Chuck Hollis, EMC Vice President and Global Marketing CTO sat in on theCube this week at EMCWorld 2012, where he shared some of the latest coming from EMC with Dave Vellante.  Hollis is always a great source for insight, the video is well worth watching and can be seen here.   With a range of topics the discussion rifled through leading thought and perspectives for EMC and the industry in general.

Reviewing some thoughts on the current revolution taking place, Hollis notes that for one such wave, namely analytics and BigData are not driven by tech, but by business people.   Using the analogy of the oil rush, the first team onsite does the exploration, the next team performs the drilling, and the next team pumps it all out, Hollis aligns this with the current state in that business people are now evaluating and looking at what opportunities might be in their environment.

That captures the notion of transformation, reaching into elements of people, process, and financials.  Business leaders now know these processes are out there.  The challenge and the big “value-add” revolves on inward-focus discussions or evaluating their specific advantages in implanting these technologies.  In IT, statistics show that 25% are actively considering IT organization transformation, this means learning new ways to compete, evaluating the variable platform to deliver services, and a whole host of other considerations.

Hollis uses an anecdote of current healthcare payment strategies and the current changing environment there where “cannibal care” organizations are changing that landscape.  In this scenario, gaining price advantage is immensely critical and there are significant needs in this space to merge data together and utilize predictive analytics to gain business value.

EMC is living the transformation in many ways, one of which Hollis shares.  The industry leading cloud architect certification from EMC has had 4500 participants to date, in addition to an IT service certification that features 600 participants.  This move towards increasing the flexibility and adoption of transformational technology is a component of EMC’s leadership in this space.

One of the existing challenges of data analysis is also discussed.  Seeing the value is a critical challenge and it will take a shift in traditional business to embrace.  Reference models in data analysis scenarios will be based on experience and reflected against perceived value.  Hollis mentions the three phases of data science denial:

1. Your data sucks
2. Your model sucks
3. You suck

Hollis is a charismatic speaker, but his points are never unclear.  On using such powerful, predictive technology, there is an acknowledgement that there is a lot of dissonance going on.  That is just something that will eventually change and require some level of organizational change as usage and technology get better and better.  Data scientists within your organization may not be the most popular at first as analysis is derived from data troves and enter business decision making.

Hollis touches on the value of this latest partner-centric event, and is glad to have been able to participate in bringing partners together in one place at one time.  This partner-centric focus is manifest in some changes in go-to market strategies just taking hold.   This partner centricity is fundamentally changing EMC’s traditional relationships to where less emphasis on the classic EMC direct sales force and more around partner enablement.

Hollis also mentions SAP’s transformation and in doing so, reinforces an existing observation that many software providers have started to evaluate their offerings.  In doing so they have come to the realization that infrastructure and the process to infrastructure has been getting in way of value proposition.  With variable consumption models available, this is now transforming the way many companies are doing business.

Looking towards the future, EMC and mobility were introduced to wrap the conversation.  Hollis shares the notion that the thinking today is beyond the desktop.  Technologies such as VDI are nice, but are really just a stepping stone to mobility.  VMware is working hard behind the scenes on transforming the mobility space and quietly putting pieces together.  While some of that work is not ready for disclosure, a vision has emerged of an agile enterprise, with significant abilities to build lightweight apps, in an app store, secured, and managed much like a desktop is today.    Hollis mentions that EMC is a company that loves to invest in transitions, and recently overheard EMC described as a company that sells disruption, a description he feels quite comfortable with.  Chuck Hollis, great interview – watch the video: http://www.justin.tv/siliconangle/b/319036956