by Edward Newman on 11/10/2011
Go Big or Go Home, seems trite, but it is applicable to IT transformation. Companies that are successfully adopting cloud technologies are taking a transformation approach, not a technical project approach. The larger the scale of the program the more traction they are getting across the enterprise, business and IT. For too long virtualization has been conflated with consolidation and that’s been one of the sticking points when it comes to trying to get the business and application owners to buy in to change. [click to continue…]
by Edward Newman on 09/07/2011
Steve Herrod’s super session was one of the things I enjoyed most about this year’s VMworld. Not only were the technologies and ideas that were introduced inspiring and where I was hoping to see VMware head but there was real passion for making content accessible evident throughout the entire presentation. VMworld coming so soon after the great one day class from Edward Tufte really increased the impact of the message. I had been thinking of content in terms of Big Information, of how do we present information to people, how do we share and collaborate etc. Steve’s presentation pushed that point even further, it’s all about the content really, the receptacle that it’s delivered in is irrelevant, it could be a briefcase, or a Ming vase, all the end user cares about is what’s in it. Just take a gander at Vincent Vega there staring at Marsellus Wallace’s soul, the briefcase isn’t what was cool in Pulp Fiction, it’s what was in it. [click to continue…]
by Edward Newman on 08/19/2011
I took time out a few weeks back to attend Edward Tufte’s One-Day Course on “Presenting Data and Information” and learned several new things and had several ideas reinforced by the methods and examples that Edward used. One of my favorite things that Edward brought up was encapsulated in this quote: “These are largely solved problems (displaying information); don’t get an original, get it right”. This of course immediately brought to mind the dreaded “Not Invented Here” syndrome and led me to think about how often I’ve encountered this in the IT world. On the other hand, innovation is terribly important and we take it very seriously at EMC - so how do you find the right balance of “solved problems” and innovation? [click to continue…]
by Edward Newman on 07/29/2011
I’ve been interviewing several people to lead up the Virtualization group of my organization lately and one of the candidates asked me an excellent question, “Well, what do you mean by Virtualization?”. Very good question, am I talking about VMware, the hypervisor, virtualized infrastructure, what? Apparently I’m in a heretical mood these days because my answer was, “No, I don’t mean any of that, I don’t want to limit it to that. When I talk about Virtualization and what I want this team to focus on is bigger than that. Virtualization to me is technology enablement allowing IT to run the workloads you need to where you want to.” [click to continue…]
by Edward Newman on 07/12/2011
I’m about to commit a bit of cloud heresy as a technology guy writing about cloud and claiming that it’s really not all about hypervisors, automation and orchestration. Sure, you need a measure of these components in order to be able to deliver on the cloud vision and model efficiently, but does that really solve the problems that are driving the consumers of IT to try and skirt enterprise IT and give their dollars to the public cloud? I think the number of services being consumed that are called cloud but really aren’t and the amount of cloud washing going on in the marketplace clue us in on the fact that it’s not the technology per se that is driving the consumption of cloud. The key thing I am hearing from my customers, and more importantly their customers, is that what is driving people to consume these services, some of which are actually inferior from a service management stand point to what is already offered internally, is the ease of consumption. Consumers are voting with their dollars for quick provisioning, knowing what they’ll pay and the levers that effect that cost, and transparency around what they are getting and using. [click to continue…]
by Edward Newman on 07/01/2011
With apologies to Chuck Hollis at EMC and James Governor at RedMonk I decided to take a crack at this whole “Why Applications are like fish and Data is like Wine” meme by extending it to posit that Information is like Cognac. Now, I’m not usually one to kick a dead horse but I think that all the talk of Big Data has maybe obscured something that I view as a problem with Big Data: knowledge workers don’t consume data, they consume information. I see Big Data as a problem quite frankly, and the IDC Digital Universe Study put it in context. If Big Data is the problem, Big Information is the goal, and to get there we need automation and analytics. So if you’ll bear with me I’ll share how I think Information is like cognac.
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by Edward Newman on 06/29/2011
IDC Released their 2011 Digital Universe Study and the results are pretty amazing: data is doubling every two years! This is the fifth year that the IDC has released this study and each year I continue to be surprised by the results, just when I think things have started to reach terminal velocity around data growth they accelerate more. Currently data growth is outpacing Moore’s Law, suddenly the phrase Big Data just doesn’t seem to cut it any more. There are all sorts of findings in the study and the repercussions for our industry will require many changes.
I recently wrote here about the need for automation in security, and Christopher Hoff has suggested some practical ways to get started here and has started an initiative around Security Automata here. This is one of the ways that the growth of data is impacting security, the very framework for how we approach protecting assets needs to change in light of the deluge of data. [click to continue…]
by Edward Newman on 06/26/2011
Recently there’s been some chatter about the role of automation in Security and whether it is appropriate or not as a business strategy much less a security strategy. Jeffrey Carr states that EMC’s wrong that automation is an efficiency and security necessity and that you shouldn’t automate because “An automated solution will never stop a customized attack because the attack was designed to circumvent it!” (his emphasis). First, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last twenty years you should avoid absolutes when talking about security. Second, not automating something because someone may develop a solution to defeat it is like not brushing your teeth because it may not prevent all cavities. This seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Jeffrey seems to conflate EMC recommending automation in security as a necessity for efficiency’s sake and abandoning all other security policies and methods. It certainly makes for good headlines, but I don’t think that people would read the three articles/whitepapers quoted and really think that EMC is going with an “automation is everything” approach. [click to continue…]
by Edward Newman on 09/21/2010
I’ve mentioned in the past just how much I enjoy working at EMC and since posting that I’ve been privileged to be able to continue hiring outstanding consultants and architects for EMC Consulting. In addition to the satisfaction of having happy customers, being able to continue to grow the ranks of our talented organization is a real point of pride. The Cloud and Virtual Data Center practice within EMC Consulting is currently hiring in North America and we are looking for flexible, creative subject matter experts who can help our customers achieve their aspirations while growing their careers within EMC. I truly believe that EMC Consulting is the place for you if you are looking to help large companies plan and implement their next iteration of IT. Please check out the positions listed below, or feel free to drop me a line at edward dot newman at emc dot com.
Southeast:
• Sr. Practice Consultant – 61302 (4 open positions)
• Practice Team Lead – 61306 (1 open position)
• Practice Manager – 61301 (1 open position)
West:
• Sr. Practice Consultant – 61314 (1 open position)
• Practice Manager – 61315 (1 open position)
Central:
• Practice Team Lead – 61316 (1 open position)
Northeast:
• Sr. Practice Consultant – 60655 (3 open positions)
• Practice Manager – 50999 (1 open position)
Applying to a position with EMC:
1. Click on the following link – http://www.emc.com/about/jobs/index.htm
2. Click on the “Apply Now”
3. Enter the five digit req. number into “Requisition ID “ box
4. Hit Search
5. Check of the box and submit to position
6. Candidates will need to register if they are not already in the system
by Edward Newman on 09/08/2010
More and more I’m hearing that it is no longer a matter of ‘if’ clients will use cloud computing in some way but a matter of ‘how’ and ‘when’. Security is often listed as the number one concern regarding cloud adoption in surveys of EMC and VMware customers, and an informal poll at VMWorld reflected that as well. Why the need for a Trusted Cloud? Well by now people have figured out the benefits of cloud computing outside just the evangelist ranks and are looking to use it within their enterprises, authorized or not. The “consumers” within the enterprise really want the provisioning, management and reporting promised by the cloud and they are willing to go around IT to get it in some instances. So if “consumers” are already using cloud, and more and more of them want to be, we need to figure out a way to inject security and compliance into those services. VMware’s been doing their part with the launch of the vShield security portfolio last week, but that is only part of the equation. So what is the Trusted Cloud? It’s a cloud that assures that the right people have access to the right services, applications and information via a secured infrastructure.
I’ll be hosting an EMC Live! webcast tomorrow on the topic and some best practices for beginning the implementation of the Trusted Cloud. You’ve got to start with an analysis and rationalization of your application portfolio in order to understand how and where trust needs to be incorporated in your transformed environment. The rationalized application portfolio feeds into your service portfolio analysis: what are the appropriate application or service architectural models for your environment? This is the basis for your cloud strategy and cloud sourcing model: what are the services that I need to provide my customers and where can they be sourced from? From here you define your services, policies and controls via ITIL or whatever framework you prefer, document them in your Service Catalog, and then publish them via a Service Portal. The goal is to provide an end-to-end unified look and feel across the different delivery models with the trust attributes integrated into the environment.
Building the Trusted Cloud
If you’re interested in learning more please join me on September 9th at 11:00am EST for the EMC Live! webcast:
The GRC-Enabled Cloud
As cloud computing becomes more pervasive, one of the most important business questions concerns governance, risk, and compliance (GRC).
How can you achieve business agility and lower costs, while still ensuring that security and compliance issues are resolved?
Attend this webcast and you will:
Understand how to incorporate GRC considerations into the IT services provided by private cloud
Learn best practices from recent private cloud customer deployments by EMC Consulting
See how you can take advantage of private cloud initiatives to meet future requirements for GRC
Find out how defining IT services can help you incorporate public cloud capabilities into your private cloud without compromising security and compliance
