Category Archives: Commvault

Gartner 3Q2011 WW ECB Disk Storage Market

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Just after IDC released their numbers of their worldwide Disk Storage System Tracker (Read my blog) 10 days ago, Gartner released their Worldwide External Controller Based (ECB) Disk Storage Market report for Q3 of 2011.

The storage market remains resilient (for now) and growing 10.4% in terms of revenue, despite the hard economic conditions. The table below shows the top 7 storage vendors and their relation to their Q2 numbers.

 

EMC remained at the top and gained a massive 3.6% jump in market share. Looks like they are firing all cylinders and chugging like an unstoppable steam train. IBM gained 0.1% in second place as its stable of DS8000, XIV and Storewize V7000 is taking shape. Even though IBM has been holding steadily, I still think that their present storage lineup is staggered and lacks that seamless upgrade path for their customers.

NetApp, which I always terms as the “little engine that could”, is slowing down. They were badly hit in the last quarter, delivering lower than expected revenue numbers according to the analysts. Their stock took a tumble too. As quoted by Gartner, “NetApp’s third-quarter results reflect an overdependence on a few large customers, limited geographic coverage in high-growth countries and increased competition from Dell, EMC, HP and IBM in the midrange modular ECB disk array market segment.”

I wrote in my recent blog, that NetApp has to start evolving from a pure-play storage vendor into a total storage and data management solution vendor. The recent rumours of NetApp’s interests in Commvault and Quantum should make a lot of sense if NetApp decides to make that move. Come on, NetApp! What are you waiting for?

HP came back strong in this report. They are in 4th place with 10.4% market share and hot on NetApp’s heels. After many months of nonsensical madness – Leo Apotheker firing, trying to ditch the PC business, the killing of WebOS tablet, the very public Oracle-HP spat – things are beginning to settle a bit under their new CEO, Meg Whitman. In a recent HP Discover conference in Vienna, it was reported that the HP storage team is gung-ho of what they have in their arsenal right now. They called it “The 4 Jewels of HP Storage Crown” which includes 3PAR, Ibrix, StoreOnce and LeftHand. They also leap-frogged over HDS and Dell in the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant (See below).

Kudos to HP and team.

HDS seems to be doing well, and so is Dell. But the Gartner numbers tell a different story. HDS, lost market share and now shares 7.8% market share with Dell. Dell, despite its strong marketing on Compellent, could not make up its loss after breaking off with EMC.

Fujitsu and Oracle completes the line up.

My conclusion: HP and IBM are coming back; EMC is well and far ahead of everyone else; NetApp has to evolve; Dell still lacking in enterprise storage savviness despite having good technology; No comments about HDS. 

NetApp to buy Commvault?

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The rumour mill is going again that Commvault is an acquisition target, and this time, NetApp. The rumour is not new but someone Commvault has gotten too big in the past couple of years to be swallowed up. But this time, it could happen as NetApp is hungry, …. very hungry.

NetApp took a big hit a couple of weeks back, when it announced its Q3 numbers. Revenues fell short of analysts expectations and the share price took a big hit. While its big rival, EMC, has been gaining much momentum on all fronts, it appears that NetApp is getting overwhelmed by the one-stop-shop of EMC. EMC is everything to everyone who wants storage, data protection software, services, data management, scale-out, data security, big data, cloud storage and virtualization and much more. NetApp, has been very focused on what they do best, and that is storage. Everything evolves around their crown jewel, Data ONTAP and recently added Engenio to their stable of storage solutions.

NetApp does not mix the FAS storage with the Engenio and making sure that their story-telling gels but in the past few years, many other vendors are taking the “one-stack-fits-all” approach. Oracle have Exadata, where servers, storage, database and networking in all-in-one. Many others are doing the same, while NetApp prefers a more “loose-coupled” partnerships, such as their “Imagine Virtually Anything” concept partnership with VMware and Cisco, in the shape of FlexPod. FlexPod is a flexible infrastructure package comprising presized storage, networking and server components designed to ease the IT transformation journey–from virtualization all the way to cloud computing.

Commvault would be a great buy (going to be very expensive buy) for NetApp. Things fits perfectly if NetApp decides to abandon its overly protective shield and start becoming a “one-stop-shop” to its customers, starting with data protection. Commvault is already the market leader in the Enterprise Disk-based Backup and Recovery market, and well reflected in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant January 2011 report.

It’s amazing to see how Commvault got to become the leader in this space in just a few short years, and part of its unique approach is providing a common core engine called the Common Technology Engine (CTE). The singular core architecture allows different data management components – Backup, Replication, Archiving, Resource Management and Classification & Search – to share resource and more importantly detailed knowledge of true data management.

In the middle of this year, NetApp had an OEM deal with Commvault to resell their SnapProtect solution, which integrates with NetApp’s SnapMirror solution. The SnapProtect manages NetApp snapshots and SnapMirror replications and also enhances the solution as a tape-out for SnapMirror. Below shows how the Commvault SnapProtect fits into NetApp’s snapshots and SnapMirror data protection architecture.

 

Sources of NetApp’s C-Level said that NetApp is still very much focused on their ONTAP strategy and with their “loosely-coupled” partnerships with key partners like VMware, Cisco, F5 and Quantum. But at the back of NetApp’s mind, I believe, it is time to do something about it. This “focused” (also could be interpreted an overly cautious) approach is probably seeing the last leg of its phase as cloud computing is changing all that. The cost of integration of different, yet flexible components of storage, data protection and data management components, is prohibitive to cloud service providers and NetApp must take a bolder approach to win the hearts of these providers. Having a one-stop-shop isn’t so bad anymore; it is beginning to make sense and NetApp had better do something quick. Commvault is one of the best out there and NetApp shouldn’t lose that chance.

Note: While the rumours of NetApp and Commvault are swirling, there’s been rumours that Quantum could be another NetApp target.