SiliconAngle's John Furrier and Wikibon.org's Dave Vellante run down the highlights of VMworld 2010. Couldn't attend the show? Check out the live Video highlights from The Cube. More on EMC and the Cloud: The cloud is where compute and storage are going. The long-term benefits of cost savings, flexibility and power will win that argument every time. However, businesses are slow to change. Adding even more confusion to the puzzle is that moving your data, compute and storage to the cloud is a whole lot more complicated than flipping a switch. Slowing down the messaging isn't always a bad thing though... 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. Pacific Crest calls the revolution in cloud computing we're experiencing "click to compute" and that there are 'six pathways to the cloud' including but not limited to SaaS and AWS: there's also virtualization and automation, OpenStack, converged systems and services. But EMC, as big as it is, hasn't fallen prey to disruptive offerings from smaller, more nimble providers. The traditional storage vendor has taken steps to diversify its portfolio and keep up with new technology. When it comes to these six pathways to the cloud in particular, EMC has done a great deal in recent months to advance its efforts. Here is a collection of those recent advancements, broken down by "pathway": EMC: Virtualization and Automation How ViPR Simplifies Data Management EMC's ViPR Group is a virtualization and automation layer that can sit on top of any platform. Other solutions simply offer automation stacks, where ViPR provides a storage platform that plugs into all of these stacks. Win for cloud. Win for EMC. Co-Innovation Between EMC and CSC is Thriving EMC + CSC offer joint approach, or co-innovation to the "as a service" implementations to the cloud. It is clear that partnerships is going to be a way that EMC scales its cloud storage business. Virtualization in Storage is a Win on All Levels SAP and EMC are quick to give specifics on how SAP environments improve business agility, which fundamentally reduces the cost of infrastructure. Storage visualization can be broken down to, and rightfully so, time and financial savings. There are practical savings opportunities offered by EMC's VMware. EMC Directions: The Intersection of Enterprise Data, Cloud and Big Data EMC's strategy is to capitalize on the confluence of traditional enterprise data, cloud computing and big data growth. To that end, EMC's strategy is to identify like-minded enterprise cloud providers and enable the development of so-called hybrid clouds -- a combination of virtualized, on-premise data center infrastructure and outsourced services. Introducing the 'Fab Four' of Software-Defined Storage (#SDS) EMC announced VFCache, 'Project Lightning' in February. The first big vendor to acknowledge flash is going to be a major player in software-led storage, EMC has skin in the game. In conjunction with the announcement, EMC's VMWare trimmed down its strategy and is doubling-down on solutions that virtualize, pool, and automate the data center. EMC: OpenStack EMC Drives More Momentum Behind OpenStack In December of last year, EMC announced their support of OpenStack and became a corporate sponsor. EMC's top priority today is the virtualization stacks. EMC, as its tradition, is playing the field. They're going to have multiple options, fill out a broad portfolio and engage customers and make sure they're not going to lose any strategic positions to its competitors. See the full article "EMC + The 6 Pathways To The Cloud" by RYAN COX, here: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/06/20/emc-the-6-pathways-to-the-cloud/