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Chuck's Blog

An EMC insider's perspective on information, technology and customer challenges.

The Speculation Game -- IBM Buys TransitiveYesterday

Those of us the industry enjoy speculating what certain moves might mean -- especially acquisitions.

One hot topic is the significance of IBM's recent acquisition of Transitive.  A lot of the eye-candy used the word "virtualization" (at least they didn't use "cloud"!) to position the technology.

No, I think that's a misdirection -- whether intentional or not. 

Transitive's claim to fame is translating instruction sets and providing lightweight runtime environments between processor families. 

For example, when Apple went Intel instead of PowerPC, Transitive's technology was a key part of keeping their customers happy.  I don't know how many people actually used the stuff, but I think it was a key part of the optics, anyway.

Might another processor transition be coming up for IBM? 

Given all the news about Intel's (and AMD's) roadmaps, how much enthusiasm is left for keeping PowerPC competitive?  The stakes just keep going up, and up, and up.

Now, I don't expect them to admit this publicly, but inquiring minds just have to ask the question, don't we?

Let's see, there's the AIX pSeries family (a healthy part of the UNIX market), the iSeries (AS/400 to all you historical types), and even a variant of Linux for pSeries that never quite found its stride.

The End Of Snaps?November 18

EMC today announced a whole slew of updates to our backup, recovery and archiving (BuRA) portfolio.  Thanks to 'Zilla and Scott for covering different aspects -- since there's a LOT to cover here.

Among all the goodies, I noticed that RecoverPoint had a slew of interesting new features.  And, thinking about it a bit more, I guessed that maybe a few people weren't aware of just how cool this replication technology could be.

You can get all the product detail from the web site, if you're interested.  Instead, I'm going to spend my time highlighting a handful of concepts that I find intriguing.

A Lot To Talk About

RecoverPoint is interesting in two ways: what it does, and how it does it.  For me, anyway, it represents some of the most advanced thinking around local and remote replication.

RecoverPoint started as the acquisition of Kaysha in May of 2006.  By September of that year, we had the first version of the EMC-ized version available for sale.

At the time of the acquisition, people tell me Kaysha has something like 50 or so production instances.  If we stay on track, EMC will finish 2008 with something like 1,000 or more.  As f

Decho ... (Decho) ... (Decho)November 17

It's short for "digital echo", hence the feeble attempt at wordplay in the title of this post.

It's also the name of the new EMC company that's going to be focusing on the information services for consumers.

Ostensibly formed through the combination of Mozy and Pi, this is the part of EMC that'll be focused on an entirely new market segment.

But, as always, there's a bit more to the thinking than shows up in the press release.

The Big Idea

We've all seen the IDC numbers about the dizzying amount of information that's being created, and how the rate is picking up ~60% per year.  That's the headline.

But, if you dig a bit deeper, one of IDC's findings is key: the prediction that 70% of this information will be generated by individuals (people like you and me), yet 85% will be entrusted to someone else for safekeeping.

So, if you're going to be in the information infrastructure business (which EMC is), this brings up the rather interesting strategic question of just how EMC plans to directly participate in this wholesale shift in the way information is generated and managed?

And, if you're an EMC watcher like I am, certain parts of this new picture are becoming very visible.

The acquisition of Iomega to play in the consumer space.

The announcement of Atmos for cloud-optimized storage.

And today's announcement of D

Do Tough Economic Times Accelerate Change?November 14

I have to brace myself these days when I read the Wall Street Journal in the morning.  For the last few months, it's been nothing but grim economic news on a historically unprecedented scale.

Way back when, I did an economics degree, and I had to do a bit of macroeconomic modelling.  I laugh now about that whole exercise -- a total waste of time as we've appeared to have lost complete track of what the global economy has morphed into.

It looks like we don't have a clear understanding anymore regarding how the different pieces are structured and interrelate -- making "fixing" the problem essentially a guessing game with trillions of dollars at stake.

But there is hope -- challenging times have this unique way of accelerating structural changes.  Yes, it's very painful stuff for everyone involved, but you eventually get to the other side of it all, and it isn't business as before when you're all done.

One consensus example you hear frequently is the last dot-bomb bust -- the bones of which (cheap fibre and web technology) laid the groundwork for much of what we see today in the web 2.0 world.

So, what structural changes might we see this time around?

The IT Side Of The Equation

You probably are aware that I spend all sorts of times with customers, and I'm not just yammering away the whole time.  I ask questions, probe a bit, and try to get an understanding of what's going on in their world.

It's fun

PowerGard For Storage?November 11

Late last night - dozing with the TV still on - a rather strange ad came over the cable.

Maybe you've seen it?

They were advertising "PowerGard" with a devilishly simply pitch: just plug it in to the wall, and save 10% on your power bill.

That's just too damn easy, I thought.

So I went poking around this morning.

A Bit More

As you can see from this detailed installation guide, it's just that easy. 

The cable ad showed a smiling young mom with her child, plugging the thing in to a convenient wall socket, and sitting back to relax with the big screen TV on, lights blazing and air conditioner pumping away -- confident and assured that she was saving money, and doing her part for the environment.

No need to understand how you're using power. 

No need to change your behaviors. 

Or even think about more efficient appliances.

If you go to the FAQ page, it becomes a bit more clear -- the thing is actually a honkin' capacitor, and it provides surge loads for inductive motors in the household: refrigerator pumps, washing machine motors, etc. 

I wonder what sort of spark it would make if you unplug it without discharging it?

At first glance (I am no double-E, mind you), I would think there are a host of variables that immediately come