Great article, one I've picked up a lot of interesting info from. Always good to learn a little more each day!

This is an area that I'm currently watching with great interest. Last year we were looking at buying a storage solution and Compellent were the favourtie from a technical stand point. However being a small company with very few customers in the UK we decided to play it safe and go with EMC. The FAST capability of Compellent's solution was a fantastic feature and was one that caught my eye immediately. It was inevitable that the rest of the industry would catch on to this great selling point eventually.

However your article appears to suggest that this might not be an easy route for the other vendors to take, whether that be through legacy design issues or patent infringement. Can you expand on those vendors currently offering FAST capability at the moment, you mention Hitachi, are there any others?

Your article also talks about the Symmetrix and the automation of moving disk hypers, do you have any idea how this same technology is meant to work with the EMC Clariion CX4?

I look forward to your reply