I was going to enroll on Twitter, but I realized that it really is an utter waste of time.  No one cares what I do every 15 minutes anyway.  I can guarantee you no one cares what I am thinking about every 15 minutes.  However,  I will give you a glimpse of what consumes my cluttered mind right now:

• Kudos to EMC’s marketing organization for pulling off EMC World in this economic climate along with the Swine Flu overhang.  There were 4000+ attendees and most of the sessions I attended broke the fire code for amount of people in a room.  While many other vendors canceled their events, EMC made it happen.
• You want to talk about irony:  I was walking into a storage customer a few weeks back to discuss a VTL RFP.  I got a call from ESG HQ that NetApp was going to buy Data Domain – who happens to excel at disk-based backup implementations including VTL solutions.  We did not alter the RFP process.  Fast forward to this week when I was scheduled to meet with the same storage customer to review the VTL RFP responses.  30 minutes before the meeting, I get a text message from ESG HQ saying that EMC is topping NetApp’s bid for Data Domain.  Next week, we are having another meeting to make a final decision on the VTL solution.  I am leaving my phone at home.
• If you have not caught it yet, find some time to Tivo CNBC’s Meeting of the Minds program where several business leaders, including Jack Welch and Larry Fink, talk about the future of capitalism in America.  Even the Tech Baby enjoyed the hour banter.
• We are witnessing more companies extending hardware (servers, networking, storage, etc) maintenance contracts as opposed to buying new gear after the asset has been fully depreciated.  One conversation I had with a customer went like this. ”We could afford to a buy a new solution, but that limits our flexibility as we are locked in for the next three years (the depreciation period).  Even though we are running older technology, renewing the maintenance agreement gives us more options in the long term.”  This is happening more often in this economy and we expect it to continue.