Entries Tagged 'EMC' ↓

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.

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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.

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I sat down this morning to write a response to Scott Waterhouse’s post on the subject of why someone would want to be an EMC employee.  I had a few paragraphs written before I scrapped it and started over.  It’s not that I couldn’t write a nice lengthy post on the subject … it’s that I already have written several.

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As if working in high-tech wasn’t loaded with enough buzzwords, being exposed to the marketing and business end of things really ramps it up.  You can’t throw a recycled can over your shoulder without hitting the word “green” or “sustainable,” so I imagine there might be a bit of green fatigue out there greeting EMC’s 2008 Sustainability Report.  Still, I took some time this weekend to read the 61-page paper and came away even prouder of working here than I was before.  Tucci’s quote of “People, planet, profit” is a nice way to remind us all that while we exist to make money, all the money in the world doesn’t mean anything on its own.

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I ran into Natalie working the V-Max booth at EMC World last week, and it got me thinking.  I have worked with Natalie several times over the past year, but it’s always been relating to her “other” job in the EMC Women’s Leadership Forum.  Seeing her working so hard at EMC World (doing her “day job”) made me realize something about most of the people who were down there.  Nobody was wearing just one hat.
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I’m writing this from the Bloggers’ Lounge in an increasingly empty convention center.  I’ve battered my feet to their limits, I got soaked in the rain, I’ve waited in long lines for mediocre coffee, and I’m mentally exhausted.  And this is what we come here for.

It all comes together here in person for four crazy days.  We “meet” people we’ve interacted with online for months.  We learn about new products, or new directions for old products.  We teach people, we learn from people, we laugh, we cry.

I can’t decide what the single best moment was.  That first batch of feedback from our first hands-on session has to rank up there.  We took a major risk and invested incredible effort into rearranging our approach, and it was a hit.   But sitting in on Natalie’s Working Mothers Experience session was fulfilling in an entirely different way.  And of course, getting to sit and talk with Steve Todd and his wife for the first time in a long time was worth flying down here for.

The best moment may have been seeing one of my co-workers getting off The Mummy indoor roller coaster at Universal.  I won’t be forgetting that look of terror any time soon.

Now it’s time to pack up and depart Orlando, just as the sun is starting to come out.  Thank you all; I can’t list everyone who helped make this a huge success for me.  My co-workers, my managers, my online colleagues, our partners and customers, and of course the event staff.  See you in Boston next year?

On day three the conference has begun to take its toll.  Legs, feet, back, brain — all tired.  But this morning was energizing — a breakfast discussion with Natalie Corridan-Gregg and a panel of working mothers.  I’ll let others discuss the meatier parts of the breakfast, but I wanted to share some of what I took away from it.

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