IBM Stakes its Cloud Storage Claim

There are several industry organizations and vendors hard at work developing cloud storage standards and the race is on to determine how data will be moved and secured in the cloud. The most recent race entrant in this race is a little company called IBM.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today launched a joint research initiative of 15 European partners to develop a so-called “smart cloud storage architecture.” The effort centers on delivering storage services within and across cloud boundaries through a better understanding what’s inside the data.

The EU-funded initiative, called VISION Cloud – Virtualized Storage Services for the Future Internet, has been formed to develop a new approach to cloud storage, where data is represented by smart objects that include information describing the content of the data and how the object should be handled, replicated, or preserved. The end game is to improve delivery of data and storage services across boundaries of countries and vendors (See Alan Earls’ recent piece for Enterprise Storage Forum, “Could Borders Bring the Cloud Down to Earth?” for more on that subject).

The VISION Cloud storage cloud architecture concept combines (a) a rich object data model, (b) execution of computations close to the stored content, (c) content-centric access, and (d) full data interoperability.

The VISION Cloud initiative will be spearheaded by scientists at IBM Research in Haifa, Israel, and supported by partners, including SAP AG, Siemens Corporate Technology, Engineering and ITRicity, Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo, Orange Labs and Telenor, RAI and Deutche Welle, the SNIA Europe standards organization. The National Technical University of Athens, Umea University, Swedish Institute of Computer Science and University of Messin, will also contribute to the effort.

A noble effort, to be sure, but Big Blue has some big vendors trying to make their architectures and delivery methods the de facto storage standards in the cloud.

Oracle staked its own claim to the cloud in recent weeks when the computer giant proposed the Oracle Cloud Elemental Resource Model API, which covers the common elements of a cloud implementation by specifying the relevant machines, storage volumes and networks. Specifically, the spec submitted to the DMTF describes how a machine can be provisioned from an image; how a volume can be attached to a machine; and how a machine can connect to a network (see “Oracle Proposes Cloud Management Standard”).

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) said the goal of its proposal is to encourage open standards, noting the Oracle Cloud API follows the Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture style and uses HTTP methods to interact with the resources to achieve provisioning, associating, modifying, and retiring of entities.

Meanwhile, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has been quietly putting in work via the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI). The CSI recently completed work on its first cloud standard, the CDMI (Cloud Data Management Interface). The CDMI provides standards for the data path to clouds, includes the ability to manage service levels that data receives when it is stored in the cloud, and includes a common interoperable data exchange format for securely moving data and its associated data requirements between clouds.

The CDMI is based on a RESTful HTTP protocol, and requires providers to implement stringent access controls and encryption of data for security purposes. The standard enables developers to mark cloud storage containers and data objects with Data System Metadata to enforce service-level requirements for the data (see “SNIA Advances Cloud, Green Storage Standards”).

It will be interesting to see how the co-opetition plays out. Is a common management method for the cloud on the horizon? Or, are we doomed to proprietary clouds with proprietary data formats?

EMC Breaks Q3 Revenue Record

EMC has reported record revenue for the third consecutive quarter as rumors swirl around the company’s potential $2 billion acquisition of Isilon Systems.

EMC (NYSE: EMC) today announced all-time record Q3 revenue, 58 percent profit growth, record year-to-date operating and free cash flow, and substantial margin expansion. As a result, EMC increased its earnings expectations for 2010 as it now expects consolidated revenues of $16.9 billion.

All in all, EMC met analyst estimates. For the third quarter, consolidated revenue was $4.21 billion, an increase of 20 percent compared with the year-ago quarter. Non-GAAP net income attributable to EMC for Q3 was $649.4 million, an increase of 35 percent a year ago and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $0.30, a 30 percent increase year over year.

EMC’s execs point to the cloud as the main driver of its growth. In a statement, David Goulden, EMC’s executive vice president and CFO, said, “For the third consecutive quarter EMC achieved our ‘triple play’ – we gained market share, invested aggressively to capitalize on the shift to cloud computing, and increased profitability. Cloud computing is driving a fundamental change in the way IT is designed and managed, represents a massive opportunity, and is happening now in various phases across the globe.”

For the full earnings recap, “EMC Continues Record Revenue Streak” at Enterprise Storage Forum.

Big Blue to buy BLADE Network Technologies

IBM announced plans to acquire privately-held networking vendor BLADE Network Technologies for an undisclosed sum as it continues to build out its end-to-end cloud computing portfolio.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) expects to close the deal in the fourth quarter of 2010, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions and applicable regulatory reviews. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

BLADE provides blade server and top-of-rack switches as well as software to virtualize and manage cloud computing and other workloads. It boasts a customer roster that includes more than half of the Fortune 500 and, along with IBM, counts HP, NEC and SGI among its OEM partners.

IBM and BLADE have worked together since 2002 and have thousands of joint clients. More than 50 percent of IBM System x BladeCenters currently attach to or use BLADE products, according to Big Blue.

In a statement, Brian Truskowski, general manager for IBM System Storage and Networking, said "BLADE will help IBM better integrate networks with its systems, optimizing them for workloads that require high-speed and low-latency performance such as cloud computing and business analytics. For example, faster data transport enables faster decisions important for analytics workloads. He continued, "BLADE will increase IBM's System Networking development, sales, support, skills and awareness and help IBM build smarter systems that are optimized for client requirements."

BLADE provides software that helps address the virtualization requirements of cloud computing environments. BLADE software allows servers to more closely integrate with the network so that clients can deploy thousands of virtual machines (VM) to run large application workloads in the cloud.

BLADE recently began shipping VMready 3.0 with Virtual Vision, a technology for automating, provisioning and securing data center networks in virtual environments. The Virtual Vision technology “sees” virtual machines (VM) as they migrate from server to server and protects them as they move throughout the data center. The software automatically synchronizes network policies and configurations across both physical and virtual networks.

VMready 3.0 equips a single switch or a stack of switches for live VM migration, and now with Virtual Vision, can unify physical and virtual networks across an entire data center and even between geographically dispersed data centers, according to the company.

VMready works with BLADE’s RackSwitch Ethernet switches or BLADE switches for IBM BladeCenter, HP BladeSystem or NEC SIGMABLADE.

BLADE’s switch-resident VMready 3.0 with Virtual Vision is available for BLADE’s RackSwitch and embedded blade server switches for the IBM BladeCenter, HP BladeSystem and NEC SIGMABLADE.

VMworld and the Storage Industry's Perfect Storm

Server virtualization and cloud computing have created a perfect storm for storage vendors with VMworld at the eye of that storm as we now look to the show to predict which way the IT industry will turn.

As Drew Robb pointed out in his "Top 10 Takeaways" from his trip to VMworld in San Francisco this week, the flood of storage news that came out of VMworld equaled the volume of storage announcements that used to coincide with the once-mighty Storage Networking World (SNW) conference.

The show featured a collection of new applications for virtual environments, a heightening of the buzz around the cloud, a couple of acquisition announcements from VMware (NYSE: VMW), and a litany of storage vendors trying to hone in on the action.

EMC (NYSE:EMC) was first out of the gate, announcing a beta program for EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager (UIM) 2.0, which promises unified management of the networking, computing and storage layers of the Vblock cloud platform.

The storage giant also unveiled a set of reference architectures and best practices for using new EMC storage technologies to reduce the per client cost of virtual desktops in VMware View 4.5 environments.

Scale Computing’s big news was about a small node. The company is taking its unified SAN/NAS storage cluster downstream with a new, entry-level system aimed at SMBs in need of shared storage for virtualization deployments.

Referred to by the company as a “JBOD killer for the SMB,” the Scale Computing N05 Starter Cluster is made up of three 500GB N05 storage nodes. A minimum configuration of a Scale Starter Cluster includes 1.5TB of usable storage capacity at a price of $7,500 and includes the same software set as the company’s larger S-Series product line.

Cloud storage service provider Zetta added data protection to its repertoire with the debut of the Zetta Data Protect solution, which the company bills as a low-cost replacement for traditional backups. Zetta Data Protect brings the company’s storage service into the backup space through use of a technology called the ZettaMirror agent, which protects data by securely replicating disparate enterprise data sources to the Zetta Storage Service, creating an online, available, and verified copy of the data.

The I/O virtualization vendors were active as well. Xsigo Systems unveiled an Ethernet version of its line of virtual I/O directors. Xsigo positions the virtual I/O directors as an alternative to Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) approaches to converged networks and cloud computing architectures. Unlike FCoE, Xsigo’s I/O directors do not require adapters to be installed in the attached servers.

Meantime, Xsigo competitor Virtensys launched a dedicated appliance that consolidates and virtualizes network connectivity and provides up to 80Gbps of sustained Ethernet bandwidth per server.

The new Virtensys VIO-4004 converts servers to high-performance and stateless compute nodes that can be interconnected by pooling, consolidating and abstracting servers’ I/O resources and state.

If I listed all of the announcements here it would make for the longest blog in InfoStor’s history. Here’s a brief rundown of the rest of the storage news.

There was a wave of cloud, scale-out storage and iSCSI announcements from the likes of BlueArc, Emulex, Infortrend, Isilon and HP.

See “VMworld storage product highlights: Round 1”

Arkeia, FalconStor, NetApp, Neverfail, QuoromLabs, Sysncsort and Veeam led launched a range of data protection, backup and recovery, business continuity and disaster recovery products.

See “VMworld storage product highlights: Round 2”

Our coverage of news from Aberdeen LLC, ATTO Technology, BLADE Network Technologies, Compellent, Coraid, SolarWinds and Zmanda included new support for vSphere 4.1, a promotional campaign that offers a free petabyte of storage and a free tool for bouncing VMs from your desktop.

See “VMworld Storage Product Highlights: Round 3”

After a week of covering VMworld and HP’s 3PAR acquisition, I’m ready for a long labor-less Labor Day weekend. But first, I have to deal with a storm of my own. It’s time to execute my BC (Backyard Continuity) plan by migrating my patio furniture to a safe location until Earl skips up into Canada.

Good luck, Dennis, MA!

HP’s bid for 3PAR not its first

After a bit of tap dancing, HP revealed that today’s $1.6 billion blockbuster bid for 3PAR was not its first.

HP published its offer letter today in which executive vice president, chief strategy and technology officer Shane Robinson wrote:

“We propose to increase our offer to acquire all of 3PAR outstanding common stock to $24.00 per share in cash. This offer represents a 33.3% premium to Dell’s offer price and is a “Superior Proposal” as defined in your merger agreement with Dell.”

In a conference call with media and analysts, Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager of HP’s Enterprise Server, Networking and Storage Business, said HP had “done due diligence on this deal prior to anything you’ve seen announced publicly” and “had multiple meetings with [3PAR’s] senior management.”

Finally, when asked whether HP had an outstanding offer on the table when Dell made its move for 3PAR, HP’s Steve Fieler, vice president, investor relations, admitted that there was “another offer on the table.”

Donatelli also said he expects HP’s relationship with Hitachi would continue. “There is always going to be overlap in storage solutions. That’s been happening for the past 20 years and I don’t have any concerns about it. I actually view that as a positive because it makes sure you have a seamless offering and that you don’t have any competitive gaps.”

He also said HP “looks forward to the response” from Dell.

Dell declined to comment on HP’s counteroffer.

For the full story on the HP-3PAR-Dell triangle, see “HP, Dell in Bidding War for 3PAR.”

You can hear a replay of the conference call/webcast on HP’s website.

Like Cisco, Brocade Falls Short

Cisco’s Q4 sales fell short last week and Brocade followed suit with its Q3 earnings, missing analyst forecasts and lowering its revenue expectations for its fiscal year. But why?

Some industry insiders think customers are biding their time as they watch how the whole converged networking/unified fabric push plays out.

In a statement regarding Brocade’s (NASDAQ: BRCD) earnings, CEO Michael Klayko said, “Q3 was another solid quarter for Brocade in which we achieved better-than-expected results from our storage area networking business and continued to make progress in our Ethernet go-to-market initiatives. As we look to Q4, we expect a strong finish to our fiscal 2010. Despite operating in a challenging global economy with variable IT spending patterns, we are confident that our sales and marketing strategies as well as our product portfolio are aligned well with customer imperatives.”

Cisco’s (NASDAQ: CSCO) CEO John Chambers also cited uncertainty in the economy as well asmixed signals in the market and customer expectations as the reason for Cisco’s Q4 sales miss. However, Chambers said he’s confident that Cisco will succeed by continuing to “aggressively move into new areas where the network is becoming the platform.”

Brocade’s Numbers:

- Q3 revenue was $504 million, increasing approximately 1% sequentially and 2% year-over-year.

- Q3 GAAP EPS (diluted) was $0.05, sequentially level, and increasing from a loss in Q3 2009.

- Q3 non-GAAP EPS (diluted) was $0.13, sequentially level, and increasing 8% year-over-year.

- Q3 non-GAAP operating margin was 17.3% versus 20.5% in Q2 2010 and 20.3% in Q3 2009.

- Q3 effective GAAP tax rate was (220)%; non-GAAP effective tax rate was 0.2%.

- Q3 Adj. EBITDA was $102 million, down from $116 million in Q2 2010 and $119 million in Q3 2009.

- Q3 total Storage Area Networking (SAN) port shipments were approximately 1.0 million.

For the full Q3 financial results, including prepared comments from Brocade executives, go to http://www.brcd.com.

For more earnings news, check out Dave Simpson’s blog on NetApp’s Q1 bonanza.

The Battle for OpenSolaris

All's been quiet on the OpenSolaris front since Oracle's acquisition of Sun, but there's a reason for that. The company has been focused on getting Solaris 11 out the door, according to John Fowler, Oracle's executive vice president of systems.

Fowler led a webcast earlier this week in which he outlined Oracle's Systems Strategy roadmap, including its plans for tape, ZFS, and the continued evolution of the Exadata database machine. It was nothing we haven't heard before. What was interesting, however, was the live chat session that ran alongside Oracle's webcast.

Tweet-chants like "Oracle needs to communicate with the OpenSolaris community!" came fast and furious as Fowler detailed Oracle's roadmap, including next year's release of Solaris 11, which is said to include a number of technologies developed by the OpenSolaris community.

Fowler admitted to sister site InternetNews.com that Oracle has "been a little quiet on the open source front. It's not that we're not investing in Solaris, we're just investing to make sure that we have all the major components for the new release."

Fearing the worst for OpenSolaris, a new open source community has formed to provide alternatives to the closed components of OpenSolaris. The community, dubbed the Illumos Project and spearheaded by Nexenta Systems' new senior director of engineering Garret D'Amore, a former Sun engineer and a leading contributor to the OpenSolaris operating system for the past five years, claims that the core concern of the OpenSolaris community is that critical components of the platform aren't open at all.

However, D'Amore maintained Illumos is not an Oracle competitor. "We would love to have Oracle and its employees as peers. They can't own it, but they can participate. We want the technology to be usable by Oracle and taken back upstream," he said. "We want to create the insurance that the industry desperately needs in case the tap gets shut off."

There's a subplot to this drama. The underpinnings of Nexenta Systems' NexentaStor software are based on the OpenSolaris ZFS file system, which is at the center of a years-long legal battle between Oracle-Sun and NetApp.

NetApp fired another salvo recently by threatening to take legal action against Coraid, a storage startup that was about to begin selling NAS products based on Nexenta's technology. The NetApp legal threat stopped Coraid in its tracks.

Illumos has its own plans for ZFS. "At the moment, the code is identical. In the future, there may be additional enhancements and innovations in Illumos beyond what Oracle has. We have some concrete ideas we are exploring, but we're not quite ready to provide concrete details yet," D'Amore said. "We want to be a self-hosting Solaris derivative without any corporate dependencies. In my ideal world, anybody could use this code for whatever they want."

It seems to me that the concerns of the Illumos folks may be valid. In recent months, Oracle has forced Lustre users to buy Oracle hardware if they want to continue to be supported, as well as shut down servers Sun Microsystems was contributing to the build farm for PostgreSQL, the open source database software.

IBM to Acquire Storwize

Sometimes the rumor mill gets it right. IBM made another move in the storage optimization space with the acquisition of Storwize, adding real-time compression to Big Blue’s arsenal.

The announcement, first reported by WikiBon’s Dave Vellante and followed shortly thereafter by an IBM press release, came amid a solid month of rumors about the potential deal and speculation spiked when Dell announced plans to buy Ocarina Networks last week.

Financial terms of the IBM-Storwize deal were not disclosed, but there are some numbers being bandied about.

Read more at Enterprise Storage Forum, "IBM to Buy Storwize for Real-Time Data Compression".

EMC breaks Q2 revenue record

July 21, 2010 -- Led by customer demand for its high-end Symmetrix portfolio, Avamar and Data Domain product families, and VMware, EMC has reported record financial results for the second time in as many quarters with consolidated revenue for Q2 hitting $4.02 billion, an increase of 24% compared with the year-ago quarter.

According to EMC (NYSE: EMC), GAAP net income attributable to EMC increased 108% year-over-year to $426 million; and GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.20, up 100% year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income attributable to EMC for the second quarter was $596 million, an increase of 66% compared with the year-ago quarter, and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $0.28, an increase of 56% year-over-year.

During the quarter, EMC achieved all-time record year-to-date operating cash flow and free cash flow of $2.1 billion and $1.6 billion, which grew 44% and 47%, respectively, compared with the year-ago period.

The company completed the quarter with $10.3 billion in cash and investments.

EMC has reported growth in several areas. Here are the Q2 highlights:

• The high-end EMC Symmetrix storage product portfolio increased 32% compared with the year-ago quarter and the EMC mid-tier storage product portfolio grew revenue 33% year-over-year.

• The combined second-quarter revenue run rate for EMC Data Domain and Avamar backup solutions exceeded the billion-dollar revenue run rate the company reported in the first quarter of 2010.

• VMware (NYSE:VMW), which is majority-owned by EMC, contributed second-quarter revenue of $673 million, increasing 48% compared with the year-ago quarter.

• Additionally, EMC's RSA information security solutions grew revenue 18% year-over-year.

EMC consolidated second-quarter revenue from the United States reached $2.1 billion, an increase of 28% year-over-year, representing 53% of consolidated second-quarter revenue. Revenue from EMC's business operations outside of the United States reached $1.9 billion, an increase of 19% year-over-year, representing 47% of consolidated second-quarter revenue. Within this, revenue increased 18%, 20% and 22% year-over-year, respectively, in EMC's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA); Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ); and Latin America regions.

EMC's revised outlook

EMC also announced that it expects to exceed its previous outlook for 2010 revenue, consolidated GAAP EPS and consolidated non-GAAP EPS.

EMC's CFO David Goulden said:

"Moving forward, we remain confident that we have the right business and operating model to continue delivering annual double-digit revenue and earnings growth over the long term."

For 2010, EMC expects to exceed its previous outlook of $16.5 billion in revenue; $0.84 in consolidated GAAP diluted earnings per share, and $1.18 in consolidated non-GAAP diluted earnings per share, which excludes the impact of restructuring and acquisition-related charges, stock-based compensation expense, and intangible asset amortization.

More info can be found on EMC's website.

For the latest news on EMC:
EMC Doubles Performance of Midrange Data Domain Systems
Top Ten Revelations from EMC World
EMC Sees SSDs, Ethernet Taking Over Data Storage
Deduplication, Storage Tiering and VPlex Star at EMC World
EMC Mozy Speeds Up Online Backup, Adds Local Disk
EMC, NetApp Strike Storage Networking Deals
EMC Says Private Clouds Are the Future of Storage, Data Centers
EMC Keeps Storage Networks Up and Running
EMC Buyer's Guide: EMC Goes x86

Open season on open-source ZFS?

July 8, 2010 -- A one-page legal letter from NetApp has sparked a debate over the use of open-source ZFS technology and put at least one storage startup in a bit of a bind.

Earlier this week, Coraid informed its customers that it has suspended sales of its recently announced EtherDrive Z-Series NAS appliances, which are based on ZFS. The decision was made after Coraid received a "legal threat letter" suggesting that the open-source ZFS file system planned for inclusion with the EtherDrive Z-Series infringes NetApp patents (see "NetApp threatens Coraid over sales of open-source ZFS technology").

So why single out Coraid? The Z-Series NAS solution is based on Nexenta's software, but, according to Nexenta, the company "has not at this time received communications yet from NetApp."

Enterprise Strategy Group senior analyst Terri McClure wonders why NetApp didn't hit Nexenta with the same letter since Nexenta supplies its ZFS software to multiple storage vendors.

"If NetApp did it would make sense – stop a number of vendors instead of just one. It certainly makes you wonder why they would single out Coraid, people could read into this that NetApp sees Coraid as a threat. Coraid's NAS product is pretty new but the underlying platform has been on the market a while and is solid, at a really aggressive price point," said McClure.

"[NetApp] just spent a couple of hundred dollars in lawyer's fees and took a competitor out of the market. Quick and easy, but a little disappointing, too. At the end of the day, ZFS is open source, and while there is no way to predict how the settlement talks between Oracle and NetApp will turn out, you can't really un-open source ZFS," she said.

There's still no word from NetApp on the matter.

Nexenta CEO Evan Powell supplied Enterprise Storage Forum with the following statement:

"I am not a patent law expert and cannot comment specifically on NetApp and Oracle's legal battle. However, I find NetApp's behavior consistent with what typically transpires when established legacy technology companies are confronted with innovation that threatens their price structure and profit margins. They first protest that the technology is unproven and unstable, then it lacks enterprise features, then adequate support and services and finally, when all else has failed, that it is violating their intellectual property. This is the path that NetApp has taken in the last two years with the ZFS file system.

"Based on the explosive and sustained growth in adoption of Nexenta's Open Storage software based on the ZFS file system, it is clear that our partners and customers are confident that this case will reach a settlement that follows the trajectory of almost every technology market in the last 15 years-- low cost, high innovation and open solutions that provide a clear and competitive alternative to closed, proprietary and expensive technologies."

You can read more from Nexenta's Powell in his latest blog post.

Related articles:
Coraid Combines ZFS With Ethernet SAN Technology
Coraid Delivers EtherDrive Storage Arrays, HBAs
Nexenta Leverages OpenSolaris and ZFS for Enterprise Storage
Compellent Offers Open-Source ZFS-based NAS
Nexenta Adds Data Dedupe to NexentaStor 3.0 with ZFS
10 Reasons Why ZFS Rocks

Storage lessons learned from the dot-com era

June 18, 2010 -- We're 10 years removed from the dot-com era and the storage landscape barely resembles that of a decade ago. At this week's BD Event here in Boston, Peter Bell, a General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, gave advice to storage startups and recounted some of the lessons learned from his time at the helm of StorageNetworks, the first–and–last of the true storage service providers (SSPs).

Bell was the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of StorageNetworks, were he guided the SSP from concept to a huge IPO in June of 2000, raising more than $700 million in funding along the way.

But, in 2003, the way-before-its-time SSP model (can you say cloud?) failed. StorageNetworks closed its doors and its competitors shifted to a software model or vanished into the ether (from the way-back machine, see: "The last–and first–SSP calls it quits").

In his current role, he represents Highland on the boards of Desktone, ExaGrid Systems, Gigamon, InXpo, Ocarina Networks, SCVNGR, Virtual Computer, VMTurbo, and is actively involved with a number of Highland's other investments.

Bell said the funding for storage startups just is not the same today.

"No startup is immune to what's going on in the market. The venture capital dollars going into software and networking startups in 2000 were about $35 billion. In 2009 they were $4 billion," he said. "The lessons learned from StorageNetworks are still relevant today. We raised $700 million in 21 months, but I don't think you can do that today."

Taking a startup public is a much longer process these days. Bell said it takes about 10 years, double the average length of time it took to go public during the dot-com boom. "It takes a lot longer and [a startup] needs to be bigger and raise more capital to reach an IPO."

Bell bets there are storage vendors out there that have filed S1s, but are waiting for the economic climate to improve before they take the plunge. There is an added bonus for the lucky few who reach an IPO. Bell said valuations are higher to the tune of about 25%.

Most startups, he said, look to acquisition as the most likely path to growth/exit strategy.

It's not all doom and gloom. Bell is still bullish on the storage market. "In 2008, it was virtually impossible for a tech startup. 2010 has been a little better, but it's still tough," he said. "But people are addicted to storage and it's legal. There aren't that many businesses out there like that."

Bell points to companies who have been acquired or are experiencing growth like Acopia, Compellent, Diligent, Data Domain, EqualLogic, Isilon, Onaro, and XIV, as recent "winners" in the storage market.

Storage startups looking for an angle should consider a few hot technologies as their foot in the door. Bell believes solid-state storage, automated tiering, open-source storage, video storage and, of course, cloud storage/virtualization, are the next big things.

Bell emphasized the importance of the management team and business model as the keys to raising venture capital.

"It's the company you keep. Pick your partners and executives very, very carefully. The business model is as important as your team, but it's often not given enough thought," said Bell. "Long, unpredictable sales cycles lead to very short CEO tenures."

Related articles:
F5 to buy Acopia for file virtualization
Compellent adds ZFS-based NAS
IBM acquires Diligent for de-duplication
NetApp bows out, EMC to acquire Data Domain
Dell to acquire EqualLogic for $1.4 billion
Isilon adds enterprise features to scale-out NAS
NetApp expands SAN strategy with Onaro acquisition
IBM buys XIV for fixed digital content

Brocade tries to One up Cisco in virtual data centers

June 10, 2010 -- Brocade answered many lingering questions in the past 24 hours about the integration of its Foundry platforms, its plans for converged network fabrics, its take on virtual machine (VM) mobility, and whether it had an answer for the Cisco-led Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition's Vblock strategy.

The company has introduced Brocade One, an architecture that brings together its operating system and management tools. The bottom line: put more smarts in the network to manage VMs in virtualized data centers.

"Brocade One represents one, unified company with one OS and one set of management tools under one architecture," said Bob Braham, vice president of product marketing at Brocade.

As part of Brocade One, the company introduced Brocade Virtual Cluster Switching, a software technology that collapses the access and aggregation layers of the network to create a masterless and distributed control plane.

Brocade VCS continuously synchronizes state, status and configuration information between nodes to enable converged fabrics to be self-forming, auto-healing and self-configuring – think VM metadata, network and storage policies.

Braham says VCS can be used to create true converged data center fabrics that are inherently multi-pathing and resilient, effectively eliminating the need for Spanning Tree Protocol (STP).

Also new is the Brocade Virtual Access Layer, a logical layer between Brocade converged fabric and server virtualization hypervisors. The Virtual Access Layer makes sure a consistent interface and set of services for VMs connected to the network. Brocade VAL will support all major hypervisors through industry-standard technologies, including the Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) and Virtual Ethernet Bridging (VEB) standards.

There was a lot of high-level speak about Brocade One, but there was one clear message – they plan to take on the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition's Vblock initiative directly. Brocade and its partners are prepping what the company calls Brocade Open Virtual Compute Blocks – tested and verified data center blueprints for VM deployments on converged fabrics.

The switching component of the Compute Blocks will be based on the Brocade 8000 Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Switch and blade (for the Brocade DCX Backbone), the Brocade NetIron MLX Series and Brocade Converged Network Adapters (CNAs).

Braham says the Brocade-based stacks will be available by year's end.

Brocade's been busy. Here's a taste of InfoStor's recent related news coverage:

Brocade, EMC lay groundwork for private clouds
Brocade increases density, throughput of DCX Backbone
Brocade CNAs qualified by EMC, HDS, IBM, NetApp
EMC expands converged networking deals with Brocade, Cisco
Dell taps Brocade for FCoE, CEE gear
Weighing the pros and cons of unified computing

HP cuts 9,000 jobs in data center consolidation effort

June 1, 2010 -- HP is cutting 9,000 jobs and taking a charge of $1 billion as it begins refitting its data centers on the HP Converged Infrastructure Architecture.

Described by HP as an "initiative is designed to enhance the client experience and better position Enterprise Services for growth," the company announced plans to consolidate its Enterprise Services' commercial data centers, management platforms, networks, tools and applications to "create a more scalable, modernized and automated IT infrastructure that will better serve its clients' needs (see "HP strikes back with Converged Infrastructure Architecture")."

The unfortunate side effect will be the elimination of approximately 9,000 positions over the next few years.

Tom Iannotti, senior vice president and general manager for HP Enterprise Services, said "Over the past 20 months, we focused on integrating EDS and improving profitability. Now that the integration is largely complete, we have identified significant opportunities to grow and scale the business. These next-generation services will enable our clients to benefit from the combined technology and services leadership that only HP offers."

HP bought EDS for $13.9 billion in 2008 and rebranded it HP Enterprise Services in September of last year.

To fund the consolidation HP will take a charge of approximately $1 billion over a multiyear period that will be included in its GAAP financial results. HP expects that, once completed, the transformation will generate annualized gross savings of approximately $1 billion and net savings after reinvestment in a range between $500 million and $700 million.

HP's most recent earnings report was strong, as it posted net earnings of $2.2 billion for fiscal Q2 (up 28% from the prior year) with $4.5 billion in revenue in the Enterprise Storage and Server segment. However, software was down 1% from '09 and services only grew 2% to $8.7 billion. See Dave Simpson's blog: "Solid storage growth in HP's Q2 report."

HP will reportedly create a few thousand new positions in support of the consolidation effort.

There may be a silver lining for any storage pros facing unemployment. Sister site Enterprise Storage Forum reports that the job market for storage networking pros is on the grow. Brocade, CommVault, EMC, NetApp, Oracle and VMware all appear to be hiring (see "NetApp Leads Rebound in Storage Networking Jobs").

EMC World Redux

May 14, 2010 -- Just when you think you're out, I'm going to pull you back in. Here's a roundup of all of our EMC World coverage, including articles and lab reviews on VPLEX, Unisphere, Data Domain and a couple of Ionix and Atmos announcements that flew under the radar.

There's a clearinghouse of links with all of our articles and lab reviews related to the 10th annual EMC World conference below, but let's tackle the news we haven't covered. While sequestered in the hotel adjacent to the show, a couple of things went right by me.

First up, EMC built out its partner ecosystem for the EMC Atmos cloud storage platform with a new crop of service providers and ISVs.

The service providers – including AT&T, CBICI, Hosted Solutions, Peer1 and Unisys – are using Atmos technology to deliver cloud services to their customers, while the ISVs now pledging support for Atmos include Acuo Technologies, Atempo, Aspera, Cloudera, CommVault, Gladinet, Emulex, EnterpriseDB, Informatica, lifeIMAGE, Metalogix, MedCommons, Nasuni, RainStor, Riverbed Technology, Seven10 Storage, Signiant, StorSimple and TwinStrata.

EMC is also making a new edition of Atmos available in its efforts to entice more partners in the form of the EMC Atmos Virtual Edition.

EMC claims the Virtual Edition "extends the ability to deliver web-accessible, elastic cloud storage qualities to customers using EMC Symmetrix enterprise storage and EMC Celerra unified storage platforms. Running in a virtual environment, Symmetrix and Celerra customers can extend their platforms to address new workloads such as content-rich web applications, storage-as-a-service, cloud archiving and access to external Atmos-powered cloud services."

Secondly, EMC announced version 2.0 of the EMC Ionix Storage Configuration Advisor. The new software automates the validation of storage configuration best-practices in physical and virtual environments, utilizes agentless discovery to simplify storage deployment and management, and provides detailed reports and trend analysis that improve storage change and configuration management processes, according to EMC.

Ionix Storage Configuration Advisor 2.0 offers coverage of the storage infrastructure from the virtual guest, to the VMware vSphere host, and down through the storage array and detects infrastructure vulnerabilities.

It also provides an audit trail of SAN changes and rule violations, flagging potential service-affecting events as they occur.

Now for the recap.

EMC kicked off the show with the launch of VPLEX, a new appliance with a scale-out architecture that can "teleport" applications from one data center to another.

EMC unveils VPLEX appliance for global storage networks

EMC World: EMC takes the wraps off VPLEX

And here's a VPLEX/VMotion lab review from Enterprise Strategy Group…

EMC VPLEX Metro and VMware ESX: Enabling 100 km VMotion with New Distributed Storage Federation

After VPLEX, EMC made some moves in the unified fabric market with a pair of newly expanded partnerships with Brocade and Cisco:

EMC expands converged networking deals with Brocade, Cisco

Also of note was the introduction of Emulex's first hardware-based encryption HBAs, as well as its first design win for the adapters with EMC.

Emulex secures EMC design win for encryption HBAs

In the midrange, the rumors were right on. EMC unified the management of its Clariion and Celerra storage platforms and upgraded its FAST technology.

EMC debuts Unisphere, FAST for Clariion, Celerra

In disk-based backup/deduplication, EMC integrated its Data Domain products with NetWorker.

EMC boosts Data Domain deduplication

Finally, EMC added some SharePoint capabilities to its SourceOne family:

EMC launches SourceOne for SharePoint

Our sister site, Enterprise Storage Forum, also covered the news of the week. Check out their articles from the show:

EMC unveils VPLEX appliance for global storage networks

EMC boosts Data Domain deduplication

EMC World: Tucci focuses on clouds, virtualization

Deduplication, Storage Tiering and VPlex Star at EMC World

EMC World: EMC takes the wraps off VPLEX

May 10, 2010 -- Beam me up, Joe Tucci. EMC kicked off its "Journey to the Private Cloud" at its 10th annual EMC World conference in here in Boston with another offering upon the altar of virtual storage – EMC VPLEX, a new scale-out architecture that can "teleport" applications from one data center to another.

The VPLEX appliance creates scale-out clusters with up to 8 nodes (N+1 and N-1) that EMC says can be dropped into an existing data center, virtualize third-party storage arrays (even the ones made by the "bad guys") and non-disruptively move/relocate virtual machines (VMs), their applications and associated information.

For full coverage of the VPLEX product launch, see "EMC Claims Answer for Latency in Global Storage Networks" from sister site Enterprise Storage Forum.

I'd love to get some reactions from actual EMC users, but the media has been set up in a comfy ballroom in the hotel next to the convention center for our convenience, of course.

We're free to stroll over to the show floor, but that might be a bit tough to do and still make it back in time for the live video feed of the rest of the day's presentations.

Some tidbits from the show:

• There are two versions of the VPLEX appliance available today. 1.) A local configuration for "simplified mobility," meaning technology refreshes and rollovers inside the data center. 2.) The Metro version that connects synchronous data centers over distances of up to 100km.

• VPLEX only does block storage, no support for file or object-based storage.

• List prices start at $77,000 for a VPLEX local configuration and EMC is also offering a software subscription service for $26,000.

• EMC expects revenues for VPLEX to ramp in 2011, but expectations for 2010 are "quite modest."

• EMC also claims that their approach with VPLEX is to "really drive standards like SMI-S" – Brian Gallagher, president, EMC's storage virtualization product group…SMI-S? Really?

• Pat Gelsinger, president and COO, EMC information infrastructure products said a new version of EMC's FAST (fully automated storage tiering) technology is set to be announced tomorrow.

More to come. – KK