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EMC Hits Hardware Refresh
Changes to hardware platforms don't reflect software acquisitions it made last year
February 10, 2004
3 Min Read
EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), which spent $3.63 billion on software companies last year, today served up a reminder that it is still primarily a hardware company.
EMC refreshed its storage networking products across the board, announcing changes to its Symmetrix and Clariion SAN, Celerra NAS, and Centera content addressed storage (CAS) systems.
With the new releases, EMC is looking to emphasize its role as a supplier of tiered storage, taking particular pains to enhance mainframe support in response to recent announcements from IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM). It's also taking aim at a perception that EMC has sacrificed hardware priorities in an effort to compete in the software arena.
"When we bought Legato and Documentum, everybody was saying we're trying to become a software company," Chuck Hollis, VP of platforms marketing at EMC. "We still do hardware."
EMC's new launches include:
Symmetrix DMX-2: a higher end of the enterprise Symmetrix DMX platform EMC rolled out a year ago (see EMC Enters the Matrix). EMC claims DMX-2 has twice the processing power and cache memory space as the original DMX, which it will continue to sell and support. EMC is touting an added feature called AutoSwap, which lets businesses migrate data and applications without interruption from the mainframe for load balancing or disaster recovery. This feature is similar to IBM's Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS) software.
New midrange Clariion systems: EMC is replacing the CX200, CX400, and CX600 models with the CX300, CX500, and CX700. EMC claims the new Clariions run from 25 percent to 100 percent faster than their predecessors, depending on the model, with no price increase.
Celerra NS700G NAS gateway: EMC says this product serves as a front-end to Symmetrix and Clariion systems, and to the Celerra NS700 NAS filer, a new product that replaces the Celerra NS600. The NAS gateway follows IBM's new NAS gateway, announced two weeks ago (see IBM Swings New NAS Gateway). Like IBM, EMC sees a trend toward pooling data residing on both NAS and SANs. "There's a shift in the NAS market to a gateway deployment that started in 2003 and is going strong now," says Hollis. "The shift is to people who want to deploy NAS in addition to SAN."
Centera mainframe connectivity: EMC has added native mainframe connectivity for Centera CAS systems, through an application programming interface (API) that supports IBM's z/OS mainframe. EMC also claims the enhanced Centera systems double data replication speeds over previous models.
None of the announcements is a radical breakthrough, but at least one observer is intrigued by EMC's mainframe emphasis, particularly in the Symmetrix AutoSwap feature.
"There's a subtle shift back to the mainframe," says John Webster, Senior Analyst and Partner of Data Mobility Group. "They added native mainframe support for Centera, which I think was a must-have, because a lot of the data Centera was designed for resides on the mainframe. But the thing that really made me stand back and say, 'Wow, my God, that's quite bold,' is they're going head-to-head with IBM on GDPS. They're doing what GDPS does without GDPS. That's knocking on IBM's door and saying, 'Move over. We can do it better.' "
What EMC hasn't gotten around to yet is full integration of the software it acquired by purchasing Legato, Documentum, and VMware in 2003 (see EMC Gobbles Legato, EMC Cops Documentum and EMC Completes VMware Acquisition).
"What I'm waiting for is when all the tools actually come together under one umbrella that would be very impressive," says Arun Taneja, founder of The Taneja Group.
EMC's platform refreshes did include enhancements to software that it had before the acquisitions, including SAN Copy and SnapView on Clariion and Celerra's management application. So far, though, EMC has continued to sell Legato, Documentum, and VMware software as separate products – often to its systems competitors (see Storage Makes Strange Bedfellows)."Further integration is a given," Webster says, "but they still need to make sure Legato and Documentum can stand on their own for awhile."
— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch
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