It’s been a long time since Jake and Elwood got the Blues Brothers back together.
Similarly, it’s been a very long time since I’ve worked for Dave Donatelli when I was at EMC. I really enjoyed the experience, and now I have a chance to do it again.
Starting August 24th, I’ll be working for Dave, this time at Oracle’s new converged infrastructure group. Yes, I’m excited about the new opportunity.
I thought I’d share a few personal thoughts behind my move.
The Lure Of A Great Leader
Very early in my career, Dave was my boss, my mentor and my friend. We started working together at a time when EMC was essentially a single-product company: Symmetrix.
When Symmetrix demand inevitably started to wane, Dave drove the Data General acquisition, which gave EMC the Clariion product line -- the right thing at the right time. It was a critical turning point for EMC. From there, other acquisitions came fast and steady, creating the modern EMC we see today.
Even though that period in time was a rough patch for everyone at EMC, I really learned a lot from watching Dave in action. Without that opportunity, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today.
The idea of working for him again is very, very appealing.
The Lure Of A Great Company
From any industry perspective, Oracle is a perpetual powerhouse.
Within our familiar enterprise IT segment, they are a force of nature. ~$170B market cap, ~120K employees and a breathtaking portfolio that ranges from powerful business software to advanced infrastructure.
The Oracle vision is to deliver an engineered version of the entire stack that customers need to power their businesses: from compelling applications all the way to powerful servers and storage. Better yet, that stack can be consumed in the data center, in Oracle’s cloud or any combination.
The strategy is working, and appears to be accelerating. The Oracle executive team is extremely seasoned and inarguably successful. Having the chance to work on the converged infrastructure part of the equation is very, very appealing to me — something I just can’t pass up.
But Some Regrets
I joined EMC in 1994. I think I met Dave that year as well. Nineteen years later, I decided I wanted to work the software side of infrastructure, and landed in VMware’s new storage business unit: VSAN et. al.
EMC is an amazing company, and I treasure my time spent there. VMware is an equally amazing company, and has a compelling opportunity to change how we think about software-defined storage in the enterprise. I expect VSAN to continue to do well.
Had I not been offered the chance to go work with Dave at Oracle, I’d still be enthusiastically at VMware.
That makes 21 years at the EMC Federation — a lot of history and relationships to leave behind. I truly wish everyone continued success in their ventures.
The Road Ahead
For those of you who are wondering exactly what I'll be doing at Oracle, the answer is "probably a lot of the stuff I've done before, plus some new stuff".
Yes, I’m still going to be blogging, just from a different perspective. And I’d like to think that good blogging is just that — things viewed from different perspectives.
I hope you’ll continue to follow me at http://chucksblog.typepad.com, or subscribe via email.
If nothing else, it should be interesting!
