CIOIN

May you live in interesting times, goes one of three Chinese proverbs. These are not only interesting times but also adverse ones for CIOs at most enterprises. There's a perpetual sense of that need to deliver flexibility in the dynamic environments; the need to save costs by optimizing data center resources; in short yes, that dictum again: 'Do More with Less.'

Is a combination of pay-as-you-go computing, increasingly via cloud networks, and virtualization the silver bullet? Probably not yet, but EMC, a global leader in storage solutions, and Dell, among the world's largest makers of computers, say it is a more potent, and an increasingly reliable, alternative to expensive hardware.