Alex from NetApp thinks I’ve given him free advertising.
Lets watch!
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Hi Mark, thanks for the free advertising. There are really three parts to any storage business; the hardware, and the software that runs on it. The third part I'll come to. Engenio takes NetApp places we haven't been before. Full motion video,
You mean ONTAP 8 Cluster Mode?
or managing huge data sets,
You mean ONTAP 8 Cluster Mode?
requires a highly scalable, very high performance and ultra-dense storage solutions; that's an area where we see a great deal of growth (as I know EMC does).
So you don’t mean ONTAP 8 Cluster Mode? But how is the E7900 ultra dense when it supports only 480 drives?
This to me is another example of the “Power of OR” not the “Power of AND” to borrow a short sighted piece of marketing. If you want huge datasets don’t do it on ONTAP do it on Engenio.
The shell game here is to love having a portfolio of storage products but not wanting to man up and admit you can’t do it all in one box and that ONTAP FC support can’t cut it with full motion video or huge data sets or so on or so on.
It represents a mixture of hardware and software for a set of issues that are much larger -- orders of magnitude larger -- than they were a few years ago, and that are no longer readily addressed by a unified storage solution.
So it was addressed before but it isn’t now? All of a sudden having an FC array is a requirement when before it didn’t matter?
This is a bit of a turn around for the people who claimed the future is IP storage, FC is dying and railed against “traditional” RAID arrays. RAID 5, RAID 10, RAID 6 and COFW snapshots. But now we’re told customer requirements have changed and highly scalable high performance ultra dense storage solutions are a requirement. These offerings of course are FC based and offer RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10 and COFW snapshots.
Outside of that is where NetApp's unified systems play; a set of hardware and software that meets the needs of 90% of the rest of the market that doesn't have these specific and novel requirements. Simple and effective, OnTap (and 8 is where our focus lies, not 7) has made even silo storage providers like EMC sit up and pay attention. The last piece in this business, and the most important, are customers. Every day of every week they're out there looking to make their businesses more effective and efficient. That means change. The requirements, the business issues, the opportunities aren't what they were 5 years ago; heck, they aren't what they were last year. Any company that stays in a rut with its solutions gets stiffed. Ask anyone from HP; their storage offerings are living proof that not innovating and not changing costs you dear. Even buying 3Par may not be enough to save them. OnTap is a brilliant piece of NetApp technology, that with the improvements in the shape of OnTap 8 that bring clustering, more efficiency, more _____ (you fill in the blanks here) will mean that we get more of the market because we're better at the unified, single platform storage that anyone else.
Yes ONTAP is so brilliant you spent your opening paragraph defining where it shouldn’t be used in this new world. But the crux here is that NetApp don’t offer a single Unified Platform.
Here are NetApp’s separate storage products.
- ONTAP 8-7 Mode
- ONTAP 8-Cluster Mode
- StorageGrid
- Engenio
Two different block storage products. Two different NAS products. One CAS also ran competitor.
Marketing Duckspeak might play well on slides but the inescapable fact is that two of those products only share an installer.
And now we've bought Engenio and upset you, and you’d like everyone else to feel equally upset too.
I’m not upset you’ve bought a fourth storage platform. I’m elated. It points out the hypocrisy when NetApp mounts it’s broken down old Nag to shout “Look at all the platforms the other guy has. We can solve all your problems with two of them. I mean three of them. Make that four of them.” It also points out the hypocrisy of slamming “traditional” RAID Arrays since you had to go buy one to meet the FC demands of “full motion video, managing huge data sets and anything else which requires a highly scalable, very high performance and ultra-dense storage solution.”
And like you pointed out, ONTAP can’t cut it with those as requirements have moved on.
You'd like us to stick to what you think is our knitting, so you can persuade the world that we're "doublespeaking" and that EMC, that truthful, faithful and spin-free EMC that only exists in your imagination, has better point solutions in every department. Oh, along with a "Just Like NetApp" stance on unified storage. It’s you that has the problem; EMC are in knots and you have your panties in a bunch because we refuse to stand still. Roll on change.
You’re not standing still or moving forwards, in your own long established terms you’re heading backwards.
Years of telling people ONTAP was all you needed now out the window and even ONTAP as a brand is fragmented. You have 7-Mode and Cluster-Mode. Both entirely different products which share a brand name which can be applied to anything. Like the term FlexPod.
NetApp has been evacuating from both orifices on their “Unified” product set for a long time now. Running around the place slamming diverse product portfolios and FC arrays as they keep adding products and buying FC arrays. But now people are noticing. And the Newspeak isn't working.
