September 11, 2009 -- Growth in the storage software market is still on the decline, as are factory revenues for the worldwide external disk storage systems market, but there are some bright spots in both sectors, according to the latest research from International Data Corp. (IDC).
IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker shows another year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2009 (2Q09) with revenues of $2.8 billion, representing –9.8% growth over the same quarter one year ago. But Michael Margossian, research analyst for Storage Software at IDC, says the storage software market is showing signs of recovery with positive growth over the first quarter of this year.
In addition, the replication market grew 5% compared to 1Q09 led by NetApp, which has been refocusing its efforts and grew 20% from the previous quarter, according to Margossian.
IDC puts EMC atop the overall market with 22.4% revenue share in 2Q09, followed by Symantec, IBM, NetApp and CA.
On the hardware front, things are revenues continue to slip with worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posting a year-over-year decline of 18.3% in the 2Q09, totaling $4.1 billion, according to the IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker.
In a statement from IDC, Liz Conner, research analyst for Storage Systems, said, "The enterprise storage systems market continued to feel the impact of current economic conditions, posting its third straight year-over-year decline. However, certain sweet spots in the market continue to thrive. iSCSI SAN and FC SAN both showed strong year-over-year growth of 57.2% and 66.8%, respectively, in the entry level price bands as customers continue to demand enterprise level network storage at a more economically friendly price point. Similarly, midrange NAS enjoyed solid year-over-year growth of 20.7% as file-level data generation continues to be a hot topic for many customers."
IDC's data shows that EMC claimed the number one spot in the external disk storage systems market with 21.5% revenue share in the second quarter, followed by IBM and HP with Dell and NetApp in a statistical dead heat for the number four position.
EMC also led the way in market share in the total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) with 26%. The network disk storage market declined 15.3% year over year in the second quarter to more than $3.2 billion in revenues.
In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, IBM and HP finished the second quarter in a statistical tie with 17.3% each followed by EMC with 15.7% market share.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
EMC scoops up FastScale Technology, Kazeon
September 1, 2009 -- The EMC acquisition machine has been busy this week. The company has inked two acquisition deals in as many days, snapping up FastScale Technology and Kazeon Systems.
Today EMC announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held eDiscovery software Kazeon. EMC plans to integrate Kazeon's technology into the EMC SourceOne product family. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2009.
The full Kazeon announcement can be found here.
The Kazeon deal came fresh on the heels of yesterday's acquisition of FastScale Technology. EMC's press release states:
"Designed from the ground up to accelerate the journey from physical to virtual to private cloud, with the addition of FastScale, the EMC Ionix portfolio will simplify end-to-end management and maximize the performance, density and efficiency of applications and software deployed on unified infrastructures."
EMC also beefed up the Ionix software portfolio via an extended partnership with VMware. EMC and VMware announced a new reseller agreement whereby EMC is now reselling VMware's vCenter AppSpeed as part of the EMC Ionix portfolio.
Today EMC announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held eDiscovery software Kazeon. EMC plans to integrate Kazeon's technology into the EMC SourceOne product family. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2009.
The full Kazeon announcement can be found here.
The Kazeon deal came fresh on the heels of yesterday's acquisition of FastScale Technology. EMC's press release states:
"Designed from the ground up to accelerate the journey from physical to virtual to private cloud, with the addition of FastScale, the EMC Ionix portfolio will simplify end-to-end management and maximize the performance, density and efficiency of applications and software deployed on unified infrastructures."
EMC also beefed up the Ionix software portfolio via an extended partnership with VMware. EMC and VMware announced a new reseller agreement whereby EMC is now reselling VMware's vCenter AppSpeed as part of the EMC Ionix portfolio.
Monday, August 31, 2009
EMC, VMware tighten software ties
August 31, 2009 -- EMC and VMware kicked off this week's VMworld conference with news of an expanded business and technology alliance that will have EMC reselling VMware's vCenter AppSpeed software and will tighten integration between VMware's vCenter product family and EMC's Ionix IT management software.
The pair is teaming up to nudge customers down the path toward migrating tier-one applications to VMware's vSphere 4 cloud operating system by using their respective software products to streamline configuration and compliance management and automate IT processes.
EMC will sell VMware's vCenter AppSpeed – a tool for monitoring application performance and dependencies across different tiers of virtual and physical infrastructures – as part of the EMC Ionix IT Management portfolio.
EMC reorganized its IT management software family last month by bringing all of its Smarts, nLayers, Voyence, Infra, ControlCenter and Configuresoft technologies together under the Ionix brand.
The Ionix software family consists of four main product sets. The first, EMC Ionix for Service Discovery and Mapping, identifies applications and their physical and virtual dependencies in support of Configuration Management Database (CMDB)/Configuration Management System (CMS) population, change management, and application troubleshooting. It also maps servers and applications prior to data center moves, consolidations, and virtualization migrations.
The second, Ionix for IT Operations Intelligence, provides automated root-cause and impact analysis and monitors services across both physical and virtual environments. The software allows users to view the relationships between virtual machines (VMs), the VMware ESX Servers they reside on, and the network.
The third is Ionix for Data Center Automation and Compliance. Aimed at compliance management across servers, storage, application dependencies and networks, Ionix for Data Center Automation and Compliance tracks configuration compliance against regulatory, best practices, and internal governance policies, including VMware vSphere 4 deployment guidelines and helps users remediate compliance violations across physical and virtual infrastructures.
The fourth and final product set, Ionix for Service Management, allows customers to deploy IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) service management. Customers can use Ionix for Service Management to build a federated CMDB that is auto-populated with physical and virtual and dependencies.
The companies also announced new physical-to-virtual migration services offerings. The services will make use of VMware Capacity Planner, EMC Ionix Application Discovery Manager, and VMware vCenter AppSpeed to speed the vSphere migration process.
The specific offerings related to VMware vCenter AppSpeed include: Enhanced Candidate Selection for VMware vCenter AppSpeed, VMware vCenter AppSpeed Jumpstart, and VMware Infrastructure Performance Health Check.
The pair is teaming up to nudge customers down the path toward migrating tier-one applications to VMware's vSphere 4 cloud operating system by using their respective software products to streamline configuration and compliance management and automate IT processes.
EMC will sell VMware's vCenter AppSpeed – a tool for monitoring application performance and dependencies across different tiers of virtual and physical infrastructures – as part of the EMC Ionix IT Management portfolio.
EMC reorganized its IT management software family last month by bringing all of its Smarts, nLayers, Voyence, Infra, ControlCenter and Configuresoft technologies together under the Ionix brand.
The Ionix software family consists of four main product sets. The first, EMC Ionix for Service Discovery and Mapping, identifies applications and their physical and virtual dependencies in support of Configuration Management Database (CMDB)/Configuration Management System (CMS) population, change management, and application troubleshooting. It also maps servers and applications prior to data center moves, consolidations, and virtualization migrations.
The second, Ionix for IT Operations Intelligence, provides automated root-cause and impact analysis and monitors services across both physical and virtual environments. The software allows users to view the relationships between virtual machines (VMs), the VMware ESX Servers they reside on, and the network.
The third is Ionix for Data Center Automation and Compliance. Aimed at compliance management across servers, storage, application dependencies and networks, Ionix for Data Center Automation and Compliance tracks configuration compliance against regulatory, best practices, and internal governance policies, including VMware vSphere 4 deployment guidelines and helps users remediate compliance violations across physical and virtual infrastructures.
The fourth and final product set, Ionix for Service Management, allows customers to deploy IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) service management. Customers can use Ionix for Service Management to build a federated CMDB that is auto-populated with physical and virtual and dependencies.
The companies also announced new physical-to-virtual migration services offerings. The services will make use of VMware Capacity Planner, EMC Ionix Application Discovery Manager, and VMware vCenter AppSpeed to speed the vSphere migration process.
The specific offerings related to VMware vCenter AppSpeed include: Enhanced Candidate Selection for VMware vCenter AppSpeed, VMware vCenter AppSpeed Jumpstart, and VMware Infrastructure Performance Health Check.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Xiotech wants to buy your old disks
August 18, 2009 -- What do vendors have to do to put you in a new array today? How about buying back capacity? That's Xiotech's plan under its new "Cash for Disk Clunkers" program.
The company is riding the coattails of the Obama administration's Cash for Clunkers auto industry stimulus program by offering cash incentives for old storage technology in favor of storage systems based on Xiotech's Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) architecture.
As part of the new program, which was announced last week and runs through September, customers can trade in "old, inefficient disk drives" for $1,000 per terabyte cash back toward the purchase of an equal amount of capacity on a Xiotech Emprise 7000, Emprise 7000 Edge, or Emprise 5000 system, or VM Storage Solution.
There is no limit to the amount of capacity organizations can trade in, and consequently no limit to the money they can save on their new storage systems, according to Xiotech's Cash for Disk Clunkers webpage.
You can find more info on Xiotech's website and read the Enterprise Strategy Group's (ESG) Lab Review on our website.
The company is riding the coattails of the Obama administration's Cash for Clunkers auto industry stimulus program by offering cash incentives for old storage technology in favor of storage systems based on Xiotech's Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) architecture.
As part of the new program, which was announced last week and runs through September, customers can trade in "old, inefficient disk drives" for $1,000 per terabyte cash back toward the purchase of an equal amount of capacity on a Xiotech Emprise 7000, Emprise 7000 Edge, or Emprise 5000 system, or VM Storage Solution.
There is no limit to the amount of capacity organizations can trade in, and consequently no limit to the money they can save on their new storage systems, according to Xiotech's Cash for Disk Clunkers webpage.
You can find more info on Xiotech's website and read the Enterprise Strategy Group's (ESG) Lab Review on our website.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Where are we with FCoE?
August 4, 2009 -- The Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard is fully baked, but how soon will customers deploy the technology beyond the testing phase?
The FCoE standard was finalized at the beginning of June. The FC-BB-5 working group of the T11 Technical Committee completed its work and unanimously approved a final standard for FCoE. As a result, the T11 Technical Committee plenary session approved forwarding the FC-BB-5 standard to INCITS for further processing as an ANSI standard.
According to the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA), this milestone has a few implications:
1.) BB-5 Frame Format and Addressing schema are the heart and soul of FCoE
2.) Advances FCoE industry with no new spins required for FCoE silicon
3.) FCoE products in OEM qualification today are based on the completed standard
4.) Users benefit from fully baked standardized FCoE solutions from day one
Industry research firm TheInfoPro (TIP) believes FCoE is still in the very early stage of development within storage organizations at large enterprises.
In a recent paper, "Fibre Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE): Storage Pro Perspective," Rob Stevenson, TIP's managing director of storage, and Anders Lofgren, chief research officer write:
"It is clear that FCoE and server virtualization are becoming more tightly linked and end users are waiting for 10 Gigabit Ethernet to be fully deployed throughout the data center before moving forward with FCoE adoption, which we expect in two to three years."
TIP also believes FCoE adoption should start to accelerate following the implementation of 8Gbps Fibre Channel and 10 Gigabit Ethernet among storage organizations.
They continue: "All of the storage teams we speak with indicate that FCoE will be the dominant storage transport for the future, but the roles of host connectivity, FCoE initiator certification and topology management are still being debated."
The vendors are arming themselves to the teeth with FCoE-capable networking gear, most notably IBM. Big Blue beefed up its Fibre Channel, FCoE and Ethernet networking portfolio through a series of expanded OEM partnerships with Brocade, Cisco, and Juniper Networks just last month.
According to Cisco's latest data on FCoE, customers are "rapidly adopting" Cisco's FCoE-capable Nexus 5000 series switches and more than one-third of those customers are planning to implement FCoE.
Cisco claims that it "leads the FCoE market" based on shipments. The company now has more than 900 Nexus 5000 customers and has shipped more than 100,000 ports. The Nexus 5020, which is FCoE-capable, has been shipping since June of 2008.
Cisco says 35% of Nexus 5000 customers purchased systems with FCoE enabled, representing: government, information technology, healthcare, manufacturing, media, financial services, telcos, and service providers.
Brocade, another big player in the FCoE space, is taking a realistic view of the subject. In an interesting talk from Tech Day 2009, Brocade's CTO, Dave Stevens, said today's FCoE technologies are changing the landscape of the data center, but only in the first five feet of the network infrastructure. (See Brocade's video: FCoE Reality - Brocade CTO Dave Stevens from Tech Day 2009)
Stay up to date on all of the latest FCoE news by visiting our FCoE topic center page.
The FCoE standard was finalized at the beginning of June. The FC-BB-5 working group of the T11 Technical Committee completed its work and unanimously approved a final standard for FCoE. As a result, the T11 Technical Committee plenary session approved forwarding the FC-BB-5 standard to INCITS for further processing as an ANSI standard.
According to the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA), this milestone has a few implications:
1.) BB-5 Frame Format and Addressing schema are the heart and soul of FCoE
2.) Advances FCoE industry with no new spins required for FCoE silicon
3.) FCoE products in OEM qualification today are based on the completed standard
4.) Users benefit from fully baked standardized FCoE solutions from day one
Industry research firm TheInfoPro (TIP) believes FCoE is still in the very early stage of development within storage organizations at large enterprises.
In a recent paper, "Fibre Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE): Storage Pro Perspective," Rob Stevenson, TIP's managing director of storage, and Anders Lofgren, chief research officer write:
"It is clear that FCoE and server virtualization are becoming more tightly linked and end users are waiting for 10 Gigabit Ethernet to be fully deployed throughout the data center before moving forward with FCoE adoption, which we expect in two to three years."
TIP also believes FCoE adoption should start to accelerate following the implementation of 8Gbps Fibre Channel and 10 Gigabit Ethernet among storage organizations.
They continue: "All of the storage teams we speak with indicate that FCoE will be the dominant storage transport for the future, but the roles of host connectivity, FCoE initiator certification and topology management are still being debated."
The vendors are arming themselves to the teeth with FCoE-capable networking gear, most notably IBM. Big Blue beefed up its Fibre Channel, FCoE and Ethernet networking portfolio through a series of expanded OEM partnerships with Brocade, Cisco, and Juniper Networks just last month.
According to Cisco's latest data on FCoE, customers are "rapidly adopting" Cisco's FCoE-capable Nexus 5000 series switches and more than one-third of those customers are planning to implement FCoE.
Cisco claims that it "leads the FCoE market" based on shipments. The company now has more than 900 Nexus 5000 customers and has shipped more than 100,000 ports. The Nexus 5020, which is FCoE-capable, has been shipping since June of 2008.
Cisco says 35% of Nexus 5000 customers purchased systems with FCoE enabled, representing: government, information technology, healthcare, manufacturing, media, financial services, telcos, and service providers.
Brocade, another big player in the FCoE space, is taking a realistic view of the subject. In an interesting talk from Tech Day 2009, Brocade's CTO, Dave Stevens, said today's FCoE technologies are changing the landscape of the data center, but only in the first five feet of the network infrastructure. (See Brocade's video: FCoE Reality - Brocade CTO Dave Stevens from Tech Day 2009)
Stay up to date on all of the latest FCoE news by visiting our FCoE topic center page.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
LSI to buy ONStor
July 23, 2009 -- LSI bolstered its portfolio of storage systems today with the news that it has inked a deal to buy NAS-maker ONStor for $25 million in cash.
ONStor, a privately held, Campbell, Calif.-based company, builds clustered network-attached storage (NAS) systems designed to store and manage unstructured data. ONStor's products include NAS gateways and systems and unified storage systems sold through the channel and OEM partners.
ONStor recently broke its own product mold when it announced the Pantera LS 2100, a unified storage system based on open-source software and the Zettabyte File System (ZFS).
The LS 2100 series is a family of unified IP storage systems that provide both iSCSI and NAS support in a single box. Targeting SMBs – a first for ONStor – the Pantera LS 2100 family also includes a variety of built-in data and storage management tools based on the OpenSolaris operating system and ZFS.
ONStor also sells the Bobcat and Cougar families of clustered NAS gateways.
"The rapid growth of unstructured data is creating significant challenges for enterprises in provisioning, protecting and managing their storage in an efficient and cost-effective manner," said Abhi Talwalkar, LSI president and CEO, in a press release issued earlier today. "With the addition of ONStor products and technology, LSI will be well positioned to offer a comprehensive set of storage solutions to help enterprise customers effectively manage both their unstructured and structured data with ease."
LSI's current product lineup includes a range of storage technologies from custom silicon ASICs to HBAs and its Engenio storage systems.
The transaction is expected to close within thirty days and is subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions. LSI expects to provide further details on July 29 when it reports second quarter results.
EMC-Data Domain update
In other acquisition news, EMC announced this morning that it has successfully completed its tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Data Domain.
EMC now controls approximately 94.2% of Data Domain shares outstanding and expects to effect a second-step merger and complete its acquisition of Data Domain today.
ONStor, a privately held, Campbell, Calif.-based company, builds clustered network-attached storage (NAS) systems designed to store and manage unstructured data. ONStor's products include NAS gateways and systems and unified storage systems sold through the channel and OEM partners.
ONStor recently broke its own product mold when it announced the Pantera LS 2100, a unified storage system based on open-source software and the Zettabyte File System (ZFS).
The LS 2100 series is a family of unified IP storage systems that provide both iSCSI and NAS support in a single box. Targeting SMBs – a first for ONStor – the Pantera LS 2100 family also includes a variety of built-in data and storage management tools based on the OpenSolaris operating system and ZFS.
ONStor also sells the Bobcat and Cougar families of clustered NAS gateways.
"The rapid growth of unstructured data is creating significant challenges for enterprises in provisioning, protecting and managing their storage in an efficient and cost-effective manner," said Abhi Talwalkar, LSI president and CEO, in a press release issued earlier today. "With the addition of ONStor products and technology, LSI will be well positioned to offer a comprehensive set of storage solutions to help enterprise customers effectively manage both their unstructured and structured data with ease."
LSI's current product lineup includes a range of storage technologies from custom silicon ASICs to HBAs and its Engenio storage systems.
The transaction is expected to close within thirty days and is subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions. LSI expects to provide further details on July 29 when it reports second quarter results.
EMC-Data Domain update
In other acquisition news, EMC announced this morning that it has successfully completed its tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Data Domain.
EMC now controls approximately 94.2% of Data Domain shares outstanding and expects to effect a second-step merger and complete its acquisition of Data Domain today.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
TIP expects spending increase in 2H '09
July 21, 2009 -- On the eve of earnings for many major vendors, TheInfoPro (TIP) research firm is predicting a second half increase in technology spending.
According to TIP's customer research, which is based on interviews with thousands of Fortune 1000 and medium-sized enterprise end users, IBM, EMC and NetApp have been most affected by the tech spending slowdown of '09.
TIP claims that the best performing vendors have been those that compete on price or base their pitch on return on investment (ROI). CommVault, Data Domain and HP all fall into that category.
On the networking side, TIP predicts, "Cisco and Juniper will benefit from pent-up demand for increasing network capacity and performance, which will result in higher network equipment spending once economic conditions improve. Projects with a more immediate ROI will continue to be promoted for the remainder of 2009, benefiting WAN optimization providers such as Cisco, Riverbed and Blue Coat."
Data Domain was slated to release its Q2 earnings this Thursday, but nixed its concall after EMC announced yesterday that it has acquired majority ownership of Data Domain. EMC expects to complete its acquisition of DDUP by month's end and is slated to report its earnings Thursday morning.
Also on deck for earnings this week are Microsoft, F5, Riverbed, Juniper and VMware. Time to sit back, grab some popcorn and watch it all unfold.
Check out TIP's predictions and the firm's latest customer research at www.theinfopro.net.
According to TIP's customer research, which is based on interviews with thousands of Fortune 1000 and medium-sized enterprise end users, IBM, EMC and NetApp have been most affected by the tech spending slowdown of '09.
TIP claims that the best performing vendors have been those that compete on price or base their pitch on return on investment (ROI). CommVault, Data Domain and HP all fall into that category.
On the networking side, TIP predicts, "Cisco and Juniper will benefit from pent-up demand for increasing network capacity and performance, which will result in higher network equipment spending once economic conditions improve. Projects with a more immediate ROI will continue to be promoted for the remainder of 2009, benefiting WAN optimization providers such as Cisco, Riverbed and Blue Coat."
Data Domain was slated to release its Q2 earnings this Thursday, but nixed its concall after EMC announced yesterday that it has acquired majority ownership of Data Domain. EMC expects to complete its acquisition of DDUP by month's end and is slated to report its earnings Thursday morning.
Also on deck for earnings this week are Microsoft, F5, Riverbed, Juniper and VMware. Time to sit back, grab some popcorn and watch it all unfold.
Check out TIP's predictions and the firm's latest customer research at www.theinfopro.net.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)