A Trend toward Simplicity
Sunday, July 19th, 2009Side Note: As I travel the country talking to companies, I have been asked why I have not posted another blog entry in a long time. I guess I could justify it by saying that I don’t have anything new worth saying, and that I don’t want to waste your time with a lot of marketing hype. That may be true, but the real reason is just a lack of time. There is a saying that, “there are those that do, and those that teach.” For those rare cases where an expert does both well, I tip my hat to them. I enjoy the rare ability to actually work with the technology in customer environments as well as sell and architect the solutions. Hopefully I can share some valuable insites that keep you coming back.
So what have I learned that might be of value to you?
There seems to be an industry trend to look to simplify. Our friends at Data Domain (recently acquired by EMC) taught us that you can sell a limited ‘lunchbox’ dedupe engine and make a lot of money. It is not fair to say that Data Domain did a good job of “putting lipstick on a pig.” (But I will anyway.) They have taught me that it is important to have solutions supported with detailed process and best practice documents. This proves more challenging the more features and capabilities that the product has. Our OEMs will often restrict the use of certain features to simplify the support and complexity. You should be able to have the best of both worlds.