First of all - happy Thanksgiving to my American colleagues!
Second, some crazy stats. Read on if you're interested....
The effort for all of us to transform for the IT landscape dominated by the trend of Virtualization (lead by VMware) is fascinating to watch, and I have to say I have a bit a of unique spot to participate and watch. This change affects customers, vendors, SIs, everyone. As we undergo this change, one of the focus areas for us at EMC is the idea that VMware "know-how" is not something just for specialists, but rather is "core".
So, we undertook a hardcore training regimen across the board - with the "Virtual Infrastructure: Install and Configure" course - the 4 day hands-on VCP pre-requisite. Others do the VSP and VTSP, and our best of the best go on to do the VCDX path.
So, every week I get a metrics package that represents a "dashboard" of the overall EMC effort focused on VMware - ranging from engineering projects, services, customer success stories and what not. But one of the ones that I always pay attention to is the number of people who have completed the VCP pre-req class. Like all metrics, it's not perfect. I have a tough time to correlate this with people who have actually taken the cert test after completing the class (I literally ask people to post their VCP # on an internal blog), and this assumes we had none in November 2007 - but in reality we have some very low number VCPs)
It's a great single litmus test of so much.
It's an individual commitment towards the VMware revolution that adds up to a greater whole.
The breakdown also reflects our view of who needs this... the answer being "everyone". Engineering (so they build better products for VMware customers), Support (so they understand how the EMC products integrate into tyour VMware environment when you call 1-800-SVC4EMC), Our pre-sales engineering generalists (so they help design better solutions for you) and our Global Services team (to help you implement your EMC solutions in the VMware context).
In a nutshell? We're up to 1400 so far.
I'm proud of the focus - but here's my question to you - customers, VMware/EMC partners, VMware yourselves - are you seeing it? What could we be doing better? As the end of every year rolls around, I look back and self-critique in the effort to do better in the new year.....
What can we do better?
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