It’s all about executing the story

I have been in hibernation mode, with a bit of “writer’s block”.

I woke up in Bangalore in India at 3am, not having adjusted myself to the local timezone. Plenty of things were on my mind but I can’t help thinking about what’s happening in the enterprise storage market after the Gartner Worldwide External Controller-Based report for 4Q12 came out  last night. Below is the consolidated table from Gartner:

Just a few weeks ago, it was IDC with its Worldwide Disk Storage Tracker and below is their table as well:

Continue reading

The reports are out!

It’s another quarter and both Gartner and IDC reports on disk storage market are out.

What does it take to slow down EMC, who is like a behemoth beast mowing down its competition? EMC, has again tops both the charts. IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Tracker for Q1 of 2012 puts EMC at 29.0% of the market share, followed by NetApp at 14.1%, and IBM at 11.4%. In fourth place is HP with 10.2% and HDS is placed fifth with 9.4%.

In the Gartner report, EMC has the lead of 32.5%, followed by NetApp at 12.7% and IBM with 11.0%. HDS held fourth place at 9.5% and HP is fifth with 9.0%. Continue reading

IDC Worldwide Storage Software QView 3Q11

I did not miss this when the IDC report of worldwide storage software for Q3 2011 was released a couple of weeks ago. I was just too busy to work on it until just now.

The IDC QView report covers 7 functional areas of storage software:

  • Data protection and recovery software
  • Storage replication software
  • Storage infrastructure software
  • Storage management software
  • Device management software
  • Data archiving software
  • File system software

All areas are growing and Q3 grew 9.7% when compared with the figures of 3Q2010. In the overall software market, EMC holds the top position at 24.5% followed by Symantec (15.3%) and IBM (14.0%). Here’s a table to show the overall standings of the storage software vendors.

 

In fact, EMC leads in 3 areas of storage infrastructure management, storage management and device management. But the fastest growing area is data archiving software with a pace of 12.2% following by storage and device management of 11.3%.

HP is not in the table, but IDC reported that the biggest growth is coming from HP with a 38.2% growth, boosted by its acquisition of 3PAR. Watch out for HP in the coming quarters. Also worthy of note is the rate Symantec has been experiencing. Their was only 2.2% and IBM, at #3, is catching up fast. I wonder what’s happening in Symantec having seeing them losing their lofty heights in recent years.

The storage software market is a USD$3.5 billion market and it is the market that storage vendors are placing more importance. This market will grow.

Go on and be a storage extraordinaire

ex·tra·or·di·naire – Outstanding or remarkable in a particular capacity

I was plucking the Internet after dinner while I am holidaying right now in Port Dickson. And at about this time, the news from my subscriptions will arrive, perfectly timed as my food is digesting.

And in the news – “IDC Says Cloud Adoption Fuels Storage Sales”. You think?

We are generating so much data in this present moment, that IDC is already saying that we are doubling our data every 2 years. That’s massive and a big part of it is being fueled our adoption to Cloud. It doesn’t matter if it is a public, private or hybrid cloud because the way we use IT has changed forever. It’s all too clear.

Amazon has a massive repository of contents; Google has been gobbling tons of data and statistics since its inception; Apple has made IT more human; and Facebook has changed the way we communicate. FastCompany magazine called Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook the Big 4 and they will converge sooner or later into what the tornado chasers call a Perfect Storm. Every single effort that these 4 companies are doing now will inevitably meet at one point, where content, communication, computing, data, statistics all become the elements of the Perfect Storm. And the outcome of this has never been more clearer. As FastCompany quoted:

“All of our activity on these devices produces a wealth of data, which leads to the third big idea underpinning their vision. Data is like mother’s milk for Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Data not only fuels new and better advertising systems (which Google and Facebook depend on) but better insights into what you’d like to buy next (which Amazon and Apple want to know). Data also powers new inventions: Google’s voice-recognition system, its traffic maps, and its spell-checker are all based on large-scale, anonymous customer tracking. These three ideas feed one another in a continuous (and often virtuous) loop. Post-PC devices are intimately connected to individual users. Think of this: You have a family desktop computer, but you probably don’t have a family Kindle. E-books are tied to a single Amazon account and can be read by one person at a time. The same for phones and apps. For the Fab Four, this is a beautiful thing because it means that everything done on your phone, tablet, or e-reader can be associated with you. Your likes, dislikes, and preferences feed new products and creative ways to market them to you. Collectively, the Fab Four have all registered credit-card info on a vast cross-section of Americans. They collect payments (Apple through iTunes, Google with Checkout, Amazon with Amazon Payments, Facebook with in-house credits). Both Google and Amazon recently launched Groupon-like daily-deals services, and Facebook is pursuing deals through its check-in service (after publicly retreating from its own offers product).”

Cloud is changing the way we work, we play, we live and data is now the currency of humans in the developed and developing worlds. And that is good news for us storage professionals, because all the data has to eventually end up in a storage somewhere, somehow.

That is why there is a strong demand for storage networking professionals. Not just any storage professionals but the ones that have the right attitude to keep developing themselves, enhancing their skillset, knowledge and experience. The ones that can forsee that the future will worship them and label them as deities of the Cloud era.

So why are you guys take advantage of this? Well, don’t just sit there and be ordinary. Be a storage extraordinaire now! And for those guys who want to settle of being ordinary … too bad! I said this before – You could lose your job.

Happy school holidays!

IDC EMEA External Disk Storage Systems 2Q11 trends

Europe is the worst hit region in this present economic crisis. We have seen countries such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland being some of the worst hit countries and Italy was just downgraded last week by S&P. Last week was also the release of the 2Q2011 External Disk Storage Systems figures from IDC and the poor economic sentiments are reflected in the IDC figures as well.

Overall, the factory revenue for Western Europe grew 6% compared to the year before, but declined 5% when compared to 1Q2011. As I was reading a summary of the report, 2 very interesting trends were clear.

  • The high-end market of above USD250,000 AND the lower-end market of less than USD50,000 increased while the mid-end market of between USD50,000-100,000 price range declined
  • Sentiments revealed that storage buyers are increasingly looking for platforms that are quick to deploy and easy to manage.

As older systems are refreshed, larger companies are definitely consolidating into larger, higher-end systems to support the consolidation of their businesses and operations. Fundamentals such as storage consolidation, centralized data protection, disaster recovery and server virtualization are likely to be the key initiatives by larger organization to cut operational costs and maximizing of storage economics. This has translated to the EMEA market spending more on the higher-end storage solutions from EMC, IBM, HDS and HP.

NetApp, which has been always very strong in the mid-end market, did well to increase their market share and factory revenue at IBM’s and HP’s expense because their sales were flattish. Dell, while transitioning from its partnership with EMC to its Dell Compellent boxes, was the worst hit.

The lower-end storage solution market, according to IDC figures, increased between 10-25% depending on the price ranges of USD5,000 to USD10,000 to USD15,000. This could mean a few things but the obvious call would be the economic situation of most Western European SMBs/SMEs. This could also mean that the mid-end market could be on the decline as many of the lower-end systems are good enough to do the job. One thing the economic crisis can teach us is to be very prudent with our spendings and I believe the Western European companies are taking the same path to control their costs and maximizing their investments.

The second trend was more interesting to me. The quote of “quick to deploy and easy to manage” is definitely pushing the market to react to more off-the-shelf and open components. From an HP stand point of their Converged Infrastructure, the x86 strategy for their storage solutions is making good sense, because I believe there will be lesser need for proprietary hardware from traditional storage vendors like EMC, NetApp and others (HP included). Likewise, having storage solutions such as VSA (Virtual Storage Appliance) and storage appliance software that runs on the x86 platforms such as Nexenta and Gluster could spell out the next wave in the storage networking industry. To have things easy, specialized appliances which I have spoke much of lately, hits the requirement of “quick to deploy and easy to manage” right on the dot.

The overall fundamentals of the external disk storage systems market remain strong. Below is the present standings in the EMEA market as reported by IDC.

 

Gartner figures about the storage market – Half year report

After the IDC report a couple of weeks back, Gartner released their Worldwide External Controller-Based (ECB) Disk Storage Market report last week. The Gartner reports mirrors the IDC report, which confirms the situation in the storage market, and it’s good news!

Asia Pacific and Latin America are 2 regions which are experiencing tremendous growth, with 27.9% and 22.4% respectively. This means that the demand of storage networking and data management professionals is greater than ever. I have always maintained that it is important for professionals like us to enhance our technical and technology know-how to ride on the storage growth momentum.

So from the report, there are no surprises. Below is a table to summarizes the Gartner report.

 

As you can see, HP lost market share together with Dell, Fujitsu and Oracle. Oracle is focusing its energies on its Exadata platform (and it’s all about driving more database license sales), and hence their 7000-series is suffering. Despite Fujitsu partnership with NetApp and EMC, and also with its Eternus storage, lost ground as well.

Dell seems to be losing ground too, but that could be the after effects of divorcing EMC after picking up Compellent early this year. Dell should be able to bounce back as there are reports stating that Compellent is picking up a good pace for Dell. One of the reports is here.

The biggest loser of the last quarter is HP. Even though it has a 0.3% of a market drop, things does not seem so rosy as I have been observing their integration of 3PAR since the purchase late last year. No doubt they are firing all cylinders, but 3PAR does not seem to be helping HP to gain market share (yet). The mid-tier has to be addressed as well and having the old-timer EVA at the helm is beginning to show split ends. Good for the hairdresser; not good for HP. IBRIX and LeftHand complete most of HP storage line-up.

HDS is gaining ground as their storage story is beginning to gel quite well. Coupled with some great moves consolidating their services business and also their Deal Operations Center (DOC) in Kuala Lumpur, simplifies the customers doing business with them. Every company has its challenges but I am beginning to see quite a bit of traction from HDS in the local business scene.

IBM also increased market share with a 0.2% jump. Rather tepid overall but I was informed by an IBMer that their DS8000s and XIVs are doing great in the South East Asia Region. Kudos but again IBM still has to transform its mid-tier DS4000/5000 business, which IBM OEMs the storage backend from NetApp Engenio.

EMC and NetApp are the 2 juggernauts. EMC has been king of the hill for many quarters, and I have been always surprised how nimble EMC is, despite being an 800 pound gorilla. NetApp has proven its critics wrong. For many quarters it has been taking market share and that is reflected in the Gartner Half Year Report below:

 

There you have it folks. The Gartner WW ECB Disk Storage Report. Again, I just want to mention that this is a wonderful opportunity for us doing storage and data management solutions. The demand is there for experienced and skilled professionals but we have to be good, really good to compete with the rest.

EMC and NetApp gaining market share with the latest IDC figures

The IDC 2Q11 global disk storage systems report is out. The good news is data is still growing, and at a tremendous pace as well. Both revenue and capacity have raced ahead with double digit growth, with capacity growth reaching almost 50%.

And not surprisingly to me, EMC and NetApp have gained market share at the expense of HP, IBM and Dell. Here are a couple of statistics tables:

Both EMC and NetApp have recorded more than 25% revenue growth, taking 1st and joint-2nd place respectively. I have always been impressed by both companies.

For EMC, the 800lbs gorilla of the storage market, to be able to get a 26% revenue growth is a massive, massive endorsement of how well EMC execute. They are like a big oil tanker in the rough seas, with the ability to do a 90 degree turn at the blink of an eye. Kudos to Joe Tucci and Pat Gelsinger.

Netapp has always been my “little engine that could”. Their ability to take market share Q-on-Q, Yr-on-Yr is second to none and once again, they did not disappoint. Even with the change of the big man from Dan Warmenhoven to Tom Georgens did not manage a smudge in its armour. And with the purchase of LSI this year, NetApp will go from strength to strength, gaining market share at the other expense. I believe NetApp’s culture plays a big role in their ability and their success. The management has always been honest and frank and there’s a lot of respect of an individual’s ability to contribute. No wonder they are the #5 best company to work for in the US.

The big surprise for me here is Hitachi Data Systems, posting a 23.3% growth. That’s tremendous because HDS has never known to hit such high growth. Perhaps they have finally got the formula right. Their VSP and AMS range must be selling well but again, for HDS, it is a challenge running to 2 different cultural systems within their company. The Japanese team and the US team must be hitting synchronicity at last.

Dell, despite firing all cylinders with EqualLogic and Compellent, actually lost market share. Their partnership with EMC has come to an end and they have not converted their customers to the EqualLogic and Compellent boxes. The Compellent purchase is fairly new (Q1 of 2011) and this will take some time to sink in with their customer. Let’s see how they fare in the next IDC report.

In this table above, HP has always been king of the hill. Bundling their direct attached or internal storage with their servers, just like IBM, has given them an unfair advantage. But for the first time, EMC has outshipped HP, without the presence of DAS and internal storage (which EMC does not sell). Even with the purchase of 3PAR late last year, HP were not able to milk the best of what 3PAR can offer. And not to mention that HP also has LeftHand Networks which now renumbered as the P4000. On the other hand, this is a fantastic result to EMC.

Where’s IBM in all this? Rather anemic, sad to say, compared to EMC and NetApp. IBM’s figures were 1/2 of what EMC and NetApp are posting and this is not good. They don’t have the right weapons to compete. XIV is slowly taking over the mantel of DS8000 as their flagship storage, and their DS series putting up their usual numbers. But that’s not good enough because if you look at the IBM line up, their Shark is pretty much gone. XIV and Storwiz(e) are the only 2 storage platforms that IBM owns. Mind you, Storwiz(e) is not really a primary storage solution. It’s a compression engine. Both the DS-series and N-series actually belongs to LSI (which NetApp owns) and NetApp respectively. So, IBM lacks the IP for storage and in the long run, IBM must do something about it. They must either buy or innovate. They should have bought NetApp when they had the chance in 2002, but today NetApp is becoming an impossible meal to swallow.

We shall see how IBM turns out but if they continue to suffer from anemia, there’s going to be trouble down the road.

As for HP, what can I say? Their XP range is from HDS but with 3PAR in the picture, it looks like the marriage could be ending soon. EVA is an aging platform and they got to refresh it with stronger middle tier platforms. As for the low end of the range, MSA is also something unexciting and I secretly believe that LeftHand should have stepped up. But unfortunately, the HP sales have to be careful not to push MSA and LeftHand side-by-side, and not cannibalizing each other. HP definitely has a challenge in its hands and both 3PAR and LeftHand have been with them for more than 2 quarters. It’s time to execute because the IDC figures have already proved that they are slipping.

What next HP?