blog), frenemy (one who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy), and waterboarding (no definition required…). With all of the advances in technology and changes in business it seems like our current dictionary falls short in describing many of our day to day technological experiences. They didn’t ask me for help, but here are a few additions that I’d like to see:

Tweetionary - the dictionary for Twitter abbreviations that enables you to construct a sentence about what you are doing every minute of the day in under 140 characters. Now a bestseller for TV news personalities.

Jobby – money-losing businesses run by independently wealthy people (often a winery, golf store or motorcycle shop) that give the person something to do

Workation - adding a bit of fun to your work trip by staying the weekend quickly followed by the…

Laycation - when your spouse has your vacation so packed with an endless parade of activities that you find you need a vacation from your vacation to finally relax and unwind

Garmenatrix - when you feel compelled to follow your GPS even when you know it is wrong

PHB (Phantom-hip-vibration) – that feeling on your hip when you think your Blackberry has gone off until you notice that you are not even wearing it

BDD (Blackberry deficit disorder) - the twitching that happens during a long dinner when your Blackberry is buzzing like crazy but you are not allowed to check it

Bat Trip - the 6 day 7 city business trip that is so hectic you feel like a bat (you work in a cave all day and fly at night)

Specificiton - what I hope my sales team doesn't do when explaining our product features

Technoflication - taking an otherwise simple function (like turning on your TV) and adding technology to the point where only a SW engineer (or a 12 year old) can make the device function

Flystration - that simple misery that now seems to encompass airline travel

And finally:

Hell (on earth) - LAX airport

 

I’m sure you have others to add; I’d be interested in reading them.

 

Mark…

Episode 84: Rapid Prototyping Big Issues

I am attending the Fortune Brainstorm conference the week in southern California. I like to do at least one "thought provoking" event per year, if the calendar permits. This one is still a bit of a techie conference but at least it goes beyond IT.

 

One thing that really resonated with me was the concept of taking "rapid prototyping" to a policy level. From a software standpoint, I am a huge fan of rapid prototyping: creating a semi-usable version of a new product that customers can touch and feel.

 

As I look at our "big challenges" in areas like energy and healthcare I am amazed that we do not embrace this concept to a greater degree. Clearly big topics like healthcare are national issues that ultimately require universal solutions, but it seems that when we are faced with problems of this magnitude, we should look at how we can do more "rapid prototyping" to prove out key ideas.

 

 

Mark...

Episode 83 - The Freedom and Benefits of Being "Off the Grid"

It is simply amazing to me how connected we have become. Cell phones, I believe, started the sea change in terms of connectivity and access, then came blackberries (anywhere/anytime email) and IM. Now we have Facebook and Twitter which lets us know what hundreds (thousands?) of people are doing every minute of their lives.

 

Here’s the question I’ve got: is all of this connectivity actually making us more productive, more innovatiove, or even making our lives that much better? Or is Facebook just the “CB Radio” of the decade (the under 40 set might even have to look that one up, or shall I say, “Google it”?).  There is no doubt that staying connected with friends is fun and staying connected with work has become almost required in most organizations, but  the question remains, are we any more innovative or productive?

 

It is really hard to chastise your kids for playing too many video games while we’re sitting on a social networking site.  I guess it is at least interacting with others but it is far from being productive or adding any value to society.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I am all in favor of having more fun! What I wonder, however, is how much our “always on” connectivity is hurting how we get our most thoughtful work done. I find that I am most productive and/or come up with the best ideas when I am on an airplane or in the shower.  The common thread is that those are the only two places where I am awake and not connected to the almost constant stream of interruptions from my blackberry. You can see how we have all become slaves to it.  When I give speeches and look out at the audience, there will always be a significant number of folks staring at a glowing screen on their lap.  

 

Now, I will admit that I am the last person who that would give up my blackberry. There is incredible freedom and productivity in not having to be in the office and still remain connected.  I believe however, that it is important for many to have some time “off the grid.”  I was even going to praise the Governor of South Carolina for taking some time off to clear his head, but my example turned out to be a little problematic…

 

Innovation and well thought out ideas, I believe, come for most of us in having a chance to think through a problem, examine it from many angles, and weigh multiple options. I know that many days, the interruptions of the day drive the day itself – the problem becomes when the interruption days become the rule rather than the exception.

 

My simple advice: go off-grid once in a while, especially when you have some hard work or real thinking to do. I believe the only thing that will happen is your overall productivity and innovation will improve.

 

Mark…

 

Episode 82 - CMA and Cloud Layers

In the last episode, I began by offering my thoughts on the multiple layers of cloud computing (Infrastructure, Services, Environments and Applications) and concluded by advising you to develop cloud strategies with these separate layers in mind. I’d like to continue this theme of cloud layers with more thoughts, comments and perspectives, this time relative to the CMA division.

At the Infrastructure layer, CMA is a consumer. We are actively pursuing, and have already begun, VM-enabling all of our Content Management and Archiving software, for both demo and development environments in the cloud. For example, our CenterStage solution is currently being demo’ed in the cloud, and very soon, Documentum xCP will be in the cloud for rapid application development. Within this Infrastructure layer, we will deliver pre-built environments so developers and composers don’t have to worry about installing and getting up to speed with software; they can immediately begin to develop applications, faster than ever before.

 

You’ll see us put production capabilities in both private and public clouds, but right now we’re focused on the development side. We see incredible time-to-results benefits here, and it’s extremely cost effective.

 

On the Services layer, we see cloud services providing richer flexibility as another tier of storage or another set of capabilities. We are working within Atmos, and have delivered REST interface support into Atmos, to demonstrate how you can interact from a content management standpoint with cloud storage. You will have all the content management capabilities and still support the environment you want with storage.

 

The environment and applications layers are interesting to me. Remember, this is about separating applications and information, so as enterprises are looking at Salesforce.com, Google apps, hosted email, and the multitude of various cloud services, they are forced to think about questions like, “how am I interacting with my information?,” “do I want my private, sensitive information stored in these services?,” “how do I migrate my information to another service if necessary?” All important considerations. CMA’s initial foray here was to develop a product for enterprises to leverage Salesforce.com, have the flexibility to store, archive and retain sensitive information in a private environment, while using the cloud-based application as the interface. Our solution, Content Services for Salesforce, does just this. You have all of the CRM services, but the NDAs, contracts, customer contact information and other sensitive content is in our (your) repository, viewable in Salesforce app. Users reap the value of the app without being forced to house all the information in a single repository, for much more flexibility.

 

Think about these three takeaways: 

·        Cloud applications can drive the same information silos as on-premise applications. For good information leverage, protection, and governance every cloud strategy requires an information management strategy.

·        Look at how you might leverage cloud-based storage. There’s great promise here, and we want to help with tools and technologies so the policies you set can be properly leveraged. Putting storage in the cloud is not enough, however, information management is still required.

·        By leveraging an information-centric strategy you can provide secure information management in the most cost-effective way possible while having optimal flexibility in selecting applications.

Clouds have great potential and I believe will be one of the major technology advances of the decade.  Like any new technology, success will come by not dismissing the technology nor by blindly embracing it, but by understanding how the value of a cloud can be exploited while not compromising needs to be made in terms of protecting and managing critical business information.

 

Mark…

Episode 81 - Cloud Layers

If there something the tech industry can agree on, it’s that cloud computing has the potential to deliver efficiencies and flexibility we’ve never seen. I’m a big believer, and incredibly supportive of EMC’s efforts. Largely lost in the love-fest is the stubborn fact that there is no single cloud strategy to consider for your organization, instead think of different layers of the cloud. I suggest four:

Infrastructure – this is right above the hardware. VMware’s vSphere is the best example as well as Amazon Web Services. As with vSphere, its essentially a cloud operating system, with availability, security and performance assurances provided for running applications.

Services – offerings such as EMC Atmos and Amazon S3 are about so much more than just raw capacity. This is a true services layer, with replication, tiering and policy-setting that provides for information storage and distribution.

Environments – here, the whole stack is “cloud-ified,” into a development stack like Windows Azure and Force.com. I’m seeing lots of movement here, as very large customers are allowing their developers to explore and write on these solutions for business-critical applications. This is a valid option for companies.

Applications – as with Microsoft Office Online and Google Apps, the application is the cloud and you dynamically provision. There is clearly interest and significant movement here.

So, what’s the point? Hopefully you’re seeing each layer as very separate, with differing capabilities and potential value. Before launching your “cloud strategy,” think about what you’re trying to get done because most of the answers are out there. Next, I’ll offer some opinions of how the CMA division fits in these cloud layers.

Mark…

Episode 80 – EMC World Orlando 2009

Greetings. Last week, I had the privilege of presenting the second day keynote at our annual EMC World conference in Orlando Florida. About 1500 customers, partners and employees turned out to hear my presentation which, in light of the times, focused on how organizations can “drive ROI” with our solutions. Return on investment? Yes. Return on information? Definitely.

As loyal readers know, the CMA division is focused on wrapping policy around information to maximize our customers’ leverage, so I described our approach to information management across five key areas:

· Information Governance: highlighting the recent launch of EMC SourceOne, and the massive cost savings associated with the cross-application archiving infrastructure family .

· Information-centric Applications: focusing on the Documentum xCelerated Composition Platform (xCP) for rapidly building composite applications. We see xCP as the platform of the future; the emphasis shifts to “configuration” not “customization,” so integration time, solution costs and operating costs for building largely case management-based applications will be cut in half.

· Information Connectivity: in promoting virtual information management, I stressed the need for organizations to take a more customer-centric approach to information. I’ve blogged on this topic a few times.

· Information Access: I enjoyed showing the productivity enhancements we provide by enabling customers to access their information their way, via Explorer, Outlook, SharePoint, TaskSpace, CenterStage, or other mediums. This benefit is a clear differentiator for CMA.

· Information and Infrastructure:  The single most commonly-used word at EMC World was “cloud,” so I described my vision of cloud “layers” and the relevance for CMA. From our integration and support for VMware’s vSphere to our demonstration of CenterStage on the Amazon EC2 web service to our intent of delivering a developers edition on Documentum xCP for trial and development, there’s momentum in our cloud strategy, and the interest from conference attendees was palpable.

I closed by demonstrating how our focus on Compliance, Composition, Customer-centricity, Collaboration and the Cloud delivers a comprehensive strategy to accelerate business with a quick and measureable payback.

It rained the entire time in Orlando, but the weather in no way damped the enthusiasm from those who took time from their busy schedules to learn, connect and interact with us. Thanks to all who made the trip, and a special thanks to everyone at EMC who put together a fantastic experience.

A .pdf of the presentation is available for download.

Download EMCWorld__DD2

Mark…

Episode 79 - Bad Math

I will admit it. I am one of a minority of people in the world who really loves math. To me, it is a lot like programming language but even more of “pure.” If you can describe something in an equation, you get a level of certainty that is just not possible in any other language – or so it may seem…

 

After much review, it is my conclusion that the present economic crisis, the worst in over 70 years, was caused primarily by a single bad math equation. Hard to believe? Read on.

 

It is hard to phantom just how math could cause such a catastrophe but, when you think about it, bad math often causes trouble. Remember all of those movies about bridges from high school showing what happens when designers didn’t calculate resonant frequencies properly. How about the structural collapses that happened when someone miscalculated the possible force on a structure?

 

OK, suffice to say that the problem is almost never really the “math” itself, but how it is applied to reach a conclusion. Just like guns don’t kill people, math doesn’t either. Be warned, however, bad math is just as dangerous in the wrong hands as a loaded gun. The latest economic times should serve as a testament to that statement.

 

By now, you may be a bit confused so let me give you some context. First, the best article describing what I am talking about (by a real writer with a lot more detail) is from a recent Wired Magazine by Felix Salmon - http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant. Check it out if you need more insight, then come back here….

 

Simply put, when companies looked to buy collateralized debt obligations (CDO’s), or insure mortgages, or rate investments, they all wanted to have a formula to evaluate risk and determine value. I know I would love a formula that would just tell me if a new product will be successful but I also know enough to know that no such thing exists.

 

Unfortunately, everyone glommed on to a particular formula, and that was just plain wrong. You can see the results. In this case, the formula failed to account for what could and would happen if the price of housing was to fall nationally.

 

So, in addition to offering interesting insight on the present situation, there is tremendous applicability to what all of us do every day when we look at data and information, and try to turn it into insight and knowledge for ourselves and our organizations.

 

It is the role of any (good) manager to look beyond conclusions or the results coming from some analysis or formula and understand the assumptions and basis.

 

The Rules for me are simple:

§  Understand and validate the source of all data and information

§  Understand and validate the ASSUMPTIONS used to create the conclusions or results

§  Understand and validate the rationale and reasoning behind any formula used to create an assessment or design assumption

 

There will always be bad data out there. In fact, the web is a shining example of that. There will also be bad math. The problem arises when managers blindly follow conclusions based on data that they haven’t validated and formulas that they don’t understand.

 

Mark...