EMC exec flames El Reg Smack! Our story about Nexenta at the VMworld 2011 Hands-on Lab (HoL) created a frisson, more than that in fact, and an impassioned EMC exec who was quoted in the story sent in this rebuttal comment. It's forthright stuff. Here it is: Disclosure – EMCer here Chris, I know you need to create high drama to drive views to your …
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This post has been deleted by its author
Being "passionate" about your work is a massively overused claim these days but this guy impressed me in that he not only cared about the product and service but actually knew his stuff.
All credit to him for this letter (unless someone can disprove his claims!) and thanks Reg for printing it.
Ah yes, but thumbs up to el reg for publishing the rebuttal, in full, on the front page, in a way it knew lots of people would look at (surely everyone reads FOTW).
So, I reckon the reg comes out ahead on points + as a bonus, if the guy's facts aren't right then others will point that out and then they do have a story!
If it were a UK print daily, corrections and apologies would appear at the bottom of page 93.
In 4 point type.
Marketing spin dosen't constitute smackdown.
Truth is, despite the expense, CIO/CTOs love EMC because they know their jobs are safe buying storage from them. EMC gear breaks just like everyone else's, but the quality of their support and post install team is rivaled only by their sales team.
If you're building datacenters for Bulge bracket banks or the Government there's only 2 players in the game - and HP are struggling. At that level Nextenta are not even close for contention. It's not just about price, it's about knowing you've got a solid solution. Speaking of which I admire EMC's restraint for not lobbing the obvious brick back at Nextenta - so tell me about the impact of the Oracle aquistition on on the longevity of your core OS and plans to shift away deo
it.. Fugly!
At smaller sites the likes of Nextenta and my personal favorite QuantaStor (If you've never heard of them they're REALLY work a look) come into play.
Speaking of QuantaStor, they behave very much like a tiny EMC in terms of customer service and support. Their features are great an their pricing is good, and they know who their customers are and what they need.
Nextenta are using tennisballs to take in an armored division. Poor choice of strategy, even though they're using some sporty tennis balls!
I read the original article and the rebuttle from the EMCer, and I think El Reg might have been a bit naughty in its original post.
It would be a bit like AutoExpress posting that "we took the 16 year old diesel VW and the new Lambo to do the shopping. The VW cruised to victory with a massive six bags of shopping while the Lambo sturggled with my Kellogs Variety Pack. Lambo have just been pwnd."
The infamous "yes and no" answer. Yes, the challenge was to do the shopping and get it home, but you wouldn't buy a Lambo to do the shopping in.
(This analogy was bought to you by The Acme Analogy Corp Foundation, where analogies are like a VW....)
A most pithy comment sir bear_all, most pithy. In fact it takes the pith. The thing of it is though, inn'it shurely, that the Lambo (EMC and NetApp) were there at VMworld's HOL to do the same job as the Nexenta (VW cheap-mobile), and the Nexenta kept up with the EMC and NetApp big boys.
For EMC to say its VNX twosome were over-specced for the job and so the Nexenta cost comparison isn't fair or accurate, and Nexenta-supplied prices are wrong (so what are EMC's and NetApp's prices?) is a bit... well... rich is the word that comes to mind.
And yes, Chad Sakac is a straightforward guy who tells it how he sees it, and Nexenta CEO Evan Powell is a straightforward guy who tells it how he sees it - and they differ. So who is right? We'll put a call in to King Solomon and ask him...
Chris.
Disclosure - EMCer here.
Chris - thank you for posting the comment, was honourable to post it in my view.
FWIW - while I disagree with the original article, I do think Nexenta did well on their initial participation in the HoL. Like my first comment - these sorts of live mass events are full of danger, problems, and it's a real test of tech and people.
With that said, back to the marketplace battlefield - where there is enough room for broad competition, and broad choice.
(the author of the response) - Chad Sakac (aka virtual geek - http://virtualgeek.typepad.com)
PS, if it seems erudite, overly polite, low on swear count - that's purely because I'm Canadian. Trust me - where I come from, that was a full out furious flame :-)
Knowing the author, I was shocked and dismayed by the relative level of profanity and malevolence displayed in his note. But seriously, world, this is the real face of the Evil Machine Company. Thoughtful, respectful, and restrained. As long as you are not a member of the Tea Party, apparently.
I remember all the same comments when IBM dissed the impact of client-server on their mainframe business. Remember Microsoft and UNIX?
The "solution you'll never be fired for buying" argument is good until the competition works well, the price is 50% and the the performance 2x. And perish the thought that competition does some things you can't do!
People still buy mainframes, but there is zero interest in the technology press about them. Big Iron storage will likely go that way, with the 50% coming from commodity components made in China, the 2x coming from flash/SSD, and the new features coming from a designed from scratch Openstack with a very powerful S3-like object store.
Sic transit!
From all vendors EMC is the least likely to provide samples for benchmarking. Why? "...because uh, your tests doesn't relate to real-world conditions..."
So I would have expected nothing less than this very long response, the latter part of it with that amount of times where "sexy" and approval of EMC kit in the same sentence, a clear lack of spelling mistakes comes through as being censored by their top marketing exec pre-"send button".
Not that We'll all run and buy some white boxes and befriend Nexenta tomorrow, but shame it must be a scary world for you if an article praising a different vendor passes through the channel Mr big-bucks, "no you can't have SNMP on our basic model", EMC.
Disclosure - EMCer here.
@VeeMan - trust me - that's just how I write and speak :-) Had it come through any approval by marketing - all the technical info would have been cut. And YES, I'm **THAT** verbose (much to my wife's chagrin). If you want evidence of the type of person I am - just read my blog (easy - google "virtual geek"). I've been out there for a while, so who I am is no secret.
I'd quit before being censored in the way you suggest. Coaching, guidance - man, I need that constantly. But changing what I say? Never. My comments are my own - my blog is my own - for better or for worse....
Also - FWIW - theres a lot of "old tapes" in your response. We're pretty active in the benchmarking game - and have been through 2010 (and will continue). We've learned and adapted. True - almost all benchmarks (at least in storage land) don't reflect well on the nature of the bizarro-world that is the real world - all shared storage subsystems very rarely support a single type of workload at a given time. That said - the lesson was learnt. People like "record breakers", so - were doing it constantly now.
Well, I am one of your bloody customers, and I'm must say I'm quite unhappy if I may "speak".
If it weren't for running contracts signed in my (government) organisation well above my head, we would have dumped EMC by now where I manage things.
Your tech support sucks big time these days and keeps going worse, especially the response times, qualification and spare parts logistics. I don't know if it's specific to EMC France, but support used to be quite decent 2 or 3 years ago but it's been going down the drain since then. Nowadays the kind of service we get for the (expensive) maintenance and support contracts we pay for is plain and simply unacceptable.
H/W reliability isn't what it used to be either. We keep replacing drives on our latest Clariion and we have a lot of failures on our Centeras.
Have you complained? If you go up the account chain there are several people who will look into what's going on. The last time I filled out a survey I got a rather huge response the same day. If your CE isn't cutting it, say something to your account team.
I'm going to guess that you are replacing a lot of Seagates on your latest Clariion.
@Alain
Another point to consider, storage companies don't manufacture the drives. Seagate, Hitachi GST, and in some cases WD do. Some arrays are better than others at detecting failures proactively, but those drives could have ended up in any array and would be failing regardless.
Disclosure, EMCer here.
@Alain - to double-up on J.T.'s comment - please escalate.
Actually, let me apologize first - you shouldnt be having support issues, and I'm sincerely sorry to hear that.
If you don't know how, or where, to escalate with your account team - you can contact me. Easiest way to do this while remaining anonymous is to post a comment on my blog (http://virtualgeek.typepad.com). I won't post your comment, but will direct you internally poste haste. If you can also get me SR (service request numbers), I can followup with the people that gave you unsatisfactory service.
BTW guys - most CLARiiONs are now 3-5 years old, and are pretty aged. And, JT has obviously been around the block (not saying there is any issue with any specific component), but as with anything mass manufactured, when a part fails, there is a tendency to fail in many places/customers at once (as there was a manufacturing issue).
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