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EMC Takes Storage Router for a Spin: Page 2 of 3

The router accelerates what EMC software boss Mark Lewis calls a “catfight” over the best ways to virtualize storage. EMC is a proponent of out-of-band virtualization, while IBM uses an inband appliance running its SAN Volume Controller (SVC) software. Hitachi takes another approach with its Tagmastore system, running virtualization in cache in the controller (see Hitachi Struts Mr. Universal and EMC & IBM in Virtual Skirmish).

So EMC’s demo brought the expect sniping from the opposition, who claimed to be unimpressed with Storage Router’s ballroom dance. “We’re leading the market in heterogenous support,” says Jeff Barnett, IBM’s manager of marketing strategy for open software. “EMC is trying to stall the market by talking about future releases that are a year away.”

Hitachi CTO Hu Yoshida says EMC is doing virtualization in the wrong place. “It doesn’t belong in the core of the network,” he says. “It belongs in the controller.”

EMC’s Lewis says his only worry about the storage router is that customers might be soured on virtualization by the time his product comes out.

“I just fear that if we’re the twelfth one to try and sell it to them, they'll hold us responsible for the first eleven,” Lewis says.