This morning I sat in on an overview of future plans for Storage Resource Management, hosted by Scott Shaffer and Ryan Fournier, who lead the engineering and product management teams for ControlCenter (and other products) here at EMC. They did a great job of talking about what we have today, what’s new in ControlCenter 6.1, and where we’re heading in the mysterious “SRM 7″.
Entries Tagged 'EMC' ↓
EMC World 2009 – Day Two – SRM Futures
May 19th, 2009 — EMC World
EMC World 2009 – Day One
May 19th, 2009 — EMC World
Day one of EMC World 2009 has come to a close and I have trouble thinking of ways it could have gone better. We had a few bumps and twists on “Day Zero” but the first full day has validated all the hard work our team has put in over the past months.
Digital Universe: What recession?
May 18th, 2009 — EMC World
EMC World is kicking off with a bang this year, with IDC’s release of 2009′s Digital Universe study (sponsored by EMC).
Every year this release drives some interesting conversation. In 2007 we learned we were producing more digital content than storage to archive it all (fortunately, not everything needs to be archived). In 2008 we talked about who owned all that data (70% user produced, but corporations responsible for 85% of that). This year is no exception — the news is that our production of information hasn’t slowed, regardless of the economy.
A “Yes Man” feeling the energy
May 11th, 2009 — Corporate, EMC
I’m not a big fan of Jim Carrey, and I wouldn’t recommend you go out of your way to catch his recent movie Yes Man. In fact, I’ll go so far as to spoil the movie for you. Saying “yes” to things you used to say “no” to opens up lots of opportunities for cool things to happen (and some not-so-cool, but they’re all worth it). Oh, and he gets the girl in the end.
Hands-on with 400 users
May 4th, 2009 — EMC World
Preparations continue for EMC World 2009, including putting the final touches on the use cases for the ControlCenter hands-on sessions. This year we’re repeating the session 4 times, with 100 likely attendees at each session. We’re taking into account the things we learned from last year, and taking an approach which we hope will make our users happier. See if you can predict the problem we’re facing right now, though.
We have a two-hour session, divided into three parts. Each part presents the user with a different ControlCenter application and a non-trivial problem (or set of related problems) to solve using that application. Attendees will be presented with the problem and some hints, and a handful of EMC representatives will be pacing the floor helping out. If anyone wants to see the “right” answer, they can just follow the directions in a handout. After letting people explore each scenario, an EMC presenter will showcase a few highlights from the directions before moving on to the next scenario.
Making do with less
Doing more with less is hardly a new directive; we’ve all felt the pinch at work and I’m sure everyone reading this has a story to tell on that front. With the recent news of EMC’s temporary 5% pay cut and temporary suspension of 401(k) matching, people are talking about ways to lessen the impact at home. I know a lot of you are probably in similar situations.
EMC World 2009 – Preparations begin
April 20th, 2009 — EMC World
For most of Q1’09 I wasn’t sure if I’d be heading to EMC World in Orlando. But the stars aligned correctly and I am going to be one of the ControlCenter representatives. My primary duty will be similar to last year, working the daily ControlCenter Hands-On sessions. I’ll also be spending some time with the ECN folks as well as the bloggers’ lounge. I should be spending some time with the ControlCenter Online Community members on Monday at 6:30 PM. There’s more info on the community site.
I attended my first real prep meeting for the hands-on session Friday and I like the new direction they are taking with the session. Last year we had detailed scenarios and walked users through them. There was a lot of hand-holding. This year it looks like we’re trying to be more exploratory, give the users some guidelines and talk it through with them in the lead. It will be more challenging but it should feel more organic. It will keep all of us on our feet working the crowd though. Last year every session was full, so if history repeats itself I expect to be answering a lot of questions about the three deep-dive use cases we’re using this year. So that means some time spent learning areas of ControlCenter I’m not very fluent in. Nothing wrong with that!
Last year I remember the “EMC Twitter” crowd (made up of employees, analysts, and partners) comfortably fit at one lunch table. I think the times are a wee bit different now. It’ll be fascinating.
I’ll continue to write periodic posts as we prepare for EMC World, and of course the event will take over my blog in May. Sneaking off to find time and space for quick blog posts last year is an enduring memory, but hopefully this year I’ll be better prepared!
Working Mothers at EMC
April 3rd, 2009 — Diversity, EMC
When my blog was young and I was hungry for topics, I was hit by a bolt of inspiration — I wanted to dig a bit deeper into the EMC that signed my paycheck as compared to the EMC I was reading about on the web, specifically in the areas of equality and inclusion. I ended up writing a series of six posts last summer dealing with the subject. That was about nine months ago, and I’m still glad I did it. I periodically drop back in to the subject as there are some compelling stories just waiting to be told and because I’m proud of the changes in culture that have happened at EMC over the years.
21st century mainframe, 21st century PR
March 11th, 2009 — EMC
I don’t usually talk EMC products in this blog, unless it’s a product I’m working directly with, or it lets me tell an interesting story. In this case, it’s the latter.
I got an email last week from Craig Librett, whose name you might recognize from RMSG’s new blog. He wanted to let me know about the announcement being made today about EMC Smarts Server Manager. Since I don’t do much work with Smarts, at first I filed it in my “read this later” category (sorry Craig). But when I looked back at it and saw that it was a big step forward in managing the “virtualized data center”, a little light went off in my head. I had just heard Chris Gahagan’s Q1’09 All-Hands call, and I remembered that exact phrase being used in talking about some long-term strategic direction.
Internal Brand Ambassadors
February 25th, 2009 — Corporate, EMC
Recently, Chuck Hollis wrote about discovering an army of EMC ambassadors on Twitter, and I shared a comment with him about how I really enjoyed the organic growth of passionate people into a new realm. If you read Chuck’s blog at all you’re aware of EMC’s methodology for encouraging social media use among its employees and the importance of our internal community site in that process. As I was reading some posts on EMC|ONE this morning I realized that while we spend a lot of time talking about how we’re all ambassadors for our brand to the Internet at large, we really haven’t talked about how we’re all internal ambassadors of our employment brand (our culture) to the rest of our employees.
