From my conversations with customers it is evident that CIO’s are continuing to strive to be at the heart of value creation. Generally speaking the top three goals for CIO’s in 2013 are: -

1. Protecting corporate data
2. Improving business productivity  – and giving business stakeholders transparency as to the cost of the IT services they are consuming
3. Lowering the cost to serve of IT services – and moving spend from CAPEX to OPEX

With Cloud Computing firmly ticking numbers two and three on the CIO “to do” list, is it just fear of failure around the first point that is preventing much wider cloud adoption than is currently occurring? Inevitably, as with all things “IT”, it isn’t quite that straight forward. Clearly, having confidence as to the protection afforded a corporations most precious asset (its data) is a potential barrier Continue Reading

Must have competencies for the Cloud in 2013

Following on from my last blog ‘Re-enforcing our doors in 2013’  solving all of the issues of disruptive innovations isn’t going to be possible in a year but we must take some strides towards making some of the changes.  The four members of the disruptive family are Cloud computing, social media, big data and Mobile.

Let’s take Cloud Computing this week and examine some competencies Continue Reading

Like many many proud parents I am sure the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will treasure their first picture of their unborn baby. Medical images such as these are stored across the globe by hospitals as part of the ever growing patient record databases. You will regularly read blogs about the use of data deduplication to reduce the amount of data stored and transmitted, however patient records is one area where deduplication seldom helps. As an example and in no connection to the Duke and Duchess except by name, the Cambridge University Hospital in the UK has been using EMC Centera for a number of years to store such data.

Many hospitals now find that storing this data can be a major obstacle  while EMC Centera can store this data perfectly well, few hospitals have the data centre space to dedicate to such arrays. ESG research in 2011 indicated in North America that total storage Continue Reading

Washing clothes is one of those tasks made a lot easier by the use of a washing machine. A piece of equipment that has been purposely designed to the task in hand, in other words an appliance. Now I am sure you could make your own washing machine, what would you need? A drum or bucket to hold all the clothes, a motor to spin the drum, and a pump to get the water in and out. But how many of us would do that? There are many brands of supplier, all offering us such appliances, Hotpoint, Bosch, Neff, Hoover and Zanussi are the ones for me that spring to mind.

So when considering kitchen appliances what are their main advantages? Well, they have been specifically designed to accomplish a task, they often reduce the amount of our time involved in that task, they offer value for money, they are modular Continue Reading

Paul Tempest-Mitchell, Sales Development Manager for UK&I on being at the EMC Forum in Dublin 2012.

Andrew Bant sharing his thoughts at the EMC Forum in Dublin 2012.

I was recently invited by Drapers magazine – the retail fashion industry bible – to comment on what UK fashion retailers are doing with mobile technology. To be honest, I struggled to think of genuinely innovative activity that put customers – not the product, brand or retailer –  first, certainly in the UK. If you check out the Neiman Marcus ‘Service’ app   you will see something that genuinely helps customers and staff, delivering a better customer service experience. Let me know if you have seen any ambitious use of mobile technology in current UK fashion retail that actually puts customer need first – all comments welcome”. Please see my article below.

Drapers Mobile Fashion article

Paul Tempest Mitchell, Sales Development Manager at EMC talks about how EMC is optimising virtual envirnoments and how to best build a good cloud environment. Register today to attend Paul’s session at EMC Forum London on the 11th of September. Register here!

It seems now as a consumer you are presented with a vast array of solutions in which to store your data. Pat Gelsinger spoke this week of a desire for VMware to become the “Apple of the data centre”, running all your applications and databases in a virtualised environment. This could be either in your own data centre or one of the many hosted now available for use by any size of organisation. And what about all this data, according to IDC data volumes will continue to double every two years, giving you possibly, a  Continue Reading

This year, we’re bringing back EMC Forum to the UK and Ireland. This essential one-day event shows you how cloud and Big Data are transforming our industry — and how you can transform your business to stay competitive.

At EMC Forum you can learn, connect and network. You will hear local and international insights from high calibre keynote speakers and presenters, and case studies featuring the latest integrated solutions from EMC and our partners. A hand-picked selection of partners, such as Cisco, Computacenter and MTI, will be exhibiting their products, and our VLab will offer technical training from EMC engineers.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the latest solutions, products and services direct from EMC specialists and partners, network with the EMC Community and
discover our vision for the future. Continue Reading