EMC: Kerr-ching! $430m XtremIO gulp's paying off... Hello, $1bn a year

Monday 26th January 2015 15:13 GMT chrismevans

Only EMC's View

"AFAs are not right … for workloads that require mainframe support." - because EMC's product doesn't support it. There's no reason to say mainframe services couldn't benefit from flash and in fact in the 1980's we had Memorex and others (EMC also I believe) selling small scale flash devices for M/F.

"AFAs are not right… for workloads that require "classic enterprise array" data services like huge at scale replication … There are no AFAs that support this (yet)." - because EMC's product doesn't support this. Again, just because EMC doesn't support it, doesn't mean it isn't required. Incidentally other vendors like HP 3PAR StoreServ and HDS HUSVM DO support these features.

"AFAs are not right …for the "oceans of object storage" or for traditional (vs. new transactional and in-memory) batch HDFS use cases." - this is becoming less true - in fact object vendors are adding flash to their products to support high performance demands (see Cleversafe).

It would be interesting to know how much of the $1bn run rate is newly acquired business and how much is business that would have been placed on other EMC platforms...

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1. Monday 26th January 2015 15:50 GMT DeepStorage
  
  No way to know
  
  Unfortunately Chris there's no way to know how many Xtremio deals fall into each of the following:
  
  1 - We bleed EMC and would buy whatever they are selling. VNX AFA or VMAX full of flash if XIO not available.
  
  2 - We use a lot of EMC kit and were looking at Pure/SF but EMC sold us XIO at deep discount to keep us from seeing how good alternatives are.
  
  3 - We wouldn't have bought EMC if XIO wasn't there to buy
  
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2. Tuesday 27th January 2015 03:44 GMT Michael Duke
  
  Re: Only EMC's View
  
  Except that HP 3Par and HDS HUSVM are NOT AFA's.
  
  They are hybrid arrays without disk, there are significant differences in latency between a hybrid box with just SSD (VNX/3Par/V7000/HUSVM) and a true AFA (Xtreme-IO / IBM Flash System / Pure etc.)
  
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  1. Tuesday 27th January 2015 09:24 GMT pd_p
    
    Re: Only EMC's View
    
    nonsensical pure-breds vs. muggle-born argument.. didn't make sense in the Rowling world and doesn't make sense here. After all, an array delivering hundreds of thousands of IOPS consistently at sub-millisecond latencies (as low as 300 microsec for random reads without cache hits and 200 microsec for random writes), with features like Dedup is nothing but an AFA. Care to show Pure/XtremIO "latencies".
    
    I think the best argument would be "if an array delivers six-nines availability guarantee, it CANNOT be an all-flash array"
    
    --------
    
    HP 3PAR Employee
    
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  2. Tuesday 27th January 2015 09:28 GMT Rulon
    
    Re: Only EMC's View
    
    You need to check your facts. Or maybe you need to simply not fall into the trap of defining things according to a narrow definition that is a disservice to your customers and is calculated to blind them to legitimate competition. Basically, what you are saying is that there is some kind of inherent advantage in being built from the ground-up even if that 'ground-up' model is lacking features, has a really, really hard time with upgrades, very limited HA, and will be totally obsolete when the next super-fast disk technology hits the market. Being built from the 'ground-up' is only an advantage if it actually produces advantages. It's like telling people that only 8 cylinder cars are fast. That argument only works on customers who never drove a Porsche with a 320 hp flat-six.
    
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  3. Tuesday 27th January 2015 14:47 GMT Man Mountain
    
    Re: Only EMC's View
    
    What utter nonsense. Nobody buys an all flash array because it is an AFA, they buy it because it is bloody fast. HP 3PAR is bloody fast (and can be described as an AFA if you wanted to be pedantic). And the advantage is it has all the functionality that EMC seem to think no one can deliver!!
    
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  4. Friday 30th January 2015 08:37 GMT angryguy
    
    Re: Only EMC's View
    
    Is that why the 3PAR array is the only one to submit an SPC-1 benchmark with under 1ms latency response time?
    
    Is that why 3PAR has a much better RAW to usable than any other product except XtremIO? (Admittedly XtremIO does really great with RAW to usable but the fact that 3PAR smokes everyone else in this still debunks your point.)
    
    And last I checked, the 3PAR product is the only one whose 5 year warranty has NO caveats.
    
    I'm sorry but this nonsense about "true AFA" vs "hybrid AFA" is religious vomit and has no technical merit. It's just marketing bs spewed by the Pure's & EMC's of the world. Heck I'd expect EMC to spew this because the VNX & VMAX are so old there's no way they can address Flash the way a 3PAR or HDS can.
    
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    1. Saturday 31st January 2015 18:34 GMT bitpushr
      
      Re: Only EMC's View
      
      NetApp's flash offerings also offer caveat-free warranties.
      
      Disclaimer: I am a NetApp employee.
      
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Monday 26th January 2015 15:46 GMT Anonymous Coward

leaving to PureStorage

glad it's doing well, why are people leaving EMC and going to PureStorage on mass?

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1. Monday 26th January 2015 17:16 GMT M. B.
  
  Re: leaving to PureStorage
  
  "en masse"
  
  Also, Pure is full of VC cash, so I imagine they can pony up some big signing bonuses for top talent. People like money!
  
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2. Monday 26th January 2015 17:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  As Chuck Hollis of EMC fame used to say :-
  
  "They're raiding the roadmap".........
  
  This is simply intended to make EMC Customers hold off on that RFP / POC / purchase of Pure, 3PAR, Solidfire etc. What it's saying is EMC should have something competitive at some point in the future. Which although I'm sure is true, it completely brushes aside the fact that the other vendors (who already have these features) aren't standing still either. They have feature maturity today not in six month time and crucially they also have roadmaps above and beyond what V4 may or may not offer at some undisclosed point in the future.
  
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3. Monday 26th January 2015 18:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: leaving to PureStorage
  
  "leaving to PureStorage
  
  glad it's doing well, why are people leaving EMC and going to PureStorage on mass?"
  
  The promise of personal wealth, and professional growth.
  
  EMC is a big, mature company. Opportunity to grow can be stifled by politics and financial reality.
  
  Until recently Pure was offering compensation packages that defy economic constraints because they have none. When you are spending other people's private money you can pay a sales team $2M in compensation on $2.5M in sales. Same team at EMC would earn 1/5th the money.
  
  Now Pure has to scramble to clean up the evidence of the "party at Mom's house" and get ready for the world to have a look at the books. So the incentives to go there are massively different.
  
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Monday 26th January 2015 21:30 GMT Anonymous Coward

Constant Attrition

EMC has had to (and will always) continuously fight various cash-rich start-ups, pecking away at niche parts of their business. It is inevitable that some make more impact than others. Buying EMC is not always about the $/GB or the lack of a "special" capability it has now. RPO, Support, Integration & Skill base are often dismissed, but are just as important. Buying EMC is like the old Big Blue days - 'no-one got fired for buying IBM'. Except that, when you bolt a bunch of EMC tech together, you do actually often get more than the sum of the parts, which is usually a good thing. It's horses for courses and the courses let alone the rides, are all different. You pick the best product / solution that fits - nothing is better or worse than anything else, as everyone is an "expert" and everyone has an opinion.

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