EMC ON Magazine - Number 2, 2010

Number 2, 2010

life in information

Future CitiesStudying Climate ChangeEmber on Smart EnergyEMC on IT and Energy Efficiency

inside

Egypt offers a model for how rising economies can develop a skilled IT workforce and a healthy IT sector that are closely aligned with each other.

Dr. MohaMED SalEM (far left), chairman of the Information Technology Institute, and Mr.

aMIn KhaIrElDIn (bottom), strategy advisor and

board member of the Information

Technology Industry Development

agency.

ACareerinSustainabilityvs.aSustainableCareerEMC’s Kathrin Winkler explains the difference.

1,656WordsonNickCarr’sThe ShallowsA dialogue on what the Internet is doing to our brains.

Don’tTaketheCowPathDavid Hill: Data protection strategies must avoid the “cow paths” created by legacy solutions.

EastMeetsWestDespite their rivalry, Route 128 and Silicon Valley have much in common.

World-classITPeter High: The best CIOs are full partners in driving business strategy.

AcceleratingITDevelopmentinEgyptTwo key agencies have helped build Egypt’s IT workforce and technology sector.

DigitalUniverseThe amount of data we store and manage will grow 44 times by 2020.

ThePrivateCloudHasaSilverLiningSanjay Mirchandani: New roles and opportunities beckon to IT professionals.

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It’s a flat-out cliché to say that change creates opportunity.

In fact, it’s a cliché to say it’s cliché to say that change creates opportunity. (Would that be a meta-cliché?)

Nonetheless, many articles in this is-sue concern the O word: the opportuni-ties that come our way as a result of the tumult and transformation technology brings. These “chances” exist at every level: from IT professionals seeking a new career trajectory, to CIOs who want to take a strategic role in driving business growth, to nations that aspire to partici-pate more fully in the world economy and create a better quality of life for their citizens. To balance the picture some-what, we also talk to author Nick Carr (page 9), who holds strong views about the ways technology can also overwhelm us.

Focusing on new career options, EMC’s

CIO Sanjay Mirchandani sketches out emerging roles in private cloud envi-ronments (page 45) while EMC’s chief sustainability officer Kathrin Winkler explains the critical difference between seeking a “pure sustainability job” versus applying the principles of sustainability to one’s own field of expertise (page 5).

Peter High reminds us (page 27) that IT executives have gained unprecedent-ed visibility into their organizations. This puts them in a unique position to help their organizations leverage technology to capture markets and capitalize on trends. With that role, however, comes the responsibility for protecting the sen-sitive data an organization is entrusted with, writes David Hill (page 15). With the emergence of virtualization and cloud computing, security officials must be sure they are developing robust pro-tection strategies and not simply follow-

seeing the Opportunity Technology Brings

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ing yesterday’s “cow paths.”As our cover story (page 32) on Egypt shows,

IT can create opportunity on a national scale, as well. Driven by the efforts of two govern-ment agencies, the country has increased the number of local IT companies tenfold during the last decade, and is exporting IT products and services throughout the Middle East and Africa.

Where many people see opportunity, Nick Carr sees the overwhelming, addictive side of technology. In a dialogue with ON publisher Gil Press (page 9), Carr argues that technology is rewiring our thought processes at the expense of deep reflection and analysis, a belief that led him to dial way back on what had become an extremely connected existence.

If you’re feeling that same need to dial back, by all means do! But not before you read this issue of ON.

Christine Kane, [email protected]

Big ideasi

In the Internet Age, success requires a willingness to continually reinvent oneself.

“ WEArE INA period of nonlinear change. What exists as a job now didn’t 10 years ago and may not 10 years from now. My best advice? Develop transferable skills, be resilient, be good at whatever you do, and keep your eyes open for new opportunities to bring sustainability into a discipline that needs it.”kathrin winkler page 5

“ INTHEPAST 17 yEArS, we have trained around 2,000 trainers who have provided about 70,000 training programs to one million Egyptians. The courses are open to the public, require only a minimal fee, and offer training in areas such as office applications, the Internet, and basic programming.”Dr. MohaMeD SaleM page 32

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“ THErE’SgroWINg social pressure to participate in these technologies, to be on Facebook and be on Twitter, and there is resentment when people try to distance themselves from it. It’s really becoming very much a social norm to present ourselves through these social networking services.”nick carr page 9

“THoSEofUS who have made a profession of IT are accustomed to reinventing ourselves as new technologies arise. If a guy with storage expertise begins to embrace systems, networks, and IT security as well, then his professional worth grows dramatically. he’s on his way to becoming a Cloud Architect ...”Sanjay MirchanDani page 45

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a career in sustainability vs. a sustainable career

BY Kathrin WinKler There’s a world of difference between pursuing a “career in sustainability” and bringing sustainability into a discipline.inTercOnnecTed wOrldI

Lately, I find myself being asked frequently about “careers in sustainability.” Sometimes it’s by reporters, but most often it’s by students or people seeking a change of professional direction. The most common questions are about how to get a “sustainability job” and whether (or where) to major in “sustainability.”

I have a problem with that. A few of them, actually.

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Which sounds awfully mean-spirited, given that I have a “sustainability job.” And yes, I think it’s one of the best jobs going. Believe me, I don’t begrudge anyone else the same opportunity. But I don’t believe that a sustainable future for our society will be best served by creating armies of people who are in “sustainability jobs.” Nor do I think there will be that many of them. Here’s why.

InspIrIng the troops The people who will drive change are those who will transform business models, technology, engi-neering, and processes to evolve toward an envi-ronmentally and socially sustainable society. As chief sustainability officer (CSO), I may be cham-pioning removal of hazardous substances, but it’s the technical supply chain team at EMC that has been working with peers, academia, and suppliers to find replacements for PVC in cable sheathing, lead in solder, and brominated flame retardants in printed circuit boards. Our packaging engineers eliminated polystyrene and designed collapsible crates. The global real estate team is responsible for our rainwater capture, water treatment plant, high-bay lighting, and countless other energy-sav-ing initiatives. Our hardware engineers developed adaptive cooling techniques, and, together with software designers, gave us disk spin-down and

solid-state disks. Procurement selected high-yield paper. Need I go on?

I am in an influence job. I am trying to educate, incite (and incent), nudge, set direction. My role is to pay attention to emerging issues and engage those who are needed to address them. Recognize new opportunities and excite those who can lever-age them. Then get the heck out of the way.

Develop your expertIse Do you want to change the world? Go become a materials scientist, engineer, financial expert. Find

a career in susTainaBiliTy {cOnTinued}

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a solution to energy storage. Get Wall Street to change the short-term mindset that plagues pri-vate industry and makes long-term investment in sustainability so challenging. Bring your passion, systems thinking, and world-view, together with another skill set or expertise, and GO CHANGE THE WORLD!

I didn’t plan to be in this job—I didn’t even know it existed until a couple of years ago. In fact, for the most part, it didn’t. I got here through a combina-tion of good timing, opportunism, passion, busi-ness experience, and some professional success (at least by my definition).

We are in a period of nonlinear change. What exists as a job now didn’t 10 years ago and may not 10 years from now. My best advice? Develop transferable skills, be resilient, be good at whatever you do, and keep your eyes open for new opportu-nities to bring sustainability into a discipline that needs it.

When DemanD exceeDs supplySome weeks I get a question every single day about how to have a career in sustainability. If I look at “pure sustainability jobs”—assuming there is such a thing—there are consultants, academicians, members of company sustainability teams, and chief sustainability officers or some equivalent. For

every person I know in one of those jobs, I prob-ably get 10 requests from people who want one. And that’s just me.

These jobs are not only scarce but perishable. It’s unfortunate but true that in tough financial times, some companies go right to the nonrevenue organizations to streamline the company. It also happens when companies merge. Thankfully, EMC hasn’t done that, but there are plenty of companies that do. Having other skills is better for peace of mind and for the wallet. More to the point, people who are in functional roles, applying principles of sustainability, are simply less vulnerable.

learn the busIness fIrstWhile I am, in some sense, a “sustainability profes-sional,” that has not been my career. My career has been in high tech. With 20/20 hindsight, it’s prob-ably more accurate to say that I have been a pro-fessional change agent, with a focus on high tech.

Say you get a job in sustainability out of the chute. Some people do. You will develop some great skills. But will you learn the business as well as if you were in a front-line job? Will you get a grasp of the financials the way you would in the back office? Will you understand the market and opportunities the way people in front of custom-ers or developing business strategy do? Will you


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appreciate the challenges in the supply chain if you haven’t been there? What will be the basis of your bona fides for influencing others to change? If sustainability is part of business strategy—and I believe deeply that it is—it’s important to under-stand the whole business picture.

Most of the CSOs I know came from within their organizations. Granted, in the past, there was nowhere else for them to come from. And there is no question that successful CSOs are being offered new opportunities; having demonstrated leader-ship in one company, several have been asked to help guide another on its journey. Tod Arbogast, for example, went from Dell to Avon, and Dave Stangis went from Intel to Campbell’s Soup. Both of them brought influence, leadership, operational skills, and experience in setting strategy and driv-ing change. Will this happen to people who’ve never done anything else? I don’t know. I wouldn’t count on it.

folloWIng the cso ImperatIveI once shocked a reporter by saying I wasn’t con-vinced that every company needs a CSO. But I’m not. I think of “sustainability” like “quality”: it needs to be interjected into everything we do by making it part of the value system of the company. In some sense, our job is to eliminate our jobs.

Do I really think that we’ll put ourselves out of a job in the near future? Not really. The space is moving too rapidly not to have someone tracking issues, establishing priorities, educating the orga-nization, managing stakeholder engagement pro-grams, and—perhaps most importantly—harvest-ing applicable ideas and best practices from the workforce and from other companies.

Someone needs to decide what the next destina-tion on the journey should be. But does it have to be in the form of a CSO? That depends on com-pany size, culture, organizational framework, man-agement style, and where they are in their own evolution.

By all means, aspire to be a CSO. Take a “sus-tainability minor” in school. Plan to change the world. We need that passion, that determination. We need it in our engineers, our program manag-ers, our scientists, our accountants, our business leaders, even our salespeople. We need it in you. Combine that resolution, courage, and apprecia-tion of the interconnectedness of our world with an insider’s knowledge, and you can move mountains. Or better yet, stop others from moving them. A

Kathrin WinKler is vice president and chief sustainabil-ity officer at emC. She blogs at http://www.interconnected-world.typepad.com/


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1,656 words on nick carr, his

decision to unplug from a very wired

existence, and how the internet is

altering our brains

By gil prESS he computer screen offers us bounties and conveniences. but is it our servant or our master? T

Nicholas Carr has a problem. “Over the past few years,” he says in his new

book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, “I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something has been tinkering with my brain. …

“I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I feel it most strongly when I’m reading … my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. … My mind now expects to take in in-formation the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

The Carr solution? He moved from “a highly connected suburb of Boston to the mountains

of Colorado,” disconnected himself from Facebook and Twitter, cut down drastically on e-mail, and wrote a book, expanding on his much-discussed 2008 Atlantic Monthly cover story “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

I live in a highly connected suburb of Bos-ton, and although I recently increased my

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http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393072223

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/

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nicK carr {cOnTinued}

“social networking” activity—and my addiction to e-mail has hit an all-time high—I find all of these to be easily controlled drugs. I can still concentrate and enjoy reading books. Carr’s lucid prose and engaging writing style certainly helps, so I man-aged to get through the 276 pages of The Shallows and absorb its main points. But as a service to ON readers suffering from heavy information overload, I picked up that ancient technology, the phone, and asked Carr: “Can you summarize the argument of the book in 140 characters?”

alterIng the pathWays In our braInsNick laughed and said, “Ignoring the 140-char-acter limit, the argument of the book is that our intellectual history has always been shaped by the technologies we use to gather, process, and share information. What neuroscience has told us recently is that the effects of those media are felt at the cellular level of the brain’s structure. When we do something—in particular do something over and over again—we alter the neural pathways in our brains.

“I think that’s happening with the Net, particu-larly as we come to use it as our all-purpose me-dium for gathering and sharing information in all imaginable forms. I think what we’re doing today is training our brains to be distracted, to take in information in lots of little bits and pieces with lots of distractions and interruptions. And as we do that, we begin to lose our ability for more sus-tained concentration, attentiveness, deep reading, and even deep thinking. If, like me, you think that attentiveness, deep thinking, and deep reading are

“ i think it’s pretty clear that richness of thinking is very tightly connected to a person’s ability to pay attention and to resist distraction.”

nichOlas carr

TheInternetisrewiringourbrainsatthecellularlevel,Carrargues.While“trainingourbrainstobedistracted,”italsocreatespressuretoblogandtweet—andworryifwedon’tbecomefamousovernight.

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really central to personal identity and also central to culture, I think you are right to be afraid of the damage that is being done today.

“In one sense, the Net is a continuation of a media trend we saw throughout the last century where the number of distractions supplied by me-dia—whether it’s telephone, radio, TV, whatever—keeps ratcheting up and keeps making demands on our attention and distracting us. But I think the Net goes far beyond even anything we’ve seen before

in its ability to prevent us from concentrating on one thing for more than a few seconds or minutes.”

But communications technologies of the past—as I continued to poke [Facebook reference intend-ed] at Nick’s argument—were not a tool for build-ing communities and providing social connections. Many people have become compulsive in their use of the Net, Nick says, because “they want to feel connected.” That’s a completely different dimen-sion than reading and writing.


“I would guess that smart people will use the Internet for smart things

and stupid people will use it for stupid things in the same way that smart

people read literature and stupid people read crap

fiction.” —Sandra kelly, 3m Corporation

“This is the continuation ad

infinitum of the process launched by abacuses

and calculators: We have become more ‘stupid’

by losing our arithmetic skills but more intelligent by evaluating numbers.” —andreas kluth, The

economist

“It’s enlightened anxiety. We know more

than ever, and this makes us crazy.” —andrew

nachison, We media

“Google will make us more informed. … Provid-

ing universal access to information will allow

people to realize their full potential.” —

hal Varian, Google

“The question is all about people’s choices. … What search engines

do is provide more information, which we

can use either to become dilettantes (Carr’s

worry) or to bolster our knowledge around the edges.” —andy Oram,

O’reilly media

“Google allows us to be more creative. … We spend less time trying

to recall and more time generating solutions.” —

paul Jones, ibiblio

reacTiOns TO nichOlas carr’s “is gOOgle MaKing us sTupid?”In a February 2010 survey* of Internet experts by the Pew Internet & american life Project, seeking views on Carr’s article, 81% of respondents thought he was wrong and that by 2020 people’s use of the Internet will enhance human intelligence. 16% thought he was right and that by 2020, the Internet could even lower the IQ of people who use it a lot.

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the fear of mIssIng outNick agreed, up to a point. “It’s a different dimen-sion, that’s true. But it’s also one of the reasons why we’re drawn to using the Web so much. As the Net becomes a means of instantaneous, con-tinuous social attachment, it becomes ever harder to break away from the Net because we, as hu-man beings, are extremely desirous of getting new information, particularly when it has social mean-ing. Certainly, we fear that there are interesting

social interactions going on that we’re not a part of, so the rise of social networking has pushed us even further along in our dependence on the Inter-net, and as a result, pushed us ever further into the Net’s way of distributing information in very short, quick overlapping bursts. I think the effects are related, even though there is a lot going on, and it remains unclear how it’s all going to play out.”

That phrase, “There is a lot going on,” prompted me to bring up an ON interview with Esther Dyson


“roget has become no more than a calculator

for the lexically lazy: Used too often, relied on

at all, it will cause the most valuable part of the brain to atrophy, the core

of human expression to wither.” —Simon winchester, 2001

“[W]e become dependent on our

information machines, perhaps even addicted

to them. Thoreau poked fun at this even before the Civil War: ‘hardly a man

takes a half hour’s nap after dinner,’ he wrote, ‘but when he wakes he holds up his head and

asks, What’s the news?’”—Steven lubar, 1993

“The high rate of change to which we have

become accustomed affects the manner in which information is presented: When the

viewer is deemed to be bored after only a few minutes of air time, or the reader after a few

paragraphs, content is sacrificed for stimulus,

and the problem is reinforced.”—James

Burke, 1978

“The calculator was meant to make computation more

convenient for people who already knew

about numbers. now, it threatens to crash

the intellectual order, assuming the role of an

end, when it is only a means.”—richard J.

klutch, 1991

“Information anxiety is produced by the ever-

widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand.” —richard

Saul wurman, 1989did wriTing MaKe us sTupid?

Claims for and against new information technologies have a 2,500-year history. Carr cites in The Atlantic article Plato’s Phaedrus and its discussion of how relying on the new tech-nology of writing will make people “cease to exercise their memory and become forget-ful.” The frequency with which this sentiment—and its more positive counterpart—have been voiced seems to have in-creased lately with the rapid development and proliferation of new information technolo-gies. here are similar senti-ments to Carr’s voiced before he published the article.

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(Fall 2007). When asked if she thinks people ever feel overwhelmed by information, Dyson replied, “Not just information, but choice.” She went on to describe the traditional way of life when you knew you might have a good life or a bad life, but you dealt with it. Now, everything is possible. It’s your fault if you don’t make the right career choice, if you don’t marry the right person. People both are and feel much more accountable. If their lives aren’t perfect, they can feel it’s their fault. “That’s a heavy burden,” Dyson said.

the lInk betWeen choIce anD InformatIon anxIetyWhen I read The Shallows, I thought that Dyson’s perspective provided the larger context for what’s discussed in the book. I said to Nick: “Our modern culture is very open. It’s very mobile. It provides lots of choices and lots of opportunities.” And Nick concurred, saying, “And as a result, a lot of anxiety as well.”

Encouraged, I continued: “It’s interesting to look at the Internet in this context. It provides more opportunities to find information, more opportuni-ties to connect, and even more opportunities to become famous overnight, out of nowhere. But the choices and the possibilities bring even more pressure: Should I blog? Should I Twitter? Maybe

something is wrong with me if I don’t do that, or something is wrong with me if I do it and don’t become famous overnight.”

Nick continued this train of thought: “Even if you don’t become famous in a large group, the person-alization of media through the Internet—where we’re all broadcasters of ourselves—does push the celebrity type of culture down to a very personal level. We’re constantly portraying ourselves in the media when we build a Facebook profile, when we send out a stream of texts or tweets. We’re creat-ing a media persona for our self. It does, on the one hand, give us more choice and in some ways more power over the creation of our self, but in other ways it does produce a lot of anxiety and I think can also produce superficiality.”

What’s to be Done?Nick continued: “I blogged briefly about a cartoon-ist who decided that he was just going to cut off the Internet and get off it. What he noticed im-mediately was that a lot of the people he knows resented him for that because suddenly they said, ‘Gee, I have to call you?’ There’s growing social pressure to participate in these technologies, to be on Facebook and be on Twitter, and there is resent-ment when people try to distance themselves from it. It’s really becoming very much a social norm to


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present ourselves through these social networking services.”

So, other than moving to the mountains of Colo-rado, is there anything Nick would suggest as a medicine to cure what we are doing to our brains?

“I’ve tried to avoid prescriptions,” Nick added, “because I think it’s important just to describe the phenomenon. I don’t want to turn into some self-help person who tells you to spend three hours sitting quietly in a dark room every day, because I don’t think it’s that simple. I think this is a major technological shift that is also shifting norms of behavior and ultimately habits of thought. The furthest I’ll go on the prescription side is to underscore the fact that I think it’s pretty clear that richness of thinking is very tightly connected to a person’s ability to pay attention and to resist distraction. I think people need to be aware that if they lose that ability, that capacity to really pay deep attention to something, they’re going to lose ultimately an important part of their personality. My suggestion is not to give up that side of human thought—the more attentive, contemplative side of human thought—without at least some consideration of what you and society as a whole may be losing. But there’s no simple solution. The spark for this book was my own realization that even when I’m not at a computer, I’m finding

it harder and harder to pay attention and to concentrate.”

a presIDentIal enDorsementShortly after our phone conversation, Nick’s view-point got an indirect but strong endorsement from President Obama, who told the new graduates of Hampton University, “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations—none of which I know how to work—information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you, it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.”

As has happened many times before, I find myself disagreeing with the authorities. Isn’t it up to us to choose the degree of control we wish or don’t wish to exert over our lives? Nick has no patience with this argument. “In the end,” he writes in The Shallows, “we come to pretend that the technology itself doesn’t matter. It’s how we use it that matters, we tell ourselves. The implication, comforting in its hubris, is that we’re in control. … The computer screen bulldozes our doubts with its bounties and conveniences. It is so much our servant that it would be churlish to notice that it is also our master.” A

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Take the Cow PathdOn’T

a COmprEhEnSivE apprOaCh tO Data prOtECtiOn

By DaviD g. hill egacy data protection solutions need to accommodate ascendant cloud computing and virtualization technologies—not the other way around.L

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alThoUGh MoDErn historians consider the story a myth, Boston’s dysfunctional roadways were supposedly the result of cows creating paths that later turned into streets. For the sake of argument, assume the story is true. Was this process initially a mistake?

Not really. Although a particular cow path may not have

been the shortest distance between two end points, it was probably the easiest route for the cows to follow. And it saved the owner from the effort of creating a path. Unfortunately, these optimal cow paths eventually led to a suboptimal solution for Boston’s roadway system as a whole.

A similar situation exists today in data protec-tion where enterprises—both private and public—have inherited a number of cow paths in the form of legacy data protection solutions. Enterprises need to understand that these existing solutions have to be coordinated effectively in order to build a comprehensive, near-optimal data protection solution for today’s evolving needs.

These new needs often include implementing server virtualization and a cloud, either private or hybrid. The path of least resistance in these situa-tions is to leave legacy data protection solutions as is and create new, independent “cow path” solu-tions for the new hardware and software in the architecture. This, however, is the last thing any enterprise should do. Instead, an effective enter-prise will define an ideal data protection archi-tecture and fit legacy and new solutions into that architecture.

dOn’T TaKe The cOw paTh {cOnTinued}

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create a comprehensIve frameWorkThe first step in constructing and implementing a comprehensive data protection scheme is to define the right model, one that integrates data protection’s disparate functions. These days, data protection is an important component of business continuity, disaster recovery, data security, regula-tory compliance, eDiscovery for civil litigation, and other functions. What model or rules of thumb do we use to ensure that all these facets of data pro-tection can be integrated effectively into a compre-hensive solution?

One key principle is that all the high-level func-tions of data protection (such as backup, access control, and encryption) can be applied to any and all data types and storage locations. These data protection functions comprise the first tier of our model.

Within this context, the need to balance privacy and security may lead to different access controls and archiving policies being applied to differ-

ent types of information. For example, protection would be more stringent for employee social se-curity numbers or corporate financial results that have not yet been released than for online repair manuals for manufacturing equipment. Similarly, one set of best practices should be defined for site mirroring, disaster preparedness, and data recov-ery, although data warehouses may have a greater need for incremental backup than, say, e-mail repositories. In other words, the model should pro-vide a common, information-centric approach to data protection at the top and fit legacy and cloud data protection subfunctions, segmented by the type and sensitivity of data, into that overall ap-proach.

This information-centric approach makes it much easier to ensure that the defined data pro-tection objectives—which may include preserva-tion, availability, responsiveness, confidentiality, and/or auditability—have been met for different categories of information.

Who’s usIng the Data? anD Why?This approach does not take care of cases where different constituencies are accessing the same data type. Therefore, the third tier of our model drives decisions about how to reconcile the some-times conflicting demands of different end users


Data protection is an important component of business continuity, disaster recovery, data security, regulatory compliance, eDiscovery for civil litigation, and other functions.

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and applications. For example, business continu-ity requires preservation of data for accuracy and completeness, whereas eDiscovery requires pres-ervation to ensure that the data is tamperproof and so is usable in civil litigation.

Based on end-user and application access needs, data protection schemes must also define the most effective point in time to move different types of information to less costly long-term stor-age as part of information lifecycle management. Developing third-tier rules to handle these needs and conflicts results in an integrated data protec-tion solution that is more cost-effective, resilient, scalable, and easy to use. In turn, this helps organi-zations avoid an ad hoc and piecemeal approach to each new data protection challenge.

Note that this model of data protection fits nicely into a governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) framework. The three pillars of the GRC framework—which represent three of the primary responsibilities of any enterprise—provide a way to analyze and understand all the facets of data protection in a comprehensive manner.

the next step: realIty testIngWhile our ideal model allows us initially to oper-ate at a high level and consider principles and objectives, eventually our cow-path-avoiding data

protection planning has to get down to the level of reality testing individual technologies. Let’s con-sider the example of adding active archiving to the data protection environment.

Active archiving is more than the automatic tiering of infrequently or never-accessed data to relatively higher capacity/lower performance disk drives. While hierarchical storage management uses disk storage more cost-efficiently, it does not (by itself) give users a full spectrum of data pro-tection capabilities.

In contrast, active archiving provides a controlled environment where all the facets of data protec-tion can be managed in a comprehensive and con-sistent manner. For example, information that is moved into an archive was previously application controlled: The application managed the creation, reading, updating, and deleting of data. Once data enters the active archive, the original application can only take actions allowed by the active archive management software, based on policy. That is an


active archiving provides a controlled environment where all the facets of data protection can be managed in a comprehensive and consistent manner.

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important and necessary restriction. For instance, the policy manager can automatically enforce retention policies, such as litigation holds, that could be accidentally or intentionally overridden in a production environment, putting the organization at risk.

As a side benefit of active archiving, the amount of active production data is reduced (because rarely used data is automatically moved to sec-ondary storage), which means faster backups and faster restores.

Technologies such as active archiving cannot be put in place in isolation. Enterprises must define when to move data to the active archive and how business continuity needs and security restrictions will change as data ages. To make this decision process as easy as possible, enterprises need a for-mal data governance program and an overall three-tier, information-centric data protection model in place. This will not only speed the implementation of active archiving but also minimize implemen-tation costs, reduce the impact on production

systems, and help avoid data protection coverage gaps.

the fInal step: stay true to your moDelOnce a data protection model has been created and implemented, there remains one final task: maintaining its comprehensive, information-cen-tric approach as part of overall IT governance.

What this really means is that the modern equiv-alent of cow paths should not be allowed to occur. The pressures of cost constraints and speed-to-market may make it difficult for IT to resist quick implementations that create independent data protection schemes, but, in the long run, prolifera-tion of independent solutions will create many of the same problems that today’s legacy solutions are causing. Boston’s infamous Big Dig was partly a reaction to the traffic-flow problems created by design violations of a previous comprehensive traffic-management scheme. The high cost of the Big Dig suggests that failure to maintain a com-prehensive scheme can be almost as expensive as failure to implement one in the first place. A

DaviD hill is principal of mesabi Group LLC and the au-thor of the recently published book Data Protection: Gov-ernance, risk Management, and Compliance http://www.mesabigroup.com/english/Portfolio/Portfolio.html.


as a side benefit of active archiving, the amount of active production data is reduced ... which means faster backups and faster restores.

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easT MeeTs wYBeyond the

stereotypes, it turns

out there is more

uniting than dividing

america’s “dueling” high-tech

regions.

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wesTto an outsider, america, the famous “melting pot,” must seem homogeneous: refined into unity by a common political system, mass media, and consumer culture. But beneath the veneer of similar strip malls, interstate highways, and sprawling subdivisions, subtleties—bits of history, climate, economics, and sociology—conspire to produce regional cultural differences that affect vocabulary, english pronunciation, preferences in food and sport, and even how people conduct business.

By alan r. EarlS

ga

ry n

eill

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In the 1940s, American diplomat George F. Kennan, on a lecture tour of the U.S., noted among his Western audiences, “a feeling that the East … was haughty and supercilious and neglectful of the wisdom and vision that flourished in the centers of learning on the West Coast.” While increased mobility over the intervening decades has doubtless reduced some of those geographic misapprehensions—perhaps natural to a nation that spans a continent—they have not been entirely erased. And, in the case of the West’s Silicon Valley and the East’s Route 128 area near Boston, they have retained a quiet persistence, which sometimes manifests itself in misunderstandings and suspicions.

sIzIng up a potentIal partnerIndeed, the potential for cultural misalignment was on the mind of BJ Jenkins, senior vice president and chief of staff of the EMC Backup Recovery Systems division, last summer when EMC beat out Silicon Valley-based NetApp to acquire Data Domain, which leads the data deduplication storage field. “The interesting thing for me about Silicon Valley as compared to Greater Boston,” says Jenkins, who was then head of EMC’s global marketing organization, “is that there are so many more technology companies in Silicon

Valley; employees there have more of a free-agent mentality, so as an employer you have to be even more sensitive to their needs.”

In preparing to meet with Data Domain, Jenkins says, there was a lot of talk and concern about cultural differences. “We wanted the Data Domain people to feel good about EMC and about their future, individually and as a company, so when we first flew out we were hypersensitive; we didn’t wear ties, just slacks and dress shirts,” Jenkins recalls.

analyzIng the east/West DIvIDeThat anyone would be so concerned about such nuances is, in part, the result of an influential 1994 book, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition

easT MeeTs wesT {cOnTinued}

on the strength of those revolutionary technologies, proximity to leading research universities and think tanks, government funding, and rapidly expanding venture capital resources, Silicon Valley during the 1980s vaulted past route 128.

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in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Author AnnaLee Saxenian proposed that the two high-tech regions were culturally different—one “laid back” and the other “buttoned down”—and further, that they represented wholly different styles of doing business. The East, she argued, was stuck in a siloed world where corporate loyalty, corporate secrets, and long-term job security were prime values. Meanwhile, according to her thesis, the West had mastered the art of collaboration, “co-opetition,” and a new networked style of doing business that was propelling the region at warp speed toward permanent global tech dominance.

“Saxenian’s story was a phenomenon,” admits Michael Best, an economics and industrial practices researcher, who has divided his time between Oxford and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “When her book came out, everyone was quoting her; there was a gut reaction around Boston, and many people took it personally,” he says. “The book seemed to say, ‘Silicon Valley is great and Route 128 didn’t work,’” he adds. Still, says Best, something bothered him about the fundamental thesis: When he looked around, Route 128 wasn’t dying; it was thriving. “Nobody realized just how vibrant and interesting it was inside 128,” he says.

hIgh tech’s roots anD branchesWhile both regions have high-tech roots stretching back to the early 20th century, their fortunes first diverged in World War II. In 1940, the federally funded Radiation Laboratory was established at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Focusing on ra-dar and electronics, it became the largest scientific effort of the period, with the lone exception of the Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb. Spurred by Cold War R&D funding, the Space Age, and construction of the Route 128 beltway, the re-gion became the nexus for leading-edge electron-ics and the emerging mass-produced minicomput-ers. In fact, it was from that environment that EMC sprang in 1979, initially providing memory add-ons for minicomputers.


in the post-minicomputer era, Best says, the route 128 region has developed a critical mass of companies in diverse industries in which the business model has become focused on core capabilities and on partnering as much as possible.

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Meanwhile, the San Francisco peninsula became home to William Shockley, co-inventor of the solid-state transistor, and later became the hotbed for developing and commercializing integrated cir-cuits. On the strength of those revolutionary tech-nologies, proximity to leading research universities and think tanks, government funding, and rapidly expanding venture capital resources, Silicon Valley during the 1980s vaulted past Route 128 in terms of total tech employment and as the epicenter of information technology. It has maintained its dom-inance ever since.

the hIDDen hanD of regIonal busIness culturesSaxenian and others detect in this divergence of fortune, an unseen hand—regional business cul-ture—cleaving the weak from the strong and the old from the new. For a while, the facts seemed to support that contention. For example, the Route 128-area companies that once dominated the market for minicomputers—including Digital Equipment Corporation, Wang, and Data Gen-eral—lagged behind in the transition to PCs and industry-standard architectures. All are now long gone.

However, notes Best, the remarkable thing is that Route 128 didn’t disappear; it simply reinvented

itself, adopting many of the dynamics of Silicon Valley and revealing some of its old, little-noticed networking habits, like formal and informal con-nections to academia and well-connected boards. In the post-minicomputer era, Best says, the Route 128 region has developed a critical mass of com-panies in diverse industries in which the business model has become focused on core capabilities and on partnering as much as possible.

“The Route 128 area doesn’t have a competi-tive advantage in high-volume production. It never had and it never will,” he says. “Nevertheless, Route 128 is highly competitive for other reasons,” namely, deep research connections and a focus on breaking new ground technically. “When a Silicon Valley company comes and buys a company in the


while Boston may have a lower metabolic rate, areas like kendall Square near Mit in cambridge have a density of researchers and companies that isn’t matched anywhere in the Silicon Valley area.

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Route 128 area, they don’t shut it down and move it. In fact, they come in so they can access the local research and engineering skills and capabilities,” he says.

“So, I do think there is a difference in the sense that the Greater Boston area doesn’t create Googles and it doesn’t create mass-market, con-sumer-oriented products,” adds Best.

DIfferent markets, DIfferent scaleEchoing those sentiments, Christophe Lécuyer, a researcher based in Silicon Valley who focuses on technology history, observes that comparative scale is the most striking difference between Bos-ton and Silicon Valley. While there are some major successes in the Boston area, such as EMC, there are many more companies in Silicon Valley, and they tend to grow faster. “One reason is that peo-ple focus on different types of markets in the two places,” he says. “Entrepreneurs in Boston tend to focus on more specialized markets, so that makes for a different potential scale.” It also results in less venture capital. Silicon Valley gets one-third of all the venture capital investments in the U.S.; Boston gets a much smaller share.

But beyond those economic facts of life, says Lécuyer, there is little evidence of any deeper cul-tural differences. “What I have seen is that there

are huge flows of people between Stanford and Berkeley on the one hand and MIT and Harvard on the other.” Similarly, Lécuyer says he has talked to engineers who have worked in both regions, and they claim the differences are minimal.

“My guess is that there is somewhat more for-mality in Boston and perhaps some differences in how people dress or interact in the work en-vironment, but I do not see that as fundamental. What is more fundamental is the way teams are organized, how they work with each other, and the competencies that people have,” says Lécuyer.

the value of a fast metabolIsmScott Kirsner, a blogger and technology columnist for The Boston Globe, and previously a technology


Says jenkins, “eMc’s culture is continuously changing through our acquisitions. we learn things from Data Domain that we can move into our core business. east or west, you evolve and you get better.”

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writer in the San Francisco area, agrees that the two regions are fundamentally similar, but he spies differences in some specific areas. For example, the velocity of thinking and doing is much higher in Silicon Valley. (He calls it the region’s “fast me-tabolism.”) “The culture is, ‘What-startup-are-you-working-on-now-and-why-haven’t-you-quit-to-start-another?’”

Indeed, Data Domain fits that classic startup model, says Frank Slootman, the company’s former CEO and now president of the EMC Backup Recovery Systems division. Speaking of Data Domain’s co-founder, Slootman says, “Kai Li was a Chinese academic who had been teaching computer science at Princeton; on sabbatical he just decided he wanted to start a company—he didn’t know what it would do or how.” Nevertheless, the Silicon Valley ecosystem provided him with partners, a business concept, and ultimately, startup capital.

On the other hand, Kirsner says, while Boston may have a lower metabolic rate, areas like Kend-all Square near MIT in Cambridge have a density of researchers and companies that isn’t matched anywhere in the Silicon Valley area. “New ideas are constantly bubbling to the surface in Boston,” he says.


It’s all In hoW you run your busInessFor EMC, which has grown adept at acquiring and integrating companies across the country and around the globe, Jenkins says the real issues are not East versus West but how you run your busi-ness, how people participate, and what motivates them to be part of the company. “We have found many more similarities than differences between EMC and Data Domain,” he says. Mostly it boils down to the difference between a relatively small company and a relatively large one. “They are like we were, back when EMC was focused on just one product, Symmetrix,” says Jenkins. “Now we have a broader company, and we take a longer-term view of the industry. EMC’s culture is continuously changing through our acquisitions. We learn things from Data Domain that we can move into our core business. East or West, you evolve and you get better.”

And, notes Slootman, the high-tech world is a meritocracy. “In combining with EMC, we have found that both sides were similar in their relentless pursuit of business—that’s why the integration has gone so well.”

“In the final analysis,” says Kirsner, “I think the regions are complementary. Many West Coast companies feel the need to be represented here in Boston and vice versa.” A

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wOrlD-ClASS

he best CIOs are full partners in driving and executing business strategy.T

By pEtEr high

President, metis Strategy

Y World-class IT requires the IT group to function as the central nervous system

of the organization.

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wOrld-class iT {cOnTinued}

ThIS IS an exciting time for information technology executives. not so long ago, business executives thought of the CIo as less than a peer—a “C-level” executive in name only. This was due to a combination of factors such as a lack of appreciation for what IT can do for a company, differing educational and skill backgrounds, and an inability among some IT executives to speak the business’s language. In fact, one did not need to go too deeply into the IT organization to find people who had difficulty articulating what the business did on a day-to-day basis.

The past decade has brought about a shift in many IT departments. The best CIOs realize they have a unique perch in the organization, which, if understood well, allows them to weave the IT function into the fabric of all other divisions in a way no other group has the reason or the means to do. There are opportunities for creative and forward-looking IT executives to champion in-novative initiatives that serve many parts of the organization. Similarly, IT is in a position to recog-nize where there are redundancies, inefficiencies, excess capacity, or systems that are working at cross-purposes.

It’s role as the central nervous systemIT should think of itself not as the order taker of years past, but as the central nervous system of the organization: Much of what is articulated by the corporate “brain” (executive leadership) is now delivered to other parts of the organization (busi-ness units and departments) and the extremities (divisions, partners, and customers) through IT. Conversely, IT is positioned to anticipate users’ evolving technology needs and then communicate and advocate for those needs to leadership and the rest of the organization.

I have had the pleasure of working with many

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talented CIOs, helping them navigate these un-charted and sometimes tricky waters to a more satisfying and strategic destination for their de-partments. Their organizations were quite diverse in terms of industry, geography, size, and company health, but there are certain common traits that are shared by the best CIOs.

First, they have a burning desire to improve. Whether they have already won awards recogniz-ing their IT achievements or are stepping forward to lead a laggard IT department, they do not ac-cept the status quo. Second, they have a desire to measure their team’s performance and their own. They embrace the axiom “that which gets mea-sured gets done.” Third, they encourage transpar-ency. Rather than keeping metrics private, they broadcast them internally and externally so stake-holders can track progress toward goals and evalu-ate IT’s contribution to the business.

Among the principles that top CIOs hold in common (see next page), you’ll find no mention of cloud computing, Web 2.0, collaboration technolo-gies, and the like. I don’t mean to suggest these capabilities are not worthy of contemplation. They are. But in creating this framework, I have chosen principles that have staying power, irrespective of the latest technology trends. Moreover, these

principles are easily grasped not only by the most senior members of an IT organization, but also by everyone in the organization. After all, the best strategic frameworks are those that the entire or-ganization can understand, support, and mobilize behind.

strengthenIng the Weaker lInksThese five principles and the 33 sub-principles that support them operate like the links of a chain. If a link is operating poorly, it is likely to compro-mise the other links it touches, even if they are operating well. By evaluating all of the principles and sub-principles on a regular basis and present-ing performance data to appropriate stakeholders in an easy-to-understand dashboard format, the organization will have a solid view of how the IT operation is doing and where to focus improve-ment efforts.

Again, “that which gets measured gets done,” and, at the same time, it provides motivation for all of IT to work together toward shared goals. A

peter high is the founder of metis Strategy. His experi-ence lies in corporate, business-unit, and IT strategy, port-folio and project management, innovation management, and product pricing.


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Five principles that contribute to iT excellence

There are certain principles that top CIos keep sacred. I have described these in great detail in my new book, World-Class IT: Why businesses Succeed When IT Triumphs. By applying these principles effectively, IT earns a place at the table and a role in defining and carrying out business strategy.

PEoPLE form the bedrock of

an organization. Without the right people

doing the right jobs at the right

time, it is nearly impossible to

achieve excellent performance.

1 jam

es y

an

g il

lust

rati

on

s

InfraSTruCTurE is the on/off switch between the reactive organization and the proactive one. If hardware, software, networks, and so on are not reliably performing their tasks, the IT organization will become stuck in reactive mode, constantly fighting fires. If the infrastructure works reliably, then a larger portion of the organization can think about the future.

2

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wOrld-class iT Five principles ThaT cOnTriBuTe TO iT excellence {cOnTinued}

IT and buSInESS ParTnErShIPS are essential. It is the CIO’s role to ensure that different groups within IT—from business analysis to development, QA, and support—function as a team, communicating effectively and efficiently. It is equally important that IT develop partnering relationships with executive management, lines of business, and key business functions to ensure ownership of and success for IT initiatives.

4

ProjECT and PorTfoLIo ManagEMEnT is the engine through which new capabilities can be brought to bear on behalf of the company. It is important to ensure that the portfolio collectively supports the objectives of the business and projects are delivered on time and on budget.

3

ExTErnaL ParTnErShIPS are increasingly important as outsourcing becomes more pervasive. by contributing to the discussion about business strategy,

IT is in a strong position to determine which aspects of IT are best handled by external partners. Further, IT must be adept at managing those relationships to be sure the company gains the expected value from its outsourcing investments.

5

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Since 1993, egypt has built a skilled it workforce, attracted investment in local companies, and fostered an it sector

that is closely attuned to market needs.

By gil prESS

acceleraTing iT develOpMenT

in egypTThE IT SECTor In EGyPT IS ThrIvInG. From 1999 to 2009, the number of IT companies grew from 266 to 3,032, the number of specialized IT trainees from 500 to over 36,000, and the number of Internet users from around 300,000 to 13 million.

Playing a major role in driving this growth are two innovative government agencies, the Information Technology Institute (ITI) and the Information Technology Industry Development agency (ITIDa). ON spoke at length with officials from both agencies: Dr. mohamed Salem of ITI and mr. amin khaireldin of ITIDa. They discussed the activities of their respective organizations, which could serve as models for other countries interested in developing and expanding their IT capabilities.

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acceleraTing iT develOpMenT in egypT {cOnTinued}

Over the past 17 years, ITI has supplied the egyptian, regional, and international markets with highly trained IT professionals. ITI graduates make up the backbone of the IT workforce in egypt. Dr.MoHAMEDSALEM, chairman of ITI, has worked at the institute from its inception, starting as director of professional training. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Ain Shams university in egypt.

iti: Strengthening the it WorKforce

What led to the founding of the Information technology Institute?

Dr. Salem: Back in 1993, the information technol-ogy market was just emerging in Egypt. There was a gap at the time between the needs of the market and the qualifications of Egyptian university gradu-ates. Local IT companies were spending a lot of money on sending their employees to Europe and the U.S. to get training, so we decided to estab-lish a local IT training center. The first class had 49 graduates. In July of this year, we will graduate about 900 members of the 30th class.

How has ITI evolved over the last 17 years? The basic mission has not changed: It is to cre-

ate, shape, nurture, and empower the Egyptian IT community by developing and disseminating state-of-the-art training processes. But there have been three distinct periods in ITI’s history.

Dr. MohaMeD SaleM, chairman of the Information Technology Institute, pauses in the lobby of the ITI headquarters building in Smart village, Egypt’s steadily growing technology center.

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At first, we were basically a supply-driven or-ganization, supplying qualified IT professionals to the market. In 1999, with the establishment of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), we became more demand-driven. The new ministry drove a focused collabo-ration with the industry, and we started to provide training based on specific industry requirements for specific IT skills. We listened and responded to the specific needs of the future employers of our trainees. The third period in our history started four years ago when we officially joined the MCIT. We now design our training programs together with the IT multinationals that have a presence in Egypt, and they provide our trainees practical ex-perience during the course of the training program.

Our core program is very selective. For our most recent class, we accepted about 900 out of 12,000 applicants, all of them new university graduates. Our students first take the founda-tion module, which covers general topics such as computer networks and databases. Then they take a focus module for which we offer about 23 dif-ferent tracks. The number of the trainees in each track depends primarily on market needs at any given point in time. Finally, they complete the nine-month program with the assessment or project

module where the students apply the concepts they learned.

What other training programs does ItI offer?We have three main programs which are arranged, in terms of the size of the audience they are ad-dressing, in the shape of a pyramid. In the base we have the “IT culture-building” program, in which we supervise 53 training centers outside of Cairo. We train the trainers, we administer the examina-tions, and we provide the certificates. In the past 17 years, we have trained around 2,000 trainers who have provided about 70,000 training pro-grams to one million Egyptians. The courses are open to the public, require only a minimal fee, and offer training in areas such as office applications, the Internet, and basic programming. They help build a culture of IT in underserved areas outside of Cairo.

The second program is called EDU Egypt. The idea behind this program is not to wait until the students graduate from the university, but to inter-vene while they are still there. We provide training in two areas: languages (primarily English), and interpersonal skills, including customer care, e-mail communications, technical writing, etc. These skills are required in the business process out-


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sourcing (e.g., call centers) industry. Currently, 55 faculties (e.g., faculty of law, faculty of commerce) in 10 universities offer this type of training, reach-ing about 20,000 students yearly.

The third program is our core nine-month train-ing program. It has graduated about 6,200 stu-dents since its inception. In addition to working for local companies and multinationals, about 15 of the graduates now work in Europe and the U.S. Our goal is that each and every graduate of ITI will find a job after graduation. The taxes that are collected for each of these positions pay back the government’s investment in each student in ap-proximately three years. As a result of the collab-orative work we do with the industry to identify the required skills up-front, there are job opportunities for all our current students.

I’m sure a big part of your success is your training staff.

Absolutely. The ratio of ITI staff members to stu-dents is one to 10, which is very high compared to what you find in Egyptian universities. And the average age of our training staff is 28. These are very enthusiastic individuals, with, on average, six years of knowledge and training experience. We make sure they are completely up-to-date on the

latest trends and developments in IT, with the help of our technology tracking office, and by sending them to international IT conferences. ITI also has a research unit which collaborates on research proj-ects with universities in and outside of Egypt. And we organize an annual international conference on IT and communications technologies.

talking about keeping up with the latest trends in It, you have just announced a cloud computing center.

Yes. ITI has several locations: Cairo, Giza, Alex-andria, Mansoura in the north, and Assiut in the south. Assiut is a 60-year-old university; we de-cided to establish a development center there for cloud computing with the goal of providing high-quality technological services to Egyptian compa-nies, especially those that work in the field of cloud computing. We hope to start operations in eight months’ time.

, Next ITIDA is fostering an IT sector that is attuned to market needs and able to leverage the IT workforce.


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The Information Technology Industry Development Agency, ITIDA, is the executive IT arm of the ministry of Communications and Information Technology. ITIDA is primarily concerned with building the capabilities of local IT companies, attracting and servicing

multinational IT companies, and growing a qualified, sustainable, and deployable talent pool. With local and international outreach, ITIDA plays a fundamental role as a one-stop shop for foreign direct investors seeking to enhance their global offering using what egypt has to offer and the competitive advantages of the country.

Foreign direct investment inflows to egypt have increased from $2.1 billion in 2003/04 to $13.2 billion in 2007/2008. recently, multinational companies have made new investments in the country as well as significantly expanding existing centers. These investments underline egypt’s

itiDa: groWing the local it inDuStrY

Mr. aMin KhairelDin is strategy advisor and board member of ITIDa. one of the agency’s responsibilities is to help multinationals invest in Egypt and export local IT products and services.

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emergence as a major hub for global sourcing, servicing blue-chip clients across many industries.

AMINKHAIrELDIN is a member of the board of directors of ITIDA and also serves as chairman of the board of directors of the Technology Development Fund (TDF). For the first 30 years of his professional career, mr. Khaireldin held a variety of management positions with Ibm in egypt and europe.

What was the motivation for establishing ItIDa?

Amin Khaireldin: ITIDA was the visionary project of the current prime minister of Egypt. In 2004, when he was the minister of ICT, he worked with about 30 experts in government, academia, and industry to define the best way to empower the IT sector in Egypt and grow the export of IT services. Once the framework to achieve this goal was defined, it was important to put in place an organization that is established by law and receives its funding from the industry. This way we ensured its long-term viability, even if the priorities of the government change. In other developing countries you may have organizations with a similar mission, but they are typically NGOs. I haven’t seen the ITIDA model deployed anywhere else.

What is the mission of ItIDa?

ITIDA is in charge of executing the IT strategy for Egypt, specifically growing exports and enabling the IT industry in Egypt to become a world-class IT industry.

What kind of activities do you pursue on a day-to-day basis to achieve this mission?

We have more than 30 programs. One of the pro-grams, for instance, is to help multinationals like EMC to invest in Egypt and export IT products and services. Other programs are driven by the human capital focus of our strategic framework, such as the programs we have inside universities, which match students’ skills with market needs. We have programs designed to support local innovation. We have programs that link industry with research centers.

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To specifically aid in the development of local IT companies, we have established a consortium of five international consultants. They visit a lo-cal company and perform an audit, benchmarking them against European and American companies of the same size and from the same market seg-ment. They define weaknesses in that company. Based on that analysis, they bring in subject-matter experts (SMEs) to work with the company for a period of six to 18 months. The SMEs work with company management to define what actions they should take in order to reach the point where they can compete internationally.

could you give us an example of something you plan for the future that’s still on the drawing board?

We are in the process of implementing a program for middle management and advanced profession-als. We studied about 30 companies and training centers around the world, famous for delivering and producing good managers and professionals. We invited 14 to bid on establishing an internation-al training center in Egypt with the capacity to train 4,000 professionals a year. The winner will need to meet a number of requirements, such as delivering 10 percent of the capacity of the center from their

own customers in their country of origin. Also, 70 percent of the trainers must come initially from Europe and/or the U.S., and 30 percent from Egypt. By the end of the first three years, the goal is to flip this ratio and have 70 percent Egyptians and 30 percent from Europe and the U.S. We are estab-lishing this training center because we anticipate that with the growth of our IT sector, we will have increasing needs for high-level, high-quality, local training of middle management.

tell us a little bit about the work you do in terms of helping local entrepreneurs and start-ups.

We have several programs in that area. One is an annual business competition in which anyone with any innovative idea can compete. A jury selects the best 30 ideas submitted, and then we provide experts to help them develop a professional business case. Another jury selects the top 10. These are invited into an event in which investors from the IT sector review these business cases and decide if they would like to invest in them. We give cash prizes to the winners of the top three places, and we help them, with further financial support and rent-free space, incubate their ideas for up to 24 months in Cairo’s Smart Village, a


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39

technology park. We have also established a technology fund,

TDF, which I chair. In addition to investing in new ideas, we provide guidance to the entrepreneurs from product development to marketing through the consulting consortium I mentioned before. When these new companies become successful, they will be able to send their managers to the new advanced training center. As you can see, our stra-tegic framework covers all aspects of the industry and emerging IT companies.

you have worked a long time in the It industry. how would you compare the It community in egypt 10 years ago to today?

Ten years ago we had very much an inward focus. And we were focused mainly on hardware. Today, there is a much better understanding of the value of services, and the trend is growing. Also in the past, the government did not pay much attention to IT. But this has changed in the last 10 years, with a strong commitment by the government to develop the local IT community, develop the IT sector, and use the sector to increase the country’s exports. We have gone through a remarkable change in the size, success, and influence of the IT sector in Egypt in the last 10 years. A


eMc’s cenTer OF

excellence in egypT

ByMAgUEDMAHMoUD, general manager, emC egypt Center of excellence

New pools of IT talent are forming around the world, and EMC is on a journey to find the best minds everywhere. EMC’s Centers

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40

of Excellence (COEs) are cultivating talent and expanding presence in key markets around the globe. The COEs leverage specific expertise and skills in key markets to advance EMC’s business. Center employees perform essential services for EMC business units, including R&D, customer service, translation services, technical support, and back-office processing. EMC now operates COEs in China, Egypt, Ireland, India, Israel, and Russia, complementing the company’s traditional bases of innovation in North America and Western Europe.

The Egypt Center of Excellence was established in 2009. EMC recognized that Egypt’s growing IT talent base, multilingual technical skills, and strategic location make it an excellent choice to provide support and implementation services to Western Europe and the Middle East. With a strong commitment to the principles of excellence and quality and with a customer-centric approach, the center is focused on delivering services for a number of EMC Global Services teams, including Technology Solutions and Services (TSS), Custom-er Support Services (CSS), Customer Service Tech-nicians (CSTs), Install Base Group (IBG), and soon, Information Intelligence Group (IIG) Consulting.

After less than a year, the Egypt COE has more than 100 employees who provide services to EMC customers globally in six languages: English, Ara-bic, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Initial feedback has been very positive and has encour-aged EMC to plan future expansion in Egypt.

The support provided by the Egyptian govern-ment through the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has been outstanding, from initial country due diligence to educational program access and government process naviga-tion. The MCIT has been a big part of the Egypt COE’s rapid success. A


the egYpt center of excellence has more than 100 employees who provide service to EMC customers in six languages.

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41

dThe data deluge continues, creating challenges for IT and driving a new approach to delivering IT, cloud computing

igiTal universe

The digital decade—are you ready?

one zettabyte (ZB) = 1 trillion gigabytes

the amount of digital information created annually will grow by a factor of 44 from 2009 to 2020, as all major forms of media—voice, tv, radio, print—complete the journey from analog to digital. at the same time, the it workforce will grow only 1.4 times.

20090.8ZB

x

202035ZB

source: idc digital universe study, sponsored by emc, may 2010

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42

digiTal universe The digiTal decade—are yOu ready? {cOnTinued}

By 2020, the number of information

containers (files, packets, and images)

that is actually managed, protected,

and stored in the digital universe will

grow 67 times.

The amount of information will grow 44 times.

The number of IT professionals in the world will grow only 1.4 times.

2009 2020

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43

digiTal universe clOud uses and cOncerns {cOnTinued}

cloud uses and concerns

how useful would cloud computing be in meeting the following it objectives?

jVery

Useful

jSomewhat

Useful

30%53%

36%45%

43%44%

40%40%

41%40%

44%22%

45%26%

Dynamically allocating computer power

Making it easier to maintain or upgrade applications

reducing infrastructure costs

Data backup

reducing the cost of developing or licensing

applications

Enabling internal collaboration

Improving communications with key partners, suppliers,

or customers

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44

digiTal universe clOud uses and cOncerns {cOnTinued}

what are the top concerns about implementing cloud computing at your organization?

Public Cloud

Private Cloud

Security ControlIntegration with legacy

systemsreliability

lack of internal/

staff expertise

Disaster recovery

Too few best

practices to emulate

Scarcity of proven suppliers

75% 50% 35% 33% 20% 20% 15% 12%

43% 26% 40% 29% 42% 18% 28% 12%

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45

CThe private cloud has a silver lining

BY SanjaY MirchanDani The rise of private cloud environments is creating new roles and new opportunities for IT professionals.iO cOrner

Is anyone wondering if “this cloud thing” is good for the careers of IT professionals? Let’s get any doubts out of the way: It’s good.

It seems when I visit CIOs or other IT ex-ecutives lately, they want most to chat with me about what a cloud-based organization looks like. They want to talk about what roles their IT organizations should con-sider adding during the effort to plan, build, and run a private cloud environment. It’s a smart thing to think about because every-thing starts with people—with their skills, their ability to prepare, and their overall understanding of how much good IT can do to advance a business’s competitiveness.

My leadership team and I also have been doing a lot of serious thinking about how a private cloud is changing our roles and our organization. I think what we’re doing at EMC will have relevance for you. In the

the organizations we run will evolve. why shouldn’t our folks situate themselves right in the locomotive of this train?

joh

n s

. dyk

es

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46

years I’ve been in IT and the technology industry, I have seen waves of technology come and go. But the private cloud isn’t just another wave. It is a total game-changing opportunity for IT profession-als. It is the thing that will make that age-old ques-tion, “Is IT aligned with the business?” disappear. A private cloud lets us deliver a catalog, a set of offerings—it shoves away our need to have to cus-tom code and custom craft and make everything complicated the way the old technology made us do things.

When one builds and runs a private cloud, life changes. The conversations change. And the job changes, bringing opportunities to grow profes-sionally.

leavIng your fIngerprInts on the clouDWe are still in the early days of this journey and can put our own fingerprints on how private-cloud building unfolds in our shops. What’s fundamen-tally going to evolve?

Well, the intent is to offer IT as a service. Our teams must build the environment differently from before and govern it differently. As an infrastruc-ture evolves into a private cloud, our competencies as IT professionals will evolve and grow, too.

For example, the whole concept of “geography”

changes. That fact forces us to look anew at our physical boundaries, our federation approach, and our tactics for working with external providers to extend into public clouds.

A private cloud also injects automation into data center operations. Simply put, our people won’t need to babysit the infrastructure or its users as much. For example, in a private cloud, internal cus-tomers can help themselves by provisioning their own storage by submitting a web form. It’s freeing people in our organizations to think about what higher-value IT activities they can pursue, what skills they can broaden, what new competencies they can gain.

We’re already seeing cloudy roles start to emerge. They bear titles such as Cloud Architect, Cloud Capacity Planner, Cloud Service Manager, Cloud Solution Consultant, Cloud Governance-Risk-Compliance Manager, Cloud Security Archi-tect, and so on.

People in my organization tell me they are eager to see what the private-cloud build-out will mean for them. It’s obvious that they’ve been putting serious thought into how to take advantage of this chance to become more functionally competent and increase their professional worth.

ciO cOrner {cOnTinued}

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47

the groWIng DemanD for clouD expertIseThe EMC Education Services organization conducts a worldwide annual survey of 1,500 IT and storage managers titled “Managing Information Storage: Trends, Challenges, and Options.” The survey asks how these managers have been coping with organizational challenges tied to the explosion of data, the increasing importance of digitized information, and the introduction of new technologies.

In the most recent update, EMC Education Services found managers rating only 30 percent of their storage professionals as “strong” or well skilled. (Alarmingly, in the past two years, the survey has revealed a decline in the percentage of storage pros rated “strong.”) When asked about emerging technologies, the respondents showed an increasing interest in storage virtualization and cloud technologies; 41 percent of the surveyed organizations are in different stages of storage virtualization implementations, and an impressive 13 percent are planning or deploying private or public cloud technologies.

Our VP of infrastructure, Jon Peirce, has run just about every aspect of IT at EMC. Today, his group manages our journey to the private cloud. He and I have been thinking about what this means for our

people. Let’s start with how a private cloud is built. The old world of IT was all about unique point solutions. We’d design something for an internal customer’s application and optimize our gear for that application. With subsequent projects, we’d do that same thing, over and over and over again. Our efforts were not marked by reusability.

neW paraDIgm, neW rolesIn the new world of the cloud, we create an en-terprise hosting platform with standardized com-ponents, built to scale. We build it once, then we provision it again and again. What does this mean to an IT person looking for a career boost? Those of us who have made a profession of IT are accus-tomed to reinventing ourselves as new technolo-gies arise.

If a guy with storage expertise begins to em-brace systems, networks, and IT security as well,


in the past two years, an eMc education Services survey has revealed a decline in the percentage of storage pros rated “strong” by their managers.

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48

then his professional worth grows dramatically. He’s on his way to becoming a Cloud Architect, able to link into everything from an initial application thought process all the way to a steady-state run-ning of a cloud infrastructure. Some of my people are pursuing just such a professional path now.

Career opportunities also accompany the “pay-as-you-go” aspect of cloud-based consumption. Self-service provisioning and the multi-tenant nature of a private cloud mean we’ll need skilled capacity planners. In fact, the Cloud Capacity Plan-ner rises to an unprecedented level of importance. In the old world, capacity planning might have been someone’s side job. In the new world, capac-ity planning will be a full-time role that encom-passes all the cornerstone technologies of storage, system, and network.

Another cloudy job: the Cloud Service Manager, an in-house consultant who thinks through how a business can capitalize on cloud services and consume them across the stack. And think of the careers arising from the day-to-day running of a private cloud. For instance, to provision cloud ser-vices, we use a “single pane of glass.” But we can-not have a storage admin, systems admin, and net-work admin all fighting for control of the mouse on that console, figuratively speaking. I think we’ll see

some of these people becoming Cloud Infrastructure Administrators charged with provisioning the entire stack. Our own IT folks dreamed and built the EMC IT Global Operations Command Center—our win-dow to our private cloud—about a year ago. Inside its walls, experts in storage, systems, networks, and security are transferring their knowledge and broadening their skills.

The final piece of the career-opportunity pic-ture relates to private cloud governance. If you’re enabling end users to provision storage by them-selves, you need someone ensuring users aren’t also doing things they shouldn’t be. A Cloud Gover-nance Manager maps the service catalog and tiers services to the business’s needs, making sure the right people have access to the right things.

These job titles may not be the final ones, but they describe the competencies we need. It’s an emerging world and a great time to be an IT pro-fessional. The organizations we run will evolve. Why shouldn’t our folks situate themselves right in the locomotive of this train? Getting on board isn’t complicated. Enjoy the journey. It starts now. A

Sanjay MirchanDani is senior vice president and chief information officer at emC.


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49

Copyright © 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission from EMC Corporation. EMC2, EMC, and where information lives are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this publication are the property of their respective owners. H7211

Editor in Chief & Publishergil Press

http://onlifeininformation.com

EditorChristine kane

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life in information

Egypt offers a model for how rising economies can develop a skilled IT workforce and a healthy IT sector that are closely aligned with each other.

East-West Tech FusionPeter High on World-Class IT Dave Hill on Data Protection Careers in the Cloud and Sustainability

Nick Carr Unplugged

ACCELERATING IT Development in Egypt

Number 2, 2010

Dr. Mohamed Salem (above), chairman of the Information Technology Institute, and Mr. Amin Khaireldin (at right), strategy advisor and board member of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency.

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