Somewhere between carving the Christmas turkey and toasting the New Year I spoke with Pat Gelsinger, President and Chief Operating Office of EMC Information Infrastructure Products about the year ahead in general and what EMC will deliver in specific.
As per usual I don’t cut him a break on the first question
Concepts like the Journey to the Private Cloud and Big Data. Those strike me as being very strategic messages for upper management. How do these equate to what the team on the ground does, be that team inside a customers organization or inside EMC?
Well lets break that down. In any strategic vision, the top level messages need to be simple and generally consistent over time. They are like a north star to help guide the myriad of activities which occur inside any large and diverse organisation.
It becomes the responsibility of each organization to incrementally align its activities to better fit with and be refined against that top level message. They’re a way of thinking about how what you’re working on today fits into the larger overall picture. For instance in Information Infrastructure Products for some product groups, it might mean to do a better job supporting virtualized environments. For others, it might mean delivering fully automated management environments for cloud (private or public) operators. For other product teams they are all about Big Data so its already central to what they do. For our sales teams, this message may be an opportunity to up level ourselves to the CIO or business leaders in our accounts to tell a more strategic and visionary message with the result being, EMC becoming a more strategic and trusted partner.
EMC has storage platforms running different operating systems and Microcode. VNX is a move towards convergence but how converged do you expect EMC storage products to get? What’s going to happen or more importantly what should we expect not to happen?
To me, simplification and convergence will be a somewhat never ending assignment for us. Clearly when we began this thrust in January of 2010 I knew we had to take major steps in replication, mid-range systems management and other things. With RecoverPoint Unified Storage Replication, Unisphere and the launch of VNX, the first phase of this plan is coming to fruition.
However, just as we start to make progress on simplification we make things more complex by adding Data Domain Archiver and Isilon to the product mix! Net, I expect we’ll make more big steps in 2011 with VNX but our need to keep simplifying and pruning will be never ending as we continue to respond to new trends in the market, as we continue to innovate and continue to acquire.
Any hints on the acquire part?
No.
Moving on..
Good idea.
The VNXe puts EMC into a more generalist practitioner segment. Do you see that product taking those design concepts upwards into the midmarket?
Yes. You can expect many of the design concepts of VNXe migrate upward into VNX over time as we work to simplify the product interfaces, further unify block and file, provide deeper application integration and make the totality of VNX and VNXe a more seamless product line going forward.
EMC has placed a big bet on Big Data by paying $2.25B for Isilon Systems and merging the Atmos team into that organisation.With a tagline like “Smart is Simple” isn’t big relative? It could be 3 Isilon nodes or 30 of them. Where’s the boundary with VNX in NAS deployments for customers who wouldn’t class themselves as having Big Data needs?
Actually the bet is bigger than simply the acquisition price of Isilon, we also have the acquisition of Greenplum and the formation of the Data Computing Division. Further, we need to carefully manage the alignment between Atmos and Isilon and Isilon and VNX.
Taken together, we have a tremendous set of assets but now, a huge set of challenges as well. We have a very aggressive ramp up for DCD and Isilon respectively; we need to execute like crazy on each of these to both realize the full value they afford, but also the competitive elements in the market place demand that we perform extremely well.
Of course, if that were not enough, the fine line between the Atmos and Isilon in scale out environments and VNX and Isilon in mid-range makes the potential for leverage high but also the risk of message and sales conflict high as well. As EMC Vice-Chairman Bill Teuber says, 2011 is a high degree of difficulty plan!
Both the opportunity and the challenges are getting lots of attention and I’ve thought about them a lot, but we couldn’t be happier with the early progress. Teams are in place, processes underway, cooperation very high and enthusiasm off the charts!
However, diligence is required.
Moving away from the tech stuff, have you read any good books over the holidays?
The two I’ve been dipping into most frequently are “The Heart of a Leader” by Ken Blanchard and since I’m training for my first marathon the aptly named “Essential Guide To Training For Your First Marathon” by Joe Donovan.
You’re running your first marathon? Which one?
Well this year I’m running the Boston Marathon in April and then the Great Wall Marathon in China in May. So not only will it be my first marathon but it’ll be my first marathon on two continents.
I’m starting to see where these high degree of difficulty plans come from.
I'll race you.
