EMC Upgrades Hardware; Partner, Dell, Aims At Enterprise

EMC Corp. has unveiled comprehensive hardware upgrades across its entire line. At the same time, EMC's partner, Dell Computer, announced upgrades to its EMC-based storage products that demonstrate Dell's growing commitment to enterprise computing.

EMC's announcements ranged from network attached storage (NAS) and high-end storage to mid-tier storage and software upgrades. "This fits into EMC's plan to present an overall umbrella of information lifecycle management (ILM)," said David Hill, vice president of Storage Research at the Aberdeen Group. "This is probably the widest announcement EMC has ever made."

Hill said the Dell announcement represents a demonstration that the two firms are committed to "driving functionality downstream from the data center to the work group." He noted that much of the new software announced Monday is being offered on lower range systems. He said his analysis of the products indicated that Dell and EMC seem to be working to keep their revenues stable while driving performance higher.

He pointed to EMC's upgrade of it Symmetrix DMX Series as appealing to many large enterprise users. Regarding that series, EMC said: "Cumulative enhancements to the Symmetrix DMX Series deliver up to twice the performance of the initial Symmetrix DMX Series introduced just 12 months ago."

EMC covered all the bases in its announcement. In addition to the upgrade to its Symmetrix family, the company beefed up its CLARiiON CX, Celerra, and Centera systems.The storage company introduced a new generation of CLARiiON CX systems--300, 500, and 700 series--all of which are available as new models or as upgrades to existing CLARiiON systems. Dell's announcement mirrored EMC's: it unveiled its Dell/EMC CX300, -500, and -700. Aberdeen's Hill said Dell appears to be "relentless" in improving the price-performance of its systems in its campaign to expand its presence in the enterprise. Dell said it has an online storage-consolidation tool that assists users in calculating their return on investment in moving from direct attached storage (DAS) to NAS or storage area network (SAN) infrastructures.

While EMC trumpeted its announcement as being comprehensive, Hill said it is essentially a hardware upgrade, albeit an important one. EMC's major announcements in the past year have been about its software acquisitions of Legato, Documentum, and VMware. Hill said Monday's announcements represent pieces in the larger mosaic of what EMC calls its commitment to its ILM strategy.