Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?

As 2010 draws to a close, I want to suggest that you read T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

Read the full poem here, and listen to a great reading of it by Eliot himself.

And tell me, what does it make you feel?

Catching Up On Readings: PINK Means Business

One of this week’s Deal Radar companies is PINK, a multimedia company focused on women who work and designed to be a resource on a variety of career and money issues – everything from whether it’s best to pay off a mortgage or invest, to social media mistakes. Click on the full article to read this and the rest of the week’s posts. >>>

Roundtable Recap: December 2 – Niche Marketplace Businesses Can Be Interesting

During this week’s roundtable, one of the questions that I answered was about the One Million by One Million program’s plans around supporting social enterprises. Well, 1M/1M is focused on helping businesses generate $1M in annual revenue, whatever be the nature of the business. We see a lot of businesses that can be characterized as social enterprises, ranging from education to rural development businesses. But our goal is to make sure that these businesses are sustainable, have customers, revenues, and profits. We do not and will not have any particular focus on non-profits that are dependent upon funding from charities. While there may be initial grants that launch businesses and get them off the ground, philosophically, we believe that a model of self-sustaining development is the key to a stable global economic system.

Now, as for today’s entrepreneurs, first up today was Hardika Shah presenting Mesoloan, a small enterprise loan program for Indian entrepreneurs in the $2,000-$20,000 loan size bracket. This is a segment that is well beyond traditional micro-finance, but also somewhat below the scope of the regular financial institutions. Hardika intends to build a financial institution focused on this segment with financing from social entrepreneurship oriented venture funds like Unitus.
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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO of EMC (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Sramana: In the context of the cloud, we were discussing some of the key issues that EMC is trying to address. Let me help you understand my question. Entrepreneurs build companies by solving problems; I think the best companies are built when its people are solving a problem and know how they can get to a customer. What I am trying to see here is whether you can help our entrepreneurs by providing them with specific insights and pointers on areas where there are problems so that they can look into solvingsuch issues in the domain of cloud computing. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO of EMC (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Sramana: The next topic that I would like to bring up in this discussion is security. What is your perspective about security in the cloud?

Sanjay: Security has always been on the top of CIOs’ minds. It will continue to be the top priority and needs to be on the top. In terms of security in the cloud, I think there is a fundamental shift in the way we approach security. Historically, we have bolted on security into our canvas, into the landscape. Every time there is a vector exposed, we have bolt on some level of security with it, and that is how the industry has evolved. With the cloud, I think we have a chance to build security into the cloud infrastructure as opposed on bolted-on security. So, fundamentally, I think the way technology is evolving in clouds, security has been plugged through right at ground zero so to speak and built in as opposed to being bolted on. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO of EMC (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Sramana: You mention private clouds. How do you decide on what to put on the private cloud versus what to procure from the public cloud as part of your cloud strategy?

Sanjay: It is a journey. The journey that we are on at EMC is to virtualize our infrastructure. This will get us into the next level where we have a highly elastic cloud-like infrastructure; [we] call it our private cloud. I shared with you earlier that we have approximately 75% of the infrastructure virtualized at EMC today. Next year, our infrastructure will be close to 100% virtualized. So, I’m providing infrastructure and platforms, in a short time across the company, as a service in a private cloud-like environment. As for the applications, we are going top down. In the case of newer applications we require, if those are available in the cloud, we consider them, engage with respective vendors, and bring them in, for example, Salesforce. As more and more existing applications come up for renewal or there are new application requirements, we decide upon them case by case, based on scale requirements. Anything else that we decide to bring in-house, those need to address availability and have to be private cloud aware. In our case, it is a staggered decision set. However, if there is a functionality that we are looking to have in EMC and it is available in the cloud and meets our needs, I’m happy to go look at it. If it doesn’t, then it has to be virtualized and cloud enabled on-premise. So ideally, we work with a private cloud in our internal infrastructure at EMC. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO of EMC (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Sramana: At EMC, now that you have this rather large virtualized infrastructure, are you able to charge back the different parts of the company based on their usage? Or is that something that you are planning to do or are interested in doing?

Sanjay: Yes, it is definitely a goal we have. Given the technology we have, we are at the point of being able to provide a lot of our infrastructure and some pieces of our platform as a service, if not charge back, at least the capability of being able to show back would be good. I am not as religious about charge back as I am about show back. Being able to run an efficient infrastructure and to be able to show the business, the true cost and value of what they pay for or the company pays for, is important to me. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO of EMC (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

How are IT organizations in large companies approaching clouds? We covered some bits of it in the post Large Enterprises: To Be or Not To Be In The Clouds. Private clouds came up as the preferred choice given the legacy, security, and continuity theme in a large enterprise. In the latest interview of our series Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing, Sramana talks to Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO of EMC. She uncovers additional aspects related to people and process evolution in large enterprises such as EMC, as they journey into the cloud. Sanjay shares his thoughts on how EMC is using their own core technologies to tier, consolidate, and virtualize to attain the business agility that the cloud promises.

Sanjay Mirchandani is senior vice president and chief information officer of EMC Corporation. He is responsible for extending EMC’s operational excellence and driving technological innovation, and he leads EMC’s network of global delivery centers in India, China, Russia, and Israel. Prior to joining EMC, Mirchandani was Microsoft’s regional vice president for enterprise services and Asia. Mirchandani earned a master’s in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor’s degree from Drew University.

EMC provides information infrastructure technology and solutions such as unified storage, content management, security, virtualization, backup and recovery, private clouds, virtual desktop infrastructure, efficiency, automation, and archiving. The company’s revenues for FY 2009 were $14 billion. EMC is headquartered in Hopkinton, MA, and has a global presence across the world with approximately 43,000 employees. >>>