Blasts from the past

Just found two videos of myself on the interweb. One at EMC Documentum in Lisbon, and the other at the EU ICT conference in Lyon. Quite scary, but they do give the confidence a boost. Links here if you promise not to criticise.

Storage de ja vu

Back in 2003, a number of us in the analyst community viewed the acquisition of the 800 lb gorilla in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) marketplace, aka Documentum, to be an exercise based upon the premise of EMC having so much in the way of storage products available, it needed to offer enterprises something to put on those products.  Roll on nearly a decade and we have the offer of  Amazon Web Services (AWS) Glacier to replace tape archives. Ignoring the current (but relevant) debates on pricing, response times, and issues of bandwidth to the Glacier offering, I personally like the idea. It is a modus operandi that is already prevalent in the consumer community. We upload our pictures to the likes of Flikr, Facebook etc not just because we want to show off, but because we believe our valuable memories will be safe there. Many use the likes of BOX.COM and Dropbox as personal archives, and many put their online passwords into emails on universally accessible webmail sites. AWS could be on to a winner.with Glacier, expect Microsoft et al to follow.

Can we visualise Big Data?

EMC hopes so. In "The Human Face of Big Data", a photo journalism project it is sponsoring, it is asking 100 of the world's leading photographers, in 30 countries to visually document the collection and use of data.

Working with photographer Rick Smolan, and his company Against All Odds Productions. The objective is to create a coffee table book and iPad app showing the best of the photographs, using the images to demystify the term that seems to have N+1 definitions for the N commentators writing about it. EMC is hoping that the book, to be published in the autumn will be a national "best seller" and is also intending to distribute copes to 'influencers'.

Of course EMC as a storage provider has a vested interest in Big Data, both on premise and in the cloud as a service. The company which recently announced $5.31bn revenues for the second quarter of 2012 makes a lot of cash from storage and with, most notably the Greenplum database, is aiming to offer organisations on premise and/or cloud solutions to meet Big Data needs. 
Illustration of Big Data by those of us in the the analyst community trying to communicate the issue to IT decision makers has always been an issue. We have reached for images of overloaded donkey carts and pictures of people running from tsunami waves. But whilst these raise wry smiles from an audience, they do not in my opinion convey the enormity (pun intended) of the subject, its challenges and opportunities for CIOs and other decision makers.

A long time ago, when I was an IT Manager in the UK NHS, I almost had sleepless nights wondering what I would do when our storage requirements reached 1 terabyte. Lately I have been known to show a photo of the 1000+ DVD collection we have at home, (don't ask) organised by genre/series or artist - that is 5 terabytes 'under management'. I wish the project well.

As a footnote I would (tongue in cheek) like to nominate this Dilbert cartoon http://bit.ly/MTQ97G suggested by @TonyBaer.

BOX.COM launches in Europe

18 June – the team from BOX.COM are in London in advance of the announcement that they are expanding into Europe, in the first instance through a London base. BOX has (unashamedly) long been a favoured company for myself in that, whilst developed in a University dorm, it was designed from the outset to be an 'enterprise ready' rather than a 'consumer' product – (add your own names here). It will sync with corporate directories and the organisation retains control of all the content.

Previously described as 'ECM in the cloud' msmd advisors believes that BOX like Salesforce.com is taking a lead, in offering organisations an alternative to on premise proprietary solutions, whilst ensuring that corporate security strategy is adhered to. (It is notable that a little time before Microsoft announced it was to acquire the Yammer collaborative suite, and in msmd advisors' opinion, the Redmond behemoth was trying to address the same issue).

However, msmd advisors believes that BOX is a product of it's time. The 'perfect storm' of widespread wifi and broadband access across the world, the emergence of other form factors/devices, such as netbooks, tablets, Android and iOS phones as access devices, and the adoption of a increasing  range of standards for file formats has made this opportunity possible.

Alongside the expansion into Europe to support multinationals etc., BOX has added a whole range of extra tools to ensure differentiation from the 'cloud storage' competition.(again add your own names).
In addition BOX has used its rapid growth to date to recruit key industry individuals to support of its founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith, such as general mangers and marketeers (such as Whitney Tidmarsh Bouck from EMC, Joely Urton from Oracle, and Meghan Hughes from Text 100). These people are not only highly experienced and referenced, but all have significant influence n the market(s) that BOX it is aiming to penetrate. They also, like the founders, seem to have a delight in making business fun (which is something that is missing in many companies today). Welcome to this side of the pond.