4.006: missing the point (yet again)

I guess I struck a nerve.

Although Hu Yoshida chose to show the top 10 largest Hitachi arrays as evidence of the benefits of virtualized external storage, his rebuttal to my response post claims that Hitachi isn't in competition with EMC to see who can ship the largest box.

Not surprising, I guess. Especially when the evidence reveals that there are no customers daring enough to push a Hitachi array beyond 1.4PB usable.

You can't compete if you can't demonstrate that you can deliver what customers want.

And that's exactly the point that Hu misses:

It isn't about what EMC tries to sell.
it is about what CUSTOMERS want to buy.

It is the customer who decides how much data they want to put into their arrays, if/when/and how much they want to consolidate, what and when to migrate to a new platform.

Oh sure, EMC analyzes customer requirements, provides recommendations, proposes configurations, and proffers references to help customers make an informed decision. But it is always the customer who determines which is the most appropriate (and cost-effective) solution for their needs.

And the evidence clearly shows that Symmetrix customers are more confident that VMAX can support larger configurations than are USP/USP-V/VSP customers.

Larger configurations help drive down costs through consolidation and efficiencies of scale. They also simplify operations and deployments. Symmetrix Federated Live Migration provides seamless tech refresh to effect consolidation of older arrays without any application downtime – and without the significant (and continuous) I/O latency overhead of an in-band virtualization approach such as Hitachi's. VMAX Virtual Provisioning has a more efficient granularity than the Hitachi equivalent, VMAX's integration with VMware is second to none, and VMAX FAST VP literally runs circles around HDT by reacting faster and moving less data to deliver highly-optimized performance for dynamic workloads.

But the bottom line is this: customers vote with their wallets.

Given that, VMAX must be doing something right: IDC StorageTracker data shows that VMAX's market share has grown significantly vs. USP-V/VSP and IBM DS8K since its introduction in April 2009.

And before I'm accused of doling out the kool-aid yet again, I in fact do know many of the customers behind the top 10 VMAX arrays first hand – many are big names in their respective markets and geographies. And each made careful, educated and informed decisions when they opted for the proven, scalable capabilities of VMAX over the alternatives.

 

VMAX: Powerful. Trusted. Smart.
 

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,VMAX,Storage Consolidation,Scale-out,Federated Live Migration,Hu Yoshida