Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Jeff Allen, Senior VP, Strategy & Development, BlueArc: Page 6 of 10

Byte and Switch: The trend right now is to drive more margins from software as hardware is being commoditized, à la EMC’s AutoIS strategy. Is it difficult to be banging the drum about purpose-built, expensive hardware when the rest of the market – and, supposedly, customers – are all talking about software and better managing the hardware they already have? [see EMC Mulls Software Buys].

Allen: A hardware engine is absolutely required for pure performance: It’s as simple as that. But this does not preclude BlueArc from having a software management engine that sits on our hardware. We will partner with software providers for things like virus scanning, resource management, and virtualization, but I need to identify which applications make sense – I don’t know yet. It is more important to find out where we play with the rest of the storage community. I think we should partner with companies that do high-end SANs, like Hitachi Data Systems, LSI Logic, EMC, and the like. These companies have some low-end NAS capabilities but nothing like the performance of BlueArc’s silicon server.

Byte and Switch: But if every startup on the block is trying to partner with EMC, why are they going to bother with BlueArc?

Allen: I was at EMC in the early days, remember, when Dick Egan [founder and chairman emeritus] was still running the show. He had a sign above his desk that said "It's the product, stupid!" The problem is, he’s not read it recently. You’ve got to have a product that really makes a difference and perhaps BlueArc can help EMC with this.

Byte and Switch: Maybe, but EMC's world revolves around software now, so surely BlueArc would be low down on its list of possible partners?