May 20th, 2009

EMC: Virtualization is ready to run the world's biggest applications

Posted by Jason Hiner @ 2:52 pm

Categories: EMC, EMCWorld, VMware, virtualization

Tags: EMC Corp., Cloud Computing, Storage Management, Virtualization, Utility Computing, Storage, Hardware, Jason Hiner

Typically, when IT departments decide to use virtualization in the data center, the big question is which workloads to virtualize. The conventional wisdom has been to avoid virtualizing anything that was too I/O-intensive, such as databases and e-mail systems.

However, EMC wants to put that idea to rest. The company, which owns virtualization market leader VMware, spent a lot of time at EMC World 2009 this week driving home the point to IT professionals that the entire data center can be virtualized.

“Virtualization is now ready to run the biggest applications,” said EMC CTO Chuck Hollis (right). “It’s ready for the biggest applications today.”

In fact, Hollis said that virtualization is already running a lot of the biggest applications for many of the world’s largest companies. America’s top auto makers are one example. Driven by intense economic pressures to reduce costs, the auto makers have recently accelerated their adoption of virtualization.

Another industry that is extensively using virtualization is oil and gas, where they have to deliver the same enterprise applications to both desktops and supercomputers. Plus, they also have a wide diversity of sites across the globe that need access to these applications. As a result, they’ve embraced virtualization to get the kind of flexibility they need on the backend.

EMC itself is committed to eventually moving its entire internal server infrastructure to virtualization, but CEO Joe Tucci said in his keynote on Monday that the company isn’t even halfway there yet. That said, Hollis noted that EMC is doing big stuff with virtualization. “We put big, hairy Oracle and Exchange workloads on VMware,” he said.

And, there are some companies that have taken the plunge and gone 100%. Hollis remarked, “We work with outsourcers that are now completely virtualized.”

Also see: Gallery: EMC World 2009

In some cases, it’s happening very quietly in the background. Hollis told the story of an IT manager who had virtualized over 3,000 servers. Hollis asked him, “How did you get your users to accept this?” The IT manager smiled and replied, “I didn’t tell them.” Apparently, no one noticed.

That’s what EMC believes will happen in nearly all cases, when virtualization is deployed correctly. Meanwhile, virtualization gives IT a lot more flexibility in managing the company’s technology infrastructure.

Hollis said that the new premise of virtualization is “architecting for choice.” He characterized virtualization to a shipping container for server workloads. This was also reflected in Tucci’s slide on virtual infrastructure:

EMC is also trying to make the case that building a virtualization infrastructure inside the firewall will enable companies to create an “internal cloud” now, and better take advantage of the opportunities presented by cloud computing (”external cloud”) in the future. It’s all conceptual and a bit of a stretch, but it’s a fairly compelling idea. Here’s Tucci’s slide on it:

For this concept to really take off, it would likely require standardization and cooperation among the various enterprise vendors, including EMC, Dell, IBM, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Citrix. It would require more than just compatible hypervisors in the virtualization layer.

That kind of collaboration is probably unlikely. EMC is one of the more open collaborators in that group and they show no interest in reaching out. Hollis claimed that VMware currently owns 97% of the virtualization market, so he argues that it is the de facto standard. While there’s some truth to that, it’s difficult to imagine that the virtualization market won’t get a lot more crowded in the years ahead because so many of the companies listed above are putting so much emphasis on it — especially since it can now handle virtually any type of server load out there.

May 19th, 2009

EMC's Tucci: The four "next big things in IT"

Posted by Jason Hiner @ 2:18 pm

Categories: Cloud computing, EMC, EMCWorld, Utility computing, VMware, virtualization

Tags: Information Technology, EMC Corp., Storage, Strategy, Hardware, Management, Jason Hiner

In his keynote address at EMC World 2009 in Orlando, CEO Joe Tucci named “The Next Big Things in IT” as part of his vision for where both IT world and EMC as a company are headed over the next few years.

Here’s Tucci’s slide:

After the keynote, Tucci came to the press room and answered our questions for over an hour. As part of that conversation I was able to ask him about his four “next big things” and clarify a few points — especially the difference between cloud computing and virtual applications, as EMC sees it.

Here’s a summary of each of these four, in terms of how EMC is defining them:

Read the rest of this entry »

May 19th, 2009

EMC World: Companies that adopt new tools still need to manage the data

Posted by Sam Diaz @ 9:03 am

Categories: Datacenter, EMC, EMCWorld, Enterprise 2.0, General, Infrastructure

Tags: Mark Lewis, EMC Corp., Tool, Storage, Hardware, Sam Diaz

How or why is your information important? Information in a business setting might include e-mails that need to be retained and archived for regulatory purposes. Or it might be the collaborative documents that employees have been working on for a product launch.

At EMC World in Orlando this week, there’s a lot of talk about virtual data centers and cloud infrastructure. But in a keynote speech this morning, Mark Lewis, president of the content management and archiving division, shifted his discussion to another critical matter: information management.

There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of information floating around out there these days - everything from e-mails to digital images. But, as Lewis notes, the bulk of that data - he says 95 percent of it - is unstructured. It’s in a file somewhere - not in an application, not in a database. It’s just roaming free.

That can’t be good for a business, he said. In the aftermath of an economic collapse and scandals such as the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, the chances that government will loosen the reins on compliance or regulatory policies around information is highly unlikely. EMC says it wants customers to put their information at the center of the business and consider these key focus areas:

Read the rest of this entry »

May 18th, 2009

Can EMC keep cloud computing from forking?

Posted by Jason Hiner @ 12:33 pm

Categories: Cloud computing, EMC, EMCWorld

Tags: AT&T Corp., EMC Corp., Atmos, Storage, Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Hardware, Jason Hiner

EMC and AT&T are collaborating on a cloud storage offering, they jointly reported on Monday. That’s good news in an environment where there is increasing fear that cloud computing solutions are developing down a fragmented path that will eventually require inter-connectivity. However, both companies acknowledged that there are limits to the collaboration announced.

AT&T’s Enterprise division announced the availability of AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service on Monday at EMC World in Orlando. This on-demand storage product allows businesses to essentially rent storage capacity from AT&T. That storage capacity can then scale up and down as needed, with companies only paying for their usage and not locked into a long-term contract.

Rowan Pacewicz, senior vice president of AT&T Business Solutions, said, “AT&T has always strived to bring the best of breed service to enable its clients to overcome business challenges. And working with EMC, AT&T can provide our customers with a flexible and cost-effective solution for storing, delivering and retrieving data that helps them meet their changing business needs.”

AT&T selected EMC as the technology vendor to build out the service, which will be based on EMC Atmos Cloud Optimized Storage (COS) technology and deployed in AT&T Internet data centers (IDCs). EMC and AT&T are jointly developing and marketing the service.

“With today’s news, EMC is extending the ‘pay-as-you-go’ model, minimizing upfront investment, while providing customers with a solution that addresses the complexities and dependencies of enterprise-class cloud environments,” said Mike Feinberg, senior vice president, EMC Cloud Infrastructure Group. “We’ve remained focused on delivering enterprise-ready cloud solutions, and today marks an important milestone that will make the adoption of cloud

Interestingly, the two companies will actually be competing in some cases because EMC will likely be selling Atmos to other providers — competitors to AT&T. But AT&T has 38 global data centers in 12 countries and on four continents, so its offering will be broad and comprehensive.

Meanwhile, EMC will help other vendors develop niche solutions. And EMC is promising to offer “federate” different types of solutions built on its Atmos technology. That could be across vendors or it could also be from an on-premise (internal) Atmos system to an off-premise (external) Atmos system.

That federation could approach could be a step toward unifying different approaches to cloud computing. However, it will not solve all of the challenges.

Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google and one of the founders of TCP/IP, recently wrote about his concerns about cloud computing being disjointed:

“In recent years, the term ‘cloud computing’ has emerged to make reference to the idea that from the standpoint of a device, say a laptop, on the Internet, many of the applications appear to be operating somewhere in the network ‘cloud.’ Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others, as well as enterprise operators, are constructing these cloud computing centers. Generally, each cloud knows only about itself and is unaware of the existence of other cloud computing facilities. In some ways, cloud computing is like the networks of the 1960s when my colleagues and I began to think about connecting computers together on networks. Each network was typically proprietary…

Cloud computing is at the same stage. Each cloud is a system unto itself. There is no way to express the idea of exchanging information between distinct computing clouds because there is no way to express the idea of ‘another cloud.’ Nor is there any way to describe the information that is to be exchanged… There are many unanswered questions that can be posed about this new problem. How should one reference another cloud system? What functions can one ask another cloud system to perform? How can one move data from one cloud to another?”

Both EMC and AT&T acknowledged that the federation scheme will not include outside storage providers such as Amazon S3. They commented that in order for that to happen, there would need to be an open standard created and there isn’t a standard that currently exists.

So Atmos is a small step in the right direction but there’s still a lot of collaboration and standards work that will need to be done to keep the cloud from forking.

See also: EMC World kicks off with new cloud offerings and EMC World: A view of the enterprise from above the cloud

May 18th, 2009

Tucci, Maritz talk acquisitions, customers and competition

Posted by Sam Diaz @ 11:50 am

Categories: EMC, EMCWorld, VMware

Tags: Acquisition, Joe Tucci, EMC Corp., Mergers & Acquisitions, Corporate Law, Storage, Investment, Finance, Business Operations, Hardware

The CEOs - EMC’s Joe Tucci and VMWare’s Paul Maritz - took some time this afternoon to meet with reporters at EMC World for a Q&A session about the companies, the technologies and the future.

Some highlights from the Q&A session:

• With $9.8 billion in cash and investments, EMC could gain some ground in technology via acquisitions. Tucci said one of the uses for the company’s cash will be to “strengthen our position in the marketplace through acquisition.” He wouldn’t say which areas or companies the company might be thinking about but did say that the he’s “much more inclined” to make acquisitions in areas where the company is already strong, notably virtualization, storage information management and security.
• Asked if the company might become a target for acquisition by another player, Tucci was quick to state that the company is not for sale. He also notes that, given EMC’s sizable market cap, there aren’t too many companies that could pull off such a transaction. Still, Tucci notes that, as executives, he and Maritz have to act with their best interest of the shareholders in mind.
• Asked about the impact of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, Maritz said it doesn’t prompt too much change for the companies anytime soon. A lot of the companies’ customers already use Oracle’s database software and they don’t see that changing anytime soon.
• In his keynote speech earlier in the day, Tucci said that EMC plans to “get closer” and communicate more with customers. During the Q&A he clarified that the company getting close to customers is not a new idea. Instead, he said that - during tough economic times - it’s important to stand by your customers. “When things are going great, you’ve got a lot of friends,” he said. : When something bad happens, you see how many true friends you have.” A rough economy will test a company and its companies, as well as its attitude and will to win. These are the times to put in an added layer of connectivity, he said, to “pick it up a notch.”
• Responding to a question about competition in the virtualization space and the plans to step up the game with the vSphere news, Maritz said there were no plans to idle and watch as competitors enter the market. Standing still simply allows competitors to come in and commoditize what a company does, he said. “If you want to stay valuable, you have to innovate.” He pointed to a “substantial” R&D team and said “we have no intention of standing still.”

May 18th, 2009

EMC World: A view of the enterprise from above the cloud

Posted by Sam Diaz @ 9:11 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Datacenter, EMC, EMCWorld, Enterprise 2.0, General, Infrastructure, VMware

Tags: Joe Tucci, EMC Corp., Cloud, Storage, Data Centers, Hardware, Data Management, Sam Diaz

In his keynote speech at EMC World, CEO Joe Tucci talked about what’s hot - not just for EMC, but for the business of technology as a whole - and looked closely at the things that will have the biggest impact on enterprise technology as the economy continues to have its own impact.

Today, as IT departments struggle with fewer resources, scaled-down budgets and increased demand, they turn to companies like EMC for solutions, Tucci said. What do they want? Well, they want to implement strategic initiatives that will have a fast return on investment and reduce their risks while also preparing them for the next generation of technology and the evolution of the data center. And they want it faster, cheaper and, of course, greener.

Also see: Gallery: EMC World 2009

That’s no easy task - but it can be done by taking a big picture look - the 30,000-foot view from “above the clouds,”, if you will. EMC has two strategies - one around information infrastructure and other other around virtualization infrastructure through VMWare.

On the information infrastructure side, the offering consists of the storage and data management layers such as EMC Atmos OnLine, which was announced this morning. Through these cloud-based offerings, customers have the power to manage the exponential growth in storage demands. Tucci noted that, in 2000, EMC had two customers storing more than a petabyte of storage. Today, that number is more than 2,000 customers.

But the problem with storage is that customers have always had to buy more than they need so they would have it available to meet their future needs. Through EMC’s model, there’s an ability to pay for what you use, as you go, and scale up or down as the demands change.

The other side of that problem, however, is the type of information that can be stored on the cloud. On the consumer side of the world, the cloud consists of new applications (at least for the user.) Customers who use consumer cloud apps like Flickr or Gmail usually start fresh, though they may migrate data (photos, contact lists, etc) into the cloud.

On the enterprise level, shifting to a new app isn’t as easy. And putting existing apps into the cloud - and giving the same types of access - into the cloud is far more complicated. That’s where the virtual infrastructure comes into play.

Tucci handed the keynote baton to VMWare CEO Paul Maritz about halfway through his presentation for an explanation of a new software layer called vSphere, the next-gen upgrade from VMWare Infrastructure. Think of vSphere as an operating system in the cloud - a layer of software and tools in the data center that unleashes the infrastructure into the cloud. The idea is that the software does, in the cloud, what is already being done behind the walls: managing and controlling user access on various platforms and devices while protecting the data.

And by bringing that technology into a protected cloud - along with EMC’s offerings of data backup and archiving, as well as smart software that takes issues such as compliance matters into consideration - users can access data anywhere, anytime and from pretty much any device.

Also see: Amazon beefs up cloud visibility and monitoring tools

EMC rolls out new high-end storage lineup; Aims to push data center flash adoption

Data center survey: Cisco’s server push sparks interest; VMware, EMC, NetApp shine

May 18th, 2009

EMC World kicks off with new cloud offerings

Posted by Sam Diaz @ 6:52 am

Categories: AT&T, Cloud computing, EMC, EMCWorld, Enterprise 2.0, General

Tags: EMC Corp., Cloud, Storage, Hardware, Sam Diaz

Things are kicking off at EMCWorld this morning, before the keynote speeches, with news from EMC and partners about high-capacity storage services that provides a scalable, hybrid model.

When it comes to enterprise storage on the cloud, there are two clouds to consider: the “private” cloud behind a company’s firewall and the Web-based cloud. The company today announced EMC’s Atmos onLine, a new Internet-based offering that builds on EMC Atmos, a build-your-own-cloud storage offering that was announced last year.

The company also announced an offering that allows users to move data between the clouds - a process it’s calling “federation.”

The idea is that, within a company, there are capabilities to manage both the internal and external cloud, keeping critical data off the Internet but still accessible via the internal cloud. The company called the federation a “critical step” in the greater adoption of the cloud, recognizing that customers are reluctant to move all of their data to the cloud.

Joining EMC in its briefing was AT&T, which announced its Synaptic Storage as a Service, an EMC-powered storage-on-demand offering that powers businesses with the ability to manage their data from any location using the Web. More importantly, it also gives the customers to pay on a usage model, with no contracts, limits or quotas.