Bob Schultz, SVP & GM, StorageWorks, Hewlett-Packard

Among top storage networking companies, Hewlett-Packard is this year's comeback kid and Bob Schultz, senior VP and general manager of the StorageWorks division, is a key fielder on its team.

Indeed, the storage division of HP has been one of the chief beneficiaries of the company's dramatic management change following the ouster of CEO Carly Fiorina last year and the appointment of Mark Hurd as CEO in March. (See High Hopes in Palo Alto.)

Within the last few months, the company has revamped its storage line, reinvigorated a woebegone channel, grown a robust partnership network, and made a landmark acquisition. (See HP Expands Program, HP Chomps AppIQ & Peregrine, and Users Eye Up HP's EVA.)

The results speak for themselves. This time last year, HP capped months of in-house disgrace with a poor showing in market research figures from IDC. Though HP continued to hold a sizeable chunk of the external disk storage systems market, IDC claimed its revenues in storage had dropped 14.4 percent year-over-year. (See IDC Releases Disk Figures, HP Storage Slammed, and HP Storage Share Slips.)

This year, IDC's report shows HP holding 19.1 percent of the overall external disk storage systems market worldwide (second to EMC's 20.3 percent share). And HP's growth is up 14.7 percent year-over-year. (See IDC Cites Record Storage.)Schultz's demeanor reflects these changes. After three tough years at HP, he sounds less like he's whistling in the dark. He seems just a bit more confident, and the tiniest moue of big-honcho impatience has crept into his tone. (Though in fairness, that could reflect annoyance with the interviewer!)

We caught up with Bob last week to pepper him with questions about HP's storage past and future. Enjoy the results!

Figure 1: Bob Schultz, SVP & GM
StorageWorks, Hewlett-Packard

Byte and Switch: So, how's life in HP's storage division under the new management?

Schultz: Well, you can look at the last six months and see how things are going for our business – revenues up 17 percent in the fourth quarter year on year. And we've seen the AppIQ acquisition, and it's going as well as any acquisition possibly could. The comments that Mark [Hurd] has made show the importance of storage to the business, and that's evidenced by the AppIQ investment. For us, we're pretty excited.Byte and Switch: OK, but how is your life different? What's the new CEO like to work for?

Schultz: Well, rather than comment on the new management... My management is really the same. I report to Scott Stallard [senior vice president and general manager of Enterprise Storage and Servers at HP] and he reports to Ann Livermore [executive VP, Technology Solutions Group]. The group I'm part of has been consistent in their commitment to storage.

Byte and Switch: But can't you point to specific things that have changed in the storage division?

Schultz: Well, we've had the hiring of sales specialists in the Americas, the staffing and reenergizing of the European channel programs, and some of the visibility in events that we've run in the last year, such as our HP Americas StorageWorks Conference [in May 2005 – see HP Expands StorageWorks Portfolio] and any number of smaller events around the globe.

We also have the whole "attach" initiative as an executive mandate. [A reference to Mark Hurd's directive encouraging resale and OEM agreements with partners companywide.] The management team has been consistent. The last six months, we've been energizing the team.Byte and Switch: What about next year? What are the key things you'll focus on?

Schultz: Well, first of all the AppIQ acquisition. Realizing the value of that business will be a focus next year. And ILM will continue to be a key effort as we move from managing infrastructure to managing information... We'll combine what we are doing in AppIQ and ILM, through 2006 and beyond.

The discussions with customers are becoming more important. People are looking at how to control costs. They are looking to control the amount of data on site, and scale continues to increase every year. Compliance and continuity are still the core concerns. Increasingly, people are interested in not just how do I store data, but how do I effectively utilize it, how can I determine what's important and make that more accessible to my customers?

Byte and Switch: What about new products?

Schultz: We'll have a number of announcements. We're making sure we continue to drive the ramp-up from EVA to clustered NAS gateways. And in terms of overall execution, we'll be making sure we're attaching storage to HP servers and selling a full portfolio, making sure everything works well together.Byte and Switch: What about iSCSI?

Schultz: We have iSCSI gateways that connect our SANs to the network. Our servers have the iSCSI option. At the low end of the market, people are also interested in unified storage. We'll continue to roll iSCSI out across arrays. Well, not in the MSA or EVA, but in the XP.

Byte and Switch: Hang on. What about the MSA and EVA? Won't you add iSCSI to those too?

Schultz: We haven't made that announcement. [A verbal scuffle ensues, after which Schultz answers the question.] On the MSA, we're shipping in the next month and a half. It's the first part of 2006 on EVA.

Byte and Switch: Will iSCSI sales affect Fibre Channel anytime soon?Schultz: I think iSCSI will open up a broader segment of the market with its ability to hit lower price points. It will expand the SAN market. People who've deployed Fibre Channel will continue to deploy Fibre Channel. iSCSI will be additive.

Byte and Switch: But at some point, don't you see iSCSI sales affecting Fibre Channel?

Schultz: That will not be an issue next year.

Byte and Switch: I want to ask you about SMI-S [the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) created by Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)]. Is it really working as it should for interoperable management of storage?

Schultz: To us it's useful and essential. It really enables you to provide heterogeneous management across storage platforms.Byte and Switch: Right. But is it really doing that?

Schultz: It's version one. We've got good SMI-S providers across array platforms. And we continue to expand functionality.

Byte and Switch: What about Aperi? [This refers to the controversial organization started a couple of months back by IBM, ostensibly to improve storage management interoperability. Some say it was an attempt to counter HP's acquisition of AppIQ. (See Aperi Appears Amid Questions, Strange Fascination With Aperi, Hey! Out of My Margin, and Aperi's Seeds of Revolution.)]

Schultz: Well, there should be one standard. In the industry, AppIQ had launched its initiative to open up AppIQ interfaces and help third parties write modules. IBM, HP, Hitachi, and Sun participated. Our take is that it would be good to move toward a standard. We think the AppIQ initiative is an opportunity to drive a standard. The initiative was kicked off about 60 days ago, and really is in its beginning stages. I don't think it will be badly affected by Aperi.

Byte and Switch: Will you support Aperi?Schultz: I think we need to get a standard. We should have a discussion around what that should be.

— Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch

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