Earlier this week I noticed the formation of a new social media community sprouting up on our internal EMC ONE platform.  The community is called "RTP2 - EMC Data Center Migration". The formation of this community is in direct response to the recent announcement of 400 new North Carolina jobs and a recently purchased EMC data center facility in Research Triangle Park.

Here's the deal: many of the IT applications currently running internally at EMC are in Westboro, MA. Most (if not all) of these applications and services will be moving to the RTP facility. The community performing this task has the goal of helping "to communicate the plan, vision and strategy [of the move] to EMC Users".

It's going to be a major effort. I'll be subscribing to this community so that I can receive notifications whenever they post anything new. I would imagine that many of the IT systems have been running in Westboro for years and are not fully leveraging the latest in virtualization technologies.

I'm particularly looking forward to hearing about the technology choices being made for the new data center configuration. One would assume it would be vBlock-based and managed by IONIX. It's unclear whether or not VMs will seamlessly VMotion down to the new environment. I'm also not sure if heterogeneous equipment will be moved down there as well.

As far as the internal community, strike up another win for social media. Upon joining this community people can get an inside look at the schedules, tasks, technologies, and applications that are part of the move, published by people that are actually DOING the move.

Stay tuned. It will be interesting to write about the data center move while many of EMC's customers are trying to do the same.

Steve

http://stevetodd.typepad.com

Twitter: @SteveTodd

EMC Intrapreneur

Earlier this month Iomega announced and started shipping the ScreenPlay Director in Europe. I had previously bought the ScreenPlay HD for my parents and the ScreenPlay Pro for myself. As the Director is to the Pro, the ScreenPlay Plus is to the HD. A device for every price point, capacity and need.

The Director has a similar form factor to the ScreenPlay Pro but the dimensions are slightly different to accommodate a roomy 2TB Drive, also, the reflective buttons have taken on a more matte effect while the blue LED on the front of the panel has been replaced with a not as eye catching white version. It's all about making the Piano Black device more subtle looking when it's under your TV.

This isn't a bad thing. 

While the Pro's light was subdued the blue LED on the ScreenPlay HD blares at you somewhat and while others don't find it irritating I used to find my eye drawn to it a bit too often when I should have been watching the screen.

I never had that issue with the Pro.

The credit card style form factor for the remote control of previous ScreenPlays has been replaced with a proper sized IR remote, which means there's no more fat fingering the wrong button at the wrong time for me. One of the features which hasn't made the cut from the Pro was the ability to record directly into the ScreenPlay via composite ports in the back of the unit.

In all honesty this was of limited use and I'd have preferred it offer S-Video input support but I did manage to capture some home movies from VHS tape and it automatically saved them as MPEG-2 files. For any of you thinking you can convert your VHS movie collection this way I'm afraid you're out of luck as the Pro was capable of detecting VHS copy protection schemes and stopping the capture process. While I can understand the desire to put those classics you just can't buy into a digital format the film industry has driven DVD prices down to insane levels meaning you can find many mainstream titles for a pittance or even less if you go to the discount outlets.   

The Director takes longer to boot than the Pro, a lot longer, but the upside is that there's now a fully featured operating system doing all the heavy lifting. The user interface scaling to 1080i resolution, it appearing on my MacBook Pro as a NAS device when it was attached to the home network and with various online video options, the ability to locate and communicate with any active media servers on the network and with BitTorrent functionality included.

Video playback is gorgeous. Indeed it's better than gorgeous and great to watch even when watching standard definition content. High Definition content, right up to 1080p, is as good as I've seen on more expensive devices, playback obviously benefiting from the latest codec support and the more powerful system on chip hardware running inside the case. 

This matters as some of those more expensive devices offer a fraction of the storage and have enough fans in them that it can sound like you're standing on an airport runway when the unit gets hot. There are things which can ruin the home entertainment experience and unless you're willing to crank the volume because you have no neighbors fan noise is one of them. 

The user interface is a significant improvement over what has come before it with some entrances and exits of various display elements gliding on to the screen but there are a few user interface elements I would have touched up slightly. Internet update capability is in the device so new code when available can be downloaded and applied with a few clicks of the remote control or sideloaded via your computer so I'd expect the system software to evolve as time goes on.

The biggest issue I had came with ordering the WiFi USB attachment from the online store. Though it's written on the site clear as day I did make the mistake of ordering the 802.11B/G adapter, which works with the Pro but doesn't work with the Director. The 802.11N adapter is supported by the Director (Larger file sizes require bigger transmission pipes) but though it is advertised in the materials and in an insert which comes in the box it wasn't available for purchase when I went looking for it. Th B/G adapter works fine with the Pro but does not work with the Director. 

I'm guessing when the Director is available in the US the WiFi Adapter will be made available too. Still, while entirely my fault it's something others should check before they hit the Purchase button.

Since I buy my devices at the retail store like everyone else, to say Iomega is growing would be a drastic understatement on my part. I first noticed they were moving significant amounts of product at my local consumer electronics store when the store appeared to be selling and replenishing stock at a rapid rate. 

From my own investigations it appears that Iomega have gone from the eight position to the third in the externally attached consumer storage market while Joe Tucci mentioned the division had significant double digit growth (Significant means something different to Joe than to you or I. He's not easily impressed.) in Q3 and that was before the insanity of the Christmas shopping season kicked off.

Overall it's a hot product and I'd have liked if there was support for an international version of Sonic Wall's Roxio CinemaNow, something which will be present in the American edition of the device, but since it isn't present you do get YouTube. Amongst all the tweener dreck of Miley Cyrus and Twlight which appears to be rated highly by the GooTubers you come across some unusual things you didn't find the last time you were there on your computer.