LSQHA Blog Reviews

Monday's sudden departure of Jay Adelson as CEO of social news aggregator Digg has raised a few eyebrows in the tech community as some rumors imply that it may have been a decision made by the company's board. Regardless of the nature of the breakup, it got me thinking about the dichotomous relationship some startups have between founders and CEOs, and which, if either, is more expendable. Sponsor Digg was originally founded by Kevin Rose in 2004 and Adelson, who had experience as founder and CTO of a few companies in the 90s, was given the CEO role while Rose became "the face" of Digg. Many startups have used this same leadership role leaving the passionate entrepreneurial founder as a separate executive from a business-minded CEO. A similar situation has happened at Twitter , with Evan Williams becoming CEO in place of Jack Dorsey who remains as chairman of the board. This seems to separate the single-focus CEO from a serial entrepreneur with other interests. Since founding Digg, Kevin Rose has founded Pownce and WeFollow as well as personally investing in several other companies while Jack Dorsey has used his time to found the mobile transaction platform Square . For the majority of startups, I would think the concept of the free-wheeling founder would be less common, and other times, founders choose to also be CEOs. But in the case of the startups that have two separate people handling founder and CEO duties, who is more vital to the company? In these cases, founders usually start their company and hire a CEO when things start to pick up and they can't handle everything by themselves. While CEOs do lot of the corporate navigating, the founder, with his passion for the product, is often the forward facing driver of the company. With this argument, I think that losing a CEO over a founder is a better loss than vice versa. Of course, all businesses are different, and people leave for different reasons, and decisions like this should be taken on a case-by-case basis. However, VCs often talk about how they invest in founders just as much as they do ideas, so for a company to lose that passionate individual that the investors initially trusted might send bad signals about later investments. I'd like to hear what you think about this issue, and whether you think either a CEO or a founder is more or less likely to stay when someone needs to go. If you have personal experience with the dual relationship of CEO and founder in a startup, please share you experience in the comments below! Photo by Jim Merithew, Wired.com Discuss

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Founders & CEOs: Who Is More Expendable?

Recently, I spoke to a crowded room of senior marketers at a CPG retailer, one of the executives asked “What’s an indicator a company is advanced in the social space?”.  I gave three answers, and one of them was “Developing a thriving advocacy program to fight your battles”.  The executives, which were used to traditional advertising and direct marketing had a lightbulb go off as I showed them this framework. Companies unable to scale into social channels –hindered by traditional thinking Companies are unable to respond quick enough to the masses of customers complaining on social channels, they simple can not hire enough community managers and Social CRM systems are still being developed.  The old school thinking of traditional marketing putting the sole focus on voice of corporate communications, and sanctioned executives only.  Yet now, as social tools are pervasive (take a look at all the people accessing Facebook from their mobile phones) the gateways of public communication have been opened. Brands must extend their strategy to the outside rings. In order to scale in both time and mass, corporations must now extend their communication strategy beyond just corporate communications and sanctioned ‘company representatives’ to include others in the mix.  In the following graphic of the “Rings of Influence” I’ve mapped out how other individuals can and should be used in the communications strategy.   I’ve worked on trust research at my former employer, and found that in most cases the closer in the rings (corporate) there’s less trust.  Independent studies, like Edelman’s 2010 trust barometer indicate similar findings, figures 7 & 8 are telling in this PDF . Inversely, the further out in the rings (prospects and customers) the greater the levels of trust. Framework: Rings Of Influence As brand embrace the larger circles, the greater opportunity for reach, trust  –and risk.  I hope you use this graphic in your planning docs and presentations, it’s licensed under creative commons as Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Common.  Graphic assistance by Christine Tran, @christineptran Role and Description The Opportunity: Who’s Doing It Right: What no one tells you: Prospects : Those that are not yet customers. Engaging soon-to-be-customers during their problem and pain stages and focusing them on your solutions is the goal. Build lifestyle communities to engage them in a ‘bigger-than-brand’ discussion such as CVS’s community for caretakers . You’ll really need to let go of hard marketing styles and focus on what IBM’s senior marketer Sandy Carter calls “light branding”.  Make sure you have a community kickstart plan. Customers : Existing buyers, some which are super engaged and vocal in the space. Enabling the voice of the customer has been a mainstay belief for product development, but most companies have not harnessed them for marketing and support. Build an active advocacy program that encourages them to fight your own battles like Intel Insiders , Microsoft MVP , Wal-Mart’s 11 moms program. Bazaarvoice enables companies like BestBuy to have ratings and reviews on their site –increasing flow through funnel Customers will love and hate you alike. If you harness their voices, expect to let both types of information come through in a strategic way. The trick? Use complaints as an opportunity to show openness and customer response in public. The savvy brands will trigger advocates to deal with detractors, use this checklist to get started . Employees : Rank and file as well as ‘approved employees’ who are enabled to use social. Regular rank and file customers that are knowledgeable about products and are close to customers are likely to be more trusted than veneered executives. Give your own rank and file the opportunity to voice their opinion like Premier Farnell gave many of their employees the ability to publish their own videos on a community like Element 14 . Employees need guidelines, training, and processes. Don’t leave your company or your employees exposed, develop internal training programs, regular communications, and a place to share. See how Intel has created a light weight ‘certification’ program for employees who participate in social Corporate : The traditional and centralized communications group and sanctioned company representatives Corporate comms can benefit from social tools that allow the spread and sharing of company messages, and they can also build a social platform to stand on in order to fend of critics See how SouthWest Airlines has built a corporate blog for years, which gave them the standing power to fight back against detractor Kevin Smith. Also, see how Domino’s President used online video to respond in a human and more trusted way during an employee health crises. Lots of retraining when it comes to rethinking the approach in this space. Stop and breath, develop a measured set of steps a framework, control is not completely lost if you have a balance. This is an opportunity more than a threat. Harness All The Voices In Your Ecosystem –Not Just Corporate Communications Brands should stop focusing on the corporate ring alone –and benefit by using all the rings in a coordinated fashion.  I’ve broken down the roles into subsets in the above matrix, yet there are some key baseline considerations as your deploy, remember to: Recognize that greater opportunity is abound at outer rings –but comes with increased risk. Brands are most comfortable operation in the inside rings, like ‘Corporate’, yet the greatest opportunity to leverage trust and reach happens at the outer rings of influence with ‘Customers’ and ‘Prospects. Map the  rings to your existing customer experience timeline. These rings aren’t unlike traditional marketing funnels, except that there’s a focus on role and trust, over cycle. In most cases, prospects are in the outer mouth of a funnel, but customers, employees, and corporate can also participate in every step of the marketing funnel. Analyze which roles are needed in what aspects of the customer timeline –and map your strategy accordingly Be pragmatic, and develop a roadmap: start with smallest ring and move out. Don’t jump on the largest ring of prospects without first getting grounded. Start at the inner circle and work you way out, building a foundation at the core and building on success and safety in experience. Companies that try to address prospects but lack the internal resources and ethos to deliver may find themselves offering false promises. This single graphic represents an entire presentation I’m developing for internal client workshops or keynote presentations at marketing and business conferences.  I love to share, and want to get your feedback in the comments below.   Update: Mitch has also extended the conversation in the Social CRM pioneers Google Group, watch it unfold and participate in the group.

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Framework: Rings of Infuence

April may bring spring showers here in the U.S., but it's also bringing nine different conferenced scattered across the country. Drupal, the future of money and technology, the future of tech in the Midwest, social media, the cloud - pick a topic, get a ticket, and feed your brain. How do you like your events guide? You can import individual events into Google Calendar using the link beside each entry, or download the entire thing as an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file, or even view it as a world map . Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor 4 April 2010: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania ConnectNow TEDx CMU is an independently organized TEDx event that will be held on April 4th, 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University and will feature a full day of talks by prominent speakers as well as recorded videos from past TEDTalks. Confirmed speakers include Jonathan Fields (author, blogger and entrepreneur), Stacey Monk (founder of Epic Change, a startup nonprofit), Chase Jarvis (photographer, director and social artist) and Nathan Martin (CEO of Deeplocal, an innovation studio in Pittsburgh). The theme of the event is "Fearless", and we are inviting speakers from cross-disciplinary backgrounds to talk about their experiences, and tell us a little about what inspires them to be fearless in the pursuit of goals. We hope to spark discussions and foster connections between participants, encouraging aspiring individuals to follow their dreams and make a difference. The event is free to attend, and the application deadline is March 21, 2010. For more information about the event, visit tedxcmu.com or email info@tedxcmu.com. You can also find TEDx CMU on Facebook or follow us on Twitter . 7 – 9 April 2010: Sydney, Australia ConnectNow ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au . 13 – 15 April 2010: Dallas, Texas PubCon South PubCon , the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here . 16 April 2010: Mountain View, California Under the Radar: Cloud Under the Radar: Cloud is must-attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a hand-picked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, visit http://undertheradarblog.com . 16 – 17 April 2010: Royal Oak, Michigan FutureMidwest FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow. Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here . 17 April 2010: New York City Seven on Seven Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new - be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine - over the course of a single day. The seven teams will unveil their ideas at a one-day event at the New Museum on April 17. Seven on Seven Participants include, on the technology side, Ayah Bdeir (artist and programmer), Jeff Hammerbacher (Accel Ventures/ Facebook), David Karp (founder of Tumblr), Andrew Kortina (of Bitly/ Venmo), Hilary Mason (of betaworks), Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), and Joshua Schachter (currently at Google, formerly at Yahoo, and founder of delicious), and on the art side, Tauba Auerbach, Cao Fei, Aaron Koblin, Monica Narula, Marc Andre Robinson, Evan Roth and Ryan Trecartin. Conference attendance includes a half-day session where the seven teams will unveil their ideas, followed by a cocktail reception in the New Museum Skyroom. Find registration information here . April 19, 2010: St. Louis Missouri Social Fresh St. Louis The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off. 19 – 21 April 2010: San Francisco, California DrupalCon DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts. Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management. 26 April 2010: San Francisco, California Future of Money and Technology Summit The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell, formerly of ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more. Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration . 7 May 2010: Mountain View, California ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference. An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences . We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks. Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform ? Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel? Content, Publishing & Recommendations - the technologies and best practices. Mobile Social Networking - how to tap into communities on mobile devices. Internet of Things - the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data. Augmented Reality - the technology and business applications of AR. Native App vs. Browser Based - Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. Click here to register now , or to become a sponsor , or to help shape the conference . 11 May 2010: San Francisco, California FinovateSpring FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day. Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available. May 17 2010: San Francisco, California SF MusicTech Summit The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off . 18 – 19 May 2010: Santa Clara, California Social Media Strategies Social Media Strategies is a conference on social business, social marketing, advertising and optimization. Social media technologies are fundamentally changing the sales, marketing and operations process. Business are leveraging social technologies to acquire, market, and communicate with customers. This conference features cutting edge topics, keynotes, workshops and discussions that provided strategic knowledge, insights and real world examples on how to successfully plan, implement and manage your organizations social media efforts to achieve your business goals. Use the code "readwriteweb" when you register and get $100 off . 25 – 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado Glue Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world. ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12". 27 – 28 May 2010: Beijing, China Global Mobile Internet Conference The Global Mobile Internet Conference is designed specifically for entrepreneurs, executives and influencers to understand and capitalize on the growing opportunities in mobile internet. Though focused on opportunities in Asia, much of the conference dialogue is intended to compare and trade best practices across borders, especially between the East and West. Around 1000 industry leaders from Asia, Europe and North America are expected to attend. The conference will be in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. 28 May 2010: Beijing, China Global Mobile Internet Conference - Innovation Show & Startup Competition The Global Mobile Internet Conference Innovation Show intends to be a launch pad for innovative mobile internet startups from around the world. Innovation Show finalists will have the opportunity to present their company to an expected 1,000 investors, industry leaders, and press. Finalists will be judged by and receive feedback from a team of respected venture capitalists and angel investors. The judges will choose one company as the GMIC Innovation Show Winner. Startups must apply by April 4. 15 – 16 June 2010: New York City Corporate Social Media Summit The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring: Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson), Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media Save $400 if you quote RWW400 when booking. Book here . 29 – 30 June 2010: London Cloud Computing World Forum The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include: Co-located with CloudCamp London Co-located with Green IT conference Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre Free-to-attend evening awards presentation Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services Evening networking party for all attendees 5 October 2010: New York City FinovateFall FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies. FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available. Download this entire events calendar in iCal format. Discuss

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 3 April 2010

Despite the heavy press coverage of smartphone operating systems like iPhone and Android, sometimes the most intriguing mobile innovations come from other companies. Case in point: Nokia's newly released "bots" for its Nokia N97 line of handsets. These four individual software programs run in the background, learning your mobile habits by passively collecting data on how you use your phone. After gaining a sense of your daily tasks and routines, the bots personalize your phone, doing everything from rearranging your applications based on usage to automating the switch between mobile profiles. Incredible! Sponsor Four Smart Bots There are four distinct mobile bots now available as a bundled download here from Nokia Labs, the community site featuring beta, non-commercialized programs for Nokia handsets. Currently, the collection includes the following: Profile Bot : This bot automates switching between mobile profiles - like switching to "silent" mode when you're in a meeting and switching back to normal mode when the meeting is over. The bot can be configured to suggest profile changes that can be activated with a single click or it can be set to full automation. Alarm Bot : The alarm bot learns when you go to bed and when you wake up. At night, the bot suggests alarms and profile changes via your homescreen. With a single click, you can set the phone to silent mode and create a new alarm to wake you in the morning.

EMC is a large company focused on high performance storage for enterprises. It's offerings are closely aligned with the idea of extending infrastructure from virtualization to private cloud infrastructure. The company wants to help IT data provisioning services are as easy as Amazon and as secure as Fort Knox. To get a handle of where enterprise data storage meets the web, we looked for inspiration from architects of the web and Internet, including web pioneer Sir Tim Berner-Lee and Vint Cerf . We take a look at EMC as positioned as the closet, physically, to the core assets of the enterprise. Sponsor In this report, we also spoke with Ted Newman, CTO of the Cloud Infrastructure Group of EMC Consulting, which is part of EMC Global Services to find out what is really happening in the enterprise sales and delivery engines. We mashed his thoughts up with some big-thinkers in the core of computing to get perspective on the company's future as a map to enterprise information assets. Where Does Data Live? EMC's byline is " Where Information Lives ", and by being a leading provider of storage solutions, this claim is literal indeed. Here, we see that data does have a home. In this case, in an enclosure, in a data center. This YouTube video shares a 2009 demonstration of EMC's Symmetrix V-Max. This unit, built in partnership with Intel, can be configured with up to two petabytes of storage and one terrabyte of cache. Based on our interview Newman from the company and its focus on creating and extending private clouds, we think the EMC is recognizing the vast power of extending the enterprise out and providing services that compete with with the ease and speed of Amazon Web Services, but also provide enterprise class controls and performance. Where Does Data Dance? Tim Berners Lee sheds some light in this interview about the future of the web and its data. Question : "Is your vision of the Semantic Web one in which data is freely available, or are there access rights attached to it?" Answer : "A lot of information is already public, so one of the simple things to do in building the new Web of data is to start with that information. And recently, I've been working with both the U.K. government and the U.S. government in trying not only to get more information on the Web, but also to make it linked data. But it's also very important that systems are aware of the social aspects of data. And it's not just access control, because an authorized user can still use the right data for the wrong purpose. So we need to focus on what are the purposes for accessing different kinds of data, and for that we've been looking at accountable systems. Accountable systems are aware of the appropriate use of data, and they allow you to make sure that certain kinds of information that you are comfortable sharing with people in a social context, for example, are not able to be accessed and considered by people looking to hire you. For example, I have a GPS trail that I took on vacation. Certainly, I want to give it to my friends and my family, but I don't necessarily wish to license people I don't know who are curious about me and my work and let them see where I've been. Companies may want to do the same thing. They might say, "We're going to give you access to certain product information because you're part of our supply chain and you can use it to fine-tune your manufacturing schedule to meet our demand. However, we do not license you to use it to give to our competition to modify their pricing." This vision is where there is opportunity, accountable means controls. Shared, means cloud. Perhaps a new term in the making: Accountable clouds. Does Your Cloud Compile? Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist posted to the Google Research blog, Cloud Computing and the Internet that further expands on vocabulary management and cloud computing. We see a definition of cloud computing emerging here that ties it to data portability and capability, a defining moment in the definition of semantic web. "Interestingly, my colleague, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has been pursuing ideas that may inform the so-called "inter-cloud" problem. His idea of data linking may prove to be a part of the vocabulary needed to interconnect computing clouds. The semantics of data and of the actions one can take on the data, and the vocabulary in which these actions are expressed appear to me to constitute the beginning of an inter-cloud computing language. This seems to me to be an extremely open field in which creative minds everywhere can be free to contribute ideas and to experiment with new concepts. It is a new layer in the Internet architecture and, like the many layers that have been invented before, it is an open opportunity to add functionality to an increasingly global network." All of the sudden, the semantic web seems required to realize the vision of the cloud. And, the great thing about it is that the cloud layer being a first example of the semantic web shows us we can start it in information technology's own backyard. EMC's Opportunity The enterprise of the future needs to share nicely, store petabytes at-will, and be available on demand. Also, to the degree that organizations run sensitive or personalized enterprise software, the platforms it runs on and interacts with will need to demonstrate the controls and permissions similar to those today inside the enterprise. This will be a key factor in whether the enterprise systems can gracefully consume cloud computing - or what they can adopt it for. This is the space open for EMC to provide hardware solutions coupled with software to manage the resources of the cloud, including storage, computing, and network. This is also the area of much focus - from monitoring to provisioning. And a winner is not going to be determined overnight. A roundup of open questions for the company and the enterprise information industry: VMware and Not - Can EMC win soley with ties to VMware, if open source hypervisors take significant market share, can and will the company be well positioned in these architectures? Oracle with Sun - Will Oracle's move into hardware, cloud, and storage have an impact on the companies positioning? S3 Servers in the Enterprise - We may have made this up. It seems clear that S3 and other Amazon Web Services will become the core fabric for IT adopting the cloud. It only makes sense to do the same with abstracting storage in the enterprise. We believe in the power of the cloud to creep in, and we want to see how big storage providers react to this new logical competitor. A key here for EMC and the rest of the IT industry is that Amazon sells storage with no consulting involved, or waiting period. At EMC, global services was responsible for 37% of EMC's total revenue in 2009 and is a important part of servicing customers. We wonder, should EMC offer an "S3" for the enterprise that plugs into Ionix and other EMC offerings? Open Protocols Inside, APIs Outside? - We asked recently in a discussion with Hitachi Data Systems whether open protocols instead of APIs would be the driver for this industry interoperability. Amazon, is clearly an API, where things more in the core of storage tier are protocols, worked on in tandem by many and influenced by those who matter. Helping IT Respond to Now - In a way, EMC and cloud computing meet in the IT budgeting process. We think that providing "always available" and "highly available" will meet, "low latency" and "DR" in a real way in future Amazon vs. internal discussions. What we mean, is that Amazon providing "scale as you go" is perfect disruption for the IT department. Iinfrastructure scales, IT budgets don't. This can be a big headache for IT trying to predict the future and is an opportunity for EMC to provide a better solution for enterprise capacity management. Yes, that means paying with a credit card - at least sometimes. Intel / Cisco as partners - New types of network management and cloud services are evolving in the chipset and network layer. We see the companies maturity in how it has global partnerships with these companies to help the the channel and drive solutions. At the same time, this centuries IT industry is more of a mosh-pit than a sing-a-long, and it seems like it is going to get very cozy in the future in the area of network and cloud management. This EMC rant on YouTube is a funny take on where the company is positioned. If EMC plays it's cards right, enterprises will choose its tools to "control the shape" of the data and systems in the data center. And, if it evolves quickly enough, the same IT manages will have solutions that keep all of the companies assets, including public cloud offerings, under one umbrella. Is your enterprise moving your data out into the cloud? Or is the cloud moving into your company's data? Photo credit: paul_clarke Discuss

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Rulers of the Cloud: A Multi-Tenant Semantic Cloud is Forming & EMC Knows that Data Matters