Vendor Differentiation Through Thought Leadership

Many years ago, I remember a presentation that made an interesting point -- the view is always better from the front.

The presenter showed a slide that depicted what the lead dog in a dog sled race might see.

Nice view of the trail ahead.

The next slide showed what the view might be from farther back in the pack. Not so nice.

And, not to chest-thump or anything, but I've been noticing that my humble little company appears to be causing a number of other vendors to follow, rather than lead.

And I have to ask the question -- what's more important?

Trying to show the way, or beating up on the other guys?

No, I'm Not Gonna Get Preachy On You ...

But I have to say I'm fascinated by the psychology of all of this. No surprise, at EMC, we think a lot about our competitors, and -- based on recent activity -- I think they're thinking a lot about us as well.

And I'm noticing that -- as EMC continues to execute well in traditional markets, and open up entirely new ones -- well, the tone has substantially changed in the competitive vendor community.

Let me share some of the interesting tidbits I've noticed in the last few weeks. Now, keep in mind that my perceptions are heavily influenced by my long-time affiliation with EMC.

You've been warned. Draw your own conclusions.

Example #1 -- Enterprise Flash Drives

We kind of took the industry by surprise last January when we announced EFDs for the DMX. We went farther, and made some pretty bold predictions about the future of flash, and the consequences for disk.

To be sure, this was a very bold move. Some even saw it as a marketing stunt.

But, what most people don't realize is that EMC has the courage of its convictions. We had some pretty strong opinions regarding the strategic importance of this technology, and we weren't shy about sharing them.

Competitors immediately fell into several camps: (1) you don't need them, (2) they don't work, (3) yeah, we're kinda looking at those as well.

But, since then, just about every storage vendor has had to significantly re-prioritize their roadmap, and figure out what they're gonna do about EFDs. The market appears to have spoken in this regard.

As an example, Sun came out loud and strong recently with characteristic unbridled enthusiasm. But, in classic Sun fashion, they missed the point entirely. It's not just the flash drives (they're just components, right?) it's what you can do with them for customers. Seems that their target use case is ZFS running on a storage-oriented server. Not the most compelling use case, IMHO.

As always, I wish them luck.

Even EMC-followers NetApp and HDS had to begrudingly admit that -- well -- just maybe there was something going on here.

Let me share a hint about how EMC thinks of this: EFDs will change everything in storage -- not only how information is stored, but -- eventually -- how storage is designed and deployed.

So, my fellow competitors, if you think that just shoving a few enterprise flash drives into your existing products is the end of the story, I'd encourage you to think again ...

Example #2 -- Information Infrastructure

EMC frequently creates new terms to describe what we're doing, because -- as often is the case -- new terms are required to describe new ideas.

And I get great enjoyment from watching how many of these get picked up by others in the industry. And I think IBM is an interesting case study in this phenomenon.

If you've been watching, IBM is seriously investing in trying to close the gap between themselves and EMC, especially in the storage domain.

Andy Monshaw has done a great job of acquiring ex-EMC companies (XiV, Dilligent) and has done well at recruiting ex-EMC salespeople.

Most surprising to me?

He's even fallen into the habit of describing "what IBM does" as "information infrastructure".

I'm flattered, since that's the phrase we've been using to describe what EMC does for a living for the last few years. We needed a new term to describe what we did for a living. Our description -- however strange it must have sounded at the outset -- must have gotten some sort of traction for IBM to pick it up as well.

Matter of fact -- I seem to remember they did the same thing when EMC started promoting the concept of ILM.

That's fine -- I think the information infrastructure category is broad enough -- and important enough -- that we need several players.

NetApp? HDS? Sun? Dell? Others? How about it? Do you want to describe what you do as "information infrastructure"?

It's worked out pretty well for us ...

Example #3 -- Cloud Prognostications

A few months ago, I wrote a few posts around what EMC was thinking in terms of the evolution of "cloud", what it might mean for IT vendors, customers, and so on.

I guess those posts were widely read, because -- before too long -- I saw all sorts of sympathetic vibrations from a bunch of others in our industry.

If you're one of those competitors, and you're reading this, I'll share something with you: I was only able to share a small fraction of what we're actually doing.

And There's More

From my perspective, EMC has offered up a substantial amount of advanced thinking on a variety of topics.

Not all of these have been picked up on yet by others -- some may never be -- but it'll be interesting to see what gets traction, and what doesn't.

A few examples might include:

- personal storage and personal information management

- information risk management and data loss prevention

- enterprise content backbones and enablement of the knowledge workforce

- the emerging role of IT, and the importance of information governance -- and how information compliance might be the new battleground.

- frictionless IT, and what's beyond simple consolidation in virtualized environments

Not to mention some more pragmatic innovations we're working on -- some in plain view.

This isn't blue-sky stuff. These ideas are backed by real investments that will either pay off, or not, depending on how it all unfolds.

Like I've said before, EMC has the courage of its convictions.

Does Thought Leadership Matter In Our Industry?

I really hope so. One of the reasons that I've worked at EMC so long -- and continue to enjoy it so immensely -- is that we get to innovate around some Really Big Ideas.

Even a few folks in the industry that once thought of us as evil incarnate are starting to come around a bit. But there's still plenty of people left to convince.

And, sometimes, competition comes from surprising corners ;-)

For me, that sort of investment by EMC in The Next Thing(s) creates a certain kind of value in the industry, and does the same for our customers and partners. Maybe even the industry as a whole ...

Conversely, I'm dismayed when I see others in our industry resorting to cooking up benchmarks and crowing about their results, or plugging their ears and saying the same thing over and over again, or -- worse -- just making up stuff that's plain wrong.

And, because we play in a very competitive industry, we have to spend significant cycles setting the story straight, and bringing a bit of balance to the discussion.

Sure it's entertaining to watch vendors go at it, tooth and nail, but I think the value created (vs effort spent) doesn't strike me as a particularly productive investment.

I'm in no position to judge whether that's the right strategy for these companies or not. I, for one, would not want to work for a company that saw the world this way.

I hope I never have to.

But I can offer that -- when I work with customers and partners -- they seem to appreciate this sort of innovation and thought leadership more than that other stuff.

What do you think?

Comments

[Taylor Allis]

Hey Chuck - that Sun/Intel use case you point to is just one use case - not "the target."

But more to the point - since when does offering customers the ability to increase their storage application performance by 3x while decreasing power consumption costs by 4.9x though hybrid SSD/HDD storage management strike anyone as "Not a compelling use case"??????

[Chuck Hollis]

Gee, you're back.

First thought, I think you missed the point of the post regarding thought leadership.

That's fine -- I understand completely.

Second thought, if that's all you're getting from flash, you probably need to revisit your implementation a bit ...

Third thought -- I think the market will be more interested when you've got a product that's shipping, supported, etc.

Or not, as the case may be.

Best of luck to the team at Sun

[Kevin Rowney]

I like your blog and it's often a fun read, but I really have to object to your attempt to portray EMC as a thought leader in Data Loss Prevention.

DLP was created by *startups* and many of the core ideas of the space were largely mapped out by late 2001. In the last couple of years, your company bought a relatively late entrant in the DLP game. Frankly, it's hard to point to any really big new earth-shattering concept in DLP pioneered by the startup you bought or by EMC itself.

From reading your past posts on this topic, it's clear that - to use your dog-sledding analogy - EMC follows our paw-prints in the snow out on the DLP trail.

Kevin Rowney
Founder, Vontu Division of Symantec

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Kevin

To be honest, I'm not 100% familiar with Vontu, nor the chronology of who came up with which idea first.

And if you -- or anyone else -- has done the pioneering thought leadership work on a topic, I'd be highly motivated to give credit where credit is due.

That being said, you've piqued my inquisitiveness a bit ... let me check around, and get back to you.

Thanks for sharing ...

[Alex McDonald]

Some of your stuff is though provoking and interesting; you write well, and you make a good deal of sense. But when you whine, it's awful.

"I'm dismayed when I see others in our industry resorting to cooking up benchmarks and crowing about their results." Sheesh.

We've been over this before. The NetApp SPC-1 benchmarks were a direct result of EMC's unaudited benchmark here; http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/specification-sheet/300-004-233.pdf. And it's on your pal Dell's website too; http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/netapp_performance_san.pdf.

When calling the pot black, best not be the kettle.

"... because we play in a very competitive industry, we have to spend significant cycles setting the story straight, and bringing a bit of balance to the discussion."

Too right. But you're spending cycles because your story requires that you rewrite the facts.

[dale]

Your company is arrogant. I like that.

[Chuck Hollis]

Alex, I guess you're helping to prove my point.

If you'll recall, the blog post was about certain vendors thinking it's more important to bash the competition than to innovate or demonstrate thought leadership.

And -- of course -- true to form, you decided to go for another round of bashing.

At least the gang at NetApp is consistent!

[Chuck Hollis]

Dale, sorry to disappoint, but -- living and working inside of EMC -- I can't really describe the company as "arrogant".

Excited, passionate, enthusiastic -- yes.

Arrogant -- not really.

Hope you won't like us any less because of this ;-)

[Alex McDonald]

Innovation is fine. Demonstrating thought leadership is fine. Good stuff, and you've a lot to say that makes sense. That I like.

But EMC and NetApp aren't think-tanks or management consultancies. We're companies that should be selling to customers the solutions that help them progress their businesses. Sales that should be won and lost on a variety of issues; hard issues like cost, functionality, performance, value for money; and soft issues like roadmap, direction, industry position, thought leadership to name but a few.

If that were only true. Where I sit, down in the trenches in the real world, it's a one-way propaganda war with you guys. Because I'm afraid that most of the stuff that gets passed in my direction from our sales guys when we compete with EMC isn't about EMC's leadership. It's bash-NetApp FUD.

I've just had a potential new customer on the phone; he's just sat through an anti-NetApp presentation from EMC. He described it as "30 minutes of slagging off NetApp". Some of what he's just heard and relayed to me is just downright dishonest. EMC have blinded its salesforce with this nonsense over the years, and they can't see their way to selling a solution as a result.

That's not leadership.

I do understand your frustration (and perhaps you'll understand mine), but you've picked the wrong target. The enemy is inside the tent. It's your own company that's causing you the problem of having to spend significant cycles setting the story straight.

[Sjon]

Who's bashing who here? I think I lost track....

But you can't really say with dry eyes a company like NetApp is not innovative, at least I still have to see ANYONE else in the industry to provide ANY benchmark result (authored or not) where RAID6 and snaps are ENABLED by default.

Like EMC invented the CAS market,I recall Network Appliance building the NAS & iSCSI market from ground up (through thought leadership?). So a little more respect would be fine here...

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Alex -- good discussion

First, I'd take exception with the "neither of us is a think tank or a mangement consultancy". Actually, we have both functions as part of EMC's mainline business, but I digress.

As far as the FUD war in the field, yep, I'd agree -- when it's rep to rep, toe to toe, the competitive blather flows from both camps.

If you've ever been exposed to game theory, you'll remember the "Prisoners' Dilemna", a situation where a positive outcome was available for both players, but trust was involved.

The structural similarities to the situation you describe are striking. And, from where I sit, the outcome will always be suboptimal for all players.

In the meantime, though, it'd be nice to hear some new thoughts from NetApp and the rest of the industry ... wouldn't it?

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Sjon

Yes, there's a lot of inter-vendor bashing in the storage industry. That doesn't mean I have to like it, though ...

For me, innovation comes in different sizes and shapes. Sure, lots of storage vendors have innovated on one feature or another, maybe a clever use of snap, or perhaps a novel data layout. That's all useful.

But I can't consider that "thought leadership" or innovation on a macro scale.

I would disagree with your assertion that "NetApp built the NAS and iSCSI market from the ground up".

Technically speaking, they were rather late to the party -- fast followers -- but did spend an enormous amount of effort evangelizing the technologies, and I'd give them credit for their widespread acceptance and use -- although, according to Gartner and IDC -- they haven't been able to establish a clear market leadership position in either.

And, finally, I give all storage vendors a measure of respect. This is a tough business, and not for the faint hearted.