Couple of quick notes on EMCs quarter from the point of a stock holder.
V-Max sales took me by surprise.
It’s starting to look like the Symmetrix team aren’t happy maintaining the status quo.
Usually that’s a pretty static segment in the market, there’s a bit of customer substitution back and forth but rarely would any of the three major players in the high end face a rout.
28% year over year growth and posting a sequential increase in a quarter where the street had projected sales to be negative Vs Q4 shows there’s a shift going on somewhere in that market.
V-Max sales are trending above projections and the attach rate of FAST V1 is already kicking around at double digits in it’s first quarter of availability.
Symmetrix is looking to take more of everyone else's business.
Avamar and Data Domain still growing like crazy.
I’m going to be careful here as I know the exact numbers but the 100%+ year over year growth figure called out in the various press pieces is accurate. Relative to the other players in the backup market it would be interesting to see who’s growing their position relative to who’s shrinking. There’s only so much money in backup so if it’s landing in the coffers of one player it’s coming directly out of the pocket of another in either lost sales or cut to the bone discounts.
Discounts being good for the customer (and perhaps the sales person) but rotten for the vendor in the long term as it’s not like the product gets cheaper to develop or support just because the sticker price on the front of it has been marked down.
Now for a complete aside…
VMware’s financial model is looking different these days.
This is a comment on a completely different set of numbers but it looks to me that VMware’s revenue mix is moving towards a more subscription style model. A model which served RedHat very well in the recent down turn but who’s absence put the hammer on Microsoft’s server software revenue during the financial doldrums.
I suppose we’ll know more about this during the next major VMware product release but even that looks to be changing with them looking to deliver a product instead of a sever component now a management component then and middleware whenever.
