Is VMax stuck on the runway?
By: Christophe Bertrand on July 17, 2009
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Looks like a bad plane ride these days for EMC on the VMax front. You can turn your cell phone back on but don’t expect to sip champagne if you’re selling VMax for a living. We’ve been looking for them in the field and like good seats on a plane, they’re scarce… but even discounted, they don’t sell.
How many VMax are out there? Remember how it was code-named “Tigon”, an infertile hybrid cat? What I’m hearing is really not that many despite many traditional sales techniques to entice customers.
Interestingly enough, Mr. Burke from EMC avoided the question when I asked him directly on Michael Hay’s blog, essentially confirming that people are just not convinced.
These are tough times, and customers are very smart and will thoroughly evaluate the economic and technological merits of new storage infrastructure investments. Saying you’ve got a new system, that’s not compatible with the previous generations, and benchmarking it against your own previous poor performers is just not cutting it anymore, even with the great marketing spin EMC put on VMax.
So what have you heard?
Comments (4 )
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the storage anarchist on 18 Jul 2009 at 4:06 am
[CB: Sorry Barry, your comment was caught in the SPAM filter. After reading your comment on Michael's blog, I checked the filter. I do not censor comments.]
I’m sure everyone knows that EMC is in the midst of quarterly earnings quiet period.
I’ll be happy to discuss sales figures when EMC makes them public.
Oh, and you never answered MY question: what exactly is HDS’ answer to the fact that Virtual Provisioning for both DMX and V-Max is now FREE, no strings attached?
Christophe Bertrand on 22 Jul 2009 at 11:33 am
Hi Barry,
See my comment in your post about the comment filter. No censorship here. We just automatically filter actual spam, but sometimes legitimate posts get caught in the net. Sorry about that.
I understand the quiet period requirement on your end and will be looking for the VMax numbers in the earnings announcement. I am sure many will be comparing notes in the industry.
There were some good blogs on what HDS is doing regarding our valuable and efficient Dynamic Provisioning feature. For more info:
http://blogs.hds.com/hu/2009/04/switch-it-on.html
http://thestoragearchitect.com/2009/04/22/enterprise-computing-hds-switches-on-virtualisation-for-free/
Let me respectfully make one comment on your offer: don’t say no strings attached! Customers still have to use DMX (since we’ll keep quiet about VMax). That’s not a string… but it may be a rope.
Michael Hay on 24 Jul 2009 at 4:38 pm
Again Barry nice to know that you are showing your real innovative colors: Sales and Marketing and enticing us to copy it!
the storage anarchist on 08 Aug 2009 at 4:51 am
EMC PR informs me that EMC does not make public statements about unit sales of any of our products, so I am not able to provide specifics for V-Max sales. But I can say this:
V-Max sales are meeting or exceeding the revenue and unit plans.
And I won’t play word games with you: Effective this quarter, Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning is provided at no additional charge for all Symmetrix DMX3/4 and V-Max systems. Copy it if you like, or ignore it…no matter to me.