2011 - Who will swim and who will sink?
Ah! It's the time of the year where holiday season is just around the corner and new year predictions are on top of everybody's mind.
It has been an eventful year in storage, with one word on my mind - "GOBBLE". Just like Pac-Man, storage start-ups are disappearing from the radar. The big news were
- HP gobbled 3PAR
- Oracle gobbled Sun (finally)
- EMC gobbled Isilon
- Dell gobbled Ocarina Networks
- Dell about to gobble Compellent
- Quest Software gobbled BakBone
- NetApp gobbled Bycast
With these consolidations, it will be interesting to see how 2011 in Malaysia will pan out. So, who will sink and who will swim in the sea of storage sharks?
My predictions?
EMC has always bought well but more importantly, integrated their acquisitions well. Isilon should not be a problem and could even overshadow the poor performing Celerra and finally compete with NetApp. CLARiiON is aging too but old is gold. CLARiiON will continue to do well but it all depends on their sales force who has been selling the CLARiiONs and the Symms for ages. Being agile and be able to sell into the enterprise NAS market with Isilon could be a challenge.
HP could suffer. They are not known for amalgamating their acquisition well. Look at Polyserve, Ibrix. Not much of a whimper after their acquisition. 3PAR has great technology but it will be a challenge because it is a big architecture change to supercede EVA as the king of the hill in HP.
Dell could struggle too because their pursuit of 3PAR, and now Compellent will definitely hurt their sales and partnership with EMC. EqualLogic is going to do well but the problem is, EqualLogic is only iSCSI (bummer). It's time Dell came up with a multi-protocol, unified storage messaging from its Exanet acquisition and when the Compellent acquisition is done, it will have a Fibre Channel story to tell as well.
Here's the other problem with Dell. Dell is not well known as a technology company. The ability of its engineering to integrate 4 disparate technologies in Compellent, EqualLogic, Exanet and Ocarina Networks will decide how well Dell is positioned in 2011.
HDS? Disappearing from the radar fast. The recently launched VSP is great and challenging the Symmetrix in the super-class ring but it's way too big for the mass market. The AMS is good and solid, and very attractive in price but HDS is not beating its drums loud enough. They got to go out there and tell how great their technology is. My prediction - they will stay afloat, drifting happily and hopefully gain a point or two in market share.
IBM? It seems to have shifted focus to XIV and happily pushing their DS series. However, I am not seeing IBM aggressive enough in the storage space and we are not see great technologies coming out from IBM. IBM will still do well with their server attached sales and their traditional market. But IBM must do more. To me, it's that sinking feeling in 2011.
NetApp just appointed a new country manager. We have strong confidence in the new man at the helm and it's about time they got their partners act together. NetApp has also recently launched some new boxes, the FAS3200 and the FAS6200 series. Big strong boxes. Plus the fact the NAS will fit better with the cloud than SAN, 2011 could be a big year for NetApp in Malaysia. The only challenge is for NetApp to tout the previous ONTAP-GX as a scale-out NAS solution better than Isilon.
In summary,
Swimmers: EMC and NetApp
Floaters: HDS
Sinkers : HP, IBM, Dell
I am signing off for 2010. On behalf of Real Data Matrix, I would like to thank our customers for a wonderful 2010. See all of you again in 2011!
Have a great holiday season, drive safe and be responsible!
