Entries Tagged 'EMC' ↓

The buzz at the office is reaching a high as last-second preparations for EMC World compete with people’s “real work” every hour of every day.  I am sad to report I won’t be attending EMC World this year; I was really looking forward to the coffee at the Bloggers’ Lounge but I’m needed here in Hopkinton (the same reason my blog posts seem to be drying up of late …).  But there are some exciting things happening within my organization that you might want to know about.

Continue reading →

A while back I made kind of a big deal about getting back into the technical arena and putting away my manager hat.

Fortunately, I didn’t toss it too far aside.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in almost 15 years at EMC it’s that change isn’t disruptive to the status quo, it is the status quo.

Everything I said I was doing before, I’m still doing.  I’m wearing a lot of hats right now.  My small development team has grown as it takes on more responsibility, and I find myself playing the roles of Scrum Master, Technical Lead, and Development Manager.  Somewhere in all that I’m trying to individually contribute technically as well, but that is at the bottom of the list.

The other thing that keeps falling off the list is contributing to “the conversation” (both internally at EMC and externally on twitter and in people’s blogs).  I’m afraid that is going to be an uncomfortable reality while I try to wrap my arms around all these roles and make sure my own commitments aren’t being missed. Try not to do too much without me .

It’s a great place to be, in the thick of the action, surrounded by good people.  I’m never bored, I’ll say that much!

I got a great email last week from my colleague Susan Shapiro, who works with the EMC Community Network.  The EDN (EMC Developer Network) is organizing a coding challenge for EMC World 2010, with a respectable amount of prize money ($25K total split among several prizes) at stake.  Being the self-centered guy I am, I immediately confirmed that EMC employees were eligible (they are, but only for one of the prizes) before letting myself get excited.

The concept: write a project where multiple EMC developer technologies can be used in a single program.  Bonus points for incorporating other online technologies.  Win money and fame and the adoration of the world.

I’m waiting for the detailed T&C, but you can read up more on it here.  Innovation through contest is something EMC has tinkered with quite a bit, as you may have read on Steve Todd’s blog last year.

Definitely check out the link for more info. I’m hoping I can find some time in between all my “real work” to put a couple of these tools through their paces.

When I saw the emails start floating by about EMC’s ON Magazine’s special issue about 20 years of the web, I flagged them for later attention and promptly moved on.  That may have been a mistake.  Recently, I cracked open the PDF and paged through it.  Something on every page caught my attention.  Except for a few times, I forgot I was reading something written by people at EMC.  I guiltily asked myself, “are we really this cool?”

So here, as requested by Natalie, is my version of the web at 20…

Continue reading →

Today was EMC’s third annual innovation conference, and as one of over 700 employees who submitted an idea I was invited to attend the proceedings at our local regional leg of the global event.

Continue reading →

Last week, I was part of a conversation with some co-workers who spoke about another employee and his prolific blog and said, “isn’t that a sign that he doesn’t have much to do?”

If only the truth were that simple.

Another co-worker asked me when I usually did my blogging.  I told him the truth — I usually get Monday’s blog entry written on Sunday night, unless I’m lucky enough to have had a great idea during the previous week in which case Sunday night is for putting the finishing touches on a post which I started earlier. A productive week is one where another topic pops up during the week and I’m able to get some words down “on paper” on a weeknight.

I very rarely work on this blog during the business day; I just don’t have time.

I know the same holds true for another Ionix blogger I’d like to introduce you to this week: Hiren Doshi, who writes Practice Agile, a brand new blog about agile development seen through the lens of someone working at EMC Ionix.  I’ve worked with Hiren for a few years now in various capacities and he “gets it.”  I’m glad he’s dipping his toe in the blogging pool and I look forward to reading more from him.  He and I are working on projects that interact, so if you pay enough attention to what we both talk about you can get a pretty good idea of what working in this little neighborhood of EMC Ionix is probably like.

I didn’t know Dick Egan, never had a conversation with him.  I knew him by reputation alone, a larger-than-life legend out of the misty past of EMC’s glory days.  It’s not often you hear the words “self-made billionaire.”  If you work in high tech, especially in Massachusetts (or in storage), your story and his probably intersect somewhere.

I don’t presume to speak for those who knew him.  But when I came back from vacation this past weekend and saw the news of his death, it was those people I thought of, the people who helped build EMC into the place it is today, who bridged the gap between the EMC before 2001 and the EMC of 2009, who were there to see Egan’s vision and adapted it into a vision for the next century. I thought of Polly Pearson’s post about the rise of EMC’s stock during the 90s, and about Egan’s response to the Working Mother’s Experience book.  I thought of the many long-tenured employees who would have memories of the early days, and wondered what they would say.  I expect the coming week will bring out a lot of personal stories from those people and others.

My heart goes out to all of Egan’s Many Children, and to the large and literal family he also leaves behind.

This morning the news hit the wire — EMC and Data Domain are now one company.  It’ll take a few days to cross all the ts and dot all the is but the deal is done.

I didn’t have much to say about the acquisition during the “battle” for the company, because I don’t know much about the business side of the products involved.  What I find fascinating is the people side of this. When Data General was acquired a decade back, we in the CLARiiON division had mixed emotions.  We were frustrated at being acquired by someone we viewed as a competitor, but were excited knowing our products would have a new channel into the market.  We figured EMC’s acquisition of us meant we were right about how important the market was we had been targeting for years.

Data Domain isn’t in that same kind of position.  I assume their fears revolve around what EMC will mean to their culture, their history of innovation, the things that got them where they are.  Their hopes are probably the same, though — entry into new markets, the EMC brand standing behind your product.  Good stuff.  Hopefully their fears will be somewhat allayed by the announcement that their CEO Frank Slootman will be heading up an entirely new division which more products will eventually join.  I would like to think this means EMC not only values how Data Domain got to where they are, we want to see that “special sauce” applied to other products in the future.

I’m looking forward to seeing an influx of new faces and ideas inside our corporation.  What’s exciting about EMC these days is that even though Data Domain will be a separate division, the cultural mingling can begin immediately, as soon as employees “meet up” on our internal web sites.  People talk all the time about the social web as a force multiplier — this is a textbook case.

For a couple months now we here at EMC have been getting teases of a big announcement in July, but it wasn’t until EMC World that I started to hear the pieces come together.  A month ago, I found out the whole story.  And now that it’s July 8, I can spill the beans.  There is no more Resource Management Software Group at EMC.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  The group’s here still, but it’s got a spankin’ new name: Ionix.

And what comes with that name (besides business cards and new splashscreens)? I’m glad you asked.

Continue reading →

I got an interesting email last week from Rita Gildea-Bryant, part of the Thought Leadership Marketing group at EMC, about a series of webcasts they are going to be hosting soon.  Traditionally, our webcasts consist of EMC telling potential (or current) customers what they should be doing with our products.  This series is a bit different.  We’re hosting these webcasts, but we’re not doing the talking.

Continue reading →