EMC's Project Bourne morphed into ViPR at the EMC World 2013 event at Las Vegas last week. It seems like everyone has a different take on what should be included in SDS, and my definition and implementation guidelines can be found in this report. Like other vendors, EMC is promising to revolutionize the way customers will provision, manage and create storage resources using ViPR, which will become a key component in the vendor's Software Defined Data Center strategy for virtualizing compute, networking, and storage resources.  Unlike other years, where EMC bombarded its attendees with dozens of product launches, this year's show focused almost entirely on ViPR, which makes sense given the importance of this technology. ViPR is expected to become generally available in the latter half of 2013, and like all other SDS implementations, ViPR is designed to reduce the number of administrators it takes to manage rapidly growing data repositories by using automation and self-service provisioning. So what's under ViPR's covers?

When you hear the words “end user computing”, what do you think of?  If you’re in infrastructure & operations (I&O), you might think about the corporate standard laptop or desktop you’ve just selected that over the next couple of years you’ll provision to most of your employees. Or your corporate standard OS image that you stamp on those systems; locked-down, loaded with the management  & security agents and corporate apps you think those employees need. Or perhaps even the corporate standard smartphone that you’ve handed out to the employees who needed mobile email access. You might think of these things because they all help I&O organizations deliver and support technology for employees more efficiently. These techniques help you address the historical “ask” from your colleagues outside of IT: “Give us technology while absolutely minimizing the impact you have on our bottom line”

I highly recommend reading Gene Leganza’s blog on the role of the Chief Data Officer, written several months ago.

Having had several related discussions this past week while in Washington DC, it is obvious that the question of how to use and manage the growing wealth of data, and incorporate it into an existing information governance organization and infrastructure (however mature or not), is top of mind in the public sector as well.  These questions are particularly timely for the federal government with the publication of the new Executive Order on Open Data and accompanying Memorandum on Open Data Policy – Managing Information as an Asset.  Do government agencies need a CDO in order to do this?

If they did, what functions does the new role take on?  Does the new role take on new uses of data for business strategy?  Who has responsibility for existing functions of information management and data governance?  Then from the organizational perspective, where does this new role sit?  Who reports to the CDO?  Gene discusses these questions in his blog.  With the increasing importance of data and the information they generate, organizations need to get their heads around the new assets they have – both for internal use and both partners external to the organization.  But the proliferation of “chiefs” doesn’t seem to be the answer.  Information is an asset to the company, yes. And it needs to be managed.  But not all assets have their own chief, nor should they.

Channel partners are bullish about their growth prospects. In fact, in a recently conducted Forrester survey in North America (NA) and Europe, 59% of channel partners expect to grow by more than 10% in each of the next two years. However, partners will need help and handholding as they aim for greater sophistication and higher growth targets, especially around cloud based services. Forrester research indicates that three-quarters of channel partners in NA and Europe now sell cloud-based solutions (up dramatically from two years ago). These solutions now make up 26% of their overall revenue, a percentage they expect to increase in coming years.

In my recent report, Seeding the Cloud Channel, I highlight three key areas where the partners will need support from both their tech vendors and their distributors:   

• Diagnostic tools and services to assess current maturity and set a transformation road map. Partners will first have to collaborate with their principal vendors to gauge the fitness of their organizations for an annuity-based business model — and whether they can sustain that model in long run. Vendors need to create assessment tools to evaluate their partners' business model transformation potential. For example, Cisco Systems built its OnPlus ROI Tool expressly for partners to model the myriad business model options and scenario decisions they face. This will not only help partners identify their pertinent strengths and weaknesses, but will also help them plan their future growth strategy.

As an analyst on Forrester's Customer Insight's team, I spend a lot of time counseling clients on best-practice customer data usage strategies. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that there is no such thing as a 360-degree view of the customer.

Here's the cold, hard truth: you can't possibly expect to know your customer, no matter how much data you have, if all of that data 1) is about her transactions with YOU and you 2) is hoarded away from your partners. And this isn't just about customer data either -- it's about product data, operational data, and even cultural-environmental data. As our customers become more sophisticated and collaborative with each other ("perpetually connected"), so organizations must do the same. That means sharing data, creating collaborative insight, and becoming willing participants in open data marketplaces. 

Now, why should you care? Isn't it kind of risky to share your hard-won data? And isn't the data you have enough to delight your customers today? Sure, it might be. But I'd put money on the fact that it won't be for long, because digital disruptors are out there shaking up the foundations of insight and analytics, customer experience, and process improvement in big ways. Let me give you a couple of examples: