Update on “Work Life of Chad” + EMC & Oracle/MSFT/SAP

Warning – I’ve done some technical posts lately, this one is personal and business.   Skip it if you want (though I think it’s interesting)…

When I did a blog post here advertising the new VMware Technology Partner Management (TPM) job opening, a lot of people said “whoa – is that Chad advertising his own job?”.   Not quite.

While there’s the “public face of the work life of Chad” (often doing silly things like Chad’s World or the Oracle Openworld keynote) here are the 3 key parts of my job over the last 4 years:

1. Responsible for the VMware/EMC technology alliance (which is engineering like the vMSC, VAAI, Virtual Volumes stuff + marketing stuff like pulling off VMworld and VMUGs, and vForums from an EMC standpoint)
2. Build and lead our now 200+ strong team of vSpecialists around the globe (which is field stuff).
3. Work personally with customers (which is field stuff – and remains my favorite :-)

While there is still a long way to go (and more and more every day) on the VMware/EMC technology alliance, and our ever-growing field focus – we’ve made a lot of progress.

EMC has asked me to help not only continue on the field front when it comes to VMware, but additional topics that matter a lot to our customers – SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft (and yet make sure that whatever I do, I don’t screw up the forward progress we’ve made re: VMware/EMC).

As part of that, it means opportunities galore:  

• It means I need a lieutenant to live on VMware’s campus on the alliance/engineering side (that’s the role I posted about – and we are interviewing, but please email if you think you might be right for it!)
• It means opportunities galore for vSpecialists as the team continues to expand, and we work to help our EMC brothers and sisters.
• And it means opportunities galore for  EMCers and EMC partners when it comes to Oracle, Microsoft and SAP.

That said, it’s a little tricky as I bleed VMware.

I’m also not going to make Virtual Geek become a “Oracle/SAP/Microsoft” place, because, after all – this blog isn’t just about my job, it’s about what I want to write about – and that hasn’t changed one bit. 

I think I’ve figured out the formula, though.   For Oracle and SAP it’s relatively easy.  EMC’s view (and certainly mine), is that Oracle and SAP work best on top of a virtualized, cloud infrastructure model – which is really led by VMware.   Larry Ellison may not agree with us (that’s clear – he thinks Sparc is going to win :-) but we’re pretty sure, and that’s what our customers as a whole are telling us.   Usually, listening to customers is a good guide (even considering the innovator’s dilemma problem).

BTW – while the blog won’t become an Oracle/Microsoft/SAP blog, I will (hopefully appropriately) link stuff.  For example:

Also, here’s a video discussing the latest on “why Oracle on vSphere and EMC”.

But, continuing on the thread…   So, we’ve got SAP/Oracle, but what about Microsoft?

Likewise, most customers virtualizing Microsoft apps like Sharepoint, SQL Server, Exchange and more do it on VMware.    But, here, the strategy needs to diverge a little.  There is absolutely a place for Hyper-V – and Windows 8 is looking pretty darn hot, so I need to have someone other than me be the very clear leader for our Microsoft-centric field community – who is a great guy named Adrian Simays.   He reports to me (so as EMC we have a coherent structure around enabling solutions communities), but we argue a lot – which is exactly right :-)

But, everyone of these will need a public community.   So We’ve kick-started new EMC communities that follow the “Everything VMware at EMC” community formula:

• Completely open.  You don’t even need to register.   The beautiful side effect is that google will crawl them thoroughly.    The measure of their success is they rise to the top when you Google “SAP EMC” or “Oracle EMC” or “Microsoft EMC”.
• Content that is favored is technical in nature.   This is what people want more than anything else.  I’ve asked them to encourage it several ways to keep it “goopey” (that’s a Chad term for nerdy, deep content).
• Dynamic and vibrant – including solution sizing support.  They are monitored by a centralized Solution Design Center team – they will respond in a 60 minute MTTR, and also will help with SAP/Oracle/Microsoft solution sizing for anyone who asks.
• Periodically reward people – regardless of who they are – for contributions to the communities.

Part of that process is shutting down old internal distribution lists and other forums.  I’m a big believer that we need to be open, be as transparent as possible, and in doing so – help our customers and partners.   You can’t be transparent if it’s internal only, and the great dialog doesn’t help our partners and customers.   Yes, every once in a while this “err on the side of public” punches me in the gut, but more often than not – it lifts me up.

People who really stand out over the coming months in those communities will become part of the future mSpecialists, the sSpecialists, and oSpecialists teams.  

If you’re part of an existing EMC Solutions Practice – that’s awesome (and likely means you’re a shoe in), but doesn’t guarantee you anything.   These communities are open to all – customers, partners, heck – competitors.   The people who contribute rise to the top.

They will get to go to TechEd, SAPPHIRE, OOW on my dime.  They will get to spend time with the engineering teams at EMC and the partners.   They will influence direction, priority and roadmap.  The price to have a front row seat is only to be willing to fight to get there – that’s it.

Q4 contests around each of these are about light up (fun, Iomega/iPads/SSDs, and more) to draw out the people who know WTF they are doing – so chime on in!

• “Everything SAP at EMC”: http://community.emc.com/community/connect/everything_sap
• “Everything Oracle at EMC”: https://community.emc.com/community/connect/everything_oracle
• “Everything Microsoft at EMC”: https://community.emc.com/community/connect/everything_microsoft
• “Everything VMware at EMC”: https://community.emc.com/community/connect/everything_vmware

Comments

[Jay Weinshenker]

People still run Oracle on something besides VMware?

Crazy Luddites!

[Jay Weinshenker]

In the video you mention that EMC is in the process of virtualizing it's Oracle 10g RAC environment under VMware. Will than be with a corresponding upgrade to Oracle 11gR2 (11.2.0.2 or higher) which is supported by Oracle under VMware, or is EMC actually going to run a version of RAC under VMware that Oracle explicitly doesn't support?

[Chad Sakac]

@Jay - thanks for your comments! Yes, we are upgrading to 11gR2 as part of the process....

[Todd Ouimet]

Reading through this blog and other documents such as:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/partners/oracle/vmware-oracle-rac-deploy-guide.pdf you'll find the OS mentioned is Linux. My open question to anyone; will a VMware virtualized Oracle RAC on Windows 2008 using the multi-writer method (kb 1034165) work in a production environment? Alternatively could a VMware virtualized Oracle RAC on Windows 2008 using shared RDM's be setup using more than two nodes?