The hardest thing to change inside IT is not technology, it is process! I say this because all too often there are technologies available that provide a far superior solution to a complex IT problem, however, this new technology may not fit into your existing business process. Need proof? Let's take data protection as an example. Did you know that VTLs (virtual tape libraries) and data deduplication technologies came out at the exact same point… Read more »
Information Classification - IT's Hardest Job
I have decided information today, is like a group of friends. If you look at my LinkedIn page or my Facebook page you see that I have over 600 connections and over 180 friends respectively. What does this really mean? Obviously don't stay in touch with all of these people. So why do we have these connections? I think it is because we believe that in the future, each one of these connections will offer… Read more »
Betamax Redux
I often joke w/ customers that when my friends were growing up they would dream of being a professional baseball player or a rock star and I used to dream of becoming a data protection technologist. Recently I read something very profound in Chuck Hollis’s internal EMC blog. Chuck said, "Decide what you're passionate about ...and write about it... it is hard to write about stuff you don't care about." I am passionate about data… Read more »
Road to 'Data' Recovery - 12 Steps
Hi, my name is Steve and I have a recovery problem. Well, a data recovery problem that is. So, I think it is about time that I apply the '12 steps' to help me with my data recovery problem.
Step 1 - It is time that I admit that I am powerless over my backup environment and my data protection world is unmanageable.
Step 2 - I have come to believe that there is a… Read more »
Lean Six Sigma Your Backups
Last week I took a course offered by EMC entitled ‘Lean Six Sigma' - Yellow Belt. This is a training course that is used to help ‘solve problems' in a given process, typically work related. When I think about where the biggest problem is in IT its in the Backup arena so I thought, what a better place to test it.
There are two components to Lean Six Sigma. Lean or Leaning a process is… Read more »