Wow! I’ve been to EMC Worlds before (three if I remember correctly) but not for several years and never as an EMC employee. Boy, have things changed!
And I’m not just talking about the size of the crowd, which has grown to more than 10,000+ users; the high-octane spectacular that’s become the Tucci and Gelsinger keynote (impressive 400’ screen, eh?); the massive hands-on lab in which hundreds of users got the opportunity to experiment with new technologies; the breathing-room-only solutions hall; the cool new conference app or even the event’s first Twitpolls.
What really stood out (excuse me while I don my analyst hat one more time) was the scope and depth of this year’s message. Yes, the message.
Whether we were talking scale-out storage, big data, cloud or, in my case, backup and recovery, the unifying theme EMC-wide was “Transform IT + Business + Yourself.” No question about it.
EMC execs Joe Tucci, Pat Gelsinger, BJ Jenkins (backup, recovery and archive), Brian Gallagher (enterprise storage) and Sujal Patel (Isilon) all framed their keynotes around the concept of IT and business transformation; EMC CIO and COO Sanjay Mirchandani took us on a journey inside EMC and the makings of today’s IT hero (reminds me of my past post Captain Instinct? The Loan Geek? Which IT Superhero Are You?); and The Backup Window’s own Stephen Manley helped us better understand the link between backup transformation and business velocity, as well as the people, process and infrastructure changes necessary to move forward full throttle and achieve backup freedom.
Now, don’t get me wrong. We still did the product thing – and with full fervor (42 announcements for those counting). The difference is we didn’t just focus on the “what” but also looked at the “why” and “how.” To paraphrase Sanjay Mirchandani, if it’s not providing business value, why do it?
Got questions? Missed the show? Want to know why Stephen Manley was riding a scooter? Comment below, check out the EMC World coverage on-line or join me and senior product marketing manager Mark Doncov on June 14 for the EMC Live event “3 Essential Steps to Transforming Your Backup and Recovery.”
Of course, Stephen and I – and the team of EMCBackup bloggers – will continue to tell the story here on The Backup Window.
