…Continued from Part 1 in the previous edition of Thoughtfeast’s ‘The Omnichannel Supply Chain’…

We now understand that there is no magic bullet in the shape of overseas production – where labour costs are no longer crushingly competitive, lead times are far too long and unpredictable; consumer inquisitiveness (“Where did this come from? Who made it? What’s the impact of this being made?”) is becoming more confident, vocal and insistent.  Consumers want to be involved in the conversation around the products that they spend their money on: when their purchasing decisions are no longer carefree and spontaneous but more thoughtful and drawn-out, consumers want a greater stake in the bargain.

But one of the biggest Continue Reading

Last week I found myself doing some analysis around how I spend my time and established that I spend over 70% of my time on customer related topics – either direct customer meetings or preparing for them or doing follow ups based on the conversations. So, that was the good news, but the data also showed that I am not a prolific blogger – although I didn’t need to look at data to know that: My absence from the Thought Feast site since January says it all! So I apologise for that. I’d make a New Year’s Continue Reading

Lady Backup has spent the last 3 weeks in 3 different desert regions.  It’s been glorious – sunny and 38C or hotter.

Here in Las Vegas for EMC World, the analogy was made to rain water in the desert and backup capacity.  Rainwater vaporizes almost instantly when it hits scorching pavement, never really quenching the Earth.  Similarly, no matter how much backup capacity added it is dwarfed by ever-growing data volumes.  I wish I could take credit for the analogy (as you know I love analogies… the crazier the better.  For example, see yesterday’s blog post).  No, this analogy came from Pat Gelsinger, president and COO of EMC’s Information Infrastructure Products.

We can’t do much to help the rainfall situation in the desert but we have good news for parched data centers around the world.  First, we introduced the new Data Domain DD990.  This new high-end purpose built backup appliance is 6x faster and offers 3x more capacity than the competition.

While speed and capacity matter to keep up with the vastness of the digital universe, we’ve made some other enhancements with the DD990.  For example, we’ve made enhancements with the Data Integrity Architecture, which gives you peace of mind by Continue Reading

Lady Backup is a fan of tattoos.  Sure some can be tacky, but on the whole they are amazing works of art.  Check out this tattoo (temporary) that I got at EMC World this week… it takes up most of my forearm.

In real life, any good tattoo artist will draw the tattoo on paper to create a stencil.  Then he or she will use a pen to draw the design on your body before getting out the needle and ink.  This way you know what it looks Continue Reading

Combining my love of northern things, old things and tasty things (I draw the line at tripe), I wallowed in the ‘Chatsworth’ documentary on TV last night.  The sections about the farm shop particularly appealed to my Omnichannel-addled brain, in drawing the threads between ultimate provenance, transparent supply chain and production techniques that are a winning feature for customers.  The zeal with which the producer – also the retailer – engaged with customers in constant conversation immediately went back into decisions on product development. Great for a farm shop (although it’s a Continue Reading

Lady Backup has a thing for cars.  The faster the better.  I am not as much of a motorcycle girl.  I probably would have a different view had I not badly burned my leg on a motorcycle when I was a teenager.

But it doesn’t really matter – no chance I will win the Harley Davidson motorcycle give away at the EMC Backup and Recovery stand here at EMC World.   Continue Reading

Now, where was I……?  Oh yes, I was listing the many benefits of archiving email  when I got yanked off stage!  Hmmm, where did I leave off……?  Ah yes…IT and one of the many benefits….

1. Reduces IT call centre traffic.  How many times in a month does IT receive a call to increase quotas or retrieve deleted email?  As I said in my previous point, quotas become a thing of the past with SourceOne, so no calls Continue Reading

Greetings from a hot Las Vegas!  Lady Backup traveled thousands of miles and many time zones to join 15,000 of my closest friends for EMC World 2012.

This is my 7^th EMC World and in the time I’ve attended, the show has gone through lots of change.  It’s not just the number of attendees – which is 10x more today compared with the first EMC World 11 years ago.  There is also a feeling that people are looking for change.  Continue Reading

Most of my friends and colleagues know that I like to cook so I will be doing a series of “recipes” in the next few weeks to address some of the key challenges based on conversations I am having with major organizations. So, to get started, here is part 1 on Creating a Trusted Cloud.

Clouds and virtualization offer powerful new ways to manage and use digital information, but they also create complexities for organizations in meeting the fundamental challenge of getting the right information to the right people over a trusted infrastructure. Why? Because clouds and virtualization change the nature of control and visibility. Infrastructure becomes virtual not physical. People access information from devices that are outside of IT’s direct control. Information moves at incredible speeds across networks and the cloud is making it hard to know exactly where sensitive information resides. Organisations must learn new ways to gain visibility into risks, threats and compliance performance.

Security is always cited as an inhibitor for cloud adoption. According to a recent Ovum survey when organizations were asked: “What are the biggest challenges or impediments to using cloud Continue Reading

This week I was invited to attend a multi-supplier strategy workshop with one of our clients.  The purpose of the workshop was to look at their future storage strategy and all the major industry vendors  were there to present. This style of workshop provides clients the ability to see consistencies and opinions from each supplier. When it was my turn to present , I decided to push things a bit and discuss how sourcing storage and technology would change in the next 5 years.  I started by suggesting that come 2017 the major vendors will not be selling hardware. This may seem a bit of a ridical theory, but by how much? If you follow my reasoning to come perhaps this statement Continue Reading