Psst, keep this under your hat, but NetApp's new flash wunderkind will be unveiled on... NetApp is holding an Insight event in Las Vegas in October – and its new all-flash box FlashRay is set to steal the show. FlashRay is a designed-from-scratch solid-state storage array, and we’ve written about it here. Now it's likely to be fully unveiled before or in time for the Vegas event on 28 October, The Reg storage desk …
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Why does this mean that FlashRay will have been announced? I recall the parable of the IBM salesman on honeymoon, just standing at the foot of the bed telling his bride how good it's going to be.
I've also heard the FlashRay architect has already bailed from NetApp for a startup, which means it's either ready to ship or won't ship in our lifetimes.
How did you derive to this conclusion? We're making multiple bets in same manner other companies made multiple bets because in the end you'd rather have some overlaps than gaps plus no one in the industry really knows how all these trends are going to pan out and those who claim that do are mostly startups that hope the roulette ball lands on their number...
Disclosure: NetApp Employee
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I went to my 5th grader's parent-teacher conference a couple of weeks ago and the young math teacher said "Well, Alex is a very nice boy, very polite, and finishes his math tests quickly". To which my response was "If he finishes quickly then how come he gets Cs?". The morale of the story...While admittedly, the folks that move first do have an advantage in the short term, they are not necessarily the ones who will succeed in the end. This is not a 100 yard dash but a marathon.
The enterprise storage market is north of 30bln. If you add in the entry level and the Service Providers this is close to 50bln. Of that number, the AFA segment is almost a $1bln. In the scheme of things this is a very very small % although it's growing quickly.
The existence of the established vendors is not solely dependent on a single product. The existence of startups IS. While certainly startups tend to move quickly, they also tend to cut corners to get their product out. They have to in order to get revenue in as quickly as possible. We're developing a system that will be able to easily adapt to different technologies as these become mainstream and we're doing it in a manner that will not endanger our customers data.
Cheers
Disclosure: NetApp Employee
I agree Nick,
disclosure im an emc employee.
This is a marathon, and we know the folly of underestimating your competitors.
Im part of the technical team working on xtremio and even though its a marvel of technology now, we are also acutely aware of its current limitations, as im sure your dev teams are.
Were we have the advantage is over a years worth of real customer and engineers feedback, when we combine this with well established test and dev behaviours it helps with the final sprint.
Who were watching are the competitors who have had their all flash arrays out that little bit longer.
Also we have marketing guys and gals too and we know how to see past the marketing hype. I hope your flash product is a success as it will help drive us all on.
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