EMC Warms to All

NEW YORK -- EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), known for its aggressive marketing, is turning a kinder, gentler face to the industry these days -- as Byte and Switch learned when we caught up with director of technology analysis Ken Steinhardt at the Storage Decisions conference here this week.

Judging by Steinhardt's comments, EMC's open to change and cooperation, countering past accusations of arrogance about its product direction (see EMC Earnings Up). The company is supporting competing SAN technologies; making some changes in how it views its own product lines; declining to criticize technologies such as tape backup that once drew guffaws; and taking a no-nonsense approach to standards. Here's a sampling of what Steinhardt had to say on some of these topics:

On the growth of Ethernet versus Fibre Channel: "We see both Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel as continuing. We've never been one to choose one over the other... The differences are more application-dependent... I see most enterprises deploying both."

On blurring boundaries between Clariion (midrange) and Symmetrix (high end) product lines: "It used to be that capacity was the greatest differentiator. Now the main difference is in service-level requirements, performance levels... Customers who want to be resilient to multiple failures would pick Symmetrix... We'll continue fully with both lines, looking for chances to offer optimization and specialization."

On iSCSI: "Symmetrix does native iSCSI. A native iSCSI for Clariion will happen."On the chance that EMC may backpedal on its anti-tape stance (see EMC Zips Lips on Tape): "I can't really comment on that."

On virtualization: "We see virtualization across the server, storage, and switch. It's a mistake to do it in just one place. You need to be strategic, to have intelligence at all three levels... That will require a greater level of integration with other major players. You can't just have point products... That's why we maintain excellent relationships with all of our switch partners."

On skepticism about SAN standards: "Open standards are key. We will resist tactical approaches -- customers won't tolerate that. I'm very encouraged by the progress of standards such as SMI-S [Storage Management Initiative Specification from Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)]."

On 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel: "We'll support it when it becomes broadly available."

On Infiniband: "Our philosophy is dictated by product demand. My personal opinion is that Infiniband will be a server and processor interconnect, not one for storage, although we could see more integration long-term."On the biggest technology trends at EMC: "We've got shorter product cycles and a significant turn of our platforms, about every 12 to 18 months. That's a little more aggressive than in the past... the result of more R&D and architectural consistencies, having the same drivers and software to scale architectures."

Despite all the good will and open-mindedness, it's clear EMC still has its eye on gaining ground in an increasingly competitive space. Steinhardt didn't flinch, for instance, when asked about the growing competition from IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), as evidenced in IBM's recent announcement of a new low-end storage system (see Son of Shark Emerges): "IBM announced some capabilities they said they'd have in 2003. Now they're available in 2004... They're free to do what they want."

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch