3.014: so much 'ado about . . .

Wow – what a bustling couple of weeks!

So many competitive storage announcements, you'd practically think they were all scheduled to maximize their disruptive impact on Q4 storage spend.

When you're the market leader, as EMC has been for the past 2 decades-plus, you learn to expect this almost annual frenzy. It comes with the target that leaders have tattooed on their backs.

This year the wanna-bee followers seem particularly agitated, though. Hitachi invested heavily in marketing sizzle for the first time since Mr. T was their chosen spokesperson – and with good reason, I'll admit: by my observations of IDC Storage Tracker data, Hitachi's delay in refreshing the aged USP-V (coupled with the loss of Sun as a reseller) has driven 5 straight quarters of USP-V market share declines vs. VMAX and the newly retired IBM DS8700.

Hitachi obviously had to try something different, even if it meant moving to yet-another new processor base. But unable to change their architecture to fully leverage industry-standard open components, their "rush" to market was slowed by the need to create FOUR proprietary ASICs. And those ASICs further handcuffed the move to the Intel platform. With the unavoidably long lead-times of ASIC development, Hitachi was locked into implementing with the PCIe Gen1-based infrastructure and processors, even as Intel is delivering the second-generation of PCIe Gen2 CPUs and interconnect. The net result? Using the same Intel processor as the 19-month old VMAX, the new VSP can't even double the performance of the USP-V that it doesn't quite replace.

That leaves VMAX at the top of the performance heap, having more than doubled the performance of the DMX4 when it was introduced in April 2009.

As a further testament to the insignificance of the VSP, I'll also note that HP has chosen to use a totally different name for the product in their lineup. Not only has my old boss shunned the brand, he and his new head of storage outright told the world that Hitachi remained in the product lineup only to support HP's mainframe customers and to fill the void above 3PAR until such time as it grows up. That must have thrilled HP EVA and XP customers alike, both groups who now find themselves sitting on dead-end kit with no defined escape path.

But that's a story for another day…

Yep, beneath all the new-found bravado and marketing spin, the simple reality is that Hitachi & HDS are still attempting to follow EMC's lead, and they're falling further and further behind.