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.

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!

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

EMC, Cisco, Vmware cause waves with cloud coalition

November 3, 2009 -- Competitors are already calling the EMC – Cisco – VMware Virtual Computing Environment coalition and its Vblock compute systems a veiled approach to vendor lock-in, but the trio begs to differ.

EMC, Cisco and VMware caused a commotion when the companies announced the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition and a new set of systems that operate as building blocks for virtualized cloud computing infrastructures.

The companies have been collaborating to create a virtualized, cloud infrastructure platform based on their respective technologies. The result is a series of integrated "Vblock Infrastructure" packages comprised of storage and networking systems and server and storage virtualization software.

We've been fielding comments from across the industry and it didn't take long for the competition to react.

EMC rival NetApp fired a shot at the VCE by classifying Vblocks as nothing more than a reference architecture rather than a full stack of server, network, storage, and virtualization technologies.

Jay Kidd, vice president Storage Solutions group and chief marketing officer, NetApp:

"We view today's announcement as a clever attempt by Cisco to sell UCS servers into EMC's install base. We also feel that this announcement further validates the trend that we're seeing as more and more enterprises move to a virtualized dynamic data center infrastructure. NetApp has been at the forefront in helping enterprises realize this shift through our close partnerships with Cisco and VMware. With VMware we have virtualized large data centers for customers like T-Systems, BT, and Sprint, and have expanded on these architectures with several integration partners to include Cisco UCS servers. Open partnerships, not closed coalitions, are what customers need and want to make the transformation to a virtualized data center."

More of Jay's thoughts on the VCE and Vblocks can be found in his latest blog post.

Dell – a huge EMC partner – calls the VCE/Vblock news an attempt to lock users into proprietary technologies.

Dell's vice president of enterprise storage and networking, Praveen Asthana, says, "The VMware, Cisco and EMC joint venture assumes that customers are looking for closed technology architectures that lock them into a restricted vendor stack. This proprietary implementation of industry standard architectures is a throwback to the 1990's and creates complete vendor lock-in. As the leading provider of Cloud infrastructure, Dell knows from its customers' insights that cloud compute workloads are best served by open, standards-based solutions – not by repackaging high-cost infrastructure as a cloud solution."

The coalition members beg to differ. They are in lock step with a message of openness.

VMware's president and CEO, Paul Maritz, says Cisco, EMC and VMware all remain committed to working in an "open way."

"We maintain our commitment to working in an open way with existing partners by making our technologies available to other parties who want to put together solutions," says Maritz. "There is no need or reason for our relationships to change. At the same time, we are adding to the options for our customers and not removing them."

EMC's CEO Joe Tucci claims the VCE and the Vblock systems offer customers more "choice."

"On the choice side, we know this is an open world and we are committed to openness," he says. "We are still offering an a la carte menu. For example, you can take EMC storage and choose another server. We are not removing choice."

However, open does not mean the ability to use just any technology to create a Vblock.

"We are not substituting on the Vblock side. If you want to use somebody else's storage you have to buy from the [a la carte] side of the menu, but you're not buying a Vblock," says Tucci. "That's the distinction. You give up certain things if you don't order from the fixed menu."

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.

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.

VMware's vSphere of influence

April 21, 2009 -- Today's release of VMware's vSphere 4 operating system – a new OS for building internal clouds – has brought with it a tsunami of support from dozens of storage vendors.

The vSphere 4 OS aggregates and manages large pools of infrastructure resources – processors, storage and networking – as a dynamic operating environment. VMware claims vSphere 4 will "bring the power of cloud computing to the datacenter, slashing IT costs while dramatically increasing IT responsiveness." VMware also touts vSphere as a path to delivering cloud services that are compatible with customers' internal cloud infrastructures. VMware plans to build in support for dynamic federation between internal and external clouds, enabling "private" cloud environments that span multiple datacenters and/or cloud providers.

Big, bad virtual machines

Using the vSphere OS, users can build bigger, faster virtual computing environments. According to VMware's published specs, the platform can pool together up to:

32 physical servers with up to 2048 processor cores
1,280 virtual machines
32TB of RAM
16PB of storage
8,000 network ports

It also creates bigger, faster virtual machines (VMs) with up to:

2x the number of virtual processors per virtual machine (from 4 to 8)
2.5x more virtual NICs per virtual machine (from 4 to 10)
4x more memory per virtual machine (from 64 GB to 255GB)
3x increase in network throughput (from 9 Gbps to 30Gbps)
3x increase in the maximum recorded I/O operations per second (to over 300,000)
New maximum recorded number of transactions per second - 8,900

Data protection and migration

VMware also claims vSphere offers zero downtime and zero data loss protection against hardware failures with VMware Fault Tolerance and minimized planned downtime due to storage maintenance and migrations with VMware Storage VMotion, which provides live migration of virtual machine disk files across heterogeneous networked storage types.

vSphere 4 also features integrated disk-based backup and recovery for all applications via VMware Data Recovery and VMware vStorage Thin Provisioning, which keeps capacity-hungry VMs in check.

Storage vendors on board

The announcements are coming fast and furious from the storage community as, so far, 3PAR, Akorri, CA, Compellent Technologies, CommVault, Dell, Double-Take Software, EMC, Emulex, FalconStor Software, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, LSI, NetApp, Nexenta, StoneFly, Sun Microsystems, Symantec and Vizioncore have all pledged support for vSphere 4.

Read on for the details we have so far…

3PAR

3PAR's InServ Storage Servers are on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for VMware vSphere 4. In addition, 3PAR and VMware are investing in joint engineering projects. For example, the 3PAR already supports the VMware vStorage initiative and the recently released adaptive queuing technology that became available in VMware Infrastructure 3.5 and is included in VMware vSphere 4.

Akorri

Akorri's BalancePoint software will support VMware vSphere by the end of 2009. BalancePoint is available on a VMware certified virtual appliance and assists in cross-domain virtualized data center management, managing virtual and physical server and storage infrastructure from a single console.

Compellent Technologies

Compellent Technologies announced that its Storage Center SAN supports VMware vSphere. Compellent's Storage Center has completed the VMware Hardware Certification Program testing criteria and is now listed on the VMware HCL for use with vSphere.

EMC

EMC announced new high-availability advancements for next-generation virtual data centers with the new EMC PowerPath/VE software. The PowerPath/VE software provides path management, load balancing and fail-over capabilities for VMware vSphere 4.

Emulex

Emulex's LightPulse host bus adapters (HBAs) and converged network adapters (CNAs) are fully supported with VMware in-box drivers as part of VMware vSphere 4. The LightPulse 8Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs and 10Gbps Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) CNAs deliver more than double the IOPS performance in VMware vSphere 4 environments over the previous release, according to Emulex.

FalconStor Software

FalconStor Software's NSS-S12 storage array supports vSphere and on the vSphere HCL. FalconStor's Network Storage Server (NSS) technology integrates storage virtualization and provisioning across multiple disk arrays and connection protocols to create a scalable iSCSI or Fibre Channel SAN.

HP

Hewlett-Packard announced the integration of vSphere 4 into its HP Adaptive Infrastructure (AI) portfolio. The interoperability of VMware vSphere 4 with HP's portfolio includes hardware compatibility for a range of HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers and StorageWorks systems and software integration of HP's Insight software with vSphere 4.

NetApp

NetApp also announced the integration and certification of its storage platforms with vSphere 4. NetApp storage platforms and software products such as SANscreen VM Insight and MultiStore are certified for vSphere 4 and available now. The NetApp Virtualization Guarantee Program for vSphere is also available immediately.

StoneFly

IP SAN maker StoneFly announced completion of VMware vSphere certification across its entire SAN product line. StoneFly IP SANs supporting VMware vSphere, including the StoneFly Voyager, Integrated Storage Concentrator and OptiSAN product lines, are now available.