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Enterprise Computing: Is There Any Point Buying From EMC?

Yesterday, EMC announced Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST), their much hyped and much anticipated storage feature enabling the automated moving of data between tiers of storage on a policy basis.   However the most notable missing feature in the EMC announcement was the lack of support for legacy DMX-3 and DMX-4 platforms.   This to me sends a message loud and clear that despite continuing to sell it, the DMX3/4 legacy monolithic hardware is dead.   If that’s the case, why bother buying from EMC any more?

Discounting EMC in the storage array market may seem like a naive and perhaps foolish comment to make.   After all, recent IDC numbers show EMC  top of the pile at nearly a quarter of all external storage arrays sold, depending on which figure you choose to use.   However, take a moment to look at the EMC briefing pages on FAST (you can find them here).   There you will see Intel co-branded with EMC, highlighting many previous messages that monolithic architectures are dead and commodity modular boxes are the way of the future.   We’ve seen that this year already with the release of Atmos.

To my knowledge, FAST is the first “innovation” of the new V-Max product line, but it isn’t unique.   In fact, I don’t think any features of V-Max are unique; the architecture is found in many other products.   There’s a whole raft of mid-range storage arrays from IBM (XIV),  3Par, Compellent, Pillar, Dell/Equallogic and  HP (Lefthand) with the last two being acquisitions of successful companies.   I expect in the next  12 months we’ll see enterprise  modular  releases from Hitachi/HP and a revamped EVA.   Most of the products mentioned here have been designed from scratch to  remove the  legacy encumberances of the past that products such as V-Max still retain.

So what’s my point?   Well, simply this; EMC have legitimised the enterprise modular architecture characterised by V-Max.   This accepts that the future is commodity-based hardware with differentiation in software.   However, EMC are no longer the leaders in this field and are having to play catch up.

 There’s never been a better time to look wider than the Big 4 (EMC/Hitachi/HP/IBM) and see if the features you need can be found elsewhere.

About the author

Chris Evans

Chris M Evans is an independent consultant with over 20 years' experience, specialising in storage infrastructure design and deployment.

4 Comments

  • This is an overlook on one more stage of EMC's sales play: spending time through a bunch of years minimizing the benefits of what are they now “introducing” as an innovation, while landing to a ground already colonised by it's competitors.

    I don't expect to see many CIOs regretting on buying Centera, DMX or Clariion hardware in the recent past, even they must admit it has been acquired relying on thoughts that may have been dismissed by this new architecture.

    This bi-polarity on sales aggresive driven policies and late-innovative backstage development should make us meditate on the right choice for storage, regarding to a convenient mix of hardware, software and consultancy is suitable for our businesses. This should be also applied when choosing the right vendors by:

    1. Paying special attention to which policy is in the long term suitable for our pockets, not the vendor's.
    2. Carrying a thorough analysis on what are the real benefits upcoming from the underlying architecture by itself and, more specifically, with the driving software.
    3. Vendors behavior on systems and software lifecycle, putting an eye on upgrading, migration, replication and HW vendor independence.

    This marketing strategy has proven to be successful in the past, and may still have some success in the near future, but let's keep an eye on customers trends on storage needs, which may turn on to be more analytical and savvy on long term investments on storage technology as the.

    Best regards
    Juan

  • This is an overlook on one more stage of EMC's sales play: spending time through a bunch of years minimizing the benefits of what are they now “introducing” as an innovation, while landing to a ground already colonised by it's competitors.

    I don't expect to see many CIOs regretting on buying Centera, DMX or Clariion hardware in the recent past, even they must admit it has been acquired relying on thoughts that may have been dismissed by this new architecture.

    This bi-polarity on sales aggresive driven policies and late-innovative backstage development should make us meditate on the right choice for storage, regarding to a convenient mix of hardware, software and consultancy is suitable for our businesses. This should be also applied when choosing the right vendors by:

    1. Paying special attention to which policy is in the long term suitable for our pockets, not the vendor's.
    2. Carrying a thorough analysis on what are the real benefits upcoming from the underlying architecture by itself and, more specifically, with the driving software.
    3. Vendors behavior on systems and software lifecycle, putting an eye on upgrading, migration, replication and HW vendor independence.

    This marketing strategy has proven to be successful in the past, and may still have some success in the near future, but let's keep an eye on customers trends on storage needs, which may turn on to be more analytical and savvy on long term investments on storage technology as the.

    Best regards
    Juan

  • This is an overlook on one more stage of EMC's sales play: spending time through a bunch of years minimizing the benefits of what are they now “introducing” as an innovation, while landing to a ground already colonised by it's competitors.

    I don't expect to see many CIOs regretting on buying Centera, DMX or Clariion hardware in the recent past, even they must admit it has been acquired relying on thoughts that may have been dismissed by this new architecture.

    This bi-polarity on sales aggresive driven policies and late-innovative backstage development should make us meditate on the right choice for storage, regarding to a convenient mix of hardware, software and consultancy is suitable for our businesses. This should be also applied when choosing the right vendors by:

    1. Paying special attention to which policy is in the long term suitable for our pockets, not the vendor's.
    2. Carrying a thorough analysis on what are the real benefits upcoming from the underlying architecture by itself and, more specifically, with the driving software.
    3. Vendors behavior on systems and software lifecycle, putting an eye on upgrading, migration, replication and HW vendor independence.

    This marketing strategy has proven to be successful in the past, and may still have some success in the near future, but let's keep an eye on customers trends on storage needs, which may turn on to be more analytical and savvy on long term investments on storage technology as the.

    Best regards
    Juan

  • This is an overlook on one more stage of EMC's sales play: spending time through a bunch of years minimizing the benefits of what are they now “introducing” as an innovation, while landing to a ground already colonised by it's competitors.

    I don't expect to see many CIOs regretting on buying Centera, DMX or Clariion hardware in the recent past, even they must admit it has been acquired relying on thoughts that may have been dismissed by this new architecture.

    This bi-polarity on sales aggresive driven policies and late-innovative backstage development should make us meditate on the right choice for storage, regarding to a convenient mix of hardware, software and consultancy is suitable for our businesses. This should be also applied when choosing the right vendors by:

    1. Paying special attention to which policy is in the long term suitable for our pockets, not the vendor's.
    2. Carrying a thorough analysis on what are the real benefits upcoming from the underlying architecture by itself and, more specifically, with the driving software.
    3. Vendors behavior on systems and software lifecycle, putting an eye on upgrading, migration, replication and HW vendor independence.

    This marketing strategy has proven to be successful in the past, and may still have some success in the near future, but let's keep an eye on customers trends on storage needs, which may turn on to be more analytical and savvy on long term investments on storage technology as the.

    Best regards
    Juan

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