SDI Wars: EMC must FORGET ARRAYS, adapt or disappear Register storage supremo Chris Mellor has recently been reporting on EMC's slow descent into corporate depression due to a combination of activist investors and recalcitrant internecine political strife. There's nothing surprising here, I've been hearing the same things all across the EMC federation, though I've no inclination …
EMC owns what 75% of vmware? what's the point of trying to compete against them aggressively when the profits from either go to the same place?
EMC has this too which I didn't know about till recently (I don't follow them too closely)
http://www.emc.com/storage/ecs-appliance/index.htm
(you won't find any special array hardware sauce there)
so it seems to me EMC has already been thinking along these lines, so nothing new for them to learn here.
EMC only owns 80% of VMware...and it under increasing pressure to reduce that. Time will likely come in the not-to-distant future where EMC must be ready to stand on it's own, even against VMware.
Now, if they can hold the wolves at bay and keep hold of VMware, that's awesome. I honestly think they're stronger together than apart...with one caveat: they must clearly define the areas of competition and cooperation between the companies. If the EMC federation is going to stay as a single entity, and behave as a single entity, they need to eliminate overlap between the companies and start working (and selling) more as a single cohesive unit.
Right now, they're half friend, half foe with a political landscape between the companies that is peppered with nuclear landmines and subject to periodic orbital bombardment. All signs are that both companies are headed for a split, as much because of internecine pissing contests within the federation as from any external interference.
Please do understand that I don't believe EMC to be fatally wounded or fundamentally unable to compete. I think they're one of the only companies out there that has a chance. But if they are to have that chance they need to either clear the air with VMware once and for all (and that means internally to both companies, with partners, investors and customers,) or they need to kick the offspring loose to fend for itself and gird their loins for war.
Either/or, but the time for dalliances with coopetition is over. War is coming, and if both EMC and VMware don't get their heads out of their politically compromised asses they don't stand a chance of surviving it.
Screw MS; Openstack is coming along. For the SMB space, at least, it's really worth looking at. Scale Computing does good work. PistonCloud is okay, and Metacloud is amaze.
VMware may be the best of the best...but the reality is that most businesses can do just fine using any of the rest.
It’s these kinds of articles that make me want to go into journalism. I really don’t think there’s anything that hasn't already been said here. It’s basically just a very flowery industry overview with lots of finger wagging and vague doomsday type statements (you have to do better, change is a coming…).
Anyone can tell you change is coming, I don’t think we are in doubt of that. What am in doubt of actual market predictions or genuine advice/observations based on market history.
Only thing stopping me is my terrible spelling and grammar. :)
Change is always "coming". But there's a hell of a difference between "change is coming" circa 2001, where the only interesting developments of substance in the storage world for the next 10 years were flash (it goes faster than disks. OoooooooooooOOOooo.) and deduplication (EMC lost a fraction of some market share to NetApp. OooooooooOOOooo.)
It's completely different today. The changes coming are not vague, nebulous and in some distant future. They are occurring all around us right now, and there is a veritable explosion of new storage companies out there actively changing the industry. The storage industry hasn't seen this kind of innovation since centralized storage for first introduced.
That is what makes this different.
I could wave my hands and say "change is coming to the operating system market" and try to sound all doom and gloom too. Lots of people do it. The truth is, however, there's fuck all happening there beyond slow, incremental evolution. Even Docker's popularization of containers is not a paradigmatic change. It will be dealt with using existing bureaucratic processes and no major powers will be harmed by that event.
What's happening now in the storage world is totally different. Everything is in flux and even the mightiest can fall. This is the point where empires are won...or lost. It is not a vague element of "change is coming" but, instead, "real change is upon us now...adapt or die."
Mellor asserts...
"there is no potential storage array acquisition which would not damage VMAX/VNX/Isilon interests"
You accept this as a truism, and imply that EMC executives might agree with you which leads you to...
"If EMC's executives can't understand that simple fact of business, it's time to fire the lot of them."
After quoting Steve Jobs, of course.("If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will.")
Is this the kind of wisdom that "younger executives" would bring to the table?
I suggest you read a book that EVERY EMC Executive has read and clearly understands.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244
Take a look at this case study in the book:
https://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/~charlesw/s591/Readings/Class03_IndustryLifeCycles/Christensen1993_BHR.pdf
Then look at the history of acquisitions at EMC.
Starting in 1999 with Data General.
No one can credibly claim that EMC's behavior indicates that your premise holds water.
The world is changing. Not every big company will survive.
But there will always be critics sitting on the sidelines.
Oh, I've read the innovator's dilemma. Several times. While it contains some worthwhile insights it is absolutely not gospel, nor universally applicable. I've also read that case study, by the way, amongst a few others. I have also done a very thorough look at EMC's acquisition history...as was a looking into the individuals in positions of power and done my homework on current politics, tensions, partnerships, and power games.
EMC is not the rock of ages. They are far more brittle than most are willing to accept. And yes, I absolutely do believe in the applicability of the Jobsian quote "if you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will."
Arrays are the past. They will be around for the next 25 years, but the peak is here. They are no longer going to drive growth. This is as a result of several other industry trends that can be boiled down to their most poignant essence as is directly applicable to EMC: "resizing LUNs does not add value to the business."
The future lies in software defined infrastructure. It lies in using the computers we buy, not in configuring, managing or maintaining them. To be perfectly blunt, those in charge of EMC haven't figured this out, and they absolutely do not want to hear it.
They are invested – financially and emotionally – in the old way of doing things, and bitter holy wars are fought within that company over any suggestion that the world is changing around them. To say nothing of the intercompany firefights within the federation, or the alienation of partners.
Whatever EMC's past, they are not presently prepared to evolve. Despite this, the biggest change in the computer industry since the introduction of the personal computer is occurring around us. Reality doesn't care what you – or EMC executives – think. It will occur.
As the price of commodity hardware drops the buyers have a harder time to justify the higher price of custom hardware. Is EMC having trouble moving from a hardware + software company to mainly software company? Other companies have had big internal political problems when the people who controlled the hardware side of the company were losing political power to the software side. Is the price of commodity SSDs going to drop so low that traditional spinning rust manufacturers go out of business? In some sense the part of the disk controller software has moved to the ssd controller and is included in the commodity price.
Oracle does not innovate or create new products that customers want. EMC does try to be better. I could see EMC / VM trying to create a software defined "lights out" infrastructure but it will take much internal pushing aside the hardware team. In contrast Oracle would do a lot marketing with a rebranded snake oil Java vm and only achieve huff and puff.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
