I pursued a job at Delphix for a simple reason. It is awesome. I rarely use that word and when I do, it is in its awe-inspiring original meaning.

When I first met Jedidiah Yueh, the 40 year old CEO and founder of Delphix, more than two years ago, I was blown away by the potential for Delphix' virtual database technology, by its leadership, and by its deep bench of IT engineering talent, such as Delphix CTO Adam Leventhal, one of the authors of Dtrace -- an extraordinary performance analysis technology that is crucial to making our digital world work so magically.

And Rick Caccia, Chief Marketing Officer, and other senior Delphix executives are all valley veterans with long and proven careers in IT markets.

I've met with thousands of CEOs from the largest (GE, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle etc), and the smallest startups and none has impressed me as much as Jed and the Delphix team. I wanted to explore this new world of corporate media with a company that ticked all the boxes.

Over the past two years Delphix has almost quintupled in size from about 60 to nearly 300 people and has extended its core technologies into huge markets in application development.

There's an app for that...

Global spending on IT is about $2 trillion, about half of that is related to app development. We live in an app world and there's an app for everything.  Competitive strategies today all require app development and app delivery faster than the competition. 

Delphix technologies can be used to speed app development by more than two times. This translates into a market lead of as much as 6 months in some cases. 

Apps are just one aspect of Jed's goals for Delphix. He wants to build the next big Silicon Valley technology company. It is rare to find that type of ambition in Silicon Valley. Startups want to be bought and an IPO is often seen as a finish-line. 

But also, it is unbelievably difficult to build another Oracle, Intel, or Google because of the massive scale needed to compete. Incumbent tech companies that are already at scale can easily keep out competitors. 

Delphix has been flying under the radar and doing very well but it is a tough business, especially when you have innovative technologies to sell. Corporate budgets are set up for buying existing technologies. 

In Delphix I feel that I've discovered an Oracle, an Intel, a Google, long before they became iconic Silicon Valley companies. Finding such a company is a rare experience. If I'm to give up a 30 year career as an independent journalist then it should be for a company such as Delphix. I would not have done it for anyone else.

I'll still be writing Silicon Valley Watcher and I'll still be meeting and interviewing people and startups. Delphix is my day job, my "sponsor" for SVW. Delphix is where I'll try out some of my corporate media ideas.

The biggest risk...

The biggest risk for Delphix and others engaged in corporate media ventures is that no one will see the content produced. Which is not much of a risk to prevent experimentation. 

Yet corporations will fuss and stress over any form of publishing. They use an incredibly slow process that involves dozens of stakeholders at every step. It's a long slog involving a lot of people working very hard and producing very little.

It's fine for producing content marketing and corporate PR but it's not appropriate or sustainable for producing editorial content, which needs to be fresh and of the moment rather than three weeks later, written by committees.

The process for producing editorial content within companies should be similar to the structure of a newsroom on a small newspaper or news magazine because it's designed for speed and quality.  

Every company has a media company...

I'm beginning to realize that there is a twist in the saying, "Every company is a media company." It is probably more accurate to say, "Every company has a media company," inside the organization.

But how do you build an editorial media group inside a company that is a peer to the other corporate departments?  

The problem of silos...

Much has been written about the problems with corporate departments operating in silos, separated from each other. The potential benefit of building a "media company" inside an organization could quickly become a strategic asset if done right, because it would operate across a horizontal span, across the many silos of a modern corporation.

A cross-silo corporate media platform reporting on the various departments within a company, through internal, and external media channels, is an incredibly exciting prospect because it could become the medium for unlocking all of the potential inside every company. It could engage all of its people in a common direction and message.

Corporate media is changing and there's lots to explore at Delphix. I'm grateful to yet again, have an opportunity to be part of something new in the changing world of media. It might even lead to a new form of corporate organization that would become a standard for all future companies. If it works.