Mark's Blog

Episode 66: So Much Change

After 4 days, I am leaving Las Vegas. I am wiped out. It was a great EMCworld but it seems that my “Vegas endurance” level is now closer to 3 days. I guess that’s what happens when you get old!

Sometimes it is hard to appreciate how much change can happen so quickly. EMCworld. with over 9000 people attending, has turned into a major event. What I really like about this event is that it is all about going deep on the technology and keeping the fluff to a minimum (at least during the day).

If you missed my talk at EMCworld – no problem – it is on YouTube if you want to see it. I spoke a great deal about collaboration. It is amazing to see how we are now leveraging technology to work together but it was clear from talking to customers that the key is going to not be any single technology but the flexibility individuals with to “mash up” their own personal collaboration suites.

Technically, achieving this is going to be very much about separating information from applications. Yes, you heard right, we need to separate our information from our applications. Let me give you a simple example. You have a document and you would like to have that document used in a variety of ways. You may want to edit it on your laptop but you would also like to edit it from a web app like Google apps and maybe even on your balackberry. You would like to push it out to a few co-workers for review and you need to share it with an external supplier.

If that document is attached to a specific application then you can work with it one way through one application. If however, it is available as a “web service” than almost anything is possible. XML-based content services are what will enable this flexibility and value. The power and flexibility of our content can truly be unleashed once it can be made available to any possible application.

We are doing some great things to help our customers leverage the widest variety of applications with content. From collaboration tools that now can integrate blogs and wikkis to XML databases that can dynamically build and index content, the change in how we can leverage information is now upon us.

Mark…

 

 

Episode 65:Zero-Wait Time

I went to check my calendar on my Blackberry the other day and actually got the hour glass! I started to freak out. Had the one appliance that I actually relied on for zero-wait time gotten too complicated? As it turns out, I had loaded some application that was soaking up the processor. So much for that app – I wiped it out!

I need at least one real-time device!

Even with all of the hardware advances, I am blown away by how long I have to wait to do basic things. When I arrive at a hotel and want to sync my email on my laptop, I can easily figure 20-30 minutes to boot, find cables or setup WiFi, configure and pay for Internet, configure and login to VPN, and then sync email. Most of the time, I don’t even bother anymore.

This is still way too hard.  

Talk about what drives value - I will even sit in my office and read my email on my Blackberry because the PC is too slow! I also made the mistake of loading a new version of PowerPoint on my existing laptop (it is only 18-months old). Now I can go get coffee while my files open. After I looked at all of the new features, I went back to my old version because I was so much more productive not waiting 10 seconds for every action!

What scares me is that we are going backwards!

We all like new features. Given the technology advances, I feel we should be able to get new features while not having to actually wait longer in the process. Even my new HDTiVo has a 2- or 3-second longer wait-time to switch between regular and recorded TV. I am not sure the picture quality is worth it.

As far as I am concerned, I have about all the features I can take in my email system and presentation tools – except performance!

Even my new car now takes longer to ‘boot’. There is no reason for this and I think that real-time responsiveness could wind up becoming the biggest new feature around.

Mark…

Episode 64: The Tech Economy – This Time Around

“May we live in interesting times.” I always found this old proverb to be the mantra for the technology industry. It is always interesting, changing and never boring. 

Since the dot-com meltdown, it seems as if every macro-economic woe has a few analysts making dire predictions for technology growth. I will tell you though that, in my opinion, the dot-com bust was a very unique situation and one that will not likely happen again. All industries can be impacted based on macro-economic growth. It’s a simple reality. The times have changed, however, and much of the technology industry is on a new curve.

Back in the now infamous dot-com era, there was a unique dynamic to technology acquisition. Companies (mostly startups and new “Internet” divisions of larger companies) had these amazing business plans that, if they were correct, would require massive amounts of compute, storage and software. Consumption of IT in advance of actual growth became an imperative as growth was supposedly coming so fast that it would be impossible to build capacity once the growth curve hit. The cash in the system made the acquisition part of the plan easy. In short, consumption was inordinately ahead of any real demand. 

As the growth failed to materialize, we were faced with significant overcapacity and the tech market “spiked.” This, of course, was very ugly. If you want to see this spike in detail you can look at the chart of total storage capacity growth over time. It is amazing how consistent this growth has been (in the area of 60% per year) over time. The funny thing is that the growth actually ramped like never before in the late 90s, 2000 and part of 2001 and then only to crash for the two years following as the excess capacity was absorbed.

As people ‘debate’ if we are in a recession or not, I continue to hear all sorts of predictions about the potential impact to the technology industry. While we are tied to macro-economics, for most technology companies this is not even close to what we had to deal with in 2001/2002.

IT capacity today is acquired when it is needed. Software is acquired when there is a definitive ROI (Return on Investment). In short, IT is a business-critical and key productivity asset for companies to maintain competitiveness. New technologies such as virtualization are helping to reduce costs by increasing efficiency. Technology that can help companies be more competitive, reduce costs, and/or reduce business risks is not something that is discretionary. It is even more of an imperative today.

It is funny that when disasters occur, people tend to take action and, in general, there is enough change along with ‘memories’ so that the likelihood of the same disaster happening again is usually pretty low. While we can always learn from the past, it can only serve as a guide to what the future will bring. In this case, we are not dealing with any overcapacity in IT, and it is more critical than ever for companies to seek improved efficiencies, productivity gains and risk reductions.

Mark…

Episode 63: At Number 1 - Information Compliance

 

Time has sure flown by. I can’t believe that it has been two months since my last post. I guess that is bound to happen sometimes. For me, blogging is like exercise. When I get in the groove it is easy but when I stop for a week, I seem to just get into a new groove. OK – on to the topic at hand.

I want to close (finally) on what I believe is the biggest information-centric IT trend for 2008 and that is Information Compliance.  

It is actually quite amazing that this market has taken so long to develop but I think I understand the reason. IT really evolved in very much a bi-polar way. By that, I mean that we had IT come together from two endpoint positions. On one side we grew IT around big corporate systems running OLTP, ERP and such. Typically, these systems are managed in a way that both contemplate and address Information security and protection. While not always perfect, these systems hold information that everyone understand was important, so the systems we designed with Information Compliance in mind.

Over this same period, we started to work and collaborate and do business in whole new ways. Email, chat, the use of the web and other such capabilities moved from interesting tools to business critical systems. The issue, of course, was that most of these applications never contemplated the fact that they would manage such critical information. 

Take a simple example of sending an email to a broker to buy or sell some stock. That is, by most legal definitions, a binding contract. It is also private and confidential. Communications like this are booming simply because it is so efficient and simple. Take an industry like healthcare. Imagine the efficiencies that we could bring to the system if people could communicate more easily with their doctors.

In fact, companies have realized, often in abrupt matter that Information Compliance represents both a risk and an opportunity. On the risk side, all of those emails, IM’s, and file shares represent a potential risk if confidential information is lost or if the information is not managed properly. On the flip side, as we develop more robust ways to protect and secure information, companies and individuals will be able to leverage more of the latest technologies for business critical and confidential needs. 

Information Compliance, by my definition, is an umbrella term that entails that we need to be able to secure protect information both “at rest” and “in motion.” We also must be able to track and audit information and understand the “history.” We must be able to insure both the authenticity and privacy of information. We must be able to control the “rights” that we want to give to individuals relative to a pice of information. We must have business rules and retention policies that insure that we have retained all of the necessary information. Finally, we must be able to “discover” information that may exist are hundreds of applications, many thousands of people, and many billions of objects pertaining to a particular topics.

As a whole, this is what information compliance is all about. 

For many companies, putting more information compliance capabilities in place will be simply about reducing risk. Over time, this capability will let us do more with our information. We will be able to share it in more secure ways and interact with more efficiency and less bureaucracy.

Mark….