EMC's CTO: IT's Next Inflection Points
Jeff Nick shares his company's big-picture vision of the forces which shape enterprise computing today and explores next-generation opportunities for vendors.
By Maryann Jones Thompson, Sand Hill Group
Jun. 25, 2007
Already one of the largest tech companies in the world, EMC has worked hard to engineer billions of dollars-worth of acquisitions over the past few years which have propelled it into an even more powerful and influential position. Its software presence is now significant - as is its participation in all of the various dimensions of IT - from storage to hardware to applications to security.
Jeffrey Nick, senior VP and chief technology officer for EMC, took the stage at Software 2007 last month to deliver a keynote address which took advantage of EMC's big-picture view to deliver a glimpse of IT's next set of advancements and opportunity areas.
Forces in the IT Vortex
Nick began by describing the big picture of forces which shape today's IT landscape.
"There is a set of forces in the IT vortex as I call it: information, infrastructure and applications - really make up the elements of IT - and interaction is how we interact with our IT infrastructures…
First, from an information asset perspective, we are experiencing an explosion in digital information of all types - rich media, documents, content of all forms.
From an infrastructure perspective, we are facing more and more complexity as the network becomes more the central nervous system of the distributed infrastructure, and 'connecting the dots' between all the infrastructure elements now needs to be done to recompose IT back into a coherent stack.
From an applications perspective, we've seen that integration and Web 2.0 capabilities are really where the technologies are driving us.
From an interaction perspective, bandwidth and ubiquitous connectivity are enabling worldwide reach, global organizations and a new way of computing with Web 2.0."
Jeffrey Nick, senior VP and chief technology officer for EMC, took the stage at Software 2007 last month to deliver a keynote address which took advantage of EMC's big-picture view to deliver a glimpse of IT's next set of advancements and opportunity areas.
Forces in the IT Vortex
Nick began by describing the big picture of forces which shape today's IT landscape.
"There is a set of forces in the IT vortex as I call it: information, infrastructure and applications - really make up the elements of IT - and interaction is how we interact with our IT infrastructures…
First, from an information asset perspective, we are experiencing an explosion in digital information of all types - rich media, documents, content of all forms.
From an infrastructure perspective, we are facing more and more complexity as the network becomes more the central nervous system of the distributed infrastructure, and 'connecting the dots' between all the infrastructure elements now needs to be done to recompose IT back into a coherent stack.
From an applications perspective, we've seen that integration and Web 2.0 capabilities are really where the technologies are driving us.
From an interaction perspective, bandwidth and ubiquitous connectivity are enabling worldwide reach, global organizations and a new way of computing with Web 2.0."
