And "Hulk" makes 10

EMC just wrapped up their annual user/partner conference in Vegas, and believe it or not - announced even more incompatible HW/SW platforms for their poor sales, partner and customer communities to wade through in search of "simple" solutions to business problems.

EMC - Where buzzwords live

Never missing an opportunity to jump on a proven buzzword bandwagon, EMC managed to add Deduplication, MAID/spin-down, Green, Reduced Energy, and of course the ubiquitous "TCO" to their backup repertoire.  Everyone's favorite storage curmudgeon Jon Toigo had a pretty good take on the announcement as well as the paid analyst commentary.

Cornering the white lab-coat market

By my simple count, the ideal EMC customer would be subjected today to no less than *ten* disparate storage platforms offered by EMC.  The only rational explanation I can think of for this cruel maze of product complexity offered by EMC is a new business model - buying all the white lab-coats available on the market at low prices in order to restrict supply.  Why do I think that?

Because there will be insatiable demand by the mass of unfortunate EMC customers who will be convinced they need professional services to glue it all together.  That will drive up prices and enable EMC to bundle the necessary white-lab coats (at a premium) for the army of insourced our outsourced IT staff required to plan, build, run, troubleshoot, repair and ultimately retire this incompatible morass of equipment:

1. DMX (If you care about your data)
2. CLARiiON (For those who can't afford EMC's best)
3. Invista (Too easy, so I'll pass judgement)
4. Celerra (Exposing EMC's supply chain immaturity)
5. RainFinity (The only disruptive, "non-disruptive" virtualization solution on the market)
6. Centera (How to lose data without worrying about knowing it)
7. CDL/EDL (FalconStor - soon to be the first OEM VTL victim at EMC, but not the last)
8. DL3D (Quantum - Because one OEM for VTL just isn't enough)
9. Avamar 4.0 (yet another way to burn host CPU cycles while deploying expensive FC storage where SATA belongs)
10. InfiniFlex (Hulk w/IBRIX- already anointed as the next Invista fiasco)
11. OceanStore (Maui - EMC's most public science project to date)

Try as I might, I couldn't keep this list down to 10, because EMC's complexity volume does indeed go to eleven.

Your IT staff - Asset or Liability?

Simplicity is relative in the enterprise, but there's no denying the advantages of a highly consolidated product suite, comprised of integrated homogeneous storage platforms or tight heterogeneous backup/recovery, security, replication and management solutions.

Among the many advantages of this approach is the ability to redeploy the same IT staff from the burden of supporting a complex storage infrastructure to the opportunity of higher-order projects with better ROI such as application optimization.  Namely improved time to market with higher quality.

Spinal Tap is cool, but with NetApp you can be a *real* Guitar Hero!

Activision's breakout at the recent Oracle OpenWorld was one of the most popular sessions at that event.

Their advanced form of NetApp-enabled IT Staff deployment actually fosters business breakthroughs (such as parallel development) not possible with other solutions.  Now that's a buzzword I'd much rather be associated with!

Comments

[Storagezilla]

-OnTap
-OnTap GX
-DataFort OS
-NearStore VTL

Running a bit behind as per usual but clearly getting there! And I was convinced you'd have a NearStore VTL annoucement at some stage this week, it cost me a few bucks to pay a bet but what with the current exchange rate you get $1000000 to €1 as it is.. ;)

[Val Bercovici]

Hey Zilla,

The Data ONTAP family (7G & GX) already has common HW & code base (Controller/WAFL/RAID-DP/etc...) and we have publicly announced our plans to converge the remaining features in our next major release.

How is that "Enginuity + FLARE + InvistaOS + DART + Linux + RainOS + CentraStar + IBRIX + OceanStore + lord-knows-what-else" fusion project coming along?

Note my distinction between homogeneous and heterogenous solutions above. The latter category doesn't need to be based on a common platform since by design it's targeted at pre-existing diverse environments (often EMC's :-)

All heterogenous solutions need to be is better than their incumbents, which based on the record sales of our VTL, Security & SRM solutions - seems to be proven by the market.

[the storage anarchist]

Try as you may, you really aren't being successful with your "jack of all trades, master of none" approach to storage.

A quick comparison of market caps, installed base, scalability, performance, availability, and composite revenue growth underscores the net importance of "different horses for different courses."

Rattle your (plastic) sabres all you'd like, but somehow I'm sure that were there to be such a thing as "NetApp World", attendance wouldn't be any where near the 9300+ that showed up in Las Vegas this week to listen, learn and support the #1 information storage company on the planet.

But I will give you credit for one thing: At least you have the honesty and integrity to acknowledge that if you really value your data, there's only one choice:

Symmetrix DMX!

Thanks so much for the unsolicited endorsement!

[Val Bercovici]

Welcome to Exposed Barry!

We prefer to think of ourselves as "Jack of the Right Trades, and working on Mastering them every day". Apparently Chris Mellor agrees. And by the looks of their latest Magic Quadrants (for NAS & SAN respectively) so does Gartner.

You see Barry, unlike EMC we at NetApp don't believe our own press. We actually rely on industry experts. We're also secure enough in our customer success that we don't need to boast about it at every occasion.

Congratulations on another EMC World. Too bad you had to renig on NetApp's registrations, as well as turn 400 of your own employees away at the last minute. That doesn't speak so well to the confidence you possess in your so-called "superiority".

Last but not least, I'm very glad to see you reinforce the storage class warfare within EMC, your products and your customer deployments.

NetApp views all our customers' data with the highest level of importance, but It's abundantly clear that EMC only offers that level of care to their wealthiest (i.e. Symmetrix) customers.

Your love of DMX above all others indicates that EMC CLARiiON AX, CX, Celerra NAS, Centera CAS, CDL, DL3D, Avamar and now InfiniFlex customers are truly 2nd-class citizens within the EMC mindset - and are effectively disenfranchised from EMC's "best".

Kinda makes you wonder...

[ted]

you are fuckin' funny!

[the storage anarchist]

If you've read my blog, you'll note that I disdain war metaphors...but there is no "class warfare" within EMC.

[ValB Says] -- Noted --

Rather, we have different horses for different courses, all flourishing within a common stable. We share a lot of the technology, and we optimize where necessitated by the target consumer.

[ValB Says] -----
Come on now, admit it StorageAnarchist, you threw up a little bit in your mouth as you wrote that sappy paragraph, didn't you? I know I sure did as I was reading it :)
[ValB Said] -----

And while you're still "working on mastering" the different courses, trying to make your square-with-a-notch-cut-out peg fit into holes it has no chance of actually filling, EMC is delivering solutions that are cost-effectively purpose-built for specific applications, spanning the world's smallest to largest storage solutions.

[ValB Says] -- That was a display of humility. Coming from EMC, I'm not surprised you didn't recognize it --

And at EMC, there are no "2nd-class citizens" - every product is designed to exactly satisfy the needs of its target customer (today AND tomorrow), and every one is #1 in its market segment(s), irrespective of what Gartner or Chris Mellor says about vision or ability to execute.

[ValB Says] -- Why believe the truth from independent sources when the dementia of your own press is so much more comforting? :) --

Contrast that to the NetApp customer, who must always accept some limitations or tradeoffs, since your One Trick Pony just isn't quite right for anything: flash drives? nope. Cache partitioning? nope. 2400 drives in an array? nope. Entry-level SOHO storage? nope. Mainframe storage? no can do. True CAS? nope. XAM? not yet. Heterogenous replication? nope. Multi-site replication? nope. Large-scale/low-cost bulk storage? nada. Scalable, predictable performance - even with >70-80% capacity utilization? not even close.

[ValB Says] -- Wow. The level of ignorance displayed in the paragraph above is staggering. I hope your salesforce carries that into every customer engagement against us. Setting the bar that far below reality is always helpful! :) --

Our customers get the point, even if you don't.

Heck, even your partner IBM gets it - that's why they still sell dozens of different storage products, instead of just the "N". And they even have 14 more to come (oh wait, that's "XIV" - sorry).

In fact, there are very good reasons that EMC, IBM, HP, Hitachi AND Sun all sell multiple storage solutions, while you guys alone are trying to scratch by with only one "general purpose" offering.

So why you do pick only on EMC, eh? (Or should I say "ay?"). Why don't you attack IBM's strategy of multiple offerings?

[ValB Says] -- EMC's antagonism, reflected in their blogs, makes it fun to "pick" on you. Have no fear, HP is on my list as well. I'll make you a deal, once you badmouth Dell (which shouldn't be too long now thanks to EqualLogic), I'll think about discussing IBM's non-NetApp products :) --

Oh, and by the way, just how are those margins from IBM looking these days? It must be tough having to compete against your own product, especially when the only thing that differentiates the two suppliers is price and service.

Finally, I'm sorry to hear about your EMC World experience...you (and many of EMC's own sales people) apparently misunderstood that "customers, partners and EMC engineers" intentionally excludes "sales reps and competitors." That's pretty much fundamental to EMC World as a forum for unfettered conversations between the paying customers and the developers.

Perhaps if you were to actually purchase and USE some EMC products to run your business, well then they just might let you in next year...maybe

[ValB Says] -- We already own some of your products, and they're heating up our data centers quite nicely. Unfortunately your contract prevents me from discussing it further --

At the very least, NetApp's IT department would have to spend less time working around those things that your developers haven't quite mastered yet :*)

[ValB Says] -- Thanks to NetApp's simplified product line, our IT department manages 10% of the complexity EMC's IT department must live with. So their time is well spent on mastering their craft --

[Lee Razo]

Hi Anarchist,

You make an excellent case. In fact it reminds me of something hi-fi stereo salesman recently told me:

"Contrast that to the Apple iPod customer, who must always accept some limitations or tradeoffs, since their One Trick Pony just isn't quite right for anything:

Front-end disc loading? Nope.
200 Disc CD changer? Sorry.
Skip correction? No can do.
33 1/3 RPM support? Sorry, charlie..."

I almost believed him too, until I realized how much technology had advanced in since 1980!

[the storage anarchist]

That's a good one, Lee.

You don't happen to drive a Yugo with racing stripes now, do you? ;*)

If one-size-fits-all, why do Chrysler, Ford, GMC, Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, Nissan and all the rest EACH make so many different 4-wheeled automobiles?

[Val Bercovici]

Ah... the trusty old car analogy. I was wondering when one of the EMC blogdroids would surface that one.

Here's the deal Anarchist - NetApp has already followed the proven model of successful global car companies - balance the demands of the various markets you're addressing with the simplest possible parts list and manufacturing model.

Extending the analogy even further - NetApp's cars all have 4 wheels, run on the same gas, are serviced by the same people, use the same roads and leverage the same familiar user interface (steering wheel, pedal locations, etc...)

OTOH - If EMC sold into the personal transportation market, there would be yaughts, planes, trains and cars in the showroom. Each would possess different modes of propulsion, use different sources of energy, be serviced by entirely different technicians, travel along different air/land/sea paths and of course have entirely different user interface controls (i.e. tiller, joysticks, etc...)

[Lee Razo]

Hi Anarchist,

Thanks for asking about my car! I've actually been driving an Audi A4 Sportline for the past couple of years, but the lease has just expired and I have decided to give it back and subscribe to something called Greenwheels:
http://www.expatica.com/nl/life_in/int_life/Dutch-community-car-service-Greenwheels.html

The Audi was nice and all, but I live in the city center of Amsterdam, and if you've ever been here I don't have to tell you that it was really more of a hassle than an asset.

To begin with it was costing me a fortune to park (not to mention that it usually cost me an extra 20-30 minutes a night to search for a parking spot where a car the size of an A4 might fit). It also seemed to be in the shop for maintenance and service more often than I got to use it (plus I found the Audi sales reps to be rather arrogant and with a bloated sense of entitlement).

On the other hand since I've started using the Greenwheels I get one at a moment's notice (and usually just a few hundred feet from my doorstep), it gets to its destination at about the same speed as my Audi once did, and the best part - I don't have to look for a parking spot when I get home, I just drop it off in its designated spot and leave the keys in the lockbox in the car. In fact I actually get exactly the same job done significantly faster and more easily with a dramatically lower TCO.

It's worth noting that Greenwheels is standardized on a single platform: The Peugeot 107 (Peugot 207s - based on the identical architecture - are also available if you need a little extra trunk space)

There was an interesting comment in that article I linked above about how, contrary to what you might expect, most of Greenwheels' customers tend to be higher educated people with higher than average salaries. The representative then goes on to speculate as to why that might be.

I guess you might say it’s a “car analogy” version of cloud computing. In fact it reminds me of what Oracle, SAP and a whole host of others have been using NetApp to do for their customers for years now:
http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2005/ndc3/052305ndcbcaward.html

I like your "horses" and "courses" analogies, but personally I'd just prefer to walk down the street and hop into a car.