The graph that Anarchist didn't show

Recently I just discovered that the Storage Anarchist is not as old as (and maybe a few others) thought.  That's good because it probably means he will be around for awhile entertaining us with his excellent writing and EMC-centric storage satire. 

But how can he explain the omission in his most recent blog post of his own products from a graph attempting to denigrate Compellent and 3PAR?   I suppose he will say it's because the graph published in the Register didn't show his own products, but he must have known that I would gladly fill in the blanks for him.  Alas, I am concerned that he might have had a senior moment.  It starts happening to guys our age -that's why the AARP starts sending cards to 50 somethings.  We might forget that we're not really old farts and decide to join!

The graphic in question pulls data  from a number of sources, including the financial analyst company Stifel Nicolaus, who had probably been used to fill in the EqualLogic Data after the Dell acquisition.  The interesting thing is that Stifel Nicolaus has also done work estimating EMC's Symmetrix revenues since EMC stopped reporting them back in 2008.  Now why would they have done something like that?  Probably because they sucked. 

And how loud was the big sucking sound?  The chart below compares 3PAR InServ array sales with EMC Symmetrix sales from the beginning of 2006. 

Now you can see why Anarchist thought we should be compared with some other companies, because in enterprise storage where 3PAR operates, we beat up his products - and he knows it.   This is even after the addition of their bolt on catch up features and their overly-hyped expensive freaking doohickeys (flash SSDs) to the Symmetrix DMX products.  Their differentiators aren't really differentiatin'.

3PAR is not the fastest growing storage company in the world, but we are happy to be where we are - continuing to grow our business and lead in real value-added innovation for enterprise storage.

Comments

[SPACRC (pronounced SPARK)]

Marc

I do love this 'war' of words and statistics.

I do respect Barry. I used to work for EMC, and I have just started to blog. I posted my first yesterday about Thin Provisioning been 10 years late in ! You might want to read. Not quite sure what Barry's reaction to it, is going to be.

As SRJ said yesterday in his comment on Barry's blog, Barry is the master of bluster and bravado. I would use the word spin, though I think in this case his spin has spun, and has been left out to dry.

I would have expected a dip in any disk storage companies revenues for Q1 and Q2 of this year with the current world recession. Many customers just stopped buying primary storage, so I believe Just a Storage Guys comments on Barry's blog are misjudged.

So well done on filling in the missing part of the graph, and putting a different spin on it.

[the storage anarchist]

Ahh...fun with numbers.

But I notice you didn't publish the actual numbers now, did you.

Plotting percentage growth is oh so - misleading. But toss Data Domain's and EqualLogic's growth rates onto your chart, and you'll still get the point I made in my post.

Obvisouly I can't publish numbers that EMC chooses not to make public, nor can I comment on the accuracy of the numbers you used above. But I will point out that comparing 3PAR revenues to Symmetrix, while convenient, is apples to coconuts. Again you're struggling for relevance in a huge market, but comparing yourself to Symmetrix doesn't make you a competitor in that space. Comparison to CLARiiON would be more accurate, especially given your recent product announcements. Or perhaps, comparing to Symmetrix-PLUS-CLARiiON, for a true perspective.

But most importantly, it is no hidden secret that the mid-tier segment of the market is growing faster than the high-end (where Symmetrix remains #1 in market share). Why you want to claim a position in the high end beats me...

At less than $50M/quarter in revenues, 3PAR is inarguably an insignificant component of the external storage market at this juncture, no matter HOW you segment it.

[marc farley]

SPACRC, thanks for the comment and welcome to the storage blogosphere! Readers should check out his blog post on the history of thin provisioning here: http://bit.ly/18R7WN

[marc farley]

Anarchist, yes our numbers are much smaller than yours, but EMC was once much smaller than its bigger. more powerful competitors. We're OK with that problem at 3PAR. As for the high end market and the insanity of being in it - I don't know why EMC would introduce V-Max. Oh sure it can be configured to be small but with pricing fit for royal weddings.

Speaking of Clariion, it would be interesting to see it compared to EqualLogic and Data Domain on these graphs too. But that would be comparing apples to oranges again because we both know Data Domain makes a completely different kind of product, so lets just see if we can find a comparison of Clariion to EqualLogic anywhere - now THAT would be interesting. However, since I don't work for Dell EqualLogic any more, it's not my business to fight that fight and unfortunately I doubt anybody at Dell would have the guts to do it with their reseller agreement with EMC still in place.

Our mid range F-Class is doing well in the upper end of the mid-range market and unlike Clariion and Symmetrix, these products share the same reservationless architecture code base and are managed with the same tools and work together flawlessly for remote copy DR purposes.

So please keep thinking of us as crazies trying to gain market share in the high end with mid range products. That works for us.

[Steven Schwartz - The SAN Technologist]

I was going to say the same thing as the SA. I would think in general that Symm should be pretty flat, but Clariion would have a more of a typical up-swing. I also think that the Equallogic numbers are a weak estimate based on Michael Dell's comments about the PS-series revenue growth to the Register. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/29/dell_equallogic_excels/)

[SPACRC (pronounced SPARK)]

Thank you for the welcome to the storageblogsphere. Hopefully I can add another interesting perspective to the world of storage blogs.
And thanks for the plug for my blog and my first post. I would not really call it the history of thin provisioning, but more a question on why did it take so long for the likes of EMC, HDS and IBM to deliver thin provisioning, and a high level summary of the impact this has had.