I couldn’t think of a good way to say this – so I’m just going to cut to the chase. I’m leaving EMC. In fact, yesterday was my last full day of work.

My time at EMC has been filled with interesting and challenging roles. I started as a developer for the SAN courses. I moved on to develop courses in the Ionix space, specifically the Voyence Control suite.

At the same time I was developing the Voyence courses, I was part of the group that jumped at the chance to do social media internally at EMC. I started a blog internally that rounded up all the stories I could find about the storage industry, and I eventually created this blog. I’ve trained and mentored lots of folks, and set the strategy for social media for Education Services.

I’m going to miss working daily with so many people! First of all, members of our Proven Professional Community …. representing you internally, making sure what you share is heard by the right people, has been without a doubt the most satisfying part of my job. Everyone working with social media – how fun has this been! We’re all connected and I hope it stays that way.

Inside Ed Services – I’m going to miss you all. From the operations team (who make me miss being a sysadmin every time we chat!), to the course developers, to the instructors, to the folks that market the product, to the ladies that answer the phones and help people get registered for class – y’all are amazing. This organization is filled with so many talented, incredible people. Saying goodbye to you all is the hardest part of this transition.

Ed Services folks will know the background story on this dollar:

Its hard to see I know, but here is what is written on it:

Think big

Think different

Connect all

Connect all – that is my mantra. The storage industry in which we work is really a very small industry. But it is probably one of the most important industries there is – we are responsible for storing the world’s information. I believe its vital to connect all to live up to this responsibility.

So please let’s stay connected! Or connect with me if you haven’t already! For me, its on to new, exciting adventures.

It’s that time of year again – time for EMC Education’s annual survey of storage and IT managers and individual contributors. Cutting to the chase - this is the link to the survey.

Every year we reach out to information and storage professionals, excluding any EMC employees, and ask them to give us feedback on the challenges they are seeing in their environments, as well as trends (what technologies is everyone using, what are the new technologies that are actually being adopted, what things do people no longer use).

Each year we publish the results at EMC World. Last year’s survey results can be downloaded here. One place the results were discussed last year was in the Proven Professional Community. Last year’s survey had questions that specifically addressed how the downturn in the economy in 2009 had impacted storage professionals, and those results were pretty telling.

This year, the survey will attempt to measure the impact of virtualization and cloud computing on our industry. Understanding this impact is important from an education perspective – do we have enough skilled workers to meet the demands of virtualization and cloud computing? What skills do they need to know? Is expanding and building on their current set of knowledge skills enough to bridge any gaps identified?

Its also important from a planning perspective. If  I manage a data center, info on emerging trends can help me identify hiring and training needs for the next year.

The survey is not for EMC employees – we are looking for participants who are in the trenches in data centers every day, either building, managing and maintaining these systems, and also the people responsible for managing these sorts of teams. Of course we’ll reach out to the folks who manage EMC storage, but the intent is to create a comprehensive industry survey. So please consider participating even if you don’t have any EMC arrays in your shop.

Once again here’s the link to the survey. We have a discussion started in the Proven Professional Community – if you have any questions about the survey logistics please let us know! We’ll also be previewing some of the findings in the community, so keep an eye out for that!

Please help us spread the word!

This post is cross-posted from the EMC Proven Professional Community on ECN.

Hi everyone! Sorry the round-ups have been sporadic the last part of this quarter. One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to be sure to get the round-ups out every Friday for 2011. If you have them, why not share your resolutions over on our Facebook fan page!

I thought this week I’d do something a little different. I wanted to reflect on what we’ve done together as a community in 2010. And instead of doing a top 10 list, I’m doing a roundup of top 10 lists.

Proven Professional Community – 2010

• World Wide Proven Professional Day
  This event is near and dear to my heart. In addition to planning events for the Proven Professionals who were physically at EMC World, we planned events for Proven Professionals across the globe – and World Wide Proven Day was born. You guys really came through, changing your avatars on different social media spaces, telling us what you were doing on #WWPD2010, and posting pictures to the Flickr group. It was a truly global event.
  I can’t wait to see how many Proven Professionals we can connect for #WWPD2011!
• Community Involvement
  The communities have definitely become a places that people can come to get help with questions about Proven Professional certifications. Its also been amazing to watch people go from students to professionals, and from partners or customers to fellow employees, or just stretching their career paths using Proven Professional certifications as a starting point.
  Its also great to watch experts in our community willingly share their knowledge with newcomers.
  If you haven’t asked or answered a question, don’t be shy, speak up! If you are nervous, you can always just introduce yourself first.
• Online Events
  If you are a Proven Professional, you may have attended one of the online events we sponsored (either an E2E or eSeminar event). Here are the events we held this year:
  • Introducing EMC VPLEX
  • New Advanced Storage Efficiency Technologies
  • New EMC Unisphere Simplifies Storage Management
  • New Symmetrix VMAX Capabilities
  • The Evolution of Cloud Computing
    If you are a Proven Professional, you have access to all the recordings of these live events. (Tips for troubleshooting access issues here). We’ll   continue to bring these to you next year as well, so stay tuned!
• New programs
  Here are some of the programs we launched this year.
  • Proven Professional Starter Kit
    
  • Proven Professional Advocacy Program
    
  • New Proven Professional Certifications – Cloud Architect and Data Center Architect
    I have no idea what we have in store for next year…but rest assured the minute I know I’ll share it with all of you here in the community.

Gina’s top 10 technology top 10 lists

I’m not saying I agree with everything on these lists, but they definitely give you food for thought. I was actually surprised how many lists mentioned the iPad. I threw in a couple of silly ones. If you know of a list I missed, add it in the comments!

1. Big themes 2010 via Chuck Hollis
2. 10 2011 predections via Chad Sakac
3. 2011 ECM Prophecies and trends by (Proven Professional) Lee Dallas
4. 10 most important enterprise IT products via CTO Edge
5. 10 most important data storage stories of 2010 via eWeek
6. Top 10 technology trends via the Telegraph
7. The 10 biggest data center stories of 2010 via CRN
8. Top 10 cloud computing stories of 2010 via Computer Weekly
9. The 10 most powerful tweets of 2010 via Twitter
10. Top 10 gadgets via Time

As 2010 closes out, I just want to say how much I enjoy working with my EMC colleagues and all of you here in the community. It has been great this year, and I’m looking forward to even a busier 2011! Happy new year everyone!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a forum or read a blog that talks about all the trust issues with the cloud – no security, lack privacy, doesn’t stand up to regulations, etc. Everyone seems to think of the cloud still as the wild-wild-west and yet I think by this time that we have a pretty good handle on what the problems are – now we need to really focus our efforts on how to solve those problems.

In October of this year a friend of mine – Dr. Jeffrey Voas, a computer scientist at NIST, co-authored a paper called “In Trust we Trust”in IEEE Computer Magazine.  In the article they made the statement:

Trust isn’t a static property and must be evaluated continuously

Cloud embodies one of the most dynamic computing environments so how do we engender an atmosphere of trust?

If you want to build a house that will stand the test of time (and the elements) you find a good contractor, one you can trust will do a great job.  And that contractor will  employ (or contract) trusted partners for materials and specialty functions like foundation teams, masons, and most important the architects who are going to specify how the structure is built and what the materials have to be to make the structure safe and pass the regulations.

It’s the same with technology. Have you ever walked into a technology Value Added Resellers (VAR) lobby? I have had the privilege of visiting many of EMC’s partners (VARs), and the first thing you always see is in their lobby are the plaques and awards from the vendors they resell for.  The execs at these partners will lead you down the hallway of their greatest assets – their technical people. They will talk about the years of experience on their technical staff and how they have built the best all-star team. Many of these technical people will have plaques, awards, and most importantly certifications showing their deep expertise in multiple related technical disciplines – security, networking, virtualization, or specific applications. The partner execs make sure you see this as part of their trust campaign – so that you see that they are serious and committed to making the investment in the technologies that they want to help you purchase and implement successfully.

There are many things we do at EMC to help our customers with their journey to the cloud. EMC Ed Services is no different with a great curriculum already in place designed to prepare technical people and turn them into EMC Proven Professionals. Our mission is now extended to help our customers, our partners, and our own internal technical talent become better trusted technical resources specifically in cloud and virtual data center certifications - so that all of us can build better trusted clouds.

I’m looking forward to learning even more about the cloud through more research and through the process of teaching. I know I’m going to meet a lot of really smart people, hear their stories and challenges, hopefully see a few light bulbs go off, and  then watch them take what they learned to new and more trusted heights.

/wayne

I got a 72 (67 is passing). Wow some of these questions are like goldie-oldies—haven’t had to think about them for a long time. I got the iSNS question right – but missed some really basic questions. This practice test is supposed to show you where you need to concentrate your studies….so I guess I need to get cracking!

I have always been more of an application person, so I really don’t remember some of the in-depth disk questions.

So, now its off to study the ISM book – starting with Chapter 1.

So are you studying? Post your practice test score in the comments! Brian is supposed to be doing this too – so we’ll see if he participates.

This blog is cross-posted from the EMC Proven Professional Community on the EMC Community Network (ECN).

Here in the States, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is pretty much this week’s Friday. So everyone gets the bonus of an early EMC Proven Professional Roundup! Here are some of the highlights from the past week in the Proven  Professional Community:

New exam building workshop/review dates are posted

If you are a certified Proven Professional, the schedule is posted through April.

Use this link to troubleshoot access problems.

New EMC Academic Alliance University Spotlight

November’s University Spotlight is on Ball State University. Learn how Ball State University prepares Master’s candidates to face the challenges of managing data – using the EMC Information and Management course.

Are any of you Ball State University students or alumni?

Blogs of interest to Proven Professionals

• Cloud
  • Chuck Hollis talks about the challenging transition ahead of us as we move to real cloud environments
  • Dustin Smith of the Exchange in the Private Cloud blogs about a white paper that shows how to deploy Exchange on an Iomega IX12
• Virtualization
  • Gregg of EMC Consulting posted a HUGE All Things Virtual roundup
  • Virtual Winfrastructure has links to three new EMC solutions docs for Microsoft Hyper-V
• Steve Todd blogs about his time at the RSA Archer roadshow <– good read if you are interested in IT governance
• Certification Exams
  • I announced on my blog I’m planning to take the E20-001. Who wants to help me study?
  • Jas Dhaliwal blogged about his experience with the VCAP-DCD datacenter design course & exam

What were you up to this week?

It’s almost December everyone! If you are studying to take an exam this quarter — its crunch time! Make sure you let the community know if you need some help or encouragement.

That’s all I have for this week. Keep safe, and we’ll do it again next week!

I have been putting off posting about this — but I don’t think I can avoid it much longer.

I’m going to start studying to take the EMC ISM (E20-001) Proven Professional exam. Hopefully I’ll sit for the exam before the end of the year.

Why am I doing this? I already have a Proven Professional Specialist certification (EMCIE SAN). But the EMCISA Associate credential came out after I took the associate exam required for my EMCIE.

So I figured, what the heck! I should probably get the new credential. Plus, I talk to so many folks in the Proven Professional community about getting this credential…I thought I’d go through it again. Feel their pain.

Not so sure that is a good idea…. :O

I already have a few people agreeing to study with me….who else wants to join our club? I wonder if we could do some studying using twitter……………..hmmmm……….

So first things first. I’m going to take the practice exam. That should point out my weak areas. My guess would be backups….when I was doing backups I was also maintaining scripts for them…I think things have changed a bit.

Once I figure out my weak areas, the plan is to go through the ISM book chapter by chapter till I feel ready. I’ll post how I do on the practice test (as well as if I need to change my study strategy!!) in a couple of days.

OK — wish me luck!! Or, better yet,  join me in the endeavor!

This post is cross-posted from the EMC Proven Professional Community on the EMC Community Network (ECN).

Here are some of the highlights from the past week in the Proven  Professional Community:

Who is studying for the EMCISA?

Byte posted a nice wrap-up of study resources. I’ve decided to take this exam before the end of the year, I’ll be blogging about my experience. Stay tuned for details!

Blogs of interest to Proven Professionals

• VMWare
  • Chad Sakac posted the slides and recording from this week’s Atlanta VMUG – they talked about storage and VMware best practices.
  • Great posts from Proven Professional TechHead this week…PPT and visio VMWare images, and vChat 11 covered vSphere questions and free tools.
  • Gregg’s blog (EMC CONSULTING) has the breakdown of what it was like to sit in the VMware vSphere: Manage and Design for Security Course.
• Cloud
  • Virtual Winfrastructure has a post about their new white paper about virtualizing Exchange on Hyper-V
• Chuck Hollis talks about EMC’s Isilon acquisition
• Chuck also talks about PowerPath <— if you are new to PowerPath or if you are starting to virtualize your servers, you should check out this article!
• Proven Professional Steve Todd talks about designing an IT infrastructure that can support innovative applications...things like embedding smart chips in running shoes.

What were you up to this week?

In the US we’re getting ready for a holiday next week…will any of you be studying?

That’s all I have for this week. Keep safe, and we’ll do it again next week!

Here are some of the highlights from the past week in the Proven  Professional Community:

Miss a past issue of the Proven Professional Update?

Not to worry! We’ve posted them in the Proven Professionals Only community!

Access issues?

The exam team has updated the exam building workshop/review schedule

If you are a Proven Professional, why not help us write/review new revisions of the Proven Professional certification exams?

Access issues?

What do you do once you have passed the EMCISA?

We had a couple of community members ask this question this week. What do you think? Go share your experience here or here. Or if you have a totally different request for help, please start a new discussion!

Blogs of interest to Proven Professionals

• EMC Consulting has posted some open positions
• Cloud
  • Chad Sakac has pointed out that many solutions docs are available on vce.com, including the one he posted on View 4.5 via NFS/FAST Cache on Vblock 1
  • EMC Replication Enabler for Exchange and Microsoft Hyper-V from Dustin Smith from the Exchange in the Private Cloud blog
  • Nice post from SharePoint in the Private Cloud that touches on the silos that exist currently in the data center (and how we’re gonna have to do something about that as we virtualize everything!)
  • vChat from VMworld Europe was about the lab in the cloud
• vSpecialist Scott Lowe also does a tech roundup!
• Storagezilla has a post about security and encryption
• Just starting out your career in information and storage management? Read Chuck’s post about backups to get some insights on why you need to learn how to do lots more than just configure the backup software your company is using.
• Steve Todd has a post on how EMC engineering is working to “componetize” things

What were you up to this week?

I know for sure lots of you are studying – let us know if you need any help! And be sure to answer requests for help from your fellow community members, that is what this is all about!

That’s all I have for this week. Keep safe, and we’ll do it again next week!

This post is cross-posted from the EMC Proven Professional Community on the EMC Community Network (ECN).

Hi everyone! Time for the EMC Proven Professional Roundup! Here are some of the highlights from the past couple of weeks in the Proven  Professional Community:

Welcome all of our new community members!

We’ve had lots of posts in the last couple of weeks from information and storage management “n00bs”. Welcome!! Keep asking your questions about the best certifications for people new to storage, how useful the EMCISA is, and what someone should do once they have the EMCISA. These are great questions!

So if you are new to the industry, and have questions about what to study, or what you need to learn or get experience with to meet your career goals, ask the community your question! Also you can search in this community, we’ve been open here for over a year so maybe your question has been asked before. Also, watch for this round-up – its designed to keep you up-to-date with the cutting edge news in our community and industry.

And if you are an experienced person in our industry – please help out the newbies! Tell your story of how you got to your position – what learning and hands-on experienced helped you get where you are. I know you are reading posts – go ahead and write a comment. You have nothing to lose, and the community would really gain a lot from your insights!

November’s Proven Professional Spotlight is on Ben Dingley

Ben is a Proven Professional who is currently focused on designing and delivering Cloud and Virtual Data Center solutions. He is a 2010 Knowledge Sharing winner for an article that examines what IT departments have to think when they restructure their support models for the virtual data center age. Go learn more about Ben, and check out his article (and tell him hi while you are at it!).

November’s Knowledge Sharing Articles have been posted

Here are the latest Knowledge Sharing articles that have been posted. You’ll need to be a Proven Professional to access the articles in the Proven Professionals ONLY community, or a Powerlink account to access the articles on the EMC Education portal. Links to the articles are here.

• Enterprise Content Management: Yesterday’s Lessons and Today’s Challenges
• The Union of Backup-Based Snapshot Technology and Data Deduplication
• Failure Points in Storage Configurations: From the Application to the Physical Disk
• Scheduling Operations in NetWorker

Want to help write a Proven Professional certification exam?

If you are a certified Proven Professional, you can actually help write the exams! In fact, the exam writing team is looking for help with the Exam Building Workshop for the E20-651 Connectrix Specialist Exam for Platform Engineers. Find out if you are qualified to participate. Fibre channel switches and SAN not your area of expertise? Check out the other areas where they are looking for exam writing participants, or just read more about exclusive Proven Professional benefit of exam building. You must be a Proven Professional to participate. Trouble accessing links? Click here for help.

Blogs of interest to Proven Professionals

• VMware
  • Listen to this video from Chad Sakac from VMWorld  2000 in Copenhagen. If you are interested in how virtualization is presenting new challenges for information and storage management professionals, you’ll learn a lot. (Tip: you don’t have to actually watch it – its over an hour long. Put it on, and listen to it while you are doing something else. I listened to it as I prepared this post! ). It will be interesting to see if any of these issues are addressed in the 2010-2011 Managing Storage Survey…
  • Check out Nick Weaver’s new powershell cmdlet library for EMC Celerra
• Cloud
  • Reflections on the Open Data Center Alliance from Chuck Hollis
  • Chuck also talks about how cloud may really be about how IT can serve users better
  • Chuck also points to out the need for a CFO (chief financial officer) type role for information. Great things to think about if you are plotting out where your career needs to be in a few years…
  • One more for Chuck – what really makes up a Vblock.
  • Chad’s evaluation of the VCE alliance at its 1-year mark
  • Mark Lewis talks about a technology-free cloud. I loved this quote from the article:
    If you make a living from IT, it’s tempting to view “the cloud” as a technology platform–a way to lower costs, meter usage and scale more efficiently. But describing the cloud as a technology platform is like describing Elvis as a ’70s act in Vegas. It’s true, but the significance gets lost.

• From EMC Consulting’s Grace Mollison: post where she talks about the challenges of a architecting a software project using AWS (Amazon Web Services – so public cloud). If you are someone just starting out – these sorts of posts can give you an idea of the skillsets you need to pick up!
• ECM (enterprise content management) is also rapidly changing. Andrew Chapman talks about what is needed to commoditize ECM and he starts with virtual documents.

What were you up to this week?

So who out there has purchased an EMC Proven Professional Starter kit? Don’t forget to sign up your advocate – if you don’t have an advocate I’m sure you can find a Proven Professional here in the community to help you out. Just ask!

That’s all I have for this week. Keep safe, and we’ll do it again next week!