EMC made their big announcement for 2011 yesterday. The company has a track record of elaborate, showy announcements that are designed to make a big impression on the audience. This time, the effort ran amok, turning into an awkward variety infomercial.
Weeks before the announcement, EMC tired to make sure storage industry followers were aware that the theme for the announcement was "record breaking". They even went so far as to send analysts and bloggers packages of broken audio records. From what I could tell, most people who received them were slightly bemused by the gesture, but not necessarily impressed.
Unable to resist the urge to flog the theme, CEO Joe Tucci started his presentation explaining unconvincingly why the announcement was record breaking. He then went into the EMC cloud computing story, this time including concepts ripped straight out of 3PAR's message book, including using the word "autonomic" a couple times. I hope my good buddy Barry Burke (EMC's Storage Anarchist blogger) heard that so he can start learning how to pronounce it. Mark my word, before the end of the year, he's going to be saying it as if he had invented it, even though it tickles his gag reflex right now.
Tucci also copped the 3PAR messages of selling technology that is less complex and doesn't require support from 3rd party service provider companies. However, he stopped short of mentioning EMC's own professional services. Hmmm.... I guess this means he wants to sell even more expensive EMC services to their customers.
Pat Gelsinger came next and presided over an series of interesting, but pointless motoring stunts and videos. IMHO, he should seriously consider using the nickname, "Chips", seeing as how he repeatedly mentioned his background from Intel.
After a few compulsory cloud comments, Gelsinger asked the crowd what words came to mind when they thought of EMC. I give him credit for having the guts to ask that one - and I was surprised to hear him say "expensive". Just when it seemed that a reality show was going to break out, he then went on to make the claim that their new "baby VNXe" system will be cheaper than similar-class products from other vendors. Yeah sure.
It was kind of funny when Gelsinger announced the VNXe, it was accompanied by a fast and cheesy synthesizer sound and a smattering of applause. For those in the audience, it must have seemed slightly strange considering the VNXe is very small in stature (it looked like it was 4u high) - much smaller than the miniature Stonehenge model in Spinal Tap.
Somebody at EMC must really like Audi automobiles as they were featured prominently in several video segments. It was the perfect opportunity for EMC to have made some excellent steering wheel cam videos, but that was not in the offing.
One of the stranger things they did was cram 26 lithe dancers into a Mini Cooper to set a record for the Guiness Book of Records. I'm not really sure why they felt compelled to do this - maybe because they realized there wasn't any legitimacy to their record breaking claims, but it was a bizarre and slightly entertaining part of the show. I thought it was interesting that they turned to a professional services provider of sorts, the Pilobolus Dance Theatre to get the contortionist-like flexibility they needed to accomplish the act. As far as I know, no EMC employees actively participated in breaking the record, yet EMC wanted to share in the accomplishment. That's like publicising that they sold to some famous customer when they actually didn't.
Gelsinger suggested that EMC storage was similarly efficient in the use of storage space as Pilobolus had been in filling the mini. Strange, I don't ever recall telling admins to get their fingers and toes out of the way so I could shut the door on a storage system. In general, there was a lot of lip service given to EMC's storage efficiency in the presentations, but nothing to back it up besides a modern dance company. Perfect!
Gelsinger liked to use the word "unquestionable" when discussing efficiency and performance. Since the theme of the event involved records, I'll go on the record saying that we will very gladly compare our capacity and energy efficiency with EMC's. And speaking of records, with EMC's history of not going on the record by participating in standard industry benchmarks, like the SPC, next time Gelsinger might want to use the word "unproven" instead of unquestionable.
A lot of competitive claims were made that clearly didn't consider all their competitors, but that's normal for these types of things. But it was hardly a string of industry-leading achievements, the way it was portrayed. While EMC claimed they made 41 new product announcements, some of them were just repackaged software and licensing and some of the items had actually been available previously - but it's fairly common to delay announcing products in order to align with an event such as this.
The rest of the show was a smattering of platitudes and spin along with bits of information about what was actually announced and the occasional car/motorcycle stunt. In what had to be one of the strangest marketing ideas of all time, for the Grand Finale of the event, EMC hired a professional motorcycle named Bubba Blackwell to jump across a good sized number of Symmetrix cabinets. They never really tied this one into any product features, but it was sort of fun watching Bubba do his thing. Still I couldn't help but wonder what the difference would have been had he jumped over 3PAR systems - he probably would have only had to jump half the distance, given our efficiency advantages.
Marc -- glad you enjoyed the event so much!
-- Chuck
Posted by: Chuck Hollis | January 19, 2011 at 09:21 AM
3PAR's use of the word 'autonomic' came after HP and IBM began using it perhaps a decade ago...and tech companies borrowed it from the medical profession. So its pointless to imply that EMC borrowed from 3PAR's messaging playbook unless you also wish to suggest that 3PAR borrowed it from others too.
And while it is true that 3PAR pushed for simplicity, it is hardly the first tech company to identify reduced complexity as a goal.
Funny you had mentioned the lame sound that accompanied the introduction of each product behind Pat on stage. I made the same comment to a friend last night. I wondered why--with all the effort spent on the event--some things seemed so poorly planned and out of place. That sound was just plain sad.
Posted by: josephmartins | January 19, 2011 at 02:56 PM
Yes Chuck, I enjoyed it like I enjoyed the original Death Race 2000.
Joseph, of course we did not invent the word autonomic, we borrowed it. However, we have been actively using it in our marketing and messaging continually for the past several years - unlike HP, IBM and anybody else I know of.
The fact that EMC competes with us every day and is exposed to our messaging - because customers use the language vendors use with other vendors - is the reason I can say with certainty that EMC is borrowing our winning messages and using it to position their own products more effectively. It's a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" scenario. EMC is a smart company and they use all the resources available - including those that come from their competitors. It's smart of them to do it.
Posted by: marc farley | January 19, 2011 at 04:43 PM
IBM has not only been using it, but dedicated an entire section of its website to the term (http://www.research.ibm.com/autonomic/). My first thought when they briefed us on it several years ago was "craptastic, another buzzword". Then 3PAR picked up the torch.
BTW, IBM shows up as the 3rd link Page 1 in a Google search. 3PAR shows up on page 7 then again on page 19. Fire your SEO. ;-)
Posted by: josephmartins | January 19, 2011 at 05:32 PM
So where is 3PAR's unified CIFS/NAS/iSCSI/FC array? NetApp has been doing that combination for many, many years. Yes you can throw a partner solution in front of 3PAR to provide NAS, but then you manage two different products, two different support contracts, and the invariable interop issues.
Posted by: Thomas | January 19, 2011 at 07:02 PM
this bravado attitude is what turned us off to emc and when 'support' for our array ended, we proudly and promptly jumped ship to the newly acquired compellent (unfortunately). we were sick of a huge company with follow the sun support on a spattering of products that no one really understood when we ran into issues. suits came in with promises and handed out hardware like santa claus due to multiple data corruption incidents on our mid-range array (lost an entire shelf 2x). i now get the great 'opportunity' to deal with emc support again because of the isilon acquisition (you paid too much, believe me i'm a current customer!).
while it's cute to see vendors go at it, the future of storage kinda sucks from a customers perspective. niche companies will go by the wayside and sell out to the industry giants. i will miss the support and innovation from joe the plumber, the small guy who knew his product very well...
Posted by: dlove | January 19, 2011 at 08:50 PM
For the record, the broken records we were sent were facsimile cardboard replicas! I was disappointed that they weren't real broken records! Indeed, the whole record breaking thing was a bit of a let-down; I was looking forward to seeing Chuck break the record for the vertical hundred metres sprint!
Posted by: Storagebod | January 20, 2011 at 07:29 AM
Joseph, Thanks for the IBM link - yes I see they are still working on autonomic computing at their Almaden Research Center. This includes autonomic storage management.
However, this is not nearly the same thing as actively marketing a real product that features autonomic processing. My Google search of "autonomic storage" shows a whole lot of 3PAR results and not much of anybody else. I guess I live in a storage-stilted world.
Thomas, the email address you left with your comment was a gmail address. That's OK, but it leaves the question as to whether or not you work for a vendor or have some other vested interest in this industry. This blog is not a forum to discuss HP's product roadmaps, especially with commenters that are not transparent.
dlove, the industry has matured and gone through an enormous consolidation, which means the barriers to entry for startups are much higher. Not that there won't be new small companies coming along, but not nearly at the same rate as there used to be. Unfortunately, I believe that is the way it is going to be for some time.
Storagebod, thanks for the clarification on the broken records, I should have known from reading your blog a couple weeks ago. As for me, I wanted to see the EMC social team pile into the mini - maybe with Zilla's smiling mug pressed against the window screaming something about Chuck invading his personal space?
Posted by: marc farley | January 20, 2011 at 10:08 AM