Hope everyone had a nice break and is ready to get back into the swing of things; 2012 is upon us and for us living in London, we look forward to a summer of travel chaos and ever increasing levels of hyperbole. It is both the London Olympics but also the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, so a great time to visit London and probably a great time to be living elsewhere.
Next week sees the Dell Storage Forum in London and the first #storagebeers of the year. Dell has had a year now to get their storage portfolio in order and 2012 must be the year that they begin to see their acquisitions deliver; yet, even that might not be enough and we need to see some innovation and road-maps presented. From Exanet to Compellent via Equallogic, there is enough product and I am looking forward to see how it gets woven into a strategy.
Yet Dell are not the only company who need to start weaving a strategy, arguably with the exception of EMC, this is the year when everyone needs to start drawing the weft and clothing their products with strategy and coherence.
And it is not just the vendors who need to get their strategies in order; this is very much the case for the end-user as well. Too much product and too much fluff still proliferates in many end-user organisations, this often due to a confusion between flexibility and choice.
From Cloud to Data Analytics; there has been a lot of playing with these technologies but many organisations need to move beyond this and into delivery of investment and results. As in every year, there is lots to do and as in every year, there might be too much to do. Start stripping away the fluff and delivering.