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My sudden disappearance and appearance in twitterosphere and blogosphere has got people in social media to ask me as to what am I up to these days. My honest answer to them is “I am having lots of fun…”

About a couple of months ago, I was offered a new role in the current organization I work for. For the past 5 years or so, I was solely focused on Storage platforms. To our customers we offer infrastructure services, managed services, professional services, outsourcing and asset management. For these years growing the storage, systems, networking and virtualization portfolios was the key to our success.

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These days it’s about working with the whole stack of products. As much as we talk about convergence within datacenter products, services convergence is at the heart of it. Typical organizations are structured to support products based on silos, with the changing landscape, it’s important to start thinking about services in similar ways.

As part of business transformation a need for a new thinking is required. In just a short duration of time, along with a group of very talented individuals we formed a small team that attacks these issues through out the business, we call it the TigerTeam and by the way, we are recruiting for it. From creating cross platform training to cross platform support to selling a whole stack of services associated with convergence is the focus.

Along with the business transformation on the customer side (external), comes a lot of internal transformation related to how we do business, growth plans, focus, internal strategies, social media, marketing, etc. A total revamp of internal IT resources that would drive more efficiency through out the organization is required. Right from using cloud based services for IT infrastructure to using CRM solutions that are cloud based has helped us to be more efficient.

Revamping as to how we do logistics to how we manage customer service to identifying new potential growth markets are some very key focus points of our future strategy and growth plans. At the heart of this sits R&D efforts, training and knowledge sharing.

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One thing that has come to realization is, SUCCESS AS A WHOLE IS IMPORTANT, not just small teams individually achieving success in an organization. Solo and Silo successes create an inequality with total business growth. Success ‘WE’ is important than success ‘I’.

Just in this short duration, we have managed to kickoff some 10’s of new projects that will help us be more aggressive with achieving our business goals. With some very unique approaches, we are trying to change the way we think and we do business.

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But it’s has been great fun and I am loving every moment of it. It may mean I might be a bit irregular with new blog posts, but at the center of this, the experience we are getting is phenomenal, the team we are building is incredible and the new thinking we are bringing will help us go far ways.

Want to make a difference…. And want to be part of this dynamic team, feel free to shoot me an email at devang at storagenerve dot com.

Cheers
@storagenerve

Facebook

At least has been 15 years since high school, but it really feels like yesterday. Friends from various grade levels, college, professional contacts and social networks all connected on Facebook….

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Yes, Facebook….

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It was my birthday yesterday and I was expecting this day to start as a pretty regular weekday. Expected a few people to call me during the day and wish me Happy Birthday and talk to me for a few to see how everything was going.

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There are a few callers that call once a year on days like the birthdays and anniversaries, some people send out emails while some sent out text messages. Which is what I was really expecting. Few friends that I have been in touch over the past year and may be some close family members would call or email to wish.

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I have been on Facebook for a few years now, may be 2 or 3. But never used it, until last August, September 2009. Blogging was my first attempt in social media, Twitter followed it and I call myself a pretty late adaptor of Facebook.

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As I was getting ready to hit the bed late night, started seeing these wall notification and direct messages come to my inbox on Gmail, people wishing me Happy Birthday. Thinking how people knew, I realized there was something on Facebook that reminded people it was my birthday.

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As I woke up in the morning, saw the inbox filled with hundreds of these messages, again some on the wall, some direct messages, some twitter DM’s, people wishing me Happy Birthday. Some folks even timed it at 12 midnight EST.

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I went to high school in Surat, India. A ton of friends still live there and a ton here in the States or Europe. As early AM hit India, people started checking Facebook for updates and saw the birthday reminders, I guess. People I haven’t spoken in years and I haven’t received emails in years, decided to wish me on my birthday.

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School life was great, very very cool, tons of fun, lots of friends and it was just a hip school…and honestly hard to forget those innocent fun days. Then as life progressed got Bachelors and Masters and made tons of friends there.

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By the time the day ended, I had more than 200 emails in my inbox with comments and messages and wall posts. People from all over, friends, family and business contacts wishing me on my birthday.

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One of the friends I am connected to on Facebook is from Kindergarten, which has to be like 30 years ago or a little less.

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It’s changed everything…..

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Click, Click and you create a profile on Facebook. Click Click and you can upload a profile picture, Click Click and you can write some information about you, Click Click and you can import your Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and Skype contacts into Facebook, Click Click and you can upload pictures movies and share them too. Click Click and you set the privacy settings for your profile.

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Based on your existing connections, Facebook will now recommend you more connections, people that you may know because they share same friends of yours or are at a second degree of separation. One contact opens possibilities to connect to 50 other people…

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Click, Click and people can send you messages, either private or public. Click, Click and you can send birthday cards, gifts. Click Click and you can write comments to someone or join a group or become a FAN.

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Click Click and you can create a business page, Click Click and you can track your users based on the activities and areas of interest they have, Click Click and now you can see updates on your Fan’s profile.

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I guess I had my cell phone information published in my profile. It was just not about wall posts and messages, as the day progressed, saw people calling me on my cell phone to wish me. Again some of these people, I may have not spoken in past 5 to 10 to 15 years….very surprising.

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All and all, it was just surprise after surprise. Heard from friends from middle school, high schools, college, professional contacts, twitter and blogging friends, …. And honestly after high school, I don’t remember having such a blast and receiving birthday wishes from so many friends and family, it was an exciting day.

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Oh….add Skype reminders…..and then Twitter updates to the list.

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I guess staying connected is good?

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Some updates both wall and messages came in as early at 5 AM (People waking up early to go to work) and before going to work, people check Facebook updates. This may be before checking their personal and work email. Click Click and you are there.

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And honestly, I am not a Facebook junkie, though I make a point to check Facebook updates once a day to see what’s going on…and make a point to write something stupid that only makes sense to me. Click Click and I am done….

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Now devices like Blackberry, iPhone, iPad all have Facebook apps on it, which allows users to stay connected to Facebook using these devices. Click Click and you are on Facebook either browsing or updating it.

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A while back, we used egroups, which later became yahoogroups. This was a means to stay in touch with school friends, college friends and family (groups). All that became history as Facebook got more popular and got more users. Being moderator of 3 yahoogroups today, I absolutely do not see any activity on these once so busy groups. Rather people have been creating group pages on Facebook and it’s easy. Click Click and you can accomplish the task.

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Its amazing to see when social networks like Facebook come and change what, how, when we interact with friends and family, improve the communication gap. With our busy lives, its still so much important to stay in touch with friends and family. Click Click and all information is here, pictures, updates, new kids born, reunions, party’s, all information…on your finger tips….

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Are you ready for Facebook

Click, Click and become a member of this large growing community of more than 500 million users today.

After high school this is probably the year where I believe I have been so connected to people both professionally and socially.

Yea…and I truly think, it’s because of Facebook….

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I just woke up……to find a total disarray in the storage industry. Things have changed but what changed, why did it change.  Nothing matches up to my last remembrance.

Did you know….

Chuck Hollis doesn’t work for EMC and is now blogging for TechTarget, his blogs are still so futuristic about the mainframe world and how it will rule the market. Barry Burke on his blog is talking about the benefits of using an iUSPV versus using an iV-Max, and has been named as the top friendliest blogger. Dave Graham is now working for AnandTech.com as the chief editor and has taken over the world by his blogs about the next generation AMD processors.

Storagezilla has now become lonely social media voice at EMC, though these days he talks a lot about how to integrate storage platforms with mobile devices. Stu Miniman still blogs occasionally on his blog but has gone to Chair the FCoE Standards committee and now hates social media. Ed Saipetch decided to turn to industry speaking and is amongst one of the leading speaker for Environment Protection.

Chad Sakac decided it was enough with VCE, vArmy, Private Cloud and these days is working hard to built the next generation weapons systems for the Army, though not everyone within the Army is so excited, Chad with his partnerships is bringing some big momentum. Steve Todd finally decided to get into management and left his long legacy with DG, XAM and programming and now doing something…..that he doesn’t want to understand.  Christopher Kusek (CXI) decided to move out of EMC and is now an activist against animal killing….

Wow… for a change….

Vaughn Stewart like Kostadis decided to move out of the Storage – Virtualization industry and these days they work together at a furniture startup. To my surprise, Val Bercovici now works with Chad in his advanced weapons systems design. After the great acquisition of NetApp, Dave Hitz has now moved over to 3Par and is helping build the next storage platform. After all, Alex McDonald decided to move to HP and now works along with Calvin Zito on competitive landscape.

Hu Yoshida decides to quit blogging and these days work along with Barry Burke and Barry Whyte and often talk about the iUSPV platform and how it may change the way we do mobile computing. All the 3 of them are working on designing the next genration platform called the iV-U-S. Claus Mikkelsen still occasionally writes about VM’s and LPar’s on mainframes and still considers HDS platform as the most monolithic architecture, just publically doesn’t accept it.  David Merrill now gave up on the whole idea of Storage Economics and is typically telling customers, always buy more storage for your future needs, TCO, ROI, ROA are not good examples and measures for Storage acquisition.

Marc Farley and Greg Knieriemen started Infosmack Productions and now run a very successful media business (talk shows, comedy, podcast – all storage / virtualization related) competing with the biggest media houses. You can call Marc and Greg at 1-800-INFOSMAC to appear on their podcast.  Stephen Foskett is now an end user managing 10 PB’s of Storage and turned into the biggest critic of storage and virtualization vendors. Every chance he gets he manages to beat up the vendors. Pretty apparent from his blogs, he hates everyone now…

As consolidation hits everywhere and doesn’t spare Storage Monkeys, Wikibon, Backup Central, The Register and GestaltIT, which are today called as GestaltMonkeys.com and RegisterBackupWiki.com. The storage analyst are no more just storage analyst and typically use a “i” in front of their twitter handles, website addresses and company names, showing an integration between storage and “i” products from Apple.

Many Vmware focused bloggers like Duncan Epping, Eric Siebert, Rodney Haywood, Simon Seagrave, Rich Brambley and Daniel Eason now have a big section on their blogs about HyperV, Xen, Amazon S3 and Azure. Scott Lowe’s focus has turned to Cisco and now he writes books on the next generation virtualization engine by Cisco. Marc Farley on the StorageRap blog decides to quit making those Steering Wheel Camera and Check it out videos, but continues to make 3par storage videos while hunting bears.

Storagebod now works for EMC, he has lately become “The Seller of Dreams”. Storage Architect – Chris Evans decided he had enough with the Storage Industry and now works and blogs fulltime for the Wine Industry. Jon Toigo now works at his startup called Toigo Partners on his first project called FunnyToigo designing his first disk array called the OptimizedToigo. Nigel Poulton permanently quits blogging and now works at a Networking startup with Greg Ferro as his boss. GrumpyStorage had enough with the storage industry and now calls himself GrumpyCloud.

Just realized either I am still in my dreams or today is the 1^st of April… remember this is a light hearted peak into the storage industry. Which one of these is your favorite….

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Just an offbeat topic…nothing to do with storage or virtualization, but might come handy if you were traveling outside the US for business. This post may just help you do your business better, help you stay connected to people, give you means to collaborate and provide full access to your information (either corporate or personal) while traveling abroad.

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The Pleasure of flying on the A380

Staying in touch

These days it has been quite easy to stay in touch with people here in the US while traveling abroad. Our dependencies are typically around mobile (smart) phones, Wi-Fi connections for laptops and being able to stay connected with family, friends, work and social media.

If you were traveling to the typical G20 nations, things may be easy with connecting back home, but it always presents a challenge. Traveling outside these countries may present a bigger challenge with being able to connect through your fingertips. Some of these challenges would be around finding Wi-Fi hotspots, making international phone calls, staying in touch with social media, etc.

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Mobile Smart Phones

One of the best options at least based on what I have experienced in the past 3 years is being able to carry a Verizon Global Phone (e.g. a Blackberry 8830 or a Blackberry Tour or a Blackberry Storm) and subscribe to a Global Roaming plan (which typically includes Voice and Data) and works in about 160 countries around the globe.

With only a fractional addition to your current plan, you will be able to keep the same phone, same phone number, installed apps, address book, calendar, emails and connect back to your Blackberry corporate server, either from a CDMA or GSM network whether be North America or EMEA or Asia Pacific with constant access to your data and voice through your global roaming plan.

To get in touch with you by a person in the US or a person located overseas, its merely dialing your US phone number and all calls independent of where you are, will be forwarded to you through the global roaming capabilities. This feature comes quite handy when you are traveling and you will not need to give 2 or 3 different phone numbers to people that would typically try to get in touch with you.

Though at times in some countries inbound calls on your cell phone may not display the name and number of the caller and may show up as a private number or a blocked number, you are guaranteed to receive all calls.

These days I have also seen the iPhones (AT&T versions) being able to practically do the same with global roaming when it comes to voice, but data plans while traveling are super expensive, which means, you may not be able to upload or download any data to your phone, apps, emails, etc.

Typically with Verizon global phones, as you land at an airport and turn on your cell phone, you get a welcome txt message along with all the prefix numbers that you will need to initiate a call to the US and for any calls locally in country.

Verizon Wireless is able to provide these global roaming facilities through its 45% ownership by Vodaphone a UK based cellular giant.

Again if you have any other options (even outside of Verizon Wireless) to get a global roaming phone, I would highly recommend it. Its just a not very convenient thing to buy cell phones, buy SIM cards, getting them topped with minutes, at times not being able to make calls and foremost staying without a data plan while traveling.

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Twitter and other social media apps

If you have an twitter app installed on your phone that allows you to stay in touch with your twitter followers, followings and friends, it should work just fine as you travel from countries to countries or continents to continents.

Other Apps you may want to have on your cell phone may include Weather, Facebook, Flickr, Maps, etc

Again anything that you are known to run on your phones locally in the US, should work while using the same phones overseas.

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Question

Though I wonder with China’s Internet policies, would one still be able to browse the content on an international global roaming phone when that phone is locally using the Internet in China to connect to the world?

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Skype

Not a bad idea to have your family and friends connect to you through Skype while traveling internationally, quite a bit of savings, amazing voice and video quality. So if the laptop you are carrying allows you to install Skype, go for it…

Also install Skype on your smart phones, which will help you make international calls very cost effectively. The latest word I hear as of couple of days ago, Verizon Wireless has given a node to have Skype on all the smart phones that are offered under its plan. That will enable people to make Skype calls locally and internationally.

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Internet Connections

Finding free Wi-Fi connections to use in your hotel rooms or lobby is next to impossible. The cost of Internet (physical or Wi-Fi) connections is pretty high in rest of the world. There are times where it’s likely you will not get an Internet connection.  Though I have found that staying with a US based hotel chain typically is a bit helpful when it comes to electronic communications.

If there are a few people that travel overseas from your organization at the same places, it may not be a bad idea to purchase a few USB broadband Internet connections for a monthly fee, which will enable broadband (wireless) access in those countries.

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Chargers

Most of your electronic equipment will just survive fine with using power adapters (verify they are 100v-240v capable & 50/60 Hz capable, which most of them are these days). Best practice carry one adapter and one power extension cord (US) and that will enable you to plug all your US devices with just one international adapter.

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Prepare before you leave

Make sure you have things prepared before you leave. For a casual traveler it may be second nature to travel within the US, but traveling internationally does present a few challenges. Verify you have power adapters, power extension cord, mobile global roaming, provisions for Internet connections, apps installed on your phone, etc before hand. It may not be very convenient to go hunting for these things the same day you land after a long flight.

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Cost

Yea this is where it gets interesting, Internet connections for one day might range as much as 30 to 60 US dollars in some countries, again do not expect it to be free.

Regarding your cell phones, consider the cost of purchasing a new phone, topping the minutes on the SIM, purchasing a SIM card, paying a fee for international calling, not having full access to your contacts, emails, calendar, etc are just a few things to consider.  Not having data plans typically hurt as well.

If you are carrying any cell phone and are not aware if it has global roaming, please refrain from using those, I have heard stories about people being charged USD 10K for using international roaming voice minutes and data kb thinking it was all covered because the phone was working.

Verify with your existing wireless subscriber as to what services are included as part of your global roaming and how they charge for each used minute and each used kb of data in the countries you plan to visit.

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Demographics about the country

If you are going to a country for the first time, it may not be a bad idea to read up a few things about that country on Wikipedia or on CIA’s Demographics page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Demographics_by_country
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html

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Notes:

Sorry, this post is only talking about traveling from the US to other countries, I don’t think I would be able to think of everything that one needs to prepare to come to the US.

Though one thing I would absolutely say, if you are traveling from overseas to the US and need any electronic gadgets or computers etc, it may not be a bad idea to stop by at a FRY’s or BESTBUY or APPLE stores to see if you can purchase them cheaper here.

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Disclaimer: I do not own any shares in Verizon Wireless or Vodaphone or FRY’s or BESTBUY or APPLE or Blackberry, neither have I received any free products from them. This blog post is purely based on my experience traveling internationally and what I find convenient to have and necessary to have.