Customers have been giving us feedback on the Centera and Data Lineage demo. I’d like to share some of the questions they’ve been asking and highlight some of the feedback they’ve been giving.
They’ve been asking questions about what seems like “a non-traditional usage” of the Centera product.
And interestingly enough they’ve been giving us something that I didn’t quite expect.
Their business cards.
To review, here’s how we got to the demo:
- June 2007: Submit Centera & Data Lineage idea as one of 410 world-wide ideas
- August 2007: Idea selected as one of 30 for a “science fair” poster competition.
- October 2007: Chosen for “3rd place” by Executives at 2007 Innovation Conference.
- December 2007: Meetings begin with CTO office on “proof of concept”.
- February 2008: Proof-of-concept coding team formed at EMC China research facility.
- April 2008: Final demo screens identified.
- May 2008: Code completed and brought to Las Vegas for EMC World 2008 Innovation Showcase.
Response to the demo has been interesting:
I Can Use Centera for More Than Just an Archive?
That’s an interesting question, and the answer is yes. Sure Centera is a prize-winner when it comes to the storage of fixed content. But it also has a long history of storing meta-data along with that content. Data Lineage meta-data is a non-traditional (yet highly valuable) way to be thinking about Centera.
The comment hints at something that not many people are aware of: XAM is a programming paradigm for fixed content. And programming paradigms are powerful. Data Lineage is not the only creative way to use an API like XAM (but it’s one of the best ones we’ve thought of yet!).
Combining Immutability With Traceability…. I Like It!
That’s right. Traceability is the whole point of data lineage. Customers want to see where their data came from and navigate back to it. And data lineage solutions have been discussed, researched, prototyped, and built. But if the lineage information can be altered or deleted in any way, then it’s not a bulletproof solution.
Anything stored on Centera is immutable. It cannot be altered. Trying to alter the content will result in a new piece of information; the old one remains. Using Centera’s retention feature means that the lineage information cannot be deleted.
The idea states that Centera could in theory be used to track lineage information at your existing (non-Centera) site. Lineage information can be created for content stored on the web, on a NAS device, in a SAN, or in any number of places.
But it’s also a great solution to have the lineage information AND the content all stored on Centera.
What About the Business Cards?
At certain points during the Innovation Showcase CXO-level customers stopped by to listen and ask questions about the data lineage idea. A significant number of those guests have left their business cards and said” “keep me posted on the progress of this idea”.
The purpose of our booth at EMC World was to collect this type of feedback. If customers said “that’s cool” and then moved on to the next demo, well, that’s not a very ringing endorsement. But when the idea results in a business card, then you know that you’re addressing a real customer need.
The Innovation Showcase at EMC World is over. It was a unique event. EMC offered a look at the early stages of innovation that we as engineers go through. I hope to post more feedback about the showcase as a whole in upcoming posts.
Steve
Update: writeup about several research projects found here
