EMC was in the storage news a lot this week. As the Internet of Things, or the Industrial Internet, continues to shift the conversation away from Big Data to Bigger Data aka our Data Revolution — storage plays a very important role in that narrative. Equally important is the cloud and how it will impact storage. From Microsoft’s very vocal desire to own the cloud and EMC and GE’s goal to control the growing Internet of Things market, the shuffling that is happening on the chess board is about as easy to stay current with as Amanda Bynes.

Here is a round-up of the storage news for this week:

Microsoft Server 2012 R2 a Step Toward Data Center Dominance?

 
Microsoft is making no secret of its ambition to “own the data center of today and the cloud of tomorrow,” writes Wikibon Analyst, Founder and Managing Consultant of the 1610 Group, and former CIO Scott Lowe in his latest Wikibon Professional Alert. The new Windows Server release requires a rethinking of IT strategy toward Microsoft updates. Rather than a service pack, this is a full new release, obviating the strategy of putting off offering new services based on Microsoft updates until the full service pack comes out.

EMC + Internet of Things : Interview with Chuck Hollis

 
The Industrial Internet is in. Contextualizing the promise of Big Data, this new trend around our buzzing, blinking connected devices, the Internet of Things, is expected to become big business. As part of my storage profiles series this month, we hear from Chuck Hollis, VP of Global Marketing CTO for EMC. Hollis gives us the inside scoop on his EMC’s vision of this blossoming market underlying the Internet of Things.

Hadoop Is Now an Ecosystem : Brings All Data Together + Makes it Accessible | #IndustrialCloud

 
Edd Dumbill, VP Strategy, Silicon Valley Data Science, discussed the big shifts in industrial Internet, Big Data, and data science with theCUBE co-hosts Dave Vellante and John Furrier, live at the GE Industrial Internet event. GE still has a long way to go, but Dumbill pointed out that what they are succeeding in bringing from the consumer industry is not just the data analysis, it’s also the ability to move data quickly.

Kim Dotcom Rages as Megaupload Files Wiped Clean by Leaseweb & LeaseWeb Hits Back At Kim Dotcom Over Megaupload Deletion

 
According to Dotcom, LeaseWeb’s decision amounted to the “largest data massacre in the history of the internet,” and was made even worse because the Dutch hosting company apparently gave him no warning of what it was about to do. Clearly someone isn’t telling the whole truth, but it’s difficult to say who. On the one hand, it’s hard to believe that Dotcom would have made a big issue out of this had he already known the data was going to be deleted – and moreover, why would he only make a fuss about it now if he had any knowledge of what was going down? But the again, why would LeaseWeb, a company whose entire business depends on its customer’s trust, do something to jeopardize that – in particular to someone as vocal as Kim Dotcom?

ScaleIO’s Quick Sale to EMC Aids Software-Led Storage Goals to Compete Against AWS with Service Providers

 
ScaleIO, an Israeli startup, has been purchased by EMC for a reported $200-$300 million. ScaleIO positions against Amazon’s Elastic Block Storage (EBS), and ScaleIO there’s is the ECS solution. It fixes a hole in EMC’s overall storage solution, software. The quality, speed and elasticity of cloud computing continues improve. Small and medium-sized businesses are moving to cloud hosting infrastructures (AWS, GCE, IBM, etc.)

EMC + the 6 Pathways to the Cloud

 
Pacific Crest Securities recently published the results of a survey of chief information officers (CIO) as regards cloud computing. The study found that CIO’s are finding the “path to the cloud” is more complicated than just signing up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) or upgrading shares of EMC to Outperform from Neutral. In this collection, we highlight EMC’s recent advancements, broken down by “pathway”: virtualization and automation, OpenStack, converged systems and services.

Takeaways

 
That wraps up another week in storage. Here are two takeaways I’d focus on this week: (1) You aren’t giving the market opportunity to the connected devices of the Internet of Things nearly enough “facetime”, (2) there are 6 pathways to the cloud, understand how each plays into your companies’ cloud plans, (3) Kim Dotcom might be a genius, but he sure loves controversy doesn’t he?