Information Playground

Meet the Experts

I've written before about the never-ending software jungle-gym of product permutations that we can build here at EMC. It's actually the theme of this blog.  I work in an Information Playground.

EMC has acquired approximately 40 companies this decade. That's why we have all of this cool technology at our fingertips.

I've also written about the fact that these companies come with architects that can be quickly integrated into the innovative culture here at EMC via our internal social media platform, EMC ONE.  Architects from different domains of expertise collaborate to propose new products.  These architects are world-wide experts in a wide variety of information-based technologies.

Some of the people I work with are so smart it makes my jaw drop.  I wish you could meet them.

Now you can.

EMC Volunteer Opportunity

EMC is active in the community and frequently offers employees a chance to get involved.

During the month of September I've basically been working two jobs.

During the day I'm a software engineer, building software for the storage industry.

At night, I collect plastic beer cups.

At Fenway Park.

Centera and Medical Imaging

I've spent some time this year writing about how digital archiving is a perfect match for EMC Centera. Digitized records, photos, videos, and audio tracks from the JFK Library represent fixed content, and Centera is optimized for the storage of fixed content. It's also scalable enough to store the number of objects being generated at the library.

Centera's compliance and tamper-proof authentication capabilities are also being deployed in the US Court System.  I've written a post about King County District Court in Seattle that provides more detail.

Another match made in heaven when it comes to Centera is medical imaging.  I mentioned in a post earlier this year that the country of Finland has purchased Centera as the centerpiece of a deep repository for safely keeping the medical records of all of its citizens.

When an entire nation chooses to store all of its medical records on Centera, it is safe to say that the product has arrived as a technology of choice for hospitals and medical applications.  In fact, no less than 1,700 healthcare organizations are currently using Centera. And that number is growing.

Here's why.

Power To The Path

I write a lot about the internal architectures of storage products like CLARiiON and Centera, and how customers deploy and use them.

There's another EMC product getting a lot of coverage today and that's PowerPath. The PowerPath software architecture is another example of software done right.

Several years ago I was given a temporary assignment to commute into EMC's facility in Cambridge, MA. The assignment had me working with the PowerPath team.  PowerPath started out as failover and multi-pathing software, and has grown to become much, much more.

Historically, when EMC acquired Data General in 1999, it also acquired DG software known as ATF (application transparent failover).  ATF enabled host applications to failover against a CLARiiON configuration.

At some point in time EMC had to make a decision of how to reconcile these two different software products. PowerPath enabled Symmetrix failover, ATF enabled CLARiiON failover. In my opinion the decision to keep one or the other was a no-brainer: keep PowerPath.

Let me tell you why.

Beat That

It took me nearly twenty years to earn my Master's Degree in Computer Science. I started in 1987 and finished in 2006.

Can you beat that? 

Why write about it?  I think it's a pretty good story.  And it's related to XAM.

And it's a Friday.

Innovation Pockets vs Level Playing Field

Over the last two years I've witnessed an organizational and cultural change regarding the development of new product concepts at EMC.  My previous company (Data General) was acquired by EMC in 1999, and within 6 months I had transfered to a research group in Hopkinton. My group had various names over the next few years, such as "Advanced Development", or "Emerging Technologies Group".

These groups were all over the place at EMC.  Every group, silo, or stovepipe in those days set aside a group of "thinkers and tinkerers", who had such tasks as "monitor the industry", "play with new technologies", "investigate new companies", or "build a proof-of-concept".  Certainly all of these groups tried to turn their ideas into working product. (In 2001 I helped launch a product called Storage Scope in this culture).  Those "innovative pockets" throughout EMC had a pretty strong chokehold on new ideas.

It doesn't work that way anymore.  From what I can tell, EMC is shifting toward a new paradigm:

A Level Playing Field.

Centera and SAP

It may not occur to the average student of the storage industry that SAP and Centera go well together.  After all, SAP systems are highly transactional (e.g. frequent database changes), while Centera is geared towards the storage of reference information (e.g. fixed content, or data that changes infrequently).

However, SAP and Centera have been bridged (a variety of vendors have written SAP connectors, see below) together in a very unique and complementary way. This is due to the fact that users of SAP generate two critical pieces of fixed content:  print lists and ADK files.

Once generated, these two pieces of fixed content present a new set of challenges for SAP customers, including capacity management, retention, backups, authenticity, and compatibility (just to name a few).

Whenever customers have these "fixed content challenges" (especially SAP customers), they should consider Centera. Here's why.