- GOOD: Was a great week out in Barcelona with the EMC vSpecialist EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) crew during our 2011 kickoff. I’m honored to be part of the team, and a spiritual leader :-)
- GOOD: Another good thing was I got to play with Isilon more this week. I’ve seen a lot of “simple” in storage land (from EMC and much from outside EMC), but this thing is easy like nobodies’ business. Boot node. Assign IP pool. Add nodes to cluster as needed. Done. Wow. Need to push to get the VM out there. Heading out to Seattle next week to help work to accelerate their VMware integration.
- GOOD: Some great time in the lab with future VMware and EMC products. So satisfying to see things coming together.
- GOOD: We announced EMC and VMware’s Q4 and year-ending results. It’s always a relief because as an exec focused on both, I see this stuff all well before hand, but need to keep absolutely quiet about it. When it’s public, it’s always a relief. Both EMC and VMware awesome – exceeding the street expectations (VMware did note that while there was going to be continued growth, their margins were going to be flat as they continue to invest in engineering/emerging market sales – which some people took negatively, but I think is dead right strategically). Most importantly – continued growth means we’re doing the right things by our customers, which is ultimately the most important thing.
- BAD: needed to deal with some silly competitive stuff. This “competitive list stuff” I see all the time both EMC and VCE as targets, and gets fwded around like mad (I’m sure we do the same thing – not claiming to be innocent here). It appeals to everyone’s desire for “silver bullets” – but man, it’s about so much more than that. The “bullet lists” I see are so trivial, so stupid, and always so wrong (in part or in whole), that I can’t help but think that everyone is best served by playing their own game as well as possible. I’m starting to think I’m naïve on this point. I’m not even going to point at the blog post in the hopes of not fanning the flames.
But – in the words of Gandhi – “be the change you want to see in the world”.
In the spirit of the BOTH the good and the bad, here’s a picture from the Barcelona (which is REALLY a beautiful palace) trip.
Story: Fred Nix (@VCEMonk on twitter, and also in the shot below to the left) decides he wants to spontaneously add some “positive energy” to the world – writes up this “free hugs” sign in spanish, and walks out to La Rambla (a famous pedestrian promenade) and starts holding it.
The first few people look at him all askance, but a few come over and give him a hug. Bit by bit more people do it, and then the vSpecialist team (me included) comes out and joins him.
Next thing you know, there’s a hug fest going on between total strangers. Some of the best hugs/responses come from the people you would least expect – nice old ladies, homeless dudes, little kids. We went out for dinner all smiling, and realized that yeah, it was a bit of positive energy, and we got as much as we gave (in fact, it was net positive to the universe – in spite freaking some people out).
So – to the competitive “checklist makers”, as well as to anyone – friends, colleagues, family – I’m always open for a free hug :-)
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