Strategy

• Enterprise taking a page from SMB?

  Fri. Apr. 25, 2008
  by Marc Farley, Inside IT Lead Blogger

  Omar Sultan from Cisco wrote yesterday about the importance of broadening the skills set among data center workers.  Here's an excerpt:

  I believe that the IT infrastructure and the IT organization need to be mirrors of each other. I don’t think you can successfully transform your data center while clinging to existing notions of organizational structure (i.e. network gal, server guy). Some of our more forward thinking customers have seen good results by integrating into “critical teams” that span technologies. I think this is a best practice that would benefit many of our customers.

  Full agreement here - you definitely want to foster a holistic perspective in IT. 

  What's interesting is that there are many, many admins who work for companies that are not in the Fortune x00 and they will tell you they are covering every aspect of ITalready.  Amazingly talented people who get it from knife-edge OJT instead of cross-training.  Some of the most effective effective and creative architectures I've ever seen are constructed by brilliant SMB people.

  That's why it is so critical to simplify IT technology - people moving from skill to skill need to be able to understand all technologies with sufficient depth to make good decisions.

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• The method to our madness

  Mon. Apr. 21, 2008
  by Jeff Johnson, Enterprise Strategist

  People often ask us what makes Dell different from our competitors. Here is a link to a podcast of an interview I recorded with Glenn Keels, Director of Global Commercial Product Development. The interview covers a lot of ground and revolves around Dell’s strategic vision of reducing complexity, relieving customer pain and delivering excellent price performance.

  IMHO, Glenn’s holistic strategy for delivering standard, open products is what customers are looking for. Anybody think our competitors are doing better?

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• TechDirt conversations on storage happening now at The Future of Storage…

  Mon. Apr. 14, 2008
  by David Graves, Editor—Inside IT

  For those of you with an intense interest in all things storage - this is exciting news.

  We're working with the Techdirt Insight Community to start conversations about what's really going on in the storage arena. As this introductory  post explains - we're posing questions to TechDirt's community of experts and posting their answers - and inviting you to join in on - a conversation hub called The Future of Storage.

  Just a few of the questions we're looking to discuss include:

  • What are the biggest storage problems that need solving?   What does "hitting the wall" mean to you, if anything?
  • What are the most important new storage technologies?   
  • For FC users, will you wait for FCoE products before you upgrade your infrastructures?  
  •  What's changing due to virtual server technologies?
  • How is your approach to DR changing?   
  • What are you doing for online archiving?  How will that change in the next five years?
  •  How do you want to manage storage?

  From time to time we'll also be pulling key conversations from The Future of Storage and posting them on Inside IT.  Join the conversation - or pose a question you think the community should discuss.

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• Blades @ Dell: Should we listen to customers or competitors?

  Fri. Apr. 11, 2008
  by Aaron Hanson, Sr. Manager—PowerEdge Server Team

  Our new M-Series Blades are getting noticed. Maybe it’s because we’re trying very hard to listen. Customers tell us that blading (is that a verb?) a data center isn’t a strategy, but it is a viable technology solution for power, space, cooling management, and performance requirements. More precisely they tell us they want blades that are modular and can be easily re-purposed as their needs change. Competitive blade offerings are designed for specific workloads with a small set of configuration options for memory and processor upgrades, but they don’t address infrastructure changes such as new network interfaces (10 Gig Ethernet) and switch architectures.

  Independent analysts like what they see. Gartner said our “positioning of its blade servers also differentiates it from competitors… Dell supports the premise that blades, racks and towers all demonstrate specific market competencies; it believes that, in the coming years, there will be room for all three. This premise is consistent with Gartner's view of the market.” You can also read what InfoWorld, BladeWatch and The Register said.

  Change is inevitable. The M-Series adapts to it with modular snap-in flexibility down to the switch interconnects. If you need to add more I/O bandwidth or want to upgrade your switches you can add upgrade modules to the M-Series on the fly. That’s the sort of simplicity our customers demand. They also want simple management of blade components. We’ve responded with the most efficient, greenest, lead-free, and fastest-to-deploy blades on the planet. Listen to a podcast describing it in more detail.

  We are trying to do the things that matter most to our customers. It’s our strategy and we are sticking with it.

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• FCoE, let's not be too hasty...

  Thu. Apr. 10, 2008
  by Matt Baker, Storage Product Strategist

  I really enjoyed reading Marc Farley's, blog on FCoE. I couldn't agree more with many of his very passionate observations.

  But I wanted to add my thoughts.  First, I DO believe that folks will comingle storage (iSCSI or FCoE) traffic and standard IP networking through the same physical link. They will NOT however, commingle that traffic on the same logical link.  Customers will utilize 802.1q VLANs to segment traffic as recommended today and into the future. Customers will also use 802.1p priority tagging to ensure that storage traffic receives priority over other traffic. Ten gigabit Ethernet changes everything and delivers on the promise of a unified fabric, and the customers I have talked with are itching to remove the 4-6+ gigabit Ethernet and 2-3 fibre channel ports, the associated tangle of cables with two 10GbE ports, two cables, and only two switch ports. Regardless of protocol, that where the money savings are for customers, both in terms of component and power savings, labor, hassle, and support costs. BTW, you don't have to wait for some newfangled protocol to achieve this today...there is this great solution that can make this happen today...iSCSI!!!

  Second, I think the underlying Ethernet technology that powers FCoE, Datacenter Ethernet (DCE)*, is a rising tide that will float all boats. It is REQUIRED for the primitive FCoE protocol, but will benefit iSCSI and any other protocol that leverages Ethernet, like iSCSI. Provided you want to spend the money on new infrastructure, DCE will definitely improve the Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics of Ethernet.

  Last, FCoE will be valuable for customers with a large existing investment in fibre channel. These customers will benefit from the cost and complexity reductions associated with a unified fabric. They can and should adopt iSCSI for new storage infrastructure build outs, particularly for storage servicing their increasingly virtualized compute farms. Finally, they can utilize FCoE to facilitate access to their legacy FC investments until they are fully depreciated and retired. Because of that, you will see Dell shipping DCE capable NICs/HBAs/Switches, FCoE forwarder systems, and more.

  Per my previous posts, we at Dell believe that iSCSI is a superior storage fabric and there are tons of reasons why. The future arrival of DCE and FCoE does not change that, but we believe that FCoE is valuable for our many customers with legacy FC environments and provides a path to a fully unified fabric for those customers.

  Last note, the savings associated with a unified Ethernet fabric and 10GbE are real. Why wait for FCoE, you can achieve those savings TODAY with iSCSI?

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• Tech trends that will shape IT for the next five years

  Wed. Apr. 09, 2008
  by Jeff Johnson, Enterprise Strategist

   

  TechRepublic recently ran an article by Jason Hiner about Gartner's predictions of the 10 technology trends that will shape IT.  In it, Mr. Hiner adds insightful comments, some of which inspired me to write this post.
  

  Gartner predicts that half of business travelers won't take their laptops with them by 2012.   The timing is perhaps aggressive but the idea is spot on.  Many people want smaller mobile systems, but there is probably going to be a point where small isn't necessarily better. Others want  larger laptops. Look at the newer notebook computers that have 20 inch monitors.  Some people want modular, multi-purpose devices - think "laptop/smartphone/PDA/emaildevice."   The range of products will undoubtedly expand.

  Gartner predicts that open source will penetrate 80% of enterprise software.  To put a finer point on it, they think 80% of enterprise software will include "elements" of open source.  I think it's an  improvement to substitute the words "standards based" for "open source." Why?  Ask, and I''l explain.
  

  The article says power efficiency will become key criteria in IT purchases.  We hear it from customers every day.  The convergence of limitations on power, cooling and space are hitting the entire IT infrastructure hard.  That's why we started years ago, and why we're delivering products and services today that address these issues head on.  We're already offering the greenest servers, client PCs and solutions on the planet.
  

  The CO2 footprint ("carbon footprint") of the data center, was also mentioned as becoming part of PC purchasing criteria.  We're well on our way to having a zero carbon footprint for our company by the end of this year.  Dell is the only company to offer free recycling for consumers and low-cost asset recovery services for business.  You can offset the carbon footprint of the entire life of one of our products with the "Plant a Tree for Me" and "Plant a Forest for Me" programs.  CO2 is still a pretty abstract concept for most people.  One way to think of it is that using an Energy Smart server that consumes 19% less power can save 3,200 watts per rack per year (about $30,000), which eliminates 18 tons of CO2 emissions, which equals about four acres of pine forest.  Please check out our credentials, and our Sustainability Report. 

  I also agree with the idea that end user preferences will drive many IT decisions.  IT organizations will govern the directions and architectures, but end users will drive what IT delivers to them as tools.  Tablet PCs, RFID devices, smart phones, email devices, telephony, fax, and other devices will all need to be interconnected.  Users will demand a single identity that travels with them and the ways they use and access information.

  In short, we agree with a lot of what's in the TechRepublic article, but differ over the timing.  What do you think? How fast is our IT world changing and in what ways?
  

   

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• Eric Schott on iSCSI/Fibre Channel coexistence

  Fri. Apr. 04, 2008
  by Marc Farley, Inside IT Lead Blogger

  This entry first appeared on my Storage@ Work blog, here.

  Questions about the future of both iSCSI and Fibre Channel. are popular with analysts and the press. Eric Schott, Director of Product Management gives his opinions in the interview below, which was filmed by UberPulse.

  Many readers will likely be surprised by what he has to say, although to me it just demonstrates the kind of clear, realistic thinking he always has. If you want to catch Eric in person, he will be presenting at SNW next Wednesday. Here is a link to a description of his presentation.

  Format: flv Duration: 01:37

  Downloads WMV  MP4  OGG

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• More Conversations: Dell Launches Cloud Computing Blog

  Sat. Mar. 15, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  For those keeping score, we launched Direct2Dell back in July 2006. IdeaStorm roared onto the scene in February last year. From there, we began expanding into other languages: Direct2Dell Chinese in March 2007, Spanish in May last year, and Norwegian in September, and there will be more in the future. Most recently, our Investor Relations blog called DellShares went live in November 2007.

  From the beginning, the purpose of Direct2Dell has been to educate and to support our customers on a wide variety of topics that they care about. This blog has grown since those early days. And that growth has encouraged more Dell folks to want to have conversations with our customers. Up to now, I've added more categories on Direct2Dell to expand the topics of discussion. That strategy has worked to a point, but now it's time to evolve.

  Starting today, members from our Data Center Solutions (DCS) team will support a group blog called In the Clouds. It will focus on cloud computing and the backend server, storage and architecture required to make it work. If you're not familiar with the concept of cloud computing, think using web-based e-mail from Yahoo, Google or AOL (see link for their slick integration with Silverlight), or uploading videos to YouTube, pictures to Flickr, or microblogging with Twitter. When you do those kinds of things you aren't storing them on your local device.. you're storing them "in the clouds," or to a remote location in the Internet.

  So, why start with Cloud Computing? The short answer is there's a lot happening in this space right now. Take a look at what Adobe's doing with their AIR product (go Twhirl!) that they recently brought to market. Google continues to surge forward with their Google document apps (Spreadsheet Forms and Google Calendar synch are two recent enhancements that rock), and this week at MIX08, Microsoft is rolling out some cool stuff with Silverlight 2.0 and Internet Explorer 8.

  What this all means is that we're at the beginning stages of a shift from the model of the past where applications and all the content created for them were stored locally. This shift has the potential to increase the types of Internet-connected devices we use to consume and create content (check out the good discussion Scoble has going about the battle for web-based content on mobile phones). 

  So, what does all this have to do with Dell and the kind of content you can expect to see in the cloud computing blog? These web-based activities require reams of server and storage hardware architected around complex custom networks. As such, these environments differ from traditional server/storage environments. Our DCS team's purpose is to help customers make sense of that complexity—see this PDF, or www.dell.com/cloudcomputing for more context. That's the kind of content you can expect from reading Dell's Cloud Computing blog.

  If this sounds interesting, I encourage you to subscribe to the Cloud Computing RSS feed. If you'd rather access it directly, go here:

  www.direct2dell.com/cloudcomputing

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• Share Your Stories About IT Complexity

  Thu. Mar. 13, 2008
  by Jeff Johnson, Enterprise Strategist

  

  Everyone in technology knows that IT is too complex.  By announcing its Simplify IT initiatives, Dell has certainly gone on record saying we're doing something about it. 

  While IT complexity is a serious subject, actual stories are often pretty funny.  I don't know about you, but I've seen plenty of examples that are so tragic they are actually hilarious.  Like unclear and acronym-filled user's manuals, stupid things end-users day and do, idiotic management decisions, and bizarre stories.  Here is one I heard recently.  One company needed to update their server image, but didn't have any automated tools to do so.  They spent weeks updating one server at a time - with a CD.  The IT people actually TRIED to get sick, by eating pizza that was a couple days old, just so they could go home.  There are a lot more like this.

  The conversations need to happen, but people can have a little fun doing it.  (Who says IT people don't have a sense of humor?)  So that is why Dell has become the charter sponsor of The IT Room (http://www.theitroom.com/), sort of a "Digital Dilbert for the IT Crowd" and a place to share horror stories and rant and rave.   This gives people a place to join the fight against IT complexity. 

  We were approached by a company, MotivFilms, to participate with other technology companies in this project and immediately jumped at the chance to participate. Dell doesn't own this project—we're just one voice in this conversation. But since we do have a thing or two to say about simplifying IT, we'll participate in the discussion.

  Dell will continue to support the dialogue around IT complexity, and will continue to sponsor The IT Room along with the other advertisers.  We're wholeheartedly supporting the idea because it generates the right kind of conversations. So join us the fight against IT complexity!  Start by mocking it.

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• Dispatches from OpenWorld: What Does Green Mean to You?

  Wed. Mar. 12, 2008
  by Collin Dunn, Treehugger Correspondent

  The highlight of the Dell booth here at OpenWorld is definitely "the wall." Attendees and other exhibitors are walking up, many sort of timidly, scoping it out, reading other entries so far; it's a great conversation piece. The entries themselves, as more and more folks have come by, have provided interesting ideas and insight into the "state of green," as it were, of those attending and presenting at the conference. 

  

  The ideas range from the personal -- "Better air for my kids" -- to the proactive -- "Buying CFLs" -- to the theoretical -- "Less consumption is the key to less recycling" -- to the downright silly -- "Kermit the frog" and "Soylent green is people." While well-meaning and interesting, none of the ideas on their own are terribly earth-shattering, and picking one to serve as "the best" or "most important" or "most actionable" reason would be an exercise in futility, and just plain silly, really.

  

  But that's not really the point. The wall is a funny sort of antiquated user-generated content here at the technology conference. It's a sounding board, to discover what people really think about this stuff. Proper context is important here; the people who are signing the wall aren't all TreeHuggers, necessarily. Most everyone is a technology professional, generally concerned more with bits of bytes than shade of green, so the wall is a green anomaly in an otherwise digital world. Clearly, some of the comments show that they've been able to combine the two: a green, clean, energy-efficient thought process. Others' comments show that they've taken it a bit less seriously, and there's nothing wrong with that; green doesn't have to be a myopic world of lowercase tree-hugging or any other old-school stereotype.

  

  In any event, we like the wall; it shows that there are lots of ways to think green, and that thinking green can and should be a part of every conversation, whether it's about rolling data centers or the planets' ability to sustain our children, and their children. Taken in contrast to the other tech-focused exhibitions, keynotes and lectures here at OpenWorld makes it even more meaningful: just imagine if "green" was a consideration in everything...the wall is taking us in that direction.

  There's lots more green to report on here at OpenWorld; stay tuned for more of the green, coming soon!

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