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

Greetings from EMC World 2013! Another record year with nearly 15,000 people from 80 countries.   There is no shortage of news from the show including:

• The headline news from EMC World 2013 is the introduction of EMC ViPR, Software-Defined Storage.
• From my area of interest, we introduced the EMC Data Protection Suite, changing the way customers consume EMC backup and archive capabilities.
• There’s also news from Isilon, Syncplicity Continue Reading

Lady Backup generally doesn’t shamelessly promote EMC products.  But there are always exceptions.  And this is one of them as we recognize the 10^th anniversary of EMC Data Domain.

Thinking back to 2009, the bidding war for Data Domain added a bit of drama and excitement  While interesting to watch, at the time I didn’t understand why our executives were so keen on acquiring Data Domain.   To me it seemed to be just another storage device – and EMC already had plenty of those.

In reality, the Data Domain appliance revolutionized backup technology.  I’ve come to appreciate the innovation of Data Domain and its many “firsts” in the market, which today Continue Reading

It seems whatever industry you are in nowadays we are obliged to shorten or abbreviate our words. Having just spent a few days discussing product roadmaps with our Champion Backup Partners, it seemed every slide we showed used some form of product abbreviation. I do now wonder if our Product Managers are creating new abbreviations so the roadmaps are only understandable with a code book.

So shortening words is not new I hear you say, true. What about then the shortening of the Continue Reading

Lady Backup is a bit of a strategist.  I like to look forward, to anticipate moves.  For this reason, I adore chess – the ability to process a series of “what if” scenarios to make the best decision on your next move.

To all of my fellow strategists in the IT world, this idea of anticipating the next move applies to backup.   Backup is a means to an end, where the end state is a business that is confident you can restore applications and recover individual files quickly.   While you might be in love with your Continue Reading

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

 Lady Backup is a stickler for tidy work, both grammar and formatting.  My employees can vouch for the amount of corrections and comments I make to everything that passes my desk.  So of course dotting every “i” is critical…

But in the case of retailer Arcadia Group, they removed tape in the backup of their IBM i environments.  These systems run the supply chain applications, along with other mission critical applications – in other words they supply the lifeblood data.

Acardia’s IT staff was finding that their tape-based backup Continue Reading

I came across this really interesting post this morning. For those of you looking to virtualise your Oracle environment, and looking to get actual insight on Before and After, look no further than EMC’s own journey to virtualisation.

In his post, Darryl Smith gives you detailed information what improvements and efficiencies to expect from going through that journey.

Read the full blog post now: Running Oracle on Virtual Infrastructure Really Pays Off: Save Big on Capital, Operating and License Costs.

If you’re looking to virtualise Oracle and are based in the UK & Ireland, get in touch and take the next step to virtualisation.

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!

Mark Galpin, Product Marketing Manager for EMC gives us a quick overview of some of the topics he will be covering at this years EMC Forum in London on September 11th, including: data growth, protecting your data, efficient backup and next generation backup solutions.

Register for EMC Forum