Tag: Dell

Posted on

Commentary on Clouds, Storage, Networking, Green IT and other topics

Rather than doing a bunch of separate posts, here is a collection of different perspectives and commentary on various IT and data storage industry activity.

Various comments and perspectives

In this link are comments and perspectives regarding thin provisioning including how it works as well as when to use it for optimizing storage space capacity. Speaking of server and storage capacity, here in this link are comments on what server and storage would be needed to support an SMB office of 50 people (or more, or less) along with how to back it up.

For those interested or in need of managing data and other records in this link are comments on preparing yourself for regulatory scrutiny.

Storage networking interface or protocol debates (battles) can be interesting, in this link, see the role of iSCSI SANs for data storage environments. Lets not forget about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) which is discussed in this link and here in this link. Here in this link are comments about how integrated rackem, stackem and package bundles stack up. To support increased continued demand for managed service providers (MSP), cloud and hosted services providers are continuing to invest in their infrastructures, so read some comments here. While technology plays a role particular as it matures, there is another barrier to leveraging converged solutions and that is organizational, read some perspectives and thoughts here.

Storage optimization including data footprint reduction (DFR) can be used to cut costs as well as support growth. In this link see tips on reducing storage costs and additional perspectives in this link to do more with what you have. Here in this link are some wit and wisdom comments on the world of disaster recovery solutions. Meanwhile in this link are perspectives for choosing the right business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) consultant. In this link are comments on BC and DR including planning for virtualization and life beyond consolidation. Are disk based dedupe and virtual tape summit resources libraries a hold over for old backup, or a gateway to the future, see some perspectives on those topics and technologies in this link.

Here are some more comments on DR and BC leveraging the cloud while perspectives on various size organizations looking at clouds for backup in this piece here. What is the right local, cloud or hybrid backup for SMBs, check out some commentary here while viewing some perspectives on cloud disaster recovery here. Not to be forgotten, laptop data protection can also be a major headache however there are also many cures discussed in this piece here.

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Green Storage Initiative (GSI) debut their Emerald power efficiency measurement specification recently, read some perspectives and comments in this link here. While we are on the topic of data center efficiency and effectiveness, here in this link are perspectives on micro servers or mini blade systems. Solution bundles also known as data center in a box or SAN in a CAN have been popular with solutions from EMC (vBlocks) and NetApp (FlexPods) among others, read perspectives on them in this link.

Buzzword bingo

What would a conversation involving data storage and IT (particularly buzzword bingo) be without comments about Big Data and Big Bandwidth which you can read here.

Want to watch some videos, from Spring 2011 SNW, check out starting around the 15:00 to 55:00 time scale in this video from the Cube where various topics are discussed. Interested in how to scale data storage with clustered or scale up and out solutions, check out this video here or if you want to see some perspectives on data de duplication watch this clip.

Various comments and perspectives

Here is a video discussing SMBs as the current sweet spot for server virtualization with comments on the SMB virtualization dark side also discussed here. Meanwhile here are comments regarding EMC Flashy announcements from earlier this year on the Cube. Check out this video where I was a guest of Cali Lewis and John MacArthur on the Cube from the Dell Storage Forum discussing a range of topics as well as having some fun. Check out these videos and perspectives from VMworld 2011.

Whats your take on choosing the best SMB NAS? Here are some of my perspectives on choosing a SMB NAS storage system. Meanwhile here are some perspectives on enterprise class storage features finding their way into SMB NAS storage systems.

Meanwhile industry leaders EMC and NetApp have been busy enhancing their NAS storage solutions that you can read comments here.

Are you familiar with the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA)? Here are some comments about OVA and other server virtualization topics.

Whats your take on Thunderbolt the new interconnect Apple is using in place of USB, here are my thoughts. Meanwhile various other tips and Ask the Expert (AtE) and discussion can be found here.

Check out the above links, as well view more perspectives, comments and news here, here, here, here and here.

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Posted on

HDS buys BlueArc, any surprises here?

Technically here in the northern hemisphere it is still summer, so there is another summer wedding to announce.

The other day Hitachi Data Systems (aka HDS) announced that they finally tied the knot buying their Network Attached Storage (NAS) partner BlueArc whom they have been in a OEM premarital arrangement for the last five years or so (wow, was that a long engagement or what?). HDS being a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. a Japanese company it should be no surprise that they operate in a cool, calculated conservative manner with products that have over the past several decades been known for delivering resiliency, functionality, performance and value.

To those in the IT and specifically data storage industry, the only surprise about HDS buying BlueArc should be what took them so long to do so myself included. With unstructured data, big data, high performance computing, high productivity computing (aka HPC), and big bandwidth needs expanding, it only makes sense that HDS finally ties the knot formally acquiring BlueArc signaling what I hope are a few things for their collective future together.

Things that I hope HDS can accomplish with their acquisition of BlueArc include among others:

  • Leverage the BlueArc hardware and performance combine with the HDS software suite to expand further upstream (and downstream) as well as into different adjacent markets leveraging their success over the long courtship where both parties got to know each other more.
  • Signal to the industry that they are truly committed to a long term NAS product solution strategy. HDS has been doing a good job of sticking with BlueArc for the past five or so years having had several previous NAS partner relationships including with NetApp, NSS and others besides their own internal projects.
  • Expand their focus to lead with NAS pulling storage with it in addition to using NAS to accessorize (or bling aka Mr. T starter kit to go with Mr. T storage videos) storage systems which means of course, going more direct toe to toe with the likes of former partner NetApp, EMC, HP (with IBRIX), IBM and Dell among many others. Ironically former HDS partner NetApp acquired the Engenio storage group from LSI whose products competed with HDS in some spaces, while BlueArc was a Engenio partner.
  • Continue to develop both the hardware and software feature functionality around the BlueArc products in addition to further integration across the joint product lines for both traditional, as well as clustered, scale out, bulk, big data, big bandwidth and HPC environments.
  • Sharpen their NAS message and solution offerings including providing the support, tools and programs to enable both their joint direct sales forces as well as their partner value added reseller (VAR) and channel networks.

Check out (here) some additional comments and perspectives by Ray Lucchesi (aka twitter @raylucchesi) over on his blog pertaining to HDS buying BlueArc.

Congratulations to both HDS and BlueArc along with best wishes, this is a deal that is good for both, now, or once the honeymoon is over, lets see how this is executed upon building on their prior joint success to expand into new market opportunities on a global basis. HDS has tools and people to move into and leverage these new as well as existing opportunities, lets see how they can execute on those hopefully not spending too much time or money on the honeymoon while their competitors are out being busy in some of those same accounts in this last month of an important sales quarter (all quarters are important when it comes to sales).

Disclosure for those interested and FWIW: BlueArc had been a client of StorageIO a few years ago, however not currently. HDS is not nor have they been a client of StorageIO, however in prior life I was a customer of theirs in addition to being a partner and supplier when I was on the vendor side of the table.

 

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Posted on

Summer 2011 StorageIO News Letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Summer 2011 Newsletter

Welcome to the Summer 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Spring 2011 edition.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

 

Click on the following links to view the Summer 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Nuff said for now

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Posted on

Dell Storage Forum 2011 revisited

About a month ago I was invited by Dell to make a quick trip down to Orlando to attend the Dell Storage Forum 2011 (e.g. twitter #dellsf11). Given that on Tuesday June 7th Minneapolis was having a heat wave with 100 degree (F) temperatures, it was actually cooler in Orlando.

Make no mistake however, there were plenty of technologies that were cool and being kept cool at the Hilton adjacent to Disney as Dell continues to expand their footprint into the hot data storage market. The event brought together three aspects of the Dell storage story which were the mergers of the recently acquired Compellent user group with the Dell Equallogic user group along with the rest of the Dell storage and data management lineup. While the limelight was focused on Compellent and Equalogic, the Dell disk Dudes (and Dudettes e.g. Gina Rosenthal aka twitter @gminks and Sheryl Koenigsberg aka twitter @storagediva ) have been involved with storage for many years in addition to the recent acquisitions.

During the event I was invited to tag along with Roger Lund (twitter @rogerlund) an IT customer of Dells and Ed Saipetch (twitter @edsai) an Dell partner to go talk with the Dell NAS dudes (aka Unified, clustered, grid, rain, big data, bulk, scale out NAS) team formerly known as Exanet. The team is mix of Dell, former Exanet and new members who have been relatively quietly enhancing their technology in addition to creating packaged solution bundles with other Dell products such as the FS7500 (coupled with EqualLogic). For those not familiar with Exanet, have a read here or hear and for those not familiar with scale out NAS (aka bulk, grid, clustered, big data, etc) have a read here.

There are lots of interesting things in the works or possible and the team that we spoke with are full of energy, ideas, support from management not to mention having some interesting technology tools to work with ranging from Ocarina (data footprint reduction aka DFR), Kace, Scalent, Powervault MD series, servers and micro servers, not to mention EqualLogic and Compellent among others including those from various partners.

NAS was not the only thing cool at the event, there was the Dell object storage solution (aka DX) based on Caringo CAS (Content Addressable Storage) OEM software technology that has been the Rx (prescription) for healthcare, medical and other archives. Keep in mind that Dell also earlier this year acquired Insight one that just happens to be involved with healthcare and medical data or information management.

Speaking of archives and objects there was also some activity this past week with Dell and Rainstor making an announcement of their joint solutions in addition. Speaking of making sure that data on Dell storage remains available, accessible and protected, preserved and served, there were also backup/restore as well as many other pieces of technology, services and solutions. There was also a good presence by Dell partners at the event including Brocade, Commvault, Quantum and Symantec among others.

Here is a link to a video from when I was a guest with hosts Cali Lewis and John McArthur on the Wikibon/Silicon Angle The Cube show while at the Dell Event. During the discussion we had some fun as well as discussed not to be scared of clouds and virtualization, however look before you leap, doing your homework to be prepared along with other themes in my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press).

Speaking of Dell, I had a nice conversation with Michael Dell during the storage beers tweet up. Did we talk about SMB or SOHO NAS, SSD, tape, HHDD, Brocade, block vs. file vs. object, data footprint reduction, big backup vs. big data, clouds, 3PAR, Equallogic vs. Compellent, HP vs. EMC?

Nope, we talked about the Dallas Mavericks (who went on to win the NBA title for 2011), social media and other items. If you have never meet Michael Dell, he is one of the most relaxed, confident and approachable CEOs of any big or large company I have meet.

In addition to visiting with Michael Dell, I also had the pleasure of meeting many other great people from Dell, their partners and others face to face including many twitter tweeps. All in all it was a great day and a half trip down to the Dell event, look forward to seeing and hearing more from Dell in the future.

Oh, and for disclosure purposes, Dell covered my RT coach class airfare while I picked up my own hotel, airport transfers, parking and incidentals.

Thanks again to Gina Rosenthal for making it all happen!

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Posted on

Congratulations to Infosmack on episode 100

Congratulations to the Infosmack crew hosts Greg Knieriemen and Marc Farley with the Diva of Disruptive Technologies, Christina Weil on their 100th episode. This episode included Robin Harris of StorageMojo and myself as guests.

Some items discussed in the 100th episode include Infosmack Live from the upcoming Dell Storage Forum, Cisco and the future of or with EMC and VMware, NetApp merger and acquisition activity, Sony and the death of Blu-ray, streaming video and related themes among others. Give it a listen when you get a chance and congratulations on the 100th episode.

Ok, nuff said

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Posted on

Dude, is Dell going to buy Brocade?

Some IT industry buzz this week is around continued speculation (or here) of who will Dell buy next and will it be Brocade.

Brocade was mentioned as a possible acquisition by some in the IT industry last fall after Dell stepped back from the 3PAR bidding war with HP. Industry rumors or speculations are not new involving Dell and Brocade some going back a year or more (or here or here).

Dell

Last fall I did a blog post commenting that I thought Dell would go on to buy someone else (turned out to be Compellent and Insight One). Those acquisitions by Dell followed their purchases of companies including Scalent, Kace, Exanet, Perot, and Ocarina among others. In that post, I also commented that I did not think (at least at that time) that Brocade would be a likely or good fit for Dell given their different business models, go to market strategy and other factors.

Dell is clearly looking to move further up into the enterprise space which means adding more products and routes to market of which one is via networking and another involves people with associated skill sets. The networking business at Dell has been good for them along with storage to complement their traditional server and workstation business, not to mention their continued expansion into medical, life science and healthcare related solutions. All of those are key building blocks for moving to cloud, virtual and data storage networking environments.

Dell has also done some interesting acquisitions around management and service or workflow tools with Scalent and Kace not to mention their scale out NAS file system (excuse me, big data) solutions via Exanet and data footprint reduction tools with Ocarina, all of which have plays in the enterprise, cloud and traditional Dell markets.

But what about Brocade?

Is it a good fit for Dell?

Dell certainly could benefit from owning Brocade as a means of expanding their Ethernet and IP businesses beyond OEM partnerships, like HP supplementing their networking business with 3COM and IBM with Blade networks.

However, would Dell acquiring Brocade disrupt their relationships with Cisco or other networking providers?

If Dell were to make a bid for Brocade, would Huawei (or here) sit on the sidelines and watch or jump in the game to stir things up?

Would Cisco counter with a deal Dell could not refuse to tighten their partnership at different levels perhaps even involving something with the UCS that was discussed on a recent Infosmack episode?

How would EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp and Oracle among others, all of who are partners with Brocade respond to Dell now becoming their OEM supplier for some products?

Would those OEM partnerships continue or cause some of those vendors to become closer aligned with Cisco or others?

Again the question, will Huawei sit back or decide to enter the market on a more serious basis or continue to quietly increase their presences around the periphery?

Brocade could be a good fit for Dell giving them a networking solution (both Ethernet via the Foundry acquisition along with Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)) not to mention many other pieces of IP including some NAS and file management tools collecting dust on some Brocade shelf somewhere. What Dell would also get is a sales force that knows how to sell to OEMs, the channel and to enterprise customers, some of whom are networking (Ethernet or Fibre Channel) focused, some who have broader diverse backgrounds.

While it is possible that Dell could end up with Brocade along with a later bidding battle (unless others just let a possible deal go as is), Dell would find itself in new and unfamiliar waters similar to Brocade gaining its feet moving into the Ethernet and IP space after having been comfortable in the Fibre Channel storage centric space for over a decade.

While the networking products would be a good fit for Dell assuming that they were to do such a deal, the diamond in the rough so to speak could be Brocade channel, OEM and direct sales contact team of sales people, business development, systems engineers and support staff on a global basis. Keep in mind that while some of those Brocadians are network focused, many have connected servers and storage from mainframe to open systems across all vendors for years or in some cases decades. Some of those people who I know personally are even talented enough to sell ice to an Eskimo (that is a sales joke btw).

Sure the Brocadians would have to be leveraged to keep selling what they have done, a task similar to what NetApp is currently facing with their integration of Engenio.

However that DNA could help Dell set up more presences in organizations where they have not been in the past. In other words, Dell could use networking to pull the rest of their product lines into those accounts, vars or resellers.

Hmmm, does that sound like another large California based networking company?

Dell

After all, June is a popular month for weddings, lets see what happens next week down in Orlando during the Dell Storage Forum as some have speculated might be a launching pad for some type of deal.

Here are some related links to more material:

  • HP Buys one of the seven networking dwarfs and gets a bargain
  • Dell Will Buy Someone, However Not Brocade (At least for now)
  • While HP and Dell make counter bids, exclusive interview with 3PAR CEO David Scott
  • Acadia VCE: VMware + Cisco + EMC = Virtual Computing Environment
  • Did someone forget to tell Dell that Tape is dead?
  • Data footprint reduction (Part 1): Life beyond dedupe and changing data lifecycles
  • Data footprint reduction (Part 2): Dell, IBM, Ocarina and Storwize
  • What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?
  • Could Huawei buy Brocade?
  • Has FCoE entered the trough of disillusionment?
  • More on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
  • Dude, is Dell doing a disk deal again with Compellent?
  • Post Holiday IT Shopping Bargains, Dell Buying Exanet?
  • Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage
  • Huawei should buy brocade
  • NetApp buying LSIs Engenio Storage Business Unit

    • Ok, nuff said for now

    Cheers Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    NetApp buying LSIs Engenio Storage Business Unit

    Storage I/O trends

    This has been a busy week as on Monday Western Digital (WD) announced that they were buying the disk drive business from Hitachi Ltd. (e.g. HGST) for about $4.3 billion USD. The deal includes about $3.5B in cash and 25 million WD common shares (e.g. $750M USD) which will give Hitachi Ltd. about ten (10) percent ownership in WD along with adding two Hitachi persons onto the WD board of directors. WD now moves into the number one hard disk drive (HDD) spot above Seagate (note Hitachi is not selling HDS) in addition to giving them a competitive positioning in both the enterprise HDD as well as emerging SSD markets.

    Today NetApp announced that they have agreed to purchase portions of the LSI storage business known as Engenio for $480M USD.

    The business and technology that LSI is selling to NetApp (aka Engenio) is the external storage system business that accounted for about $705M of their approximate $900M+ storage business in 2010. This piece of the business represents external (outside of the server) shared RAID storage systems that support Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC) and emerging FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) with SSD, SAS and FC high performance HDDs as well as high capacity HDDs. NetApp has block however there strong suit (sorry netapp guys) is file while Engenio strong suit is block that attaches to gateways from NetApp as well as others in addition to servers for scale out NAS and cloud.

    What NetApp is getting from LSI is the business that sells storage systems or their components to OEMs including Dell, IBM (here and here), Oracle, SGI and TeraData (a former NCR spin off) among others.

    What LSI is retaining are their custom storage silicon, ICs, PCI RAID adapter and host bus adapter (HBA) cards including MegaRAID, 3ware along with SAS chips, SAS switches, PCI SSD card and the Onstor NAS product they acquired about a year ago. Other parts of the LSI business which makes chips for storage, networking and communications vendors is also not affected by this deal.

    In other words, the sign in front of the Wichita LSI facility that used to say NCR will now probably include a NetApp logo once the deal closes.

    For those not familiar, Tom Georgens current CEO of NetApp is very familiar with Engenio and LSI as he used to work there (after leaving a career at EMC). In fact Mr. Georgens was part of the most recent attempt to spin the external storage business out of LSI back in the mid 2000s when it received the Engenio name and branding. In addition to Tom Georgens, Vic Mahadevan the current NetApp Chief Strategy Officer recently worked at LSI and before that at BMC, Compaq and Maxxan among others.

    What do I mean by the most recent attempt to spin the storage business out of LSI? Simple, the Engenio storage business traces its lineage back to NCR and what become known as Symbiosis Logic that LSI acquired as part of some other acquisitions.

    Going back to the late 90s, there was word on the street that the then LSI management was not sure what to do with storage business as their core business was and still is making high volume chips and related technologies. Current LSI CEO Abhi Talwalkar is a chip guy (nothing wrong with that) who honed his skills at Intel. Thus it should not be a surprise that there is a focus on the LSI core business model of making their own as well as producing silicon (not the implant stuff) for IT and consumer electronics (read their annual report).

    As part of the acquisition, LSI has already indicated that they will use all or some of the cash to buy back their stock. However I also wonder if this does not open the door for Abhi and his team to do some other acquisitions more synergic with their core business.

    What does NetApp get:

    • Expanded OEM and channel distribution capabilities
    • Block based products to coexist with their NAS gateways
    • Business with an established revenue base
    • Footprint into new or different markets
    • Opportunity to sell different product set to existing customers

    NetApp gets an OEM channel distribution model to complement what they already have (mainly IBM) in addition to their mainly direct sales and with VARs. Note that Engenio went to an all OEM/distribution model several years ago maintaining direct touch support for their partners.

    Note that NetApp is providing financial guidance that the deal could add $750M to FY12 which is based on retaining some portion of the existing OEM business however moving into new markets as well as increasing product diversity with existing direct customers, vars or channel partners.

    NetApp also gets to address storage market fragmentation and enable OEM as well as channel diversification including selling to other server vendors besides IBM. The Engenio model in addition to supporting Dell, IBM, Oracle, SGI and other server vendors also involves working with vertical solution integrator OEMs in the video, entertainment, High Performance Compute (HPC), cloud and MSP markets. This means that NetApp can enter new markets where bandwidth performance is needed including scale out NAS (beyond what NetApp has been doing). This also means that NetApp gets a product to sell into markets where back end storage for big data, bulk storage, media and entertainment, cloud and MSP as well as other applications leverage SAS, iSCSI or FC and FCoE beyond what their current lineup offers. Who sells into those spaces? Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle, SGI and Supermicro among others.

    What does LSI get:

    • $480M USD cash and buy back some stock to keep investors happy
    • Streamline their business or open door for new ones
    • Perhaps increase OEM sales to other new or existing customers
    • Perhaps do some acquisitions or be acquired

    What does Engenio get:
    A new parent that hopefully invest in the technology and marketing of the solution sets as well as leverage or take care of the installed base of customers

    What do the combined Engenio and NetApp OEMs and partners get:
    With combination of the organizations, hopefully streamlined support, service, and marketing, product enhancements to address new or different needs. Possibly comfort in knowing that Engenio now has a home and its future somewhat known.

    What about the Engenio employees?
    The reason I bring this up is wondering what happens to those who have many years invested and their LSI stock which I presume they keep hoping that the sale gives them a future return on their investment or efforts. Having been in similar acquisitions in the past, it can be a rough go however if the acquirer has a bright future, than enough said.

    Some random thoughts:

    Is this one of those industry trendy, sexy, cool everybody drooling type deals with new and upcoming technology and marketing buzz?
    No

    Is this one of those industry deals that has good upside potential if executed upon and leveraged?
    Yes

    Netapp already has a storage offering why do they need Engenio?
    No offense to NetApp, however they have needed a robust block storage offering to complement their NAS file serving and extensive software functionality to move into to different markets. This is not all that different from what EMC needed to do in the late 90s extending their capabilities from their sole cash cow platform Symmetrix to acquire DG to have a mid range offering.

    NetApp is risking $480M on a business with technologies that some see or say is on the decline, so why would they do such a thing?
    Ok, lets set the technology topics aside, from a pure numbers perspective, lets take two scenarios and Im not a financial person so go easy on me please. What some financial people have told me with other deals is that its sometimes about getting a return on cash vs. it not doing anything. So with that and other things in mind, say NetApp just lets $480M sit in the bank, can they get 12 per cent or better interest? Probably not and if they can, I want the name of that bank. What that means is that for a five year period, if they could get that rate of return (12 percent), they would only make $824M-480M=$344M on the investment (I know, there are tax and other financial considerations however lets keep simple). Now lets take another scenario, assume that NetApp simply rides a decline of the business at say a 20 percent per year rate (how many business are growing or in storage declining at 20 percent per year?) for five years. That works out to about a $1.4B yield. Lets take a different scenario and assume that NetApp can simply maintain an annual run rate of $700-750M for that five years, that works out to around $3.66B-480M=$3.1B revenue or return on investment. In other words, even with some decline, over a five year period, the OEM business pays for the deal alone and perhaps helps funds investment in technology improvement with the business balance being positive upside.

    Now both of those are extreme scenarios so lets take something more likely such as NetApp being able to simply maintain a 700-750M run rate by keeping some of the OEM business, finding new markets for challenge and OEM as well as direct, expanding footprint into their markets. Now that math gets even more interesting. Having said all of that, NetApp needs to keep investing in the business and products to get those returns which might help explain the relative low price to run rate.

    Is this a good deal for NetApp?
    IMHO yes, as long as NetApp does not screw it up. If NetApp can manage the business, invest in it, grow into new markets instead of simple cannibalization, they will have made a good deal similar to what EMC did with DG back in the late 90s. However NetApp needs to execute, leverage what they are buying, invest in it and pick up new business to make up for the declining business with some of the OEMs.

    With several hundred thousand systems or controllers having been sold over the years (granted how many are actually running is your guess as good as mine), NetApp has a footprint to leverage with their other products. For example, should IBM, Dell or Oracle completely walk away from those installed footprints, NetApp can move in with firmware or other upgrades to support plus up sell with their NAS gateways to add value with compression, dedupe, etc.

    What about NetApps acquisition track record?
    Fair question although Im sure the NetApp faithful wont like it. NetApp has had their ups and downs with acquisitions (Topio, Decru, Spinaker, Onaro, etc), perhaps with this one like EMC in the late 90s who bought DG to overcome some rough up and down acquisitions can also get their mojo on. (See this post).While we are on the topic of acquisitions, NetApp recently bought Akorri and last year Bycast which they now call StorageGrid that has been OEMd in the past by IBM. Guess what storage was commonly used under the IBM servers running the Bycast software? If you guessed XIV you might want to take a mulligan or a do over. Btw, HP also has OEMd the Bycast software. If you are not familiar with Bycast and interested in automated movement, tiering, policy management, objects and other buzzwords, ping your favorite NetApp person as it is a diamond in the rough if leveraged beyond healthcare capabilities.

    What does this mean for Xyratex and Dothill who are NetApp partners?
    My guess is that for now, the general purpose enclosures would stay the same (e.g. Xyratex) until there is a business case to do something different. For the high density enclosures, that could be a different scenario. As for others, we will have to wait and see.

    Will NetApp port OnTap into Engenio?
    The easiest and fastest thing is to do what NetApp and Engenio OEM customers have already been doing, that is, place the Engenio arrays behind the NetApp fas vfiler. Note that Engenio has storage systems that speak SAS to HDDs and SSDs as well as able to speak SAS, iSCSI and FC to hosts or gateways. NetApp has also embraced SAS for back end storage, maybe we will see them leverage a SAS connection out of their filers in the future to SAS storage systems or shelves instead of FC loop?

    Speaking of SAS host or server attached storage, guess what many cloud, MSP, high performance and other environment are using for storage on the back end of their clusters or scale out NAS systems?
    Yup, SAS.

    Guess what gap NetApp gets to fill joining Dell, HP, IBM and Oracle who can now give a choice of SAS, iSCSI or FC in addition or NAS?
    Yup, SAS.

    Care to guess what storage vendor we can expect to hear downplay SAS as a storage system to server or gateway technology?
    Hmm

    Is this all about SAS?
    No

    Will this move scare EMC?
    No, EMC does not get scared, or at least that is what they tell me.

    Will LSI buy Fusion IO who has or is filing their documents to IPO or someone else?
    Your guess or speculation is better than mine. However LSI already has and is retaining their own PCIe SSD card.

    Why only $480M for a business that did $705M in 2010?
    Good question. There is risk in that if NetApp does not invest in the product, marketing, relationships that they will not see the previous annual run rate so it is not a straight annuity. Consequently NetApp is taking risk with the business and thus they should get the reward if they can run with it. Another reason is that there probably were not any investment bankers or brokers running up the price.

    Why didnt Dell buy Engenio for $480M?
    Good question, if they had the chance, they should have however it probably would not have been a good fit as Dell needs direct sales vs. OEM sales.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

    As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

    server storage data infrastructure i/o iop hdd ssd trends

    Updated 2/10/2018

    Despite having been repeatedly declared dead at the hands of some new emerging technology over the past several decades, the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) continues to spin and evolve as it moves towards its 60th birthday.

    More recently HDDs have been declared dead due to flash SSD that according to some predictions, should have caused the HDD to be extinct by now.

    Meanwhile, having not yet died in addition to having qualified for its AARP membership a few years ago, the HDD continues to evolve in capacity, smaller form factor, performance, reliability, density along with cost improvements.

    Back in 2006 I did an article titled Happy 50th, hard drive, but will you make it to 60?

    IMHO it is safe to say that the HDD will be around for at least a few more years if not another decade (or more).

    This is not to say that the HDD has outlived its usefulness or that there are not other tiered storage mediums to do specific jobs or tasks better (there are).

    Instead, the HDD continues to evolve and is complimented by flash SSD in a way that HDDs are complimenting magnetic tape (another declared dead technology) each finding new roles to support more data being stored for longer periods of time.

    After all, there is no such thing as a data or information recession!

    What the importance of this is about technology tiering and resource alignment, matching the applicable technology to the task at hand.

    Technology tiering (Servers, storage, networking, snow removal) is about aligning the applicable resource that is best suited to a particular need in a cost as well as productive manner. The HDD remains a viable tiered storage medium that continues to evolve while taking on new roles coexisting with SSD and tape along with cloud resources. These and other technologies have their place which ideally is finding or expanding into new markets instead of simply trying to cannibalize each other for market share.

    Here is a link to a good story by Lucas Mearian on the history or evolution of the hard disk drive (HDD) including how a 1TB device that costs about $60 today would have cost about a trillion dollars back in the 1950s. FWIW, IMHO the 1 trillion dollars is low and should be more around 2 to 5 trillion for the one TByte if you apply common costs for management, people, care and feeding, power, cooling, backup, BC, DR and other functions.

    Where To Learn More

    View additional NAS, NVMe, SSD, NVM, SCM, Data Infrastructure and HDD related topics via the following links.

    Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), as well as tips can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

    IMHO, it is safe to say that the HDD is here to stay for at least a few more years (if not decades) or at least until someone decides to try a new creative marketing approach by declaring it dead (again).

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2017 (vSAN and vCloud). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

    Posted on

    Dude, is Dell doing a disk deal again with Compellent?

    Over in Eden Prairie (Minneapolis Minnesota suburb) where data storage vendor Compellent (CML) is based, they must be singing in the hallways today that it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

    Sure we had another dusting of snow this morning here in the Minneapolis area and the temp is actually up in the balmy 20F temperature range (was around 0F yesterday) and holiday shopping is in full swing.

    The other reason I think that the Compellent folks are thinking that it feels a lot like Christmas are the reports that Dell is in exclusive talks to buy them at about $29 per share or about $876 million USD.

    Dell is no stranger to holiday or shopping sprees, check these posts out as examples:

    Dell Will Buy Someone, However Not Brocade (At least for now)

    Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage (we now know Dell was out bid)

    Data footprint reduction (Part 2): Dell, IBM, Ocarina and Storwize

    Data footprint reduction (Part 1): Life beyond dedupe and changing data lifecycles

    Post Holiday IT Shopping Bargains, Dell Buying Exanet?

    Did someone forget to tell Dell that Tape is dead?

    Now some Compellent fans are not going to be happy with only about $29 a share or about $876 million USD price given the recent stock run up into the $30 plus range. Likewise, some of the Compellent fans may be hoping for or expecting a bidding war to drive the stock back up into the $30 range however keep in mind that it was earlier this year when the stock adjusted itself down into the mid teens.

    In the case of 3PAR and the HP Dell budding war, that was a different product and company focused in a different space than where Compellent has a good fit.

    Sure both 3PAR and Compellent do Fibre Channel (FC) where Dells EqualLogic only does iSCSI, however a valuation based just on FC would be like saying Dell has all the storage capabilities they need with their MD3000 series that can do SAS, iSCSI and FC.

    In other words, there are different storage products for different markets or price bands and customer application needs. Kind of like winter here in Minnesota, sure one type of shovel will work for moving snow or you can leverage different technologies and techniques (tiering) to get the job done effectively the same holds for storage solutions.

    Compellent has a good Cadillac product that is a good fit for some SMB environments. However the SMB space is also where Dell has several storage products some of which they own (e.g. EqualLogic), some they OEM (MD3000 series and NX) as well as resell (e.g. EMC CLARiiON).

    Can the Compellent product replace the lowered CLARiiON business that Dell has itself been shifting more to their flagship EqualLogic product?

    Sure however at the risk of revenue cannibalization or worse, introduction of revenue prevention teams.

    Can the Compellent product then be positioned lower down under the EqualLogic product?

    Sure, however why hold it back not to mention force a higher priced product down into that market segment.

    Can the Compellent product be taken up market to compete above the EqualLogic head to head with the larger CLARiiON systems from EMC or comparable solutions from other vendors?

    Sure, however I can hear choruses of its sounding a lot like Christmas from New England, the bay area and Tucson among others.

    Does this mean that Dell is being overly generous and that this is not a good deal?

    No, not at all.

    Sure it is the holiday season and Dell has several billion dollars of cash laying around however that in itself does not guarantee a large handout or government sized bailout (excuse me, infusion). At $30 or more, that would be overly generous simply based on where the technology fits as well as aligns to the market realities. Consequently, at $29, this is a great deal for Compellent and also for Dell.

    Why is it a good deal for Dell?

    I think that it is as much about Dell getting a good deal (ok, paying a premium) to acquire a competitor that they can use to fill some product gaps where they have common VARs. However I also think that this is very much about the channel and the VAR as much if not more than it is just about a storage product. Servers are part of the game here which in turn supports storage, networking, management tools, backup/recovery, archiving and services.

    Sure Dell can maybe take some cost out of the Compellent solution by replacing the Supermicro PCs that are the hardware platform for their storage controllers with Dell servers. However the bigger play is around further developing its channel and VAR ecosystems, some of whom were with EqualLogic before Dell bought them. This can also be seen as a means of Dell getting that partner ecosystem to sell overall, more dell products and solutions instead of those from Apple, EMC, Futjisu, HP, IBM, Oracle and many others.

    Likewise, I doubt that Mr. Dell is paying a premium simply to make the Compellent shareholders and fans happy to create monetary velocity to stimulate holiday shopping and economic stimulus. However, for the fans, sure, while drowning your sorrows in egg nogg of holiday cheer that you are not getting $30 or higher, instead buy a round for your mates and toast Dell for your holiday gift.

    The real reason I think this is a good reason for Dell is that from a business and financial perspective, assuming they stick to the $29 range, it is a good bargain for both parties. Dell gets a company who has been competing with their EqualLogic product in some cases with the same VARs or resellers. Sure it gets a Fibre Channel based product however Dell already has that with the MD3000 series which I realize is less function laden then Compellent or EqualLogic; however it is also more affordable for a different market.

    If Dell can close on the deal sticking to its offer which they have the upper hand on, execute including rolling out a strategy as well as product positioning plan. Then educate their own teams as well as VARs and customers of what products fit where and when in such a manner that does not cause revenue prevention (e.g. one product or team blocking the other) or cannibalization instead expanding markets, they can do well.

    While Compellent gets a huge price multiple based on their revenue (about $125M USD), if Dell can get the product revenue up from the $125 to $150 million plateau to around $250 to $300 million without cannibalizing other Dell products, the deal pays for itself in many ways.

    Keep in mind that a large pile of cash sitting in the bank these days is not exactly yielding the best returns on investment.

    For the Compellent fans and shareholders, congratulations!

    You have gotten or perhaps are about to get a good holiday gift so knock of the complaining that you should be getting more. The option is that instead of $28 per share, you could be getting 28 lumps of coal in your Christmas stocking.

    For the Dell folks, assuming the deal is done on their terms and that they can quickly rationalize the product overlap, convey and then execute on a strategy while keeping the revenue prevention teams on the sidelines you too have a holiday gift to work with (some assembly will be required however). This also is good for Dell outside of storage which may turn out to be one of the gems of the deal in keeping or expanding VARs selling Dell based servers and associated technologies.

    For EMC who was slapped in the face earlier this year when Dell took a run at 3PAR, sure there will be more erosion on the lower end CLARiiOn as has been occurring with the EqualLogic. However Dell still needs a solution to effectively compete with EMC and others at the higher end of the SMB or lower end of the enterprise market.

    Sure the EqualLogic or Compellent products could be deployed into such scenarios; however those solutions are then playing on a different field and out of their market sweet spots.

    Lets see what happens shall we.

    In the meantime, what say you?

    Is this a good deal for Dell, who is the deal good for assuming it goes through and at the terms mentioned, what is your take?

    Who benefits from this proposed deal?

    Note that in the holiday gift giving spirit, Chicago style voting or polling will be enabled.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Re visiting if IBM XIV is still relevant with V7000

    Over the past couple of years I routinely get asked what I think of XIV by fans as well as foes in addition to many curious or neutral onlookers including XIV competitors, other analysts, media, bloggers, consultants as well as IBM customers, prospects, vars and business partners. Consequently I have done some blog posts about my thoughts and perspectives.

    Its time again for what has turned out to be the third annual perspective or thoughts around IBM XIV and if it is still relevant as a result of the recent IBM V7000 (excuse me, I meant to say IBM Storwize V7000) storage system launch.

    For those wanting to take a step back in time, here is an initial thought perspective about IBM and XIV storage from 2008, as well as the 2009 revisiting of XIV relevance post and the latest V7000 companion post found here.

    What is the IBM V7000?

    Here is a link to a companion post pertaining to the IBM V7000 that you will want to have a look at.

    In a nut shell, the V7000 is a new storage system with built in storage virtualization or virtual storage if you prefer that leverages IBM developed software from its San Volume Controller (SVC), DS8000 enterprise system and others.

    Unlike the SVC which is a gateway or appliance head that virtualizes various IBM and third party storage systems providing data movement, migration, copy, replication, snapshot and other agility or abstraction capabilities, the V7000 is a turnkey integrated solution.

    By being a turnkey solution, the V7000 combines the functionality of the SVC as a basis for adding other IBM technologies including a GUI management tool similar to that found on XIV along with dedicated attached storage (e.g. SAS disk drives including fast, high capacity as well as SSD).

    In other words, for those customer or prospects who liked XIV because of its management GUI interface, you may like the V7000.

    For those who liked the functionality capabilities of the SVC however needed it to be a turnkey solution, you might like the V7000.

    For those of you who did not like or competed with the SVC in the past, well, you know what to do.

    BTW, for those who knew of Storwize the Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) vendor with real time compression that IBM recently acquired and renamed IBM Real time Compression, the V7000 does not contain any real time compression (yet).

    What are my thoughts and perspectives?

    In addition to the comments in the companion post found here, right now Im of the mind set that XIV does not fade away quietly into the sunset or take a timeout at the IBM technology rest and recuperation resort located on the beautiful someday isle.

    The reason I think XIV will remain somewhat relevant for some time, (time to be determined of course) is that IBM has expended over the past two and half years significant resources to promote it. Those resources have included marketing time, messaging space and in some instances perhaps inadvertinly at the expense of other IBM storage solutions. Simiarly, a lot of time, money and effort have gone into business partner outreach to establish and keep XIV relevant with those commuities who in turn have gone to their customers to tell and sell the XIV story to some customers who have bought it.

    Consequently or as a result of all of that investment, I would be surprised if IBM were simply to walk away from XIV at least near term.

    What I do see as happening including some early indicators is that the V7000 (along with other IBM products) now will be getting equal billing, resources and promotional support. Weather this means the XIV division finally being assimilated into the mainstream IBM fold and on equal footing with other IBM products, or, that other IBM products being brought up to an elevated position of XIV is subject to interpretation and your own perception.

    I expect to continue to see IBM teams and subsequently their distributors, vars and other business partners get more excited talking about the V7000 along with other IBM solutions. For example, SONAS for bulk, clustered and scale out NAS, DS8000 for high end, GMAS and Information Archive platforms as well as N and DS3K/DS4K/DS5K not to mentiuon the TS/TL backup and archive target platforms along with associated Tivoli software. Also, lets not forget about SVC among other IBM solutions including of course, XIV.

    I would also not be surprised if some of the diehard XIV loyalist (e.g. sales and marketing reps that were faithful members of Moshe Yani army who appears to be MIA at IBM) pack up their bags and leave the IBM storage SANdbox in virtual protest. That is, refusing to be assimilated into the general IBM storage pool and thus leaving for Greener IT pastures elsewhere. Some will stick around discovering the opportunities associated with selling a broader more diverse product portfolio into their target accounts where they have spent time and resources to establish relationships or getting thier proverbial foot in the door.

    Consequently, I think XIV remains somewhat relevant for now given all of the resources that IBM poured into it and relationships that their partner ecosystem also spent on establishing with the installed customer base.

    However, I do think that the V7000 despite some confusion (here and here) around its recycled Storwize name that is built around the field proven SVC and other IBM technology has some legs. Those legs of the V7000 are both from a technology standpoint as well as a means to get the entire IBM systems and storage group energized to go out and compete with their primary nemesis (e.g. Dell, EMC, HP, HDS, NetApp and Oracle among others).

    As has been the case for the past couple of years, lets see how this all plays out in a year or so from now. Meanwhile cast your vote or see the results of others as to if XIV remains relevant. Likewise, join in on the new poll below as to if the V7000 is now relevant or not.

    Note: As with the ongoing is XIV relevant polling (above), for the new is the V7000 relevant polling (below) you are free to vote early, vote often, vote for those who cannot or that care not to vote.

    Here are some links to read more about this and related topics:

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    While HP and Dell make counter bids, exclusive interview with 3PAR CEO David Scott

    Last week Dell announced (read previous and related posts here) that they were buying 3PAR for $1.15B USD, then HP offered a counter bid, this morning Dell countered with a $1.6B USD bid only to be followed by HPs counter counter counter bid of $1.8B which almost seems like an Ebay autobid raising the question of what is the buy it now price.

    Meanwhile, I was asked today to be the guest co host of the Storage Monkeys Infosmack Podcast with regular host Greg Knieriemen filling in for the regular co host Marc Farley who happens to be a 3PAR employee while we interviewed special guest CEO David Scott.

    Click here to listen to this exclusive interview with 3PAR CEO David Scott during the midst of the bidding between HP and Dell for some insight into 3PAR, their technology as well as get an inside insight discussion with the man who is the current Belle of the Ball in this current IT industry merger and acquisition bidding battle along with related industry trends and perspective insight commentary.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    Posted on

    Kudos to HP CEO Mark Hurd for dignity to step down from his post

    Yesterday (Friday) late afternoon, HP announced (or read here) that their CEO Mark Hurd was resigning due to improprieties uncovered during an internal investigation.

    HP is far from being alone in the corporate world involving investigations, lawsuits by governments or allegations of bribes and impropriety.

    However what stands out is that of the CEO stepping down.

    While not unique, after all remember the former CA CEO Sanjay Kumar who was locked up, or former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes now stepping into new government provided accommodations due to illegal activities, not to mention those from Enron among others. Granted in those situations there were legal ramifications outside of the companies prompting the courts to get involved, something that looks like for now is not the case at HP. However, having the courts get involved with corporate activity is almost becoming a pattern of how business is done. For example, there is a whos who list (e.g.Cisco, Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel, or Oracle among others) of IT companies involved in (or recently settled) various government or financial dealing cases associated with bribes, kickbacks or other business improprieties reminiscent of Rodney Dangerfield character Thornton Melon explaining how business is conducted in the real world during Dr Phillip Barbay business class in Back to School.

    Lets get back to and focus on the individual, that is Mr Hurd and what I think is something rare these days. That is a CEO or leader of a company or organization seriously taking responsibility for their actions or those that they are responsible for instead of lip service and spin doctoring.

    I do not know whether Mr Hurd decided on his own or it was suggested to him that he step down from his post. However what I do know simply based on the story that has been put out by HP is that Mr Hurd either has, or is being portrayed as taking the high road of stepping down. That is, as the head of the HP organization, he is taking responsibility for actions, not looking for special status or exceptions and stepping down from his post instead of trying to sweep the dust or dirt under the rug. Thus Kudos to Mr Hurd for taking responsibility, not hiding, spinning or throwing someone else under the proverbial corporate politics bus to save his own hide.As the CEO of a major corporation the buck stops with him and he should not be above the law or polices of his own organizations that other employees would be expected to follow.

    Too often today we hear stories of company or organization or government leaders getting or expecting special treatment in some cases not taking full and complete responsibility for their actions other than for a photo opportunity.

    On a different yet related note, perhaps my thinking will change as more comes out on the story as well as they story behind the story, however this is an interesting example of how crisis management can be dealt with. Sure the story was released on a Friday afternoon which is typically when bad news is put out after the financial markets have closed. On the other hand, given the nature of HP being a tech company and with web, blogs, twitter, face book and other social media the chatter was significant for a late Friday afternoon.

    Lets see how this plays out and if HP along with their PR crisis team played the right cards by getting the story out, CEO Mark Hurd stepping down to avoid prolonging the situations as well as how wall street will react short term and over the long haul.

    This leaves me with a closing thought of if politicians from all sides (or across both sides of aisle or parties) did what HP CEO Mark Hurd did (resign) due to impropriety, we would have fewer elected officials. Thus I do not think Mr Hurd has a future in government politics not because of what he did that caused his stepping down at HP.

    No, rather because either on his own or under advice of others he decided not to look for or seek special favor or cover up of what was done as well as try not to spin the story thus saving both him and his company (HP) for the long term.

    Nuff said for now.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    Posted on

    Two companies on parallel tracks moving like trains offset by time: EMC and NetApp

    View from VIA Rail Canada taken using Gregs iFlip

    I see some similarities and parallels between two competing companies. Those companies happen to be in the same sector (e.g. IT data storage) however offset by time (about a decade or) subject to continued execution by both.

    Those two companies are EMC and NetApp.

    Some people might assert that these two companies are complete opposites. Perhaps claiming that one is on the up swing while the other on the down path (have heard claims and counter claims of both being on the other path). I will leave the discussion or debate of which is on the up and which is on the down path to the twittervile and blogsphere ultimate tag team mud wrestling arena or You Tube video rooms.

    I see EMC and NetApp a bit differently which you can take it for what that is, simply an opinion or perspective having been the competitor and partner of both when I was on the vendor side of the table and later covering the two as an industry analyst.

    Without going too far down the memory lane route, in a nut shell, I recall when EMC was still a fledgling startup who wanted to sell me (I was on the customer side then) rebrand Fujitsu disk drives to attach to my VAX/VMS systems and memory for our mainframes. Come to think about it, Emulex was also selling disk drives back then before reinventing themselves later as an HBA and hub vendor.

    Later as a vendor, around late 94 or early 95, it was the up and coming small little bay area NAS filer appliance vendor (e.g. the toaster era) that we partnered with including a very brief OEM deal involving repackaging their product which was NetApp or Network Appliance as they were formerly known then. Once that ended after a year or so NetApp become a competitor as was EMC who at the time had as the main act the Symmetrix and about to do the EPOCH backup and McData acquisitions as well as landing the HP OEM deal for open systems.

    Ironically NetApp was out to knock off Auspex which happened fairly quickly while EMC was struggling to get its NAS act together with the early DART behemoth while successfully knocking out IBM and other entrenched high-end solutions. In a twist of fate, the company I was working for ended up selling off all of their RAID (initially a few, then later all of them) patents to EMC for some cash and later transitioned out of the hardware business becoming simply a VAR of EMC (that was MTI).

    While at INRANGE which later merged into CNT before acquired by McData (I left before that) and then Brocade, both EMC and NetApp were partners across different product lines.

    What they have in common

    Ok, enough of the memory lane stuff; lets get back to where the similarities exist.

    Back in the mid 90s, EMC was essentially a one trick pony with a very software feature function rich large storage system that sold for a premium generating lots of cash from its use of cache. Likewise, NetApp is a vendor that while it has many product offerings and has some acquisitions, still relies very much on their flagship NAS storage systems that are also feature function (e.g. software) rich that leverage cache to generate cash.

    Both companies are growing in terms of revenues, installed base, partners/OEMs and product diversity. Likewise each company needs to continue expansion into those as well as other adjacent areas.

    Can NetApp catch EMC? Maybe, maybe not, however IMHO the question should be are there other areas that NetApp can extend its reach into causing EMC to react to those, like how EMC took advantage of opportunities causing IBM and others to react.

    Here are some other similarities I see of and for EMC and NetApp:

    • Both have great outreach programs where information is provided without having to ask or dig in a proactive way, yet when something is needed, they give it without fanfare
    • Both are engaging at multiple levels, from customer, to financial and investors, to var, to partner, trade groups, to trade and other media, to analysts to social networking and beyond
    • Both are passionate about their companies, cultures, products, solutions and customers
    • Both can walk the talk, however both also like to talk and see the other balk
    • Both lead by example and not afraid to tell you what they think about something
    • Both embrace social media in connection with traditional mediums for communication with people as opposed to a giant megaphone for talking at or spamming people (when will other vendors figure that out?)
    • Both also are willing to hear what you have to say even if they do not agree with it
    • Neither is scared of the other (or at least not in public)
    • Both cause the other to play and execute a stronger game
    • Both are not above throwing a mud ball or fire cracker at the other
    • Both are not above burying the hatchet and getting along when or where needed
    • Both compete vigorously on some fronts, yet partner (publicly or privately) on other fronts
    • Both have been direct focused with some vars and some OEMs
    • Both started somewhere else and now going and moving to different places and in some ways returning to their roots or at least making sure they are not forgotten
    • Both are synonymous with their core focus products and background
    • One comes from an open systems focus working to prove itself in the enterprise
    • One comes from the enterprise establishing itself in SOHO, SMB and other spaces
    • Both have many solutions, some would say long in the tooth, others would say revolutionary
    • Both are growing via organic growth as well as acquisition and partnering
    • Both have celebrity leaders and team role players to support and back then up
    • Both also have deep benches and technical folks in the trenches to get things done
    • Both have developed leadership along with rank and file employees internal
    • Both have gone outside and brought in leadership and skilled players to expand their employee ranks
    • Both are very much involved with server virtualization (Microsoft and VMware)
    • Both are very much involved in storage virtualization and associated management
    • Both are involved with cloud solutions for enabling public or private storage
    • Both are independent storage vendors not part of a larger server organization
    • Both have interoperability programs with other vendors servers and software and networks
    • Both also get beat up about their pricing models for extensive software feature function portfolios associated with respective storage solutions
    • Both get criticized by customers or the industry as is often the case of market leaders

    What I see EMC needing to do

    • Articulate where their multiple products and services fit and play into their different target market opportunities while worrying less about the color hue of logos or video backgrounds
    • Avoiding competing with itself or becoming its own major or main competitor
    • Clarify cloud (public and private) cloud confusion transitioning into cloud cash and opportunity
    • Minimize or cut channel contention and confusion internally and across partners
    • Remember where they came from and core competences however avoid a death grip on them
    • Look to the future, leverage lessons learned that helped EMC succeed where others failed
    • EMC needs NetApp as a strong NAS competitor as each plays stronger when against the other. This is like watching world-class athletes, artists or musicians that step up their games or works when paired with another

    What I see NTAP needing to do

    • Doing an acquisition in an adjacent space, perhaps even a reverse merger of sorts to move up and out into a broader space that compliments their core offerings. For example, something outside of the normal comfort zone which arguably Datadomain would have been close to their comfort zone. Likewise acquiring a software player such as Commvault would be similar to EMC having acquired Legato, Documentum and so forth. That is NetApp would have to do a series of those. So why not something really big like a reverse merger or partial acquisition of say Symantecs data protection and management group (aka the old Veritas suite including backup, management tools, clustered file server software, volume managers etc).
    • In addition to adjacent acquisition, opportunities plays such as the recent Bycast move makes sense however then those need to be integrated and rolled out similar to what EMC has done with so many of their purchases.
    • Minimize or cut channel contention and confusion both internal across products and with partners.
    • NetApp started at the lower end SMB, grew into the SME and now enterprise place, however they tried with the StorVault and backed out of that market leaving it to EMC Iomega, Cisco, HP, Dell and others. Maybe they do not need a low-end play, however I rather liked the low-end StorVault story as well as where it was going. Oh well, needless to say I ended up buying an EMC Iomega IX4 as the StorVault left the market. Hmm, does that mean NetApp should acquire SNAP or Drobo or some other low-end SOHO play? Only if the price is right and there is an existing customer base and channel in place otherwise it would be a distraction from the core business. BTW, did I mention EMC Legato, oh excuse me, Networker came from the desktop and SMB environment however grew to the enterprise (yes I know, that is debatable) however now is difficult to put into SOHO environments.
    • Does NetApp need a stronger block storage play, perhaps a 3PAR acquisition? Maybe, perhaps not depending on if they are competing for today’s market or tomorrows.
    • Does NetApp need to be acquired? I think they can stay independent; however they need to expand their presence and footprint from a product, partner and customer perspective.
    • NetApp needs a strong NAS competitor in the likes of an EMC as the competition IMHO makes each stronger as well as providing competition which should play well for customers. Not to mention the back and forth mud ball and fire cracker tossing can be entertaining for some.

    What is your take?

    Are EMC and NetApp two companies on parallel tracks offset by time and perhaps execution?

    Cast your vote and see what others have indicated in the following poll.

    View from VIA Rail Canada taken using Gregs iFlip

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and VMware vExpert. Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio.

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Post Holiday IT Shopping Bargains, Dell Buying Exanet?

    For consumers, the time leading up to the holiday Christmas season is usually busy including door busters as well as black Friday among other specials for purchasing gifts and other items. However savvy shoppers will wait for after Christmas or the holidays altogether perhaps well into the New Year when some good bargains can become available. IT customers are no different with budgets to use up before the end of the year thus a flurry of acquisitions that should become evident soon as we are entering earnings announcement season.

    However there are also bargains for IT organizations looking to take advantage of special vendor promotions trying to stimulate sales, not to mention for IT vendors to do some shopping of their own. Consequently, in addition to the flurry of merger and acquisition (M and A) activity from last summer through the fall, there has been several recent deals, some of which might make Monty Hall blush!

    Some recent acquisition activity include among others:

    • Dell bought Perot systems for $3.9B
    • DotHill bought Cloverleaf
    • Texas Memory Systems (TMS) bought Incipient
    • HP bought IBRIX and 3COM among others
    • LSI bought Onstor
    • VMware bought Zimbra
    • Micron bought Numonyx
    • Exar bought Neterion

    Now the industry is abuzz about Dell, who is perhaps using some of the lose change left over from holiday sales as being in the process of acquiring Israeli clustered storage startup Exanet for about $12M USD. Compared to previous Dell acquisitions including EqualLogic in 2007 for about $1.4B or last years Perot deal in the $3.9B range, $12M is a bargain and would probably not even put a dent in the selling and marketing advertising budget let alone corporate cash coffers which as of their Q3-F10 balance sheet shows about $12.795B in cash.

    Who is Exanet and what is their product solution?
    Exanet is a small Israeli startup providing a clustered, scale out NAS file serving storage solution (Figure 1) that began shipping in 2003. The Exanet solution (ExaStore) can be either software based, or, as a package solution ExaStore software installed on standard x86 servers with external RAID storage arrays combining as a clustered NAS file server.

    Product features include global name space, distributed metadata, expandable file systems, virtual volumes, quotas, snapshots, file migration, replication, and virus scanning, and load balancing, NFS, CIFS and AFP. Exanet scales up to 1 Exabyte of storage capacity along with supporting large files and billions of file per cluster.

    The target market that Exanet pursues is large scale out NAS where performance (either small random or large sequential I/Os) along with capacity are required. Consequently, in the scale out, clustered NAS file serving space, competitors include IPM GPFS (SONAS), HP IBRIX or PolyServe, Sun Lustre and Symantec SFS among others.

    Clustered Storage Model: Source The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)
    Figure 1 Generic clustered storage model (Courtesy The Green and Virtual Data Center(CRC)

    For a turnkey solution, Exanet packaged their cluster file system software with various vendors storage combined with 3rd party external Fibre Channel or other storage. This should play well for Dell who can package the Exanet software on its own servers as well as leverage either SAS or Fibre Channel  MD1000/MD3000 external RAID storage among other options (see more below).

    Click here to learn more about clustered storage including clustered NAS, clustered and parallel file systems.

    Dell

    Whats the dell play?

    • Its an opportunity to acquire some intellectual property (IP)
    • Its an opportunity to have IP similar to EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp, Oracle and Symantec among others
    • Its an opportunity to address a market gap or need
    • Its an opportunity to sell more Dell servers, storage and services
    • Its an opportunity time for doing acquisitions (bargain shopping)

    Note: IBM also this past week announced their new bundled scale out clustered NAS file serving solution based on GPFS called SONAS. HP has IBRIX in addition to their previous PolyServe acquisition, Sun has ZFS and Lustre.

    How does Exanet fit into the Dell lineup?

    • Dell sells Microsoft based NAS as NX series
    • Dell has an OEM relationship with EMC
    • Dell was OEMing or reselling IBRIX in the past for certain applications or environments
    • Dell has needed to expand its NAS story to balance its iSCSI centric storage story as well as compliment its multifunction block storage solutions (e.g. MD3000) and server solutions.

    Why Exanet?
    Why Exanet, why not one of the other startups or small NAS or cloud file system vendors including BlueArc, Isilon, Panasas, Parascale, Reldata, OpenE or Zetta among others?

    My take is that probably because those were either not relevant to what Dell is looking for, lack of seamless technology and business fit, technology tied to non Dell hardware, technology maturity, the investors are still expecting a premium valuation, or, some combination of the preceding.

    Additional thoughts on why Exanet
    I think that Dell simply saw an opportunity to acquire some intellectual property (IP) probably including a patent or two. The value of the patents could be in the form of current or future product offerings, perhaps a negotiating tool, or if nothing else as marketing tool. As a marketing tool, Dell via their EqualLogic acquisition among others has been able to demonstrate and generate awareness that they actually own some IP vs. OEM or resell those from others. I also think that this is an opportunity to either fill or supplement a solution offering that IBRIX provided to high performance, bulk storage and scale out file serving needs.

    NAS and file serving supporting unstructured data are a strong growth market for commercial, high performance, specialized or research as well as small business environments. Thus, where EqualLogic plays to the iSCSI block theme, Dell needs to expand their NAS and file serving solutions to provide product diversity to meet various customer applications needs similar to what they do with block based storage. For example, while iSCSI based EqualLogic PS systems get the bulk of the marketing attention, Dell also has a robust business around the PowerVault MD1000/MD3000 (SAS/iSCSI/FC) and Microsoft multi protocol based PowerVault NX series not to mention their EMC CLARiiON based OEM solutions (E.g. Dell AX, Dell/EMC CX).

    Thus, Dell can complement the Microsoft multi protocol (block and NAS file) NX with a packaged (Dell servers and MD (or other affordable block storage) powered with Exanet) solution. While it is possible that Dell will find a way to package Exanet as a NAS gateway in front of the iSCSI based EqualLogic PS systems, which would also make for an expensive scale out NAS solution compared to those from other vendors.

    Thats it for now.

    Lets see how this all plays out.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    Technorati tags: Dell