This may seem like a bold statement to make, however we need to look forward to where the industry is headed.  First of all, vendors want us to buy their unified hardware stacks; it represents that move back to a consolidated architecture that kept one vendor dominant in the mainframe days – IBM.  “No-one gets fired for buying IBM” the saying goes (or used to go), demonstrating how IBM was seen as the data centre supplier for all things computing in the 70’s and 80’s.  Of course we know that politics within organisations and the cost of IBM hardware eventually broke the monopoly, but the status quo worked well for many companies for many years.

Now, Cisco, EMC, VMware, HP, Oracle and potentially many others want to own your data centre.  They want you bought into their computing stack.  Over time, I suspect many of those same companies want to move you to their cloud infrastructure offerings, even if they don’t offer them today.  This will be both directly and indirectly.  There will be the direct model, where the vendor offers cloud services to you under their name; there will be the indirect model where their technology powers the cloud provider, or is offered as a service.  It’s at this point the 3Par acquisition becomes much more interesting.

3Par already have many customers in the cloud services sector.  In fact they sell their hardware on the virtues of multi-tenancy, reduced cost through thin provisioning, tight integration with virtual hypervisors and so on.  In this growth sector of the industry, cost is a key driver and no end user or company will pay more than they need for storage.  This means Enterprise arrays like those from Hitachi and EMC won’t play a central role in this future, but rather storage devices which provide the highest efficiency will.  Where do all the major players stand?

• EMC have entered the market with a brand new platform – Atmos.  Although withdrawn as a direct service, Atmos continues to be available from partners.  EMC have chosen to use their own technology as the foundation for cloud.  In addition, VPLEX provides the ability to virtualise the storage layer, including federation features that fit well with VMware.
• HP have a strong blade server offering for their cloud infrastructure.  Matrix provides orchestration for the server, network and some parts of the storage layer, however this work is incomplete and doesn’t fit well with the high end XP arrays.  Slotting 3Par into the storage layer would provide a storage platform well suited to HPs unified computing infrastructure.  It means EVA can be quietly dropped and XP can be retained (in whatever future guise) for high end customers (including mainframe) and if required, gradually dropped.
• Cisco have chosen to partner with EMC rather than acquire storage technology itself.  In fact, looking and both EMC and Cisco, they need each other; EMC have no server platform, Cisco have no storage; it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, a bit like Jack Sprat and his wife.  At this stage, Cisco could have purchased 3Par and provided and end-to-end solution, but clearly that would be a big step and would require kicking EMC to the kerb, something they obviously don’t want to do (yet).
• Hitachi have server and storage offerings, however Blade Symphony is mainly sold in domestic Japan and not widely advertised globally.  They do have the potential to provide an end-to-end offering as Hitachi also sell networking equipment.  Key for Hitachi will be credibility in a market they don’t currently play in.
• IBM should have all the components of a consolidated infrastructure but there doesn’t appear to be a lot of discussion about their offerings.  They appear to have two strategies – Dynamic Infrastructure and Cloud Computing but their offerings aren’t clear.
• Dell clearly wanted 3Par to fit into their medium to high-end storage offerings.  Today Equallogic has successfully met their SMB requirements, but they OEM technology from EMC (CLARiiON and Symmetrix) for the rest.  Acquiring 3Par would remove that dependency and allow Dell to offer end-to-end technology as their own products.
• Netapp have a self-proclaimed unified architecture that does fit well with virtualisation from VMware.  However they don’t own any other parts of the technology stack and so must partner to deliver unified offerings.  Netapp are covering all bases by offering solutions with VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, but none of these could be described as the unified stack other vendors have.
• Oracle already provide an integrated infrastructure based around their Exadata acquisitions and of course all of the Sun Microsystems technology, however I’m not sure many companies would see the Oracle offerings as other than tied directly to their database platform and not for virtualisation.

Overall, 3Par fit the requirements of HP & Dell to provide integrated technology offerings.  The move to the cloud will require leaner and efficient storage products, plus tight integration and orchestration.  It’s all about positioning today for bigger returns tomorrow.

© Chris for Gestalt IT, 2010. | 3Par Acquisition: The Future For The Storage Industry
Read more posts categorized as Featured, Server Virtualization, Storage

Who will power the enterprise? The smart money is betting on a few superpowers taking over.

After years spent focusing on personal technology, businesses are increasingly turning back to the enterprise. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is the poor economy. Individuals simply have less free cash to spend on gadgets and software, and the meagre profits are increasingly going into the pockets of a single company: Apple.

The corporate IT market is much more dynamic and competitive, with a few very large “superpower” companies discovering their power to drive purchasing decisions. If a supplier can create an integrated “stack” of hardware and software, they can push product purchases that might otherwise be overlooked or postponed. This is the main reason that enterprise IT acquisitions work so well: Where a small company must fight to sell their product, a large one can hitch it to a much more strategic sale and have it pulled along.

The old IBM model is the prototype, with that company once selling everything from office equipment to datacenter gear as well as the consulting and integration services to make it all work.

HP has spent almost two decades bulking up to become the new IBM, buying their way into open systems laptops, desktops, and servers (Compaq), networking (3Com), services (EDS), and storage (Compaq, LeftHand, Ibrix, and perhaps 3Par). HP has been remarkably proficient at executing on this enterprise plan: In talking to enterprise IT folks, I often hear IBM-esque sentiments regarding the new HP. They tell me they’re willing to give HP the benefit of the doubt when it comes to new technologies and products, buying on basis of the company’s reputation and ability to make everything work. This bodes well for the company’s post-Hurd future, and HP has the most-complete “enterprise stack” in the business.

But HP has a target on its back, pinned there by Dell. The folks from Round Rock believe they can be more efficient (and thus profitable) than HP in the same markets, and have been making moves to fortify their enterprise offerings. Dell was always more of a manufacturing than R&D business, but they have shown a desire to broaden their focus. Intrigued by the high-margin mid-enterprise storage business built from their EqualLogic acquisition and their success selling EMC storage, Dell is moving into the enterprise. They matched HP/EDS by purchasing Perot and have made smaller buys in storage (Ocarina, Exanet) as well as the big move for 3Par.

The next big emerging stack player is Oracle. The acquisition of Sun gave Oracle a strong hardware base to complement their command of enterprise software, and many expect further acquisitions. But Oracle is playing a different game than HP and Dell, focusing on the high-margin enterprise space and ignoring more competitive outlying areas. Many suspect the company might make a play in the network space (Brocade, Juniper, and F5 have been mentioned) but storage is possible as well. CEO Larry Ellison is a major investor in Pillar Data Systems, so many expect a spin-in here. But Oracle has the appetite for something much bigger, even EMC or NetApp.

Then there is Cisco, who have attempted to parlay their data center networking strength into a broader position. But Cisco’s halting moves into storage (Fibre Channel switching and SAN extension) did not displace the market leaders, and their server products (UCS) have not made much of a dent on HP, IBM, and Dell either. A solid partnership with EMC has delayed further forays into the enterprise storage market, and Cisco seems puzzlingly interested in low-margin access businesses (Linksys, Flip) and their Cius tablet.

There are other players in the enterprise space as well. EMC has diversified under CEO Joe Tucci, taking a dominant position in server virtualization (VMware) and making a strong enterprise security acquisition (RSA). But the many faces of enterprise storage remains EMC’s strength, and they seem content to partner with Cisco for a stack sale. Hitachi, NEC, and Fujitsu also offer varying enterprise hardware and software stacks, but their comparatively small sales presence in the US market limits their ability to execute. In the final analysis, only IBM, HP, Dell, and perhaps Oracle can claim to be enterprise IT superpowers at this point.

Image credit: Steam Engine by Stuck in Customs

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Meet the Enterprise IT Superpowers
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But there’s an amazing short-term win to be had for whoever acquires 3Par. According to IDC, the race for number two in external disk storage system sales is a bitter fight. IBM, NetApp, HP, and Dell are all within striking distance of each other, pulling in between $500 and $579 million dollars while big daddy EMC makes more than any two of them. The battle between HP and Dell in storage arrays is a dead heat, with just $6 million separating the two.

The 3Par acquisition creates a massive market-share shift!

It’s no wonder HP and Dell are fighting over 3Par! That acquisition is good for an easy $50 million in quarterly revenue, and a strong sales push could make this $60 million. This extra revenue cements the buyer ahead of his rival and makes him a challenger to IBM and NetApp. It wouldn’t be all that surprising to see the winner vault into the number 2 spot within a year.

This is a huge win for HP or Dell and a serious egg-on-the-face moment for NetApp, IBM and the loser. Sure, $1.7 billion is a lot to pay for $250 million in revenue, but the winner gets immediate bragging rights and a serious prospect of breaking free of the second-place pack. 3Par’s technology is unique in being a real tier-1 threat. This was an issue for the company as a startup, but becomes a serious asset in the hands of HP or Dell (or, dare I suggest, Oracle or NetApp). A well-executed transition and sales execution will cement HP or Dell as the most-credible competitor to EMC within a few years.

Stephen’s Stance

The 3Par acquisition makes so much sense, one wonders why it didn’t happen sooner. Dell clearly sees this as a higher-end repeat of their success with EqualLogic and gives them a chance to earn some additional enterprise credibility. An HP acquisition makes just as much sense, giving them fresh SAN technology and letting them pull ahead of Dell once again. A big deal like this also gives HP’s Dave Donatelli some internal clout in the aftermath of the Hurd fiasco. I expect a counter-offer or two before this is done, but 3Par remains attractive at even a billion more.

Will anyone else join the fray? IBM seems happy with XIV, though the market doesn’t see that product as tier-1. I expect them to stand pat. Oracle should jump in, given the souring of their Sun-era Hitachi OEM deal. Passing on 3Par leaves them with no enterprise SAN chair when the music stops, but they might not feel that they need this kind of hardware. Cisco could use the 3Par technology to reject EMC, but they might not be ready for that move. Another idea is perennial second-place storage company NetApp, who might be able to afford to play this game and could really use a new product line.

What’s left for the loser? Not much. There isn’t another startup with credible tier-1 SAN intentions. Compellent is a great alternative in the midrange SAN market, and Xiotech has great SAN technology here, too. Everyone assumes Oracle will pick up Pillar, and then there’s BlueArc and Isilon waiting in the NAS space. But none of these are a slam-dunk in terms of market share, and the value question looms large when it comes to any high-P/E acquisition. Expect more acquisitions in the coming quarters, but the 3Par game looks like a highlight.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Everyone Loves 3Par – Here’s Why!
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The storage industry got a lot more competitive this morning, as Dell announced plans to buy 3Par. This is the latest round in a well-established race for the enterprise storage dollar, challenging superpower (and Dell partner) EMC in the high-end SAN space. What does this acquisition say about the industry as a whole? Where are we headed?

I’ve long wished for a new enterprise storage superpower. Competition is good for everyone, and the enterprise storage space has always been highly competitive. Traditional SAN storage powers (EMC, HDS, HP, and IBM) have been under continual attack from tech-heavy upstarts like EqualLogic, LeftHand, Compellent, Xiotech, and 3Par. The smaller (revenue-wise) NAS market has been more serial, with NetApp knocking off Auspex, then challenged by EMC. Yet innovators have been thick there as well, from Exanet to Ibrix, Isilon to Onstor.

Through it all, one thing has been clear: The major companies, though perhaps lagging in technology, were usually able to withstand the attack of the upstarts through sheer strength of salesforce. Storage is a strategic investment, and selection of a storage platform is much more far-reaching than many IT product decisions. The inertia of an installed storage environment makes it a real challenge to switch vendors, giving the established players massive leverage.

It became clear to me and many others that the best way for upstart companies (and, by extension, technologies) was to be part of an established vendor’s sales process. OEM relationships were a big part of this (witness the success of BlueArc and even NetApp and HDS) but acquisition was a much stronger proposition. If customers were warmer to OEM products than independent sales, they are much hotter when it comes to acquired technology. HP, Dell, IBM, and EMC have all demonstrated the power that comes when an established company buys a startup and puts the power of their sales force behind these new products.

This explains Dell’s fantastic success with EqualLogic. They took a product that was emerging as dominant in its niche (midrange iSCSI SAN) and blasted it into the market, while at the same time optimizing manufacturing and deployment. EMC did the same with Clariion and DataDomain, and HP is showing strong signs of health with LeftHand and Ibrix. Then there is IBM, who took XIV out of Israel and made it a source of irritation to the rest of the industry.

Many industry watchers have long wondered what would happen if the smaller guys got together, forming a new superpower of their own. Would 3Par, BlueArc, and Sepaton be a real challenger? What about Xiotech or Compellent and Isilon or FalconStor? Is mixing and matching some smaller companies a recipe for success? The answer was often a counter-question: What if someone like Dell, who knows how to manufacture and sell, picked them up instead? This seemed much more like a sure-thing, since the established management and financials stave off potential integration issues.

It appears that this is the future. Established players will pick up smaller companies, fortifying their offerings and accelerating sales in a way the little guys weren’t capable of. Dell’s billion-dollar acquisition of 3Par reportedly headed off a similar offer from HP, and will likely spark another acquisition. I imagine the management teams at Compellent and Xiotech just got a lot busier…

Clearly, Dell and HP are playing this game. IBM and EMC are in it, too. But what about Cisco and Oracle? Could they be planning storage acquisitions of their own, to the detriment of partners like EMC and Hitachi? What about the strong contingent from Japan, NEC and Hitachi? And who gets picked up next? We shall see!

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Dell + EqualLogic, Exanet, Ocarina, 3Par = What?
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Newly-added links will be at the top of the list.

• Stack Wars
• Obligatory Stack Wars Post
• Clash of the IT Titans
• Establishing the WOW factor
• Hitachi Data Systems, Microsoft to collaborate on unified compute platform
• Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – On Cisco and UCS
• Infosmack 41 – Stack Wars
• What’s Citrix’s stack attack?
• Infrastructure stack alliances bring benefits and drawbacks to enterprise data storage
• Infrastructure Wars: The Battle Brewing in the Storage Industry
• The 10 Big Ideas That Are Shaping IT Infrastructure Today
• Imitation is the Sincerest form of Flattery
• A New Chapter Begins In The IT Stack Wars

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Stack Wars: The Links
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But what does this all mean to enterprise IT? Who benefits from these vertically-integrated stacks? Who stands to lose out? To paraphrase the wise Jedi master, Yoda, “cloudy, the future is.” So, the stack wars have begun!

What’s a Stack?

The largest IT infrastructure vendors are aligning their own products and joining together in alliances to create vertically-integrated “datacenter in a box” stacks that include server, storage, networking, and higher-level software for virtualization and management. Cisco and EMC are certainly at the forefront of this development with their Acadia VCE vBlock, as demonstrated and deconstructed at our Tech Field Day earlier this month. The reinvigorated HP has its own offering in this space, and is unique in its ability to use all in-house hardware, and IBM and Oracle/Sun are serious challengers. Today, Hitachi announced their own Unified Compute Platform as well.

The battle of the stacks extends upward into software as well. Although VMware and Microsoft (and don’t forget Citrix) are quick to point out that they can run on anyone’s hardware stack, they are being pulled into the war through alliances, ownership, and old feuds. VMware forms the “V” in the Cisco/EMC “VCE” stack, though they also linked up with Cisco and NetApp in February. HP and Microsoft signed an even bigger agreement in January, suggesting that Hyper-V is their preferred virtualization solution. Hitachi’s UCP digs deep into the Microsoft solution set and mixes in home-grown software to do everyone else one better. But perhaps it will be Oracle/Sun who will deliver a real software-focused stack, given Oracle’s historical focus.

All of these stacks have a few things in common:

1. Standard hardware configurations are specified for ease of purchasing and support
2. The hardware stack includes blade servers, integrated I/O technology, Ethernet networking for connectivity, and SAN or NAS storage
3. Unifying software is included to manage the hardware components in one interface
4. A joint services organization is available to help in selection, architecture, and deployment
5. Higher-level software, from the virtualization hypervisor through application platforms, will be included as well

Who’s Driving?

Although all of these stacks include software components, it is interesting to note that it is the hardware guys who are in the driver’s seat. Microsoft and VMware are surely wary of tying up too closely with any one server or storage vendor, lest they lose the ability to compete in other environments. One expects these two to announce partnerships across a few hardware stacks, though it is unlikely that they will both fully integrate with every offering.

When it comes to stack hardware, only HP has a complete solution, having recently acquired 3COM, LeftHand, and Ibrix. IBM, Dell, and Oracle are thin on networking technology, though their storage story is stronger than many give them credit for. EMC clearly lacks the server and networking components and so tied up with a complementary Cisco who is strong in both areas. Then there is Hitachi, with a solid reputation in storage and strong but relatively unknown blade server offering but no clarity on the networking side. Perhaps HDS is already on the phone with Xsigo, VirtenSys, or Arista?

Certainly, all of these hardware vendors would like to offer a complete solution. This leads one to assume that many of the smaller hardware companies will soon be acquired, since they cannot hope to offer their own stack. The networking and virtual I/O companies are especially juicy targets, but don’t count storage out either. One could certainly imagine Cisco picking up a storage company or two and leaving EMC at the altar! Compellent is undervalued right now, and 3PAR must look pretty good, too.

The Cloud Angle

What doe these stacks have to do with that other megatrend in IT, cloud computing? There are two angles here:

1. Integrated stacks are the perfect foundation for private and public cloud deployment, providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as a turnkey purchase. I called this the “home theater in a box” concept at Tech Field Day: A single line item gets you all the components you need to roll out a large-to-huge virtualization-ready infrastructure.
2. Integrated stacks are a lame attempt for the hardware guys to stay relevant in a public cloud world. Public cloud providers are taking a top-down approach to infrastructure with most relying on generic commodity servers, storage, and networking rather than buying from the big-iron providers in the stack wars. This consolidation mirrors the dying breaths of the British auto industry, which attempted to retain their hold on the market through scale rather than competitive products.

It’s not immediately clear whether one, both, or neither of these arguments truly provides the impetus for these hardware stacks, but the vendors are all pushing them as cloud-ready. Certainly, the advent of cloud computing is a major factor.

Only the Beginning

This is only the beginning of the stack wars. I have asked the Gestalt IT authors and Tech Field Day delegates to weigh in on this subject, and expect to see a number of insightful pieces written on the topic in the coming weeks. I will continue covering the topic as well. Please consider subscribing to the Gestalt IT RSS feed or following @GestaltIT on Twitter to stay up to date on the latest developments. Thoughtful comments and responses are always welcome as well.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | The Stack Wars Have Begun!
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Exclusive, Featured, Networking, Server Virtualization, Storage, Top Story

So, here’s my rash statement from Twitter last night: “If FAST isn’t free, I don’t want it!  All it’s doing is automating process I could script/do manually”.  It’s a bold statement, I know, so is FAST really offering something better than what could be achieved today using EMC’s Symmetrix Optimizer?

Hot Spots

EMC’s Symmetrix architecture (18 years old and counting, I believe) uses the concept of disk hypers to present LUNs.  Each physical disk is carved into a number of slices, which are then recombined to create LUNs to present to a host.  A mirrored (RAID-1) LUN uses two hypers, a RAID-5 (3+1) LUN uses 4.  EMC ensure general performance by setting standards on how LUNs are created from hypers and that’s reflected in a “binfile” layout.  However despite this sensible planning, it is possible (especially as hard drives are now much larger and contain many more hypers) that two hypers on a single physical disk could be highly active and so contend against each other – in other words “hot spots” on disk.

Optimizer helps alleviate the issue of hot spots by exchanging the high I/O hypers with low I/O ones, distributing busy LUNs across more physical spindles.  This is classic load balancing where resources are distributed across the available infrastructure in order to obtain better overall generic performance.  EMC have now rebranded Optimizer as part of Ionix for Storage Resource Managment, but it’s still effectively the same product.  Hyper swaps can be managed automatically, based on historical performance data.  They can also be user-defined – a manual swap at the users request.

Although tedious (and not as well automated as Hitachi’s HiCommand Tiered Storage Manager), in theory Optimizer could be used to manually move workload between storage tiers.  In fact, Optimizer is already aware of a tiered storage infrastructure.  Here’s a quote directly from the ControlCenter 6.1 manual:

“Optimizer is also aware of physical drives that operate at different speeds, as well as location of the data on the physical media, which influences the I/O rate. This information is used when determining which logical devices to move.”

So with a little bit of knowledge on the layout of data on a Symmetrix array, it would be possible today to use Optimizer to perform LUN-based FAST.

Load-Balancing Versus Policy

Unfortunately, simple load-balancing of I/O across a storage array doesn’t offer what should be seen as the next generation of storage tiering.  Where Storage Tiering 1.0 was about offering multiple layers of storage within the same physical infrastructure and manually placing or moving LUNs to the appropriate tier, Storage Tiering 2.0 will be about establishing policies that determine more service-based measurements of the performance and availability customers receive.

A policy-based approach would allow rules to be established on how data at the application layer moves between tiers.  This is a critical distinction from the load-balancing  methodology earlier described.  As an example, where an application was known to require higher performance at a certain time of day or day of the week, data could be moved proactively to a faster tier of storage, returning later once the high I/O workload had completed.  Whilst achievable using Optimizer, there’s no doubt the process of application migration would be tedious and time consuming.  I expect the v1.0 implementation of FAST will simply package up Optimizer into a tool that automates the migration of related data between tiers.  Don’t forget, other vendors have been offering this feature for some time – for example Hitachi and Tiered Storage Manager.

Increasing Granularity

Now LUN-based migration has its benefits.  Where large numbers of disks exist in an infrastructure, application data can be placed or moved to the most appropriate location as required.  However with the introduction of solid state disks (SSDs), a more granular approach is needed as the number of SSDs deployed in an array is likely to be low due to their excessive cost.  Moving an entire application (or even LUN) to SSD will be undesirable unless that application can take full use of the SSD hardware.  There are very few, if any, applications that require high-intensity read/write activity from every piece of application data all the time.

Block-level tiering offers a higher level of granularity to the placement of data.  A LUN can be split into blocks and placed across multiple layers of storage technology including traditional HDDs and faster SSDs.  Selective placement will ensure the more efficient use of expensive SSD media by placing only the highly active data onto it.

All of a sudden with increased granularity we’re back to Storage Tiering 1.0 where data is being placed on faster technology purely based on increasing overall system performance.  This is a feature Compellent have been offering for some time.  Data is migrated up or down the tier hierarchy on a daily basis, subject to performance figures over a 12-day period.  This level of granular performance management is possible because data is stored in a block-based structure.  Unfortunately for EMC, the hyper design legacy represents a technical challenge in making FAST version 2 a reality.

Patent Rights

As just mentioned, Compellent already offer block-based data migration in their products.  At a recent dinner in London with the Compellent team, they highlighted their strong position in the market, protected by patents covering block-level data migration between tiers.  You can find the filed patent here.  Compellent use the term “Data Progression” to describe how blocks are moved between tiers based on I/O activity.  As I/O activity is monitored over time, it is possible to determine the most appropriate tier of storage to use when expanding capacity.  Typically these are lower tier SATA drives, as initial performance requirements are usually over-estimated.  This metholodogy is very much Storage Tiering 1.0 discussed earlier.

Compellent aren’t the only people claiming rights to block-level tiering within a storage array.  I’ve also found the following patent application from IBM, filed by Barry Whyte, Steve Legg and others.  If IBM and Compellent both claim to have invented the FAST concept, how does that position EMC?  Do they have an earlier patent which trumps these two?

Summary

Storage Tiering 1.0 provides performance management of storage arrays.  Storage Tiering 2.0 extends this to offer policy-driven optimisation offerings.  Both of these technologies are available today from existing vendors in one format or another.  EMC will simply be playing catchup with these vendors once FAST 1 & FAST 2 are released.  I’d like to be surprised and see EMC offer something the competition currently don’t.  I’m not holding my breath…

© Chris for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Do We Need FAST v1, EMC?
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Yesterday Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) used SNW USA to release information on their proposed cloud strategy, referred to as “Agile Cloud”.  Everyone believes they need a cloud story and clearly Hitachi are no different.

Taken from the presentation I was given last week, is the following picture.  This pretty much sums up Hitachi’s approach; make a virtue of the technology they have today around virtualisation and revamp their Content Archive Platform as a generic content platform – HCP.

Most of the things you’d expect are there – multi-tenancy, consistent name spaces, security, data tiering, REST interface to the HCP platform, but one or two differences stuck out for me.  Firstly Hitachi are not about to get into the business of being a cloud services provider (CSP), like EMC, Microsoft, Amazon et al, but rather are making their technology available to other service providers to take up this challenge.  Second, they are not betting on commodity solutions for data storage (e.g. Atmos) but are assuming Enterprise customers will want the same level of reliability they currently enjoy on existing Hitachi hardware.

With stories in The Press regarding data loss in cloud offerings ringing in everyone’s ears, there’s sure to be an increased focus on transparency regarding data security – not from an access point of view but on the use of technologies like RAID, backup and other methodologies cloud providers will implement to ensure data loss doesn’t occur.  It’s also an opening for increasing the price and breadth of service offerings – a tiered approach to cloud storage provision as clearly one size/protection level doesn’t fit all.

© Chris for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Hitachi Enters The Cloud
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Fabrik, maker of SOHO storage devices like this G-Safe, has been acquired by Hitachi GST

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (hereafter referred to as HGST) just bought Fabrik, the company that produces and distributes consumer storage devices as SimpleTech and pro/AV storage using the G-Technology name.

We in the enterprise storage sector are all too familiar with the epic battles between Hitachi Data Systems (let’s call them HDS) and EMC, both providers of storage systems to the enterprise IT market. And last year EMC purchased consumer drive maker Iomega, pushing out some impressive storage systems that combine the best of both companies.

So is Hitachi’s combination with SimpleTech a response or challenge to EMC’s acquisition of Iomega? In a word, no.

First there is the small issue that HGST is an entirely different company from HDS. Both are subsidiaries of the massive Hitachi, Ltd. of Japan, but to conflate them into one company would be a disservice:

• HGST is much more like Seagate Technologies or Western Digital – a maker of hard disk drive mechanisms, the core components of modern data storage devices from the consumer to enterprise space.
• HDS is much more like EMC or NetApp – a maker of storage systems and software aimed at the enterprise IT market.
• Parent company Hitachi, Ltd. makes all sorts of stuff, from appliances to monorails (no kidding!) and so is much like Mitsubishi or Fujitsu.

Where EMC is actively expanding Iomega’s marketing into a supplier of tiny storage systems for entry-level IT and lab use, we shouldn’t expect the same synergistic offerings from HDS and SimpleTech or G-Technology. Instead, we should look at this as a response to Seagate’s purchase of Maxtor and Toshiba’s consolidation with Fujitsu’s disk unit: HGST will have a much better consumer channel for its disk drive mechanisms and will be better able to compete with those companies and Western Digital in places like Staples and Best Buy.

This is not to say that SimpleTech and G-Technology doesn’t compete with Iomega, mind you. In fact, Fabrik’s two brands were head-to-head with EMC’s little sister in just about every corner of their markets, and they make some cool devices for the SOHO market. Check out the [re]drive, G-Drive Mini SSD, and G-Speed XL if you don’t believe me!

Sounds like a win for them, but not a game-changer for enterprise storage.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Does Hitachi+SimpleTech = EMC+Iomega?
Read more posts categorized as All, Featured, Storage

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Hitachi’s (HDS) RAID 6
Read more posts categorized as All, Storage