The ongoing battle for 3Par by HP & Dell tells us much more about the state of the IT Industry than just the desires of two companies to acquire some interesting storage tech. It signals an acceptance that storage is a key feature in the future direction of the IT industry – more important than networking and almost as important as the virtualisation platform itself.
Hitachi
Meet the Enterprise IT Superpowers
After years spent focusing on personal technology, businesses are increasingly turning back to the enterprise. 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.
Everyone Loves 3Par — Here’s Why!
The 3Par acquisition is a slam dunk at under $2 billion. The company has great enterprise-grade SAN technology and a proven ability to sell into high-end accounts but lacked the revenue to go it alone. A major enterprise IT vendor like HP or Dell (not to mention Oracle, IBM, or even NetApp) will kick sales into high gear. But there’s an amazing short-term win to be had for whoever acquires 3Par!
Dell + EqualLogic, Exanet, Ocarina, 3Par = What?
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?
Stack Wars: The Links
We at Gestalt IT are not the only ones looking at the Stack Wars. We didn’t even come up with the name! In the spirit of community, we will be collecting links to other sites covering the topic on this page. Check back often as new links will be added frequently!
The Stack Wars Have Begun!
Just as public cloud computing is beginning to catch on, the enterprise data center world has been shaken up by the biggest IT product vendors. Rather than sit back and watch their wares commoditized, companies like Cisco, EMC, HP, and now HDS are stepping up to the plate with integrated “stacks” that include server, storage, networking, and management software. The next-layer players, VMware and Microsoft in particular, are joining hands, too, eager to support these stacks. To paraphrase the wise Jedi master, Yoda, “cloudy, the future is.” So, the stack wars have begun!
Do We Need FAST v1, EMC?
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 manuallyâ€. 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?
Hitachi Enters The Cloud
Yesterday Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) used SNW USA to release information on their proposed cloud strategy, referred to as “Agile Cloudâ€. Everyone believes they need a cloud story and clearly Hitachi are no different.
Does Hitachi+SimpleTech = EMC+Iomega?
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) just bought Fabrik (SimpleTech and G-Technology). So is Hitachi’s combination with SimpleTech a response or challenge to EMC’s acquisition of Iomega? In a word, no.
Hitachi’s (HDS) RAID 6
Hitachi (HDS) has been one of the pioneers in implementing RAID 6 in their storage products. This technology briefing covers HDS’ implementation of RAID 6 and compares it to their RAID 5 implementation.