Our People: Mark's Blog

Episode 14: Tape is Dead - Long Live Tape

Tape is dead – long live tape.

So, how many times do we hear bold proclamations?  They are a part of daily life.

Great predictions are made, but usually they get over-hyped (that’s the job of marketing right?) and, often, people don’t see things happening as quickly as predicted and then, logically, start to question the original premise.

It is easy to identify the big trends after the fact. Predictions like the car will replace the horse, we will pay our bills online and stop mailing checks, or we will watch the TV we want “on demand” vs. the network’s schedules. These all seem completely logical now but were all, at some time, just “wild ideas.”  The right ideas will generate a disruption -but, they almost always take longer than people think.

Sometimes bold predications don’t work out. We are not all traveling around in flying cars or living on the moon. The secret, obviously, is sorting out the real trends from the hype and understanding that even mega-trends do not happen overnight.

Timing is everything.

The other problem is that things don’t really change that often. Computing has “era’s” if you will – these can last many years and even decades. Imagine driving down a long, long straight road. It can be straight for years then, all of a sudden, a curve.

Missing trends (or curves in the road), simply, is how most (if not all) technology companies fail – they look at data and ignore the information/knowledge and then, miss a trend. Even in technology, the roads are pretty straight. Major trends tend to last at least a decade, which is plenty of time for everyone to get comfortable. Each day we wake up and assume the road will be straight, just like it was yesterday. The secret is predicting the curves.

For example, tape backup, I believe, is about to hit a curve.

The curve has been coming for a while based on a number of technologies like low cost disk, lower cost bandwidth, backup-to-disk, CDP (continuous data protection) and snapshot technologies. Now I believe that curve is going to make a hard tight turn based on two factors. Data de-duplication (or de-dupe) technology and Compliance (customer driven).

Data de-duplication is, in many ways, a simple concept. The simple premise is that you only need to backup one copy of any common piece of data. Doing it is the tougher problem. Good de-dupe systems can detect “duplication” at the file level or even within files. For example, most of us reuse tons of Power Point files but only make slight changes. Good de-dup (as it is called) technology can compress backup data (to disk) at 25:1 or better on incidentals and up to 500:1 overall – this is big. The technology does not work with tapes as reconstructing any file needs to use “segments” that may be located “far away” from each other on the media. This is no issue for a disk drive but essentially impossible to do on tape.

Shazam! With data de-duplication, disk can actually be lower cost than tape!

Compliance sits on the customer (pull side) of the disruptive spectrum. Companies are now faced with big costs for loosing or not being able to recover data. Not a couple bucks either, but big money, millions. Let’s face it - these are not tape’s strong points either. Coupled with the cost savings now possible with RDE, the argument for a curve in the road is compelling.

So there you have it – we announced our planned acquisition of Avamar yesterday and the reason we chose to move now is that the curve is coming, and I believe that it is just over the next hill.

Avamar offers the absolute best data de-duplication technology on the market today. It is capable of providing de-duplication both at the edge (to avoid sending too much data of the network to centralized backup stores) and at the core. It is simple and complete in that you don’t have to graft on your legacy backup software, yet it can still work in conjunction with tape-oriented backup systems. Just install it and use it. For those belt and suspenders types, you can still use your legacy tape backup SW to the backup the Avamar Data Vault.

Just like VMware, or Smarts, or Documentum, Avamar is on the leading edge of a trend in a huge market. The data protection/recovery market is about to change and we are going to lead the way.

So far, I think we have been a pretty good oracle (oops, I guess that word is taken) of technology trends. I think many folks had resigned themselves to backup being a static market that is just a chore within IT. That is not the case. There are sometimes some long straight roads but watch out for curves…

Mark…

Episode 8: What EMC will buy next

I always wanted to do that – write one of those attention-grabbing headlines that have become permanent fixtures in our daily lives. The one clear thing about news (that people want to read) is that “ordinary” just doesn’t work. So often we use great words like “crisis” and “revolutionary” to describe ordinary things. The problem is, what do you call something truly revolutionary when the word is also being used to describe the next “Desperate Housewives” season?

I gave a keynote Thursday at the Silicon Valley Summit, talking about M&A, deals, and strategy. As I looked back at the deals we have done to transform the company it truly seems remarkable. We have invested almost $7B, entered new markets, bought some of the most revolutionary, and I do mean revolutionary, technology in IT, and yielded impressive business results. Customers get it and are excited. We are excited!

By far, the most frequently asked question of me is “so, what are you going to buy next?” I get it from the press, the analysts, investors, folks from EMC, friends, neighbors, and even my daughter. In business conversations, the question usually comes at the very end and is just thrown in casually (like we’ll just slip that one in).

My answer is usually a “Disney” analogy -“Do you think Disney would announce where the next DisneyWorld is going to be located before they bought the land?”

OK, you probably guessed it, I am not going to tell you what we are going to buy next (Joe and the Board breathe a big sigh of relief here), but I am going to give you a much more valuable piece of information. I am going to tell you WHY we buy companies. There are and will be exceptions but, in general:

1. We buy great and disruptive technologies
2. from companies with great people that share our drive and vision
3. that fit with our core vision and strategy and products
4. that expand our available market
5. and increase our relevancy to our customers

For years folks have been talking about EMC being a “storage” company or becoming a “software” company. People are always trying to find a one word label for things. If we do anything that falls outside the current definition of “storage,” folks would say that they don’t understand our strategy “your ‘box’ is storage – you’re not coloring within the lines.”

Actually, we are coloring within the lines; you just need to know what we are drawing.

OK, if you must have one word – I would call us an “Information” company. If I am allowed 4 words – we are becoming an Information-centric IT company. Hey- the tagline still works perfectly - we are “Where Information Lives!”

In a simple frame-work, I like to explain it this way.

- What we are = “Where Information Lives”

- What we are creating = The “Information Infrastructure”

Uh oh – what happened to ILM (Information Lifecycle Management)? We spent tons on money on all of those signs – do we have to write it off? Where did it go? Fact is - It is still front and center.

- Our Customers’ Strategy = Information Lifecycle Management

Fact is - ILM is still the most important capability we can deliver to our customers!

So while I will admit that I do watch an occasional Desperate Housewives episode (OK - I have a season pass on my Tivo), I am not ready to use the “revolutionary” word there yet. I would like to think EMC, however, is building some truly revolutionary solutions for our customers’ current and next generation IT needs.

Hopefully this quick note gives you some insight into what we are all about. I mentioned previously that I would discuss my vision for IT and datacenters of the future, a concept I call “Flat IT.” I promise that I will start on that topic within a couple of weeks – Flat IT is the basis for “how” I believe IT will evolve, which is another key piece of the equation.

Take Care!

Mark…