Touching The Elephant
HDSer here...
I couldn't help but comment, though I'll politely excuse myself from getting into a debate about definitions. Discretion and valor... what's that line?
However, I would argue that reading these quarterly numbers and having the takeaway being that we either need big changes is a bit like the story of the blind men and the elephant. A bit too much context missing for these numbers to be useful...
We only had introduced a definitionally approved "AFA" in the VSP F Series in November. At the end of selling cycles and before the holiday season. We weren't expecting gangbuster numbers.
One of the points raised above is also very true. Sometimes we position F Series and sell F Series, sometimes we position F Series and a customer prefers the non-definition-compliant all flash G Series. It is what it is, customers are happy, market AFA number crunchers, not so much.
And, of course, we also introduced the all new HFS A Series solution in January - post these numbers. As a new line for us, it's still ramping (I'll admit that), but when it hits full stride, look out.
Before you worry about our portfolio, or who is acquiring who, let's remember that this is only one way to look at the market. The flash market is maturing and customers who thought every flash array is mission-critical ready are starting to ask way harder questions - about active/active capabilities, about replication automation, about data eradication, etc. etc.. As a vendor who's Top 10 customers each quarter average shipment size is over 1PB each, we are ready to answer those hard questions and more.
And that's before I mention the continued enhancements you'll see this year. :-)
Bob