Mark's Blog

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...

 

 

Episode 78 – Business Efficiency of Good E-mail Management

“The bane of my existence” loosely defined means the person or thing is “a constant irritant or source of misery.”  In many ways, I think e-mail must be the bane of IT and of many users. The amount of corporate e-mail messages sent and received per person, per day is just insane, growing from 142 in 2007 to an estimated 199 in 2010. On average then, organizations with 10,000 mailboxes handle 2 million e-mails per day, so when factoring in message length and attachments (39% of all corporate e-mail), e-mail management can be a costly, painful requirement for doing business. 

I once did a simple calculation of the corporate productivity that was lost in our organization each time an e-mail was sent to “ALL.”  If it takes, on average, just 30 seconds for each person in a 50,000 person company to open, glance through and then delete or file an e-mail, each unwanted email effectively would cost the company roughly 416 hours of labor costs! Pretty amazing.

With all of this “accumulation” of e-mail content, asking individuals to take the time to manage all of their own e-mail is simply not wise or cost effective. I remember when EMC used to set these small mailbox size limits and everyone would spend hours each week moving e-mails into PST files or putting large files on their laptops. Beside the security and compliance issues, it is simply not cost-effective to ask users to manage this volume of information manually.

Today we launched a new, important family of products aimed at addressing the policy-based information management (i.e. archiving, eDiscovery, retention, deletion, etc) requirements for organizations on all sizes. The SourceOne family enables companies to centrally manage multiple content types for consistent retention, disposition and overall lifecycle management. We’re thrilled to deliver this to the market because it sits at the intersection of hot button topics for executives, namely, reduce costs; mitigate risk; ensure compliance and improve productivity.  SourceOne has all of that covered, and cost savings are especially compelling for these economic times. Initially, SourceOne focuses on managing e-mail.

Recent analyst projections show customers who implement an email management solution can reduce storage costs between 20-30%, improve time to complete backups by greater than 50%, and get an average payback in 2-3 years. All strong stuff, but we have our sights set for SourceOne to dramatically to beat those numbers so payback can come in under 12 months. Of course the size of your environment matters, but we’ve seen a 14,000 user organization achieve payback in just 7 months and 62% TCO savings, so this is impressive, no matter how you slice it.

There are, however, enormous additional efficiencies (that are not even factored yet) when adopting an information management capability like SourceOne .

First, you can increase user productivity if users simply don’t have to manage their email. The system does it for them via policies around retention (and deletion). Additionally, when e-mail and other content is well-managed, it is easier (and much less expensive) to find. Gartner says companies without an active policy and strategy for content archiving solutions will spend 1/3 more on eDiscovery than those without. And since eDiscovery typically involves lots of lawyers; paying extra to try to find information is very expensive.

I encourage you to read more about these solutions.

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge and thank the entire team involved in getting these game-changing solutions to market. In these times, every company needs to insure their information is properly retained and managed but what everyone really wants are more ways to save money. The real win is when you can get both at once.

 

Mark…

Episode 77: Virtual Information

Cloud Computing and Virtualization are clearly a couple in the “Next Big Things” in technology these days. What I would like to do is to take up the topic of what it really means to virtualize information.

Just so we start off on the same page, here are some of MY definitions of the key technologies I’ll likely reference today and in the near future:

Virtualization - Isolation/separation/abstraction between in place resources and delivery of services from these resources

Infrastructure Clouds - An aggregation of resources that can be allocated and delivered dynamically (typically compute and storage resources)

SaaS - Delivery of an application over the network as an on-demand service in which the service can be leveraged across multiple separate “tenants” or clients

Information Virtualization – the ability to manage, protect, secure, and present information to multiple applications while also abstracting where the information is physically located

One problem that is hitting us with full force today is basic information management; mostly because the information (both content and data) is everywhere. It is buried in rows and columns in databases, hidden in proprietary formats and embedded within applications, and in file systems and repositories… everywhere.

If you look at the web today and how we manage information, we improved our ability to manage and find information by simply making copies of the data. We don’t move the data; we simply aggregate and index.  This is what we value from the likes of Google and Yahoo today. We call it search but, really, the technology is just all about making copies.

So now it might appear as though we have a simple model to apply to all information, however this approach presents a few pretty big glitches.  First, the format of the web is fairly consistent (using XML) so it is readable. Second, while there is lot of information on the web, it still dwarfs the amount of private information that exists. Even if we wanted to – there is not enough storage in the world to make more copies of everything. Third, unlike the web, this information is mostly private and needs to be secured.

Take, for example, the basic concept of creating a personal health record.  One might think this would not be too hard; just get my health data, put it in a file, and put it somewhere – and voila – we are done.  If it were only that simple… Think about it, our health information is everywhere (blood tests here, MRIs in that system, doctors’ notes somewhere, probably hand-written), and in most cases, it is not going to make sense to ever try to move it.  This is where the concept of “Virtual Information” comes in, for transparent delivery and management of secure content and data, independent of any specific application. This is the real deal because organizations can leverage value of the content and data across multiple applications, and the cost savings through effective policy management can be enormous.

In future blogs segments I’ll share some of Information Virtualization capabilities we’re actively building across EMC. It is really exciting stuff!

Mark…

Episode 76: The Legacy Application is Dead – Long Live the Information

In a year of belt tightening, the likes of which most of us have never seen before, the first (and sometimes only) conversation that I have with a CIO is about how he/she can save money on IT.

At EMC we have many technologies that are focused squarely on efficiency. From tiered storage, to virtualization, to data de-duplication, much of what we do is to help companies do more with less and gain maximum leverage from their information. So we’re well positioned. However, one of the biggest CIO focus areas is managing the overhead costs of the ever-increasing number of applications across an enterprise. As one CIO put it, “new applications never seem to completely replace old ones – so old applications never really die.”

Old applications are the bane of IT. You know the ones. They are running on some hardware platform that was built when most of us were in elementary school,  by people who are nowhere to be found (but are likely at a rest home in Florida), and the one person who vaguely knows how to maintain it is actively planning next year’s retirement. All the while the software and hardware maintenance bills are crushing your budget. Sound familiar?

When I ask what keeps people from simply pulling the plug, the most common answer is “we don’t really use it much but we need access to the data.” In fact, studies show that more than half of the “living dead” applications running today are only used to insure access to information, buried inside a database so turning off the application also means losing the data. 

Well, maybe not anymore.

As I was out visiting customers and spending time with our sales teams, I found a solution that had literally been created in the field, by our customers and partners, revolutionizing how companies can save money. The solution is straightforward – built in a way to preserve the data with access to the information; secure and govern that legacy data according to policy; and repurpose, integrate and mine the data with other content – all while enabling organizations to completely retire the old applications and associated hardware and software.

I think this approach is perfectly-timed for this economic environment. The cost saving derived (retirement of legacy systems, lower maintenance and personnel costs) could deliver a rapid return on the investment. So, I’m happy to report that you can save money on IT, and that old man can still rest comfortably in retirement.

Mark…

 

 

Episode 75: Snowflakes

I went up skiing a couple of weeks back. The snow made for a brutal drive but not for the reasons you might think. I am from Colorado, the snow was the easy part. I just had never been skiing in California before and I learned two things.  First there is only one puny road to South Lake Tahoe and second, about a billion people try to drive up there for the weekend. Needless to say, I had lots of time to think about snow.  You probably know the old story that while snowflakes all look the same from a distance, in reality, no two are exactly alike. To me, selling enterprise software is a lot like selling snowflakes, as it seems that every installation is different.

 

Enterprise Content Management is going through an interesting evolution. As the market originated, the focus was squarely on solving the problem described by the term itself – managing content. ECM technology was valued and a necessary component across many applications and solutions. Like databases, ECM technology was deployed across a myriad of applications.

 

Effectively we have been “selling snowflakes” so far with ECM. Essentially, we have been building customized applications for each individual customer. This is evident in the ECM market overall as, for every dollar in software license revenues, a typical consumer will spend between $5-6 on services for customization and integration. Fortunately for our business and our customers’, we are working to dramatically reduce that ratio.

 

While it is true that custom technology implementations serve unique purposes, over time, many application requirements become much more consistent. CRM and ERP systems are good examples of transactional applications that have become far more standardized over the past decade. This has reduced costs and improved productivity and, in most cases, even delivered greater functionality.

 

Too much customization can constrain both the use of a technology as well as inhibit many productivity improvements that are possible by leveraging the technology. This is why you will see us develop, partner, build and sell more complete content-enabled applications for specific functions (like Accounts Payable) as well as combine our technology components together to form what we call Solution Frameworks. These frameworks become the new application development platform where building applications is mostly simple customization.

 

We will never seek to eliminate the capability to build customize applications as there can be great value when it is done for the right reasons but we do seek to bring a whole new set of Applications to market at completely new price points that we believe will change the market as we know it.

 

Mark...

 

Episode 74: A new beginning

I'm back! A new beginning.

Greetings! As you can see, it's been awhile since my last blog post. Don't take it personally, I've been busy. OK, that is maybe not the best excuse but we have been consumed with working to accelerate our business, so I gave up the blogging for a bit.

It's a new year, and so I hope you, your family, and your business have a great 2009.
Some might say it is more appropriate to say, "I hope your business survives 2009." Make no mistake – these are tough times, but as I've said before, this down economy provides opportunities for leaders to re-examine their business strategies for new ways to not just survive but thrive and grow during this brutal stretch we're facing. I truly believe times of uncertainty can lead to new opportunities.

So here is my advice for thriving in 2009 – it is pretty simple – just do three things.

CONTINUE TO INVEST – Give your company a "stimulus" done right. Go ahead and make the changes necessary to insure your operations are the most competitive and productive. In fact, there has never been a better time to retool for the future. While I am sure there is a ton of waste in this recent US government stimulus package, I was most pleased to see at least some investments proposed for technology-based productivity and efficiency improvements. These are the right investments that can speed recovery and set us up for long term growth.
    
FIND A FEW STRATEGIC PARTNERS – Now is not the time to take unnecessary risks in terms of partnering - work with leaders (market leaders, thought leaders, innovators), those who are driving and adhering to industry standards. Look for companies who have customers similar to you or ones who admire. Work with vendors you can trust.

WORK BOTTOMS UP (not tops down) – When I turn on the TV today for the latest dose of bad news, it is hard to imagine thriving in this economy, but you can with the right approach. The problem with the tops-down view is that it can paralyze an organization from taking any action at all. A bottoms up view, however, provides countless opportunities to augment investments in customer, employee and products/services functions – they're all still there, ready for positive change. Use this time as an opportunity to view (and review) your business through different lenses. Don't let the ongoing funeral on CNBC freeze up your ability to act!

Within CMA, I am excited about all of the changes we have made to reinvent our business over the past few months. All of this positive activity did curtail my blogging time (which I do consider to be highly valuable, and hope you do as well). In coming posts I will tell you what we are doing to change the face of our industry and how we will help you leverage your information better than ever before.

Mark...