This is a stunning move by EMC, but one that makes perfect sense. No customers lose any functionality that they need, and if they require something they did not have before, it is easier to add that feature or capability than to buy a separate unit. Now, on to the specific announcement.
The new family consists of two separate yet similar siblings. The VNX-Midrange Unified Storage family supersedes the traditional Clariion and Celerra products. Critical to understanding EMC's decision is its belief that the move to highly virtualized servers demands new storage solutions. That means shifting from traditional systems with static RAID groups to those with self-optimizing storage pools. That will require the automatic optimization of both the placement of applications on VMs, as well as the automatic optimization of data on disk (which means the ability to move data as appropriate as applications are dynamically moved). EMC states that this can generate up to three times the performance--say, three times the users and three times the transactions in a SQL Server or Oracle application environment while using a VNX system. And, both Unisphere and FAST VP (both introduced for the Clariion and Celerra lines in the third quarter of 2010) can be used with VNX.
The VNXe-Entry-level Unified Storage line is designed specifically for small businesses, remote offices or branch offices, as well as certain departmental applications. This is below the midrange market.
Why is EMC so interested in these markets? First, because the entry-level market is larger than the midrange market, and the midrange market is (and is forecast to remain) larger than the high-end market. To steal a line from Willie Sutton, EMC is going where the money is. But the fact is that entry-level storage customers, most of which depend on IT generalists rather than storage specialists for administration and management responsibilities, need a solution like VNXe. So what does the company bring to the party? The answer is a lot of R&D that has already been amortized with higher-level products and can be adapted to fit the specific needs of the entry-level market. The VNXe has wizards for system deployment, management and integration with existing server and application environments. VNXe also leverages EMC Unisphere, a user interface that provides a dashboard to manage system components. Obviously, this is a product that EMC is not selling direct, so its partner ecosystem will be paramount in determining its success in this market.
The IT information infrastructure wars are going to continue hot and heavy in 2011, and we expect storage battles to be competitively fierce. EMC made a number of major storage technology announcements and acquisitions in 2010, but the year was also one of strategic directional shifts for the company on a number of fronts. From where we sit, 2011 would seem to be the year those pronouncements turn to actions continuing the implementation of the company's strategic vision.
