EMC announcements: Form over substance
By: Christophe Bertrand on January 19, 2011
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There has been a flurry of posts recently in the blogosphere comparing EMC’s VMAX and Hitachi’s VSP. Lots of details and perspectives have been provided by both camps. These loaded architectural discussions can be confusing for readers, even for those who are really savvy and know storage systems well. But there is a fundamental marketing discussion underlying these exchanges.
EMC used to be really good at product transitions. I say this with a lot of respect. But for whatever reason, things have changed. They’ve lost their “Mojo”.
It’s much like a recent candidate for Governor here in California who thought that a lot of (marketing) money could get you there. Well, the other guy spent a fraction and got the job. He was a better product for his audience, had a message that resonated, etc. We’ll see in time if the goods are delivered, but since it is politics, anything goes!
Today’s announcement by EMC was an interesting example of form over substance. It was a show, but it begged more questions than it provided answers. It was entertainment, just like a circus show with all the characters. They even had little Billy provisioning a storage device from his iPad. It must have cost a lot of money.
But seriously, it was updates and catch up, and a much-hyped relaunch of a low end product that seems to be missing the mark based on some early blog reviews.
Why make it simple when you can make it complex?
Over 40 products or solutions were discussed, but nothing really ground-breaking or that had not already been covered (leaked?) in the media recently. You’d think EMC would want to consolidate their portfolio as customers have been expecting. Make it simple. With so many products and solutions, one could easily get lost on the journey to the private cloud. And this complexity can only add operational costs. Also, there seemed to be a certain avoidance of discussing the high end of the market where VMAX is positioned. See why below.
Tough product transition
Back to my point, it’s marketing and it was a marketing show. Looking back 18 months, what is frankly astonishing to me is that EMC’s transition from DMX to VMAX was poor. Seriously, you can talk about chip sets until you’re blue in the face but this is just obfuscating the reality. Let me start with 3 items:
1) False Claims: VMAX was clearly not ready when announced and released. While this happens often in technology, claiming first to market when you make an announcement 18 months before you push it out is not being first to market. FAST was SLOW.
2) Performance: The product’s architecture was a bit of a gamble: it was a design predicated on scale out. In essence, if you can’t scale up, it’s hard to truly benefit from scale out. So…customers keep using DMX (an older scale up architecture). Of course, why wouldn’t they? I hope the transition to the next generation DMX will be non-disruptive if EMC decides to back away from VMAX. The problem with today’s performance announcement is this: asserting is not proving. In the field, we’re hearing that the product has serious performance issues. No one is buying that this is really being addressed. In his blog yesterday, Chris Evans provides a good piece of advice:
The performance and efficiency claims should be challenged by customers at every opportunity as only customer pressure will make EMC change their policy.
3) Value: As my esteemed colleague says: “If customers brought VMAX based on EMC’s support promises, they may only be able to recoup a year worth of usage before their VMAX technology must be refreshed due to its financial EOL (3 years). You can’t run your infrastructure on a vision.”
There are many other dimensions to yesterday’s announcements that will be covered by other bloggers and industry commentators in the next few days. My fundamental question is this: If you take away Evil Knievel, the puppies and the kids, the clown car act, the car sales guys….when the show is over, what are you left with? What’s really new? What have they just announced that’s not some form of repackaging?
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the storage anarchist on 24 Jan 2011 at 8:04 am
Your assertion that the DMX-VMAX transition was slow is contradicted by reality: the enterprise storage market grew in 2010, VMAX grew faster than the market, and Hitachi shrank.
As I noted in my recent blog post ( http://thestorageanarchist.typepad.com/weblog/2011/01/3016-commodity-vs-custom-hu-cares.html ), according to IDC Storage Tracker, VMAX gained over 10 points of share in the high end from Q1-Q3 2010 – share taken primarily from Hitachi/HP.
Proof that Done Right is a very real differentiator.
The more interesting fact is that the VSP which was announced 18 months AFTER VMAX uses the same Intel chipset (Harperton quad cores) as does VMAX. Hitachi prospects should be very concerned that the VSP was practically obsolete the day it shipped.
Christophe Bertrand on 24 Jan 2011 at 11:22 am
Barry,
Thank you for your input and reply. However, I confidently maintain my position, as it is based quite a bit on feedback from customers and other industry commentators, and will keep adding to it in the near future as I receive more. As for the numbers game, I think we had covered that in a previous exchange a long time ago ( http://blogs.hds.com/christophe/2009/07/is-vmax-stuck-on-the-runway.html ). I am sure we’ll meet again soon in the blogosphere!
Christophe
the storage anarchist on 26 Jan 2011 at 9:34 am
As with oxygen, a rapid loss of market share seems to make some people hallucinate.
IDC StorageTracker is the definitive source of historical platform sales data. You can choose to make up your own alternate reality, but the rest of the world prefers to use facts.
EMC stated yesterday that Symmetrix revenues grew 19% Y/Y. Care to share the USP-V+VSP revenue growth with us?
Christophe Bertrand on 26 Jan 2011 at 1:40 pm
Barry,
We are in our quiet period and therefore I cannot discuss financials….and yes, you are right: I admit I am still dizzy from the Bubba Knievel stunt.
Many of us in the industry keep wondering what was actually “game-changing” in your announcement? Too much marketing killed the message ultimately. And there were many claims that seemed to lack third-party validation. Would love to see some facts to back up your claims. If you’re unclear on what types of facts, I’m looking for the real ones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact
Christophe
the storage anarchist on 27 Jan 2011 at 9:11 am
I look forward to your financials when you come out of the quiet period within the next couple of weeks. Somehow I doubt you had a quarter representing even a fraction of what EMC accomplished in Q4′10.
As to “killing the message” for you, my apologies.
But then, you probably aren’t looking to buy any EMC storage in the next few months, are you?
I can assure you the intended audience has received the messages well – in fact, we’ve already sold out many of our Mega Tour cities (we are adding more). People like that we are delivering products that help them get where the economy and unbridled data growth are driving them to go. You can focus on attacking components of EMC’s portfolio, but the simple fact is that you don’t have the portfolio to meet customers’ needs.
And the IDC Market Share data underscore that FACT.
Christophe Bertrand on 27 Jan 2011 at 7:25 pm
Thank you for your perspective, Barry.
Dennis Ryan on 04 Feb 2011 at 2:28 am
What’s a quiet period?
Christophe Bertrand on 04 Feb 2011 at 12:54 pm
Dennis,
There are a couple of definitions. Usually, it’s the period between end of a quarter and when earnings results are issued, but it also can refer to a period of time after you’ve spoken to a prospect about VMAX….
Shane on 08 Feb 2011 at 2:16 pm
Whilst I find these “discussions” between Barry and the various HDS bloggers entertaining in much the same way that 2 women pulling each other’s hair and trying to scratch each other’s eyes out is entertaining, I’m also invariably left shaking my head. Do you guys really think that these “debates” do anything but make you all look like a couple of whiny school yard brats having a pathetic “my Dad can run faster than you Dad” argument???
Christophe Bertrand on 08 Feb 2011 at 3:22 pm
@Shane. Thank you for posting. Appreciate your feedback and you sharing your opinion. I’ll be the first to admit that it is better to stay focused on providing useful facts, user feedback or important innovations.